Methodological Challenges of Re-studying Communities

1. Methodological Challenges of Re-studying Communities Chris Phillipson Keele University

2. Re-studying communities Key areas covered: • Background • Why re-study? • Findings from re-studies • Problems of re-studying • Strategies for re-studying • Final questions

3. Re-studying communities Background • Everyone is re-studying. Re-visiting (e.g. cities) is now stock in trade of novelists, biographers and historians (e.g. Ackroyd, Robb, Sinclair). • Sociologists less in evidence though studies starting to accumulate. • Pressure to ‘return to community studies’ in context where pressures on communities are increasing e.g.through impact of economic recession.

4. Re-studying communities Why re-study? • Community studies were part of the ‘intellectual biography’ or journey for many sociologists (cf. Morgan, 2008) • Rectifying omissions (Lassiter et al., 2004) • To provide an approach to understanding social change/ highlight new developments (Charles et al., 2008; Phillipson et al., 2000)

5. Re-studying communities Findings from a re-study:The Family and Community Life of Older People (2000) • Sheldon (1948) Wolverhampton (Metropolitan) • Young and Willmott (1957) Bethnal Green (Inner City) • Willmott (1960) Woodford (Suburb) Testing the ‘environment of kin’ (Frankenburg, 1960) thesis to explore changes in lives of older people from late-40s/50s to 90s.

6. Re-studying communities Methodology of study: Subjective definition of ‘close’ network members. • Inner circle – very close • Middle circle – fairly close • Outer circle – less close - what kind of support do you provide? - what kind of support do you give? • 620 interviews/ c. 5000 relationships • 130 qualitative interviews; small number with mothers and their daughters. • Some observational work.

7. Re-studying communities Findings: • Movement from old age experienced in context of family groups to one characterised by ‘personal communities’. • Growth of ‘intimacy’ (the ‘couple’). • Importance of friends. • Management of more dispersed network but more varied forms of communication • Maintenance of ‘family groups’ (but now Bangladeshi).

8. Re-studying communities Follow-on studies: • Study of first generation migrant women from Bangladesh (Tower Hamlets) • Community-based studies of social exclusion. • Community empowerment

9. Re-studying communities What are the problems in doing a re-study? Or (more provocative) is it worth it? • Do they really add any new knowledge? e.g. family is still important (Phillipson et al., 2000) but any national survey will tell you that. • Can we be confident about interpretations of changes over time? How do you know that ‘change’ really is change? e.g. are friends really more important now or is it just that we asked questions about them i.e. ‘social change’ v ‘sociological change’ (Bell, 1977).

10. Re-studying communities • Can we compare localities over time? Radical changes in admin boundaries, globalisation etc, may be subversive of the re-studying enterprise. • Are ‘iconic’ studies best left as historical documents – important material – but raising questions now for historians as much as or more than sociologists? • ‘re-studies’ or ‘new studies’ (Stoke-on-Trent versus Bethnal Green)

11. Re-studying communities Strategies for re-studying: • Focus on a group or an issue. • Go ‘extremely’ local e.g. single street (Atlee, 2007) and ‘network-based’ (Phillipson et al., 2004) • Studying local sources of community power remains important (Newby et al., 1978) • Link to underlying dynamics of locality change. • Develop strong ethnographic perspective linked with quantitative data.

12. Re-studying communities Final thoughts: • Are we trained to do ‘community studies’? • What/where are the priorities for further study? • Cross-national studies would be valuable but are rare – approaches to EU/US/UK funding bodies to support an initiative may be worthwhile. • Trans-national communities need to be opened-up for study with development of new methodologies.

13. Selected references Atlee, J. Isolarion Chicago University Press 2007 Bell, C. ‘Reflections on the Banbury Study’ in Bell, C and Newby, H. Doing Sociological Research Allen and Unwin 1977 Crow, G. and Allan, G. Community Life Allen and Unwin 1994 Edwards, R (ed) Researching Families and Community Life Routledge 2008 International Journal of Social Research Methodology Vol. 11 No.2 2008 (whole issue) Phillipson, C. et al. The Family and Community Life of Older People Routledge, 2000 Phillipson, C. et al.Women in Transition. Policy Press 2002 Phillipson, C. et al. Social Networks and Social Exclusion, Ashgate 2004