engage@liverpool [email protected]
TRANSCRIPT
engage@liverpool• Background: broad changes in funding arrangements
– ESRC/AHRC – More emphasis on methods/training: NCRM/RDF
• Formation of Methods North West: each partner institution to contribute something distinctive
• Not replication but complementarity• Why engage@liverpool? • Emerges from long-standing tradition of research
grounded in– Unique local, national and international relationships – Focus on understanding/intervening in wider social, cultural
and political processes– Collaborative/cross-disciplinary approach
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engage@liverpool• Social Justice Seminar Series
– Pairs academics and community activists/social movements to discuss work together.
– Begins Friday 17 October: special screening of the film Isolation in conjunction with the Liverpool Radical Documentary Festival followed by a Q&A with the film’s central figure, Stuart Griffiths, and a discussion led by Ross McGarry (University of Liverpool)
– Hearnshaw Lecture Theatre, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool , from 4pm
• Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series 2012-13: Governance, Human Rights and Justice – Nick Hardwick, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons: ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Issues of Governance, Human Rights and Justice in Custody’, Wednesday 24 October
– Professor Gordon Hughes, Cardiff University: ‘Urban Security and Social Justice in Europe’, Wednesday 28 November
– Both 4.30-6.30 pm, Hearnshaw Lecture Theatre and Foyer, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool 3
engage@liverpool• Interchange Voluntary and Community Sector Research Forum
– Workshop focused on creating connections, generating discussion and an exchange of ideas between higher education and community research. Blackburne House, Hope Street, Liverpool, Wednesday 7 November, 5.30-8.00
– http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/festival/festival-events/specific-2012/research-forum.aspx
• 2012 Duncan Memorial Lecture– Professor Martin McKee, London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine: “Capitalism in Crisis: The Implications for Health and Health Policy”, 19th November, Victoria Museum and Gallery, University of Liverpool, at 5.45pm.
• Policy Provocations– Debates include: Can the Private Sector Deliver? Do We Still Need
Libraries? Can Capitalism be Responsible? Does aid work and for whom?
– http://www.liv.ac.uk/events/policy-provocations 4
engage@liverpool• Explicit acknowledgment of historic connections with/legacy of
figures like: Dr William Henry Duncan, Charles Booth, Eleanor Rathbone
• Emphasises one important strand of research at Liverpool: researchers who work “in close connection with a visible, thick, active, local, often counter-public ... labour movements, neighbourhood associations, communities of faith, immigrant rights groups, human rights organisations ... [to] make visible the invisible, make the private public and validate connections” (Burawoy 2004: 7-8)
• Examples:– Interchange: connecting research and the community– The Reader: promoting reading through diverse initiatives– PhD work of Eileen Turnbull: researcher for the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign,
work has helped get parliamentary and media coverage (e.g. Channel 4’s Dispatches) 5
engage@liverpool• Connects into another strand of research via a distinctive
approach to methods and methodology • Activists, campaigners and reformers but also social
scientists, arts and humanities scholars and medical researchers
• Capacity to perform one role linked to the other• Not just about social relevance of research (‘impact’,
‘knowledge exchange’) • Extends to engagement with moral, political and
philosophical questions and methodological innovations in and across diverse fields of research
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engage@liverpool• Interventions in knowledge and social, cultural and
political life• Doctor Duncan: pioneer in field of social medicine• Charles Booth: pioneer in ethnographic studies of
poverty and demography• Eleanor Rathbone: pioneer in field of policy studies
• engage@liverpool takes up the contemporary expressions of this tradition of innovation
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engage@liverpool• Also usefully set against current attempts to rethink the
‘politics of method’ and the ‘social production of knowledge’– E.g. ‘public social science’; ‘the social life of methods’; the
making/(re)assembling/happening/construction of the social; etc.
• Provides the focus of the ‘how to’ methodology talk series, the core of engage@liverpool
• Not research-by-numbers but reflections on/discussions of methodology-as-practiced and its effects in practice
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engage@liverpool• Latour 1979, 1987, 2005: Laboratory Life; Science in Action; Reassembling the
Social• Alpers 1983: The Art of Describing, Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century• Hacking 1983: Representing and Intervening• Shapin & Schaffer 1985: Leviathan and the Air Pump• Clifford & Marcus 1986: Writing Culture, The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography• Ashmore, Milkay, Pinch 1989: Health and Efficiency, A Sociology of Health
Economics • Lynch 1993: Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action• Goodwin 1996: ‘Professional Vision’• Porter 1996: Trust in Numbers• Gupta and Ferguson 1997: Anthropological Locations, Boundaries and
Grounds of a Field Science• Scott 1998: Seeing Like a State• Bowker & Star 1999: Sorting Things Out, Classification and its Consequences
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engage@liverpool• Osborne & Rose 1999, 2004: ‘Do The Social Sciences Create Phenomena? The
Example of Public Opinion Research’; ‘Spatial Phenomenotechnics: Making Space with Charles Booth and Patrick Geddes’
• Maynard, Schaeffer 2000: ‘Toward a Sociology of Social Scientific Knowledge’• Abbott 2001: Chaos of Disciplines• Mol 2002: The Body Multiple, Ontology in Medical Practice• Burawoy 2004: ‘For a Public Sociology’• Beck 2005: ‘How Not to Become a Museum Piece’• Edgeworth 2006: Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice, Cultural
Encounters, Material Transformations• Gieryn 2006: ‘City as Truth Spot’• Igo 2007: The Averaged American, Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a
Mass Public• Latour, Weibel 2007: Making Things Public• Mackenzie, Muniesa, Siu 2007: Do Economists Make Markets? On the
Performativity of Economics10
engage@liverpool• Savage, Burrows 2007: ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’• Osborne, Rose, Savage 2008: ‘(Re)Inscribing the History of British Sociology’• Adkins, Lury 2009: ‘What is the Empirical?’; Measure and Value• Ingold 2010: ‘Bringing Things to Life, Creative Entanglements in a World of
Materials’• Savage 2010: Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of
Method• Borofsky 2011: Why a Public Anthropology?• Camic, Gross, Lamont 2011: Social Knowledge in the Making• Law, Ruppert, Savage 2011: ‘The Social Life of Methods’• Saetnan, Lomell, Hammer 2011: The Mutual Construction of Statistics and
Society• Lury, Wakeford 2012: Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social• Back, Puwar 2012: Live Methods• Evidence Live 2013: a conference (www.evidencelive.org) being run with the
support of bodies like the British Medical Journal and featuring speakers such as Dr. Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame 11
engage@liverpool• Central claim: methods as practices constitute ‘ways of
world-making’ (Goodman 1978)– As true of the social sciences, arts and humanities as much as
the natural sciences, (bio)medicine, the psy-disciplines, states and corporate bureaucracies
– Emphasis on analyses which recognise this ‘symmetry’ and treat methodology as productive
– Researchers at Liverpool extremely well placed to contribute to such debates as their research is predicated on recognising exactly this
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engage@liverpool• This was demonstrated in past talks, e.g.:
• Luis Cuevas, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, ‘How to Improve the Diagnosis of Tuberculosis in Low Resource-High Incidence Settings’
• Chris Brunsdon, Geography, ‘How to do Quantitative Research: Citizen-Produced Data’
• David Whyte, Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, ‘How to Study Power, How to Study the Powerful’
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engage@liverpool
• Gillian Howie, Philosophy, ‘How to Think about Death: Living with Dying’
• Bruce Routledge, Archaeology, ‘How to Study the Past: The Biopolitics of Human Sacrifice’
• Susanne Langer, Public Health, ‘How to Understand Suicide: A Study of the Psychological Autopsy’
• Reflections on contemporary ‘matters of concern’ at the intersections between fields and seen from various perspectives
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engage@liverpool• Traces through to Liverpool’s doctoral research clinics
with Methods North West:
• The Lives of Others (April 2012, April 2013)• Ethics (April 2012, April 2013)
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engage@liverpool• Continued in this year’s ‘how to’ methodology talks• 14 Nov 2012: Dr. Gemma Catney, 'How to Study
Segregation by Ethnic Group'. 3pm, Rendall Building, LT8.• 5 Dec 2012: Prof. Michael Beer and Dr. Gabe Mythen,
double session on ‘How to Mobilise and Demobilise Risk – Perspectives and Approaches in an Interdisciplinary Field’. 3pm, Rendall Building, LT8
• Dates to be confirmed but Spring programme to include: • Prof. Alan Harding, Institute of Public Policy• Dr. Rachel Pope, Archaeology• Dr. Alexandra Harris, English• Prof. Mark Swenarton, Architecture
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engage@liverpool• Finally, also provides theme for ‘Live Data: Research in
Real-time’ – A symposium engage@liverpool will host for Methods North
West, 24th January (further details/bookings available soon).• Focus: proliferation of new forms of data generated in
real-time – E.g. everything from numerical information produced by
government to video footage and Twitter feeds • Will also highlight studies of new technologies and work
practices in action
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engage@liverpool• Summary: engage@liverpool provides access to research
which actively and critically engages (1) with the moral, political and philosophical questions of the day, (2) with people, creating links beyond the university with communities of all kinds and at various levels, and (3) with methodological innovations and new forms of/questions concerning knowledge production and its consequences.
• For more information, go to www.liv.ac.uk/engage or contact [email protected]
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