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Celebrating Classic Sociology: Pioneers of British Qualitative Research

A symposium organised by Qualidata and held on 5-6 July 2001 at the University of Essex

Brief Report
Selected Abstracts
Original Programme (includes full list of speakers)

Brief Report

This conference was organised by Qualidata, the Qualitative Data Service at the UK Data Archive and was sponsored by the Department of Sociology at Essex and the British Academy. This will be remembered as one of the key events to have taken place for British Sociology at the start of this new Millennium.

Delegates gathered to hear papers from seminal figures of British sociology. Speakers included Michael Young on updating Family Life and Kinship, Peter Townsend on reliability, Janet Finch on feminism and qualitative work, Colin Bell on the problems of engaging in sociological research.

Although there was a desire to highlight the work done in the past this was not a backward looking event. Many of the papers offered rich insight into research strategies, methods and analyses used by eminent sociologists during the 1960s and 1970s which continue to have an influence on contemporary theory and research today. Emphasis was placed on how this work informed current and future practice in the field of qualitative research. Some speakers focused on this idea, such as David Vincent on working class autobiography and Chris Phillipson with Revisiting Bethnel Green, that looked at a project to follow up classic studies of the 1950s and 1960s with new research.

Qualidata is committed to providing the research, learning and teaching communities with significant real life data that can be re-analysed, reworked, compared with contemporary data, and that will, in time, form part of our cultural heritage as historical resources.

For British sociological research the decades since 1950 have witnessed an unprecedented flowering: in the growth of its influence, in the spread of its themes, and in the development of its quantitative and qualitative methods. From the 1960s into the 1970s sociology was not only an exceptionally popular subject with students, but was also given more national research resources than at any time before or since. This enabled social researchers to carry out studies of a thoroughness unlikely ever to be equalled. Just one example is Peter Townsend's in-depth national survey of institutional homes for the aged The Last Refuge.

This great wave of research activity has left us with a triple heritage. The first is the development of crucial ideas - such as the role of the extended family in the cities, or of the 'moral panic' - which remain part of the mainstream of current sociological thinking. The second is the uneven residue of original research data, which it has been Qualidata's goal to rescue. Much of it is now permanently archived as a resource for social researchers in the future. The third heritage is the surviving members of that pioneering generation of researchers: for despite some major losses, most of them are still with us, and a good many of them still actively researching.

In this summer of 2001 Qualidata is in its seventh year of work, and our rescue mission for the data from classic early sociological studies is almost completed. We have confirmed some grave losses, including all of the uniquely sustained research of John and Elizabeth Newson on child rearing; the Banbury studies, Rex and Moore's Sparkbrook study to name but a few. But more positively, we have rescued the surviving data from many other researchers, including outstandingly well-known single projects such as The Affluent Worker, Mods and Rockers, and the entire life's work of pioneering researchers such as George Brown and Peter Townsend.

This symposium can be seen as a unique moment in British Sociology. An opportunity to celebrate the rescue of a crucial part of our heritage for future generations. At the same time it enabled younger researchers interested in that research data to come together with the pioneers who generated it, and to reflect both upon that past achievement and upon the relevance of classic British Sociology for understanding the social issues of the 21st century. It also provided the opportunity to debate and think ahead about qualitative research and its methods. Moreover, and perhaps more significantly for Qualidata, the underlying message of the symposium was to promote both the archiving and re-use of British qualitative data archives.

The conference was enjoyed by all and seen as an important step in putting the re-use of qualitative data on the intellectual agenda for contemporary research. Plans are afoot to publish a selection of the papers in a future issue of the International Journal of Social Science Methodology.

Louise Corti
Director Qualidata, UK Data Archive, University of Essex