03 January 2018
The Persistence of Gender Inequality
A Summary of the Annual Equality Lecture 2017 by Professor Mary Evans
At the end of October 2017 we hosted our seventh annual Equality Lecture in partnership with the British Sociological Association. We were really delighted that the lecture this year was given by Professor Mary Evans, who has been central to the development of women’s and gender studies in the UK, and a prolific writer and academic on all aspects of gender in society. Her work has covered diverse topics such as love, detective fiction, austerity, autobiography, social class and higher education, Jane Austen, and has examined how social actions and actors are formed and structured within the social world.
Professor Evans drew on her recent book ‘The Persistence of Gender Inequality’ (Polity, 2016) to show how gender inequality is being reproduced in contemporary society, but is taking new forms. She began by making the point that gender as well as race, have been largely ignored in those major recent works (for example, by Thomas Piketty) which seek to address inequality. She argued that the connection between class inequalities, as shaped by gender and race, need to be brought to the fore if we are to understand the forms that unequal social relationships take in the contemporary western world.
Professor Mary Evans taking audience questions with event chair, Professor John Horne. Photo credit Sam Lane for The British Library Board.
She suggested that in the past forty years particular forms of social change have enlarged and reshaped inequality including:
‘the dissolution of some forms of class boundaries; the creation of a new social contract and with it a new version of the ‘ideal citizen’ and the expectations of women’s appearance and conduct.’
Evans described these latter two changes as constituting a form of ‘aspirational coercion’ which has a particular effect on four central forms of inequality between men and women, which are:
‘inequalities of income, public power, responsibility for care and; forms and means of representation, all of which are experienced in different ways according to difference in class and race.’
The notion of who counts as ‘middle-class’ and assumptions about middle-class personhood and values in contemporary neoliberal western societies such as the UK, were shown by Evans to be important to her idea of ‘aspirational coercion’.
On the one hand traditional markers of ‘middle-classness’ are increasingly uncertain; on the other, the middle-class to whom politicians often refer could be more accurately described as the ‘upper middle-class’.
Evans argued that in the UK, it is in fact, upper middle-class white men who remain dominant in elite professions, ‘high’ culture and politics. Yet, it is this particular version of elite autonomy, financial reward and social mastery that have become central to the notion of the ideal contemporary citizen whom she named: ‘the master of the universe’.
‘Being a commander of men has always dominated the aspirations of the ruling class but what interests me here is that we get to the point here where it intersects with gender in the way in which this idea of the powerful autonomous individual, replete with choice and agency has now become generalised as a human ideal.’
Evans suggested that very few people, men or women, of any race, ever get to occupy the position of ‘master of the universe’ but that this fantasy has a very real impact on the way in which people, and especially women, are recognised and ascribed social value. As paid work becomes the ‘gold standard’ as part of the fantasy status of ‘autonomous subject’, the unpaid work of caring for others, which remains overwhelmingly work done by women, becomes value-less:
‘The ‘master of the universe’ […] the specialist, the highly skilled, is essentially […] care-less. So with ‘success’ goes distance from care: a social association which establishes a connection between high achievement and being care-less, and being a low achiever and doing care.’
Audience questions at the Equality Lecture. Photo credit Sam Lane for The British Library Board.
The second issue of ‘aspirational coercion’ is around consumption as a route to, and marker of, female emancipation. The inability to participate in social expectations around consumption become a marker of lacking, and therefore source of personal shame, such that for women living in poverty, consumption has done very little to narrow class difference or experience. At the same time, consumption is a site for control and coercion around the shape and appearance of the female body. In this, the standards about the appearance of the female body are presented in ways which are connected to an ideal about an autonomous, emancipated, culturally hegemonic female subject. An ideal subject very far removed from the reality of most women’s lives, both in the west and in developing nations.
Professor Evans finished her lecture with a reminder of the need to think about gender and social inequality together, to enable us to understand what is being called the ‘new form of capitalism’. The idea of ‘aspirational coercion’ is important to understanding the relationship between individuals and capitalism which shape who is able to participate as an autonomous subject. And autonomy remains largely determined by new forms of this interplay between class, gender and race.
Further information;
Watch a video of Mary’s lecture here.
Listen to a podcast of Mary's lecture here.
Read a short piece by Mary on her lecture here.
04 October 2017
The Annual Equality Lecture: The Persistence of Gender Inequality
On the 23 October this year, the British Library and British Sociological Association will host the seventh annual equality lecture. This year we are delighted that the speaker will be Professor Mary Evans, talking about gender inequality and why many continue to ignore it as a major issue in structural and cultural inequality.
The issue of gender inequality has made the headlines again and again in recent years. Research undertaken by the coalition A Fair Deal for Women for instance, has shown that in the UK women, especially BAME and disabled women, have been disproportionately affected by cuts to public spending. Meanwhile, the gender pay gap and the poor representation of women at senior levels in employment, in politics, and on Boards, is a persisting problem. The issues which were so central to the Second Wave Feminist movement – such as childcare, employment equality, freedom from sexual oppression, the right to economic equality - remain daily battles for women in the UK today.
Image: Professor Mary Evans outside the British Library. Photo copyright Sarah Evans.
Feminism as a movement feels as though it has regained momentum in the UK. The work of Laura Bates and the Everyday Sexism project has sought to expose the sexism, abuse and misogyny that women face on a daily basis. Activist groups such as Sisters Uncut have lobbied to improve conditions and support for those women who are victims of domestic violence. And, the marches on International Women’s Day earlier this year harnessed women’s anger about policies and attitudes, both in the UK and internationally, which continue to dehumanise women and cause suffering.
Despite the fact that women continue to suffer both structural and cultural inequality, gender is often ignored as a fundamental constituent of inequality in discussions about inequality, both within academia and the public realm. Professor Evans will draw on her most recent book, The Persistence of Gender Inequality (Polity Press, 2016) to make this argument, and to show the importance of making these connections if progress in gender equality is to be achieved.
Professor Mary Evans began her academic career over 40 years ago at the University of Kent, where she taught sociology and women’s and gender studies. Since 2007, Professor Evans has been Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of Kent and more recently she took up a post at the London School of Economics where she is now Visiting Professor at the Gender Institute. Professor Evans is particularly interested in gender and class as components of social identity and the way we structure and imagine the social world.
For more information about the event and to book tickets, please visit our events pages.
Visit Mary’s blog post about her book on the Polity Press Blog: http://politybooks.com/the-persistence-of-gender-inequality/
01 September 2017
Bringing Voices Together: the importance of independent Black publishing
A guest post by Kadija George
Kadija George, FRSA is a Birmingham University alumni and currently an AHRC/TECHNE scholarship PhD candidate at Brighton University researching Black British Publishers. She is the Publications Manager for Peepal Tree’s Inscribe imprint, an editor of several groundbreaking anthologies and publisher of SABLE LitMag. She is a Fellow of the George Bell Institute and a Fellow of the Kennedy Arts Centre of Performance Arts Management.
Why do we need Black publishers if one of our societal objectives is to nurture a diverse society in Britain? Because diversity is paralleled with having options; we need gay publishers, women publishers as well as Black publishers.
This does not mean though that Black publishers (or any other ‘minority’ publisher) should be eschewed as being ghettoised, but rather as specialised. Therefore, when Shappi Khorsandi, withdrew her longlisted novel, Nina Is Not OK, for consideration for the Jhalak Prize, saying that, she “felt like my skin colour was up for an award rather than my book” [i] , she assumed that being nominated for the prize would place her in a category that would stigmatise her or limit her audience, yet such prizes highlight the books for what they are – good work, well written. With just 51 books being nominated though, it should shame the mainstream white dominated publishing industry in Britain into doing better with regards to publishing Black writers; an estimated 184,000 books were published in 2013 in the UK. [ii]
Aside from this, there are five broad reasons rationalising the need for, and increased awareness of Black publishers:-
Black publishers take on writers without shock or stereotype. If a writer approaches a Black publisher with a ‘thirty something’ love story between a devout Muslim and a devout Christian who live happily ever, this does not present a story that is unrealistic to a Black publisher; they understand that it is an ordinary part of everyday life (which means that Black writers' work is humorous at times, too). These are black lives, and they matter without the need to challenge the writer’s credentials, their authenticity or the need to be validated by white expertise.
They are also often the only ones willing to take the risk to publish work that is viewed as ‘experimental’, giving the writer permission to be who they are, to write what they want. The best of such work, which often does not easily fit into any one genre is published by independent Black press or is self-published, such as Walter Moseley’s The graphomanic’s primer: a semi surrealist memoir (Black Classic Press) or Tim Fielder’s Matty’s Rocket, (dieselfunk.com).
Secondly, publishing is more than the physical product for Black publishers as there is the equal need to educate the Black community. This was contained in John La Rose’s 'Dream to Change the World' when he established New Beacon Books in 1966.
Those who migrated to Britain in the 1950’s, who were to become publishers, were equally activists in the community. Social justice work was an integral aspect of their work, supporting the lives of those of African descent who (im)migrated to Britain from the West Indies, Africa and Asia and for the human rights of communities and activists abroad who were under attack, such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Angela Davies (West Indian Digest, Vol. 1, no 8, Nov/Dec 1971). They were at the forefront of campaigns such as the New Cross Massacre (The New Cross Massacre Story (New Beacon 1981), and challenged authorities regarding the murder of Stephen Lawrence - Black Deaths in Police Custody and Human Rights: The Failure of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry by David Mayberry (Hansib Publications, 1993).
The New Cross Massacre Story (New Beacon 1981)
The third factor is that they are information providers, utilising the pamphlet as a tool to send out political and social messages, such as the Pan African Association in 1898 announcing the need for a conference to address the dire position of black people in the world. The practical outcome was the first Pan African conference in 1900. Similarly, informing the community of how West Indian children were being (dis)educated in British Schools sparked a movement that started in late 1960’s and carried on until the mid-1980’s that comprised establishing supplementary schools and led to associations of black professionals and the black family to reverse this situation. How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System (1971) by Bernard Coard (New Beacon) originated as a paper at a conference.
Fourthly, black publishers claim and re-claim the printing of classic texts that may otherwise have remained invisible. New Beacon’s re-publishing Froudacity by JJ Thomas (1969) with an introductory essay by CLR James, ‘The West Indian Intellectual’ are two classic works between one cover. Walter Rodney’s The Groundings with My Brothers, was originally printed on a Gestetner, by Bogle L’Ouverture (1969), a title which, along with his next book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa(1972), remain in high demand.
Froudacity / JJ Thomas (1969)
Finally, Black publishers ensure the visibility of Black people’s lives in British history.
Not telling the Black British story denies all British people of their true history:
…the idea of not accepting inhibiting traditions, but being constantly inventive and novel; because one of the problems I can see facing West Indians in Britain in future, is the inhibiting tradition of the education system. This not only affects West Indians as you all ready realise, but ordinary Britons, but it is the rupture of the traditions which underline this tradition which will be important... (John La Rose – letter to Kamau Brathwaite - 24 Feb 1969 - GPI Institute GB2904 LRA/01/143/04)
This underlines the work undertaken by David Olusaga in his TV series and accompanying book, Black and British, A Forgotten History (shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize) in which he disrupts the telling of British history. His core point is this; it is not possible to tell British history without telling the story of Black British history which is not just about the people who live(d) in Britain, but those in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia too. When Britain became an empire, their colonies would forever be a part of British history. This history includes the history of the book. Olusaga also pointed out that it is novels such as Andrea Levy’s Small Island that tell important aspects of Black history. [iv]
This is why the ‘Bringing Voices Together’ networking event is needed, because the British Library is surely the first place for people to visit to find out about the history of the book in Britain, and that history needs to ensure the inclusivity of the history of Black British books and publishers, so that it is not as Olusaga says, a ‘deliberately forgotten’ history. (David Olusaga, Brighton University, 30 November 2016)
Related posts: Bringing Voices Together: Inclusivity in Independent Publishing in Contemporary Britain, 7th September
Related links: All about African publishers
Twitter: @kadijattug
02 August 2017
Bringing Voices Together: Inclusivity in Independent Publishing in Contemporary Britain, 7th September
Chantelle Lewis is a PhD student working at the British Library on a project on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) publishing. In this post, Chantelle describes her project and a forthcoming event at the Library.
My name is Chantelle Lewis and I am a PhD student in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths College. My research is focused on the lived experiences of mixed race families in mono-cultural British towns. Since beginning my PhD, I have been interested in 'race' in Britain, racialised inequalities and the legacies of colonialism. I am keen to become a public sociologist emphasising how sociological research can help shape important social policies.
I am currently working as a PhD placement researcher within the Contemporary British Publications team at the British Library. The title of my placement is ‘Independent, D-I-Y, and activist BAME publishing, in print and online, in 21st century Britain’. I am interested in the current production of inclusive publications, and how the Library can better engage with independent publishers and activists invested in widening representation of writers of colour.
I began by using the Library’s online catalogue to assess its holdings of independent and activist publishing committed to writers of colour. Following this, I met with writers, publishers and activists, and asked them about their experience of supporting independent expression in print and online. The result of these meetings will be a networking event at the British Library titled 'Bringing Voices Together'. I was inspired to organise Bringing Voices Together after the project illuminated devolved literary practices which could help structure a pragmatic response by the British Library.
The event will bring together people from the arts, literary, and activist world, together with staff from the British Library. The group will include people invested in the development of platforms for diverse forms of expression, as many face similar obstacles in a predominantly mono-cultural industry.
Whilst meeting with writers, publishers and activists, I began to feel like there were key people I was speaking to who could benefit by connecting with others committed to inclusivity. Inspired by the on-going project run by Birkbeck History department - History Acts , where historians meet with activists to discuss the possibility of collaboration, I was keen to do something similar as part of my placement. As well as having writers and publishers involved, there will be academics and researchers at the event. I am hopeful that this will allow for interdisciplinary discussions on past and present expression by writers of colour.
Part of Bringing Voices Together will be to gather information for the British Library’s Contemporary Britain web pages on independent publishers who have committed to writers of colour in print and digital formats. This will serve as a starting point for the Library to become actively engaged with the varied formations of contemporary publishing in Britain. This information is also intended to help bookshops and public libraries connect with different voices, as well as offering more wide-ranging options for users of the Library. We’ll update this post with more details after the event.
Over the coming weeks, there will be a series of guest blog posts from myself and some of the people I have met who are engaged with inclusive independent publishing. Alongside the updates to the Contemporary Britain web pages, these articles will show that Bringing Voices Together is intended to be action driven, coupled with giving a much needed platform to different modes of expression. It also contributes to the notion of legacy and how collaboration can be at the forefront of change.
The fusion of attendees and speakers from publishing, literary, academic and activist backgrounds will allow a range of stakeholders to meet and debate the contemporary issues in publishing and the innovative ways these are being addressed. This will lead to a celebration of resourceful production which has been rewarded by the widening presence of public appreciation. It will also comment on the positive aspects of independent publishing and the opportunities it can present for inclusive expression.
The event gives all involved the opportunity to contribute to a conversation on inclusionary practices in publishing. The principle aim of the afternoon will be to provide recommendations on how the British Library can become more closely involved with writers of colour in independent publishing.
Chantelle Lewis BSc, MA and PhD candidate in Sociology
28 March 2017
Report on Rebels
Polly Russell, Lead Curator for Politics and Public Life, reports on our event to mark International Women's Day 2017: 'Rebels in the Archives'.
Earlier this month, to mark International Women’s Day, the British Library hosted ‘Rebels in the Archives’, a sell-out panel discussion with four women who, in different ways, have uncovered the hidden histories of women’s lives in Britain’s past.
The evening kicked off with Heidi Safia Mirza, Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmith’s College and author of Young Female and Black. Heidi discussed how Women of Colour have been rendered invisible by the absences and omissions which characterise most representations of the past. Attend to the archive, look beyond the obvious and take responsibility for finding and accounting for Women of Colour when researching women’s lives was her message.
Next up was Abi Morgan, BAFTA and Emmy Award winning writer and producer whose film Suffragette introduced cinema audiences around the world to the story of how working class women fought to get the vote in the UK. Abi described the process of writing the film’s script, how libraries and archives held the key to the narrative and character and of the totemic importance of archival objects – she described the tiny purse Emily Wilding Davison was holding when she fatefully stepped in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby on the 4th June 1913 and how this brought to life the fragility and courage of ‘extraordinary sacrifice made by the ordinary’.
From left to right the 'Rebels in the Archives' Panel: Heidi Mirza; Abi Morgan; Margaretta Jolly; Debi Withers; Jill Liddington. Image courtesy of Polly Russell.
Writer and historian Jill Liddington followed Abi and heroically compressed a life’s work into a splendid 15 minute presentation. Jill, the author of a seminal account of northern working-class women’s contribution to the Suffragist movement, One Hand Tied Behind Us, detailed how archives and libraries held the key to a history of women which had previously been omitted from historical record.
The final speaker of the evening, curator, researcher and digital expert Debi Withers, brought us bang up to date with a discussion of how digital archives and catalogues have the potential, if opened up to tagging and searching, to widen access to and enable links between feminist archives.
The evening’s discussions were expertly chaired by Margaretta Jolly, Reader in Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex and someone directly responsible for increasing the number of women rebels in the British Library archives – Margaretta contributed 60 Women’s Liberation Movement oral histories to the British Library as part of the Sisterhood & After project she led in 2013.
After audience questions Margaretta concluded the evening by noting that though the panel employed diverse approaches to understanding the past, worked across different formats and spoke to different audiences, their work was evidence that archives and libraries are places where the rebels of the past could b e uncovered so th at rebels of the future may thrive.
You can see a short video of the evening’s highlights and a podcast of the evening is also available on the British Library's SoundCloud channel.
The event was developed in association with the University of Sussex and was supported by the Living Knowledge Network.
16 January 2017
2017 / 2018 British Library PhD Placements
Rachel Tavernor is a Media and Cultural Studies PhD Researcher at the University of Sussex. In this post, she discusses her PhD Placement at the British Library.
At the start of 2016, I did not imagine that I would be finishing the year at the British Library. For the last three months, I have been based in their Research Development team, as part of their new PhD Placement Programme.
My placement focused on exploring twentieth and twenty-first century anti-poverty activism in the British Library Collections. After a preliminary mapping of the archives, and discovering how much material was available, I narrowed the focus of my placement to housing activism. Struggles for decent and affordable housing, with secure and fair tenancies, are at the forefront of many anti-poverty movements and are often led by women. I developed two strands of the project to explore the ways in which radical, feminist, and at times illegal, protest actions are archived.
Firstly, I traced housing activism, including rent strikes, squats and housing cooperatives, across the British Library Collections. Working with diverse materials, including oral histories, manuscripts, music and news media, I was able to map the differing voices in the archive. In particular, investigating the tensions between protesters, mainstream media and government narratives. A guide to the materials found in the collections will be available on a new project website, Archiving Activism (launching in Spring 2017), which will include images of relevant collection items.
Secondly, I developed a small research project on the practices of archiving activism. To understand and propose ways to archive activism, I conducted a series of nine interviews. Many very enjoyable hours were spent listening to campaigners, feminist archivists and academics who engage with archives of activism. The interviews informed an internal report that I produced for the British Library on potential ways to archive contemporary activism.
Image: The gates of the British Library.
We will be discussing archives, activism and feminism movements on 8 March 2017 with a panel discussion on Rebels in the Archives. One of the privileges of working with the Library was the opportunity to invite inspiring feminists, Jill Liddington, Abi Morgan, Heidi Safia Mirza and Deborah Withers, to contribute to this event (booking now open).
I recently presented my research project to PhD students at the annual CHASE conference, Encounters, and to British Library staff as part of the British Library Bitesize Talk Series. Both events gave me the opportunity to share my research and reflect on my time at the British Library. For those of you considering applying for a PhD Placement in 2017, here are my reasons for taking part:
- Research Skills: you get a chance to use the skills that you’ve learnt conducting your PhD research in a new environment. You will also learn new research skills by working on a short-term project with industry outputs.
- Rich Resources: you get the time to explore the rich resources of the British Library Collections. You also get to find out about the resources that are yet to be made public or are soon to be acquired… watch this space for some exciting new acquisitions.
- Public Engagement: you get to engage people with your research and the British Library Collections. You may have the opportunity to create your own event, possibly presenting your research or supporting the Library with their large events programme.
- Colleagues and Collaborators: you get to work with some fantastic colleagues who are passionate about the British Library and research. You also get to be part of a cohort of PhD Placement researchers and learn about a wide range of research that is conducted at the Library.
- Inspiration: finally, the British Library is packed with inspiring people, both past and present. I return to my PhD research this week with new ideas, skills and experiences.
The British Library have just published a new call for applicants for 2017/2018 British Library PhD Placements. Included in the programme are placements on:
- Independent, DIY, and Activist BAME Publishing, in Print and Online, in 21st century Britain
- 21st Century British Comics
- Researching the EU Referendum Through Leaflet and Web Archive Collections
If you have any questions about the placements, contact [email protected]
07 September 2016
The Annual Equality Lecture with Professor Andrew Sayer
On 24 October this year, the British Sociological Association and the British Library will hold their Sixth Annual Equality Lecture. The speaker, Professor Andrew Sayer, will talk to the topic ‘Why We Can’t Afford the Rich’ about which he has written a book, aimed at a public audience.
Professor Sayer is Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University. Over the last 40 years, he has written on the philosophy of social science, industry and unequal development, political economy, divisions of labour and their economic and social implications, the causes of inequalities and their impact on individuals, and on dignity and ethics in everyday life.
In the last 15 years he has also worked on ‘moral economy’, examining the justifications of particular economic institutions and relationships, and the relationship between economic practices and morality in everyday life. This work has been extremely valuable to those interested in the complexity of everyday practices which enable inequalities to persist in our society.
The subject of ‘Why We Can’t Afford the Rich’ couldn’t be more topical. For instance, the tax affairs of the super-wealthy continue to receive regular press coverage in the UK. Meanwhile, some of the world’s richest companies have been reported as benefiting from complex and lucrative tax avoidance schemes, and there is much online speculation about the social ends to which this money might otherwise have been used.
Image: Professor Andrew Sayer © Andrew Sayer
The broad collections at the British Library are able to show aspects to this debate within its wider historical context. The relationship between wealth distribution, social responsibility and morality has been debated across time, and across cultures, within social, legal and religious writing as well as within famous works of fiction. For instance, Charles Dickens is well known for his explorations of wealth inequality, morality and human behaviour in Victorian society.
In previous years, the Annual Equality Lecture has covered topics including equality for people with disabilities; the meaning of liberty; egalitarian social capital; the value and of equality and; equality and wellbeing. The expert and passionate speakers we have been lucky enough to host have delivered thought-provoking lectures, many of which are available as podcasts and videos.
We hope that you can attend the event this year for an evening of intellectual discussion, followed by conversation in the bar. For further information about the event and booking details, please see our ‘What’s On’ pages.
29 October 2015
Sources and Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Late News: We are pleased to announce that Professor Benjamin Bowling (Kings College
London) will also be speaking at the event.
Criminology and Criminal Justice are the focus of this year’s all day workshop on sources and methods in socio-legal research. Following last year's suggestions for themes of future events the British Library, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and Socio-Legal Studies Association have teamed up with the British Society of Criminology. The workshop will take place at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies on Friday, 20 November 2015.
The event, aimed at PhD/MPhil researchers, early career academics and policy researchers, offers a valuable opportunity to benefit from insider views of several UK collections that support criminological and criminal justice research, but crucially, also offers the opportunity to hear an international group of distinguished researchers in law and criminology talk about particular sources and attendant methodological issues encountered in their research. There will be opportunities for questions and discussion throughout the day which finishes with a panel discussion.
From the British Library, Jon Sims, will provide a glimpse of content and services that offer potential to support contextual studies of criminal law, crime and criminal justice, offering examples that illustrate the scope of the Library’s collections including news media, sound recordings, industry information, colonial public records, private historical papers, literary and pictorial sources. Beyond the British Library the day offers insight on the qualitative, quantitative and theoretical methods and data sources used by or found in the collections of the impressive array of speakers who have volunteered their time.
From the Manheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the LSE, Paul Rock (with Tim Newburn and David Downes) discuss the “large and worrying gaps in formal documentation” encountered during their research since 2009 on the official history of criminal justice (1959 to 1997) in context of the accumulation of records, and procedures of file selection and retention. From the National Archives (Kew), Nigel Taylor will discuss the context of Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation, the EU Right to be forgotten ruling, compliance and inter-institutional dialogue surrounding decisions about access to records of criminal justice. Representatives from other UK national collections are Sharon Bolton, Data Curation Manager at the UK Data Service, who will be talking about finding quantitative and qualitative crime and criminological data sources and also highlighting associated resources such as case studies based on the data and teaching sets, and Stuart Stone, from the Institute of Criminology (Cambridge), talking about the world renowned, and strongly interdisciplinary, Radzinowicz Library.
On the theme of qualitative methods and the interpretation of texts, Lizzie Seal (University of Sussex) will discuss sources used for research on public reactions to the death penalty in mid twentieth-century Britain. Focusing on letters sent to successive Home Secretaries, she will compare these articulations of qualitative views with what sources accessible at the British Library - the Mass Observation Capital Punishment Survey, contemporary newspaper articles and oral history interviews from the Millennium Memory Bank - did and didn’t reveal. Linda Mulcahy and Emma Rowden (LSE and University of Technology, Sydney) focus on Court Design Guides published by the UK government in the aftermath of the Beeching Report which concluded that the court system was in crisis. They discuss the use of a Foucauldian methodology and analysis that highlights relationships between data management and emerging themes, discourses on status, efficiency and danger, the privileging of some court users over others, and issues around designated space.
Visiting fellow at Queen Mary, Adrian Howe discusses standard positivist and post-structural methodologies deployed by feminist researchers in criminology and criminal justice. She will be looking at the role of statistical analysis, which allows for particular biases in the collection of data, in determining the scale and in raising the policy profile of domestic violence, and on the discursive production of crime by non-feminists researchers. Also from the University of London David Nelken (Kings College) asks ‘Whom Can We Trust?’ in discussion of qualitative methods in comparative research, briefly addressing issues such as conflicting accounts of events in context of approaches he has called ‘Virtually there’, ‘Researching there’ and ‘Being there’ and ‘second-order comparison’.
Paul Dawson, Research Manager at the Evidence and Insight Unit of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), will discuss the use of police data, providing insight of the work of the unit through case studies, demonstrating data use and research within the Metropolitan Police Service, and offering advice about data access. Also in the context of policing and data access, Lisa Dickson from the Law School at the University of Kent will discuss her investigation of NHS disclosure to the police of confidential patient-identifiable information without patient consent through the Data Protection Act 1998. She will be talking about her use of Freedom of Information requests as a research method to secure the data, and about FOI responses as a distinctive and interesting source of research information.
On quantitative sources and methods, Nick Tilley (UCL) will be discussing the wide range of statistical sources available in criminology, what types of data are currently most commonly used, possibilities, pitfalls and practical problems for broadening the range of data sources, and other data sets that are often overlooked. Following on from this, Andromachi Tseloni (Loughborough University) offers an overview of common methods applied to the Crime Survey of England and Wales, asking what such analyses can and cannot tell about the issues examined. Continuing the focus on quantitative methods, but also the themes of policing data and domestic violence, Allan Brimicombe, Head of the Centre for Geo-Information Studies at UEL, will discuss the use of police recorded data to understand patterns of escalation to violence and homicide amongst repeat victims of domestic violence/abuse (DVA).
Booking information
This event is organised by the British Society of Criminology, Socio-Legal Studies Association, British Library and Institute for Advanced Legal Studies. The price of £90 (Students £65) includes lunch and refreshments. If you would like to take advantage of this great opportunity please visit http://events.sas.ac.uk/events/view/18733 on the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies events page for booking details, timings and access arrangements.
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