'A Slice of Life': Food Narratives and Menus from Mass-Observers in 1982 and 1945

This paper reports on an analysis of hitherto unexamined documentary data on food held within the UK Mass Observation Archive (MOA). In particular it discusses responses to the 1982 Winter Directive which asked MOA correspondents about their experiences of food and eating, and the food diaries submitted by MOA panel members in 1945. What is striking about these data is the extent to which memories of food and eating are interwoven with recollections of the lifecourse; in particular social relations, family life, and work. It seems asking people about food generates insight into aspects of everyday life. In essence, memories of food provide a crucial and potentially overlooked medium for developing an appreciation of social change. We propose the concept \'food narratives\' to capture the essence of these reflections because they reveal something more than personal stories; they are both individual and collective experiences in that personal food narratives draw upon shared cultural repertoires, generational memories, and tensions between age cohorts. Food narratives are embodied and embedded in social networks, socio-cultural contexts and socio-economic epochs. Thus the daily menus recorded in 1945 and memories scribed in 1982 do not simply communicate what people ate, liked and disliked but throw light on two contrasting moments of British history; the end of the second world war and an era of transition, reform, individualization, diversity which was taking place in the early 1980s.Mass Observation Archive; Food and Eating; Qualitative; Personal Food Narratives; Secondary Analysis; Longitudinal

Studying complex places : change and continuity in York and Dijon

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Data diffraction : challenging data integration in mixed methods research

This article extends the debates relating to integration in mixed methods research. We challenge the a priori assumptions on which integration is assumed to be possible in the first place. More specifically, following Haraway and Barad, we argue that methods produce “cuts” which may or may not cohere and that “diffraction,” as an expanded approach to integration, has much to offer mixed methods research. Diffraction pays attention to the ways in which data produced through different methods can both splinter and interrupt the object of study. As such, it provides an explicit way of empirically capturing the mess and complexity intrinsic to the ontology of the social entity being studied

Emma Uprichard: most big data is social data – the analytics need serious interrogation

In the final interview in our Philosophy of Data Science series, Emma Uprichard, in conversation with Mark Carrigan, emphasises that big data has serious repercussions to the kinds of social futures we are shaping and those that are supporting big data developments need to be held accountable. This means we should also take stock of the methodological harm present in many big data practices. It doesn’t matter how much or how good our data is if the approach to modelling social systems is backwards. This interview is the last installment of our series on the Philosophy of Data Science. Previous interviews: Rob Kitchin, Evelyn Ruppert, Deborah Lupton, Susan Halford, Noortje Marres, and Sabina Leonelli

'Food hates' over the life course : an analysis of food narratives from the UK Mass Observation Archive

This article presents data from the UK Mass Observation Archive drawn from the 1982 Winter Food Directive, which focuses on memories of childhood food ‘hates’. Through our analysis of these data, we identify three main findings: (a) there is a discrepancy between individual-level and collective aggregate level food hates, which problematises the notion of commensality; (b) a small but powerful ‘outlier’ group of respondents, which we refer to as ‘visceral repulsors’, show relatively extreme reactions to certain foods throughout their lives; and (c) the duration and temporalities of food hates can be used to sketch a rough model of change and continuity of food hates over the life course. Finally, the discussion focuses on the food hate trajectories through the life course, situated in a social context, to explore the implications the findings may have for food and health policy more generally

A Reappraisal of Children’s ‘Potential’

What does it mean for a child to fulfil his or her potential? This article explores the contexts and implications of the much-used concept of potential in educational discourses. We claim that many of the popular, political and educational uses of the term in relation to childhood have a problematic blind spot: interpersonality, and the necessary coexistence for the concept to be receivable of all children’s ‘potentials’. Rather than advocating abandoning the term—a futile gesture given its emotive force—we argue that the concept of children’s potential must be profoundly rethought to be workable as a philosophical notion in education. In an era marked by the unspoken assumption that ‘unlimited potential’ is always a good thing, we argue that it might be necessary to think about the limitations of the notion of individual potential; namely, the moment when it comes into contact with other people’s projects. We propose a conceptualisation of potential as the negotiated, situated, ever-changing creation of a group of individuals, in a process marked by conflict, and which remains essentially difficult.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9508-

Most big data is social data : the analytics need serious interrogation

In the final interview in our Philosophy of Data Science series, Emma Uprichard, in conversation with Mark Carrigan, emphasises that big data has serious repercussions to the kinds of social futures we are shaping and those that are supporting big data developments need to be held accountable. This means we should also take stock of the methodological harm present in many big data practices. It doesn’t matter how much or how good our data is if the approach to modelling social systems is backwards

Focus : big data, little questions?

Big data. Little data. Deep data. Surface data. Noisy, unstructured data. Big. The world of data has gone from being analogue and digital, qualitative and quantitative, transactional and a by-product, to, simply, BIG. It is as if we couldn’t quite deal with its omnipotence and just ran out of adjectives. BIG. With all the data power it is supposedly meant to entail, one might have thought that a slightly better descriptive term might have been latched onto. But, no. BIG. Just BIG