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Studying ‘communities’

Studying ‘communities’. Researching Society and Culture 21st January 2014 Hannah Jones. What are community studies? How can you study communities? What can community studies tell us? Examples of community studies The future of community studies?. What are community studies?.

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Studying ‘communities’

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  1. Studying ‘communities’ Researching Society and Culture 21st January 2014 Hannah Jones

  2. What are community studies? • How can you study communities? • What can community studies tell us? • Examples of community studies • The future of community studies?

  3. What are community studies? Two things community studies don’t necessarily have in common: • Object of study • What’s a community? • Method of study • How do you study community?

  4. Community • Neighbourhood/geographical area • Social connections • (Local?) identity • …?

  5. How can you study communities?

  6. How can you study communities? www.placesforall.co.uk http://lsecities.net/objects/research-projects/ordinary-streets

  7. What can community studies tell us? Can something detailed and specific be relevant more widely? Suzanne Hall: Emblematic Scale: ‘a device for representing the whole’ Middle Ground: ‘a set of distinctive practices defined within an area’ Idiosyncratic Scale: ‘a means of accessing the individual… where the city is known through a microcosmic part’ … only use terms like this if they are useful to you!

  8. Wilmott and Young • Bethnal Green and Greenfield, 1957 • Families and streets • Interviews, ethnographies, statistics • Early development of social science methodology

  9. Mumford and Power • ‘East-Docks’ and ‘West-City’ in East London, 2003 • Family, public space and race relations • Interviews, meetings, walks and ethnographic notes • Anonymised places

  10. From Mumford and Power (2003) p.18

  11. Read carefully From Mumford and Power (2003) p28

  12. Reading community studies for the methods • What assumptions? (Who is the researcher? Who is being studied?) • What kind of knowledge is being produced? (Is it presented as ‘true’, ‘objective’? Who is it for? Who will use it?) • How is data collected – and how is it analysed? • What practicalities are there that affect the studies? (Keeping in contact with participants, changing names…)

  13. Community studies of the future? • Migration and mobility (between neighbourhoods and cities as well as countries) • Family, gender and community • Communication technologies and online communities • Communities of identity vs place?

  14. TO SUMMARISE • Community studies might also be thought of as ‘locality’ studies • Often mixed methods from a range of sources, including institutional statistics and individual voices of community members • Aim to tell us something specific, and something general • Definitions of community contested and always changing – possibilities for new forms of community studies (and new research methods)

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