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This chapter is a collaborative piece about doing collaborative ethnography. It primarily draws on the authors’ ethnography over many years in establishing and developing the field of collaborative ethnography through their published work. The chapter introduces collaborative ethnography as a methodology, but also describes the encounter that led to writing this book. In the Rotherham project, collaborative ethnography became a way of closing the distance between those who write about people and those who are written about. It made explicit the discussions and debates that happen when we learn together, but it also went further. As such, this chapter is a multi-voiced piece of writing, which begins with a discussion about the nature of research itself, and then moves on to describe the research encounter.
This is a book that challenges contemporary images of place. Too often we are told about deprived neighbourhoods but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham. Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography, and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a how to for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.
This is a book that challenges contemporary images of place. Too often we are told about deprived neighbourhoods but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham. Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography, and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a how to for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.
This is a book that challenges contemporary images of place. Too often we are told about deprived neighbourhoods but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham. Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography, and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a how to for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.
This chapter argues that emotions help people with ‘meaning making’, and offer different experiences of the world through a different lens. It does so in the context of women’s writing, as writing connects ordinary women and gives them the opportunity to articulate feelings not expressed or shared before. In academic social science, emotions have historically been associated with the irrational and quite opposed to the objective scientific search for knowledge. However, in the last decade or so, sociologists have recognised that ethnographic research cannot be clinical and detached from human emotions. We can say ‘emotions do things’ — they move us but also connect us with others.
This chapter considers alternative histories of urban settlement through the intersection between family and neighbourhood. It proposes a form of co-production that connects specific small-scale communities not to meta-histories, but to documents that have a specific meaning within their own notions of narrative. The ‘stuff’ of such histories, because they are as much about the private, intimate, and familiar, is about stuff in the home — much of it undiscovered, perhaps only half-realised by families. Many historians have seen this as the ephemera of marginal oral histories. In extension of arguments about the role of oral history made elsewhere, this chapter argues that the connection between the intimate, which includes the material memorabilia and personal documents in homes, and the public community, helps us to explore the ways in which ideas of postcolonial citizenship are related to the idea of the home.
This chapter addresses the question of how historical knowledge can help one to make sense of communities like Rotherham. It first considers what counts as ‘historical knowledge’, and examines the limitations of historiography in producing histories at a local level, where issues of class, gender, and ethnicity are played out in people’s everyday lives. The chapter then explores how historians are expanding what counts for historical knowledge — in particular, the co-production of research, which can be defined as research with people rather than on people. It also provides some real-world examples of co-production in action. Finally, the chapter provides some arguments as to why historical knowledge matters.
This chapter focuses on the identities of British Muslim young women from a writing group, and shares some of the themes that emerged during these writing sessions. Three specific themes related to identity came out of the girls’ writing group: place and globalisation; religion; and language. In the UK, there is an increased focus on social cohesion and integration. Young people from minority ethnic communities experience a great deal of pressure in order to fit in with the national narrative of ‘Britishness’, and often feel that they should conform outwardly in their dress and physical appearance, and adopt British sociocultural practices. Those individuals who maintain their faith, language, and cultural identity are seen as segregating themselves and living parallel lives.
This chapter aims to sketch out Rotherham as a remembered place, where people hold knowledge and experiences. Rotherham is also a place in the future. The chapter explores ways in which communities can be represented differently in an age of uncertainty and austerity. It focuses on creativity and the arts as a source of hope and a way of imagining better communities. This draws on the central purpose of the ‘Imagine’ project. As part of the ‘Imagine’ project, this chapter reveals a series of interlinked projects within Rotherham, exploring common everyday cultures, writing in the community, artistic images of Rotherham, and oral histories of Rotherham.
This chapter articulates an approach to knowing through art, in that we recognise the need for artists as individuals to intervene and change the world. It also argues that the process of making involves a process of change, and art includes a huge diversity of practice and a commitment to knowing together and making together. Art as knowing can be developed through conversations, walks, in moments of interaction that create spaces for more things to happen. Art is a process, and here we think about how things emerge — stuff comes from stuff: trying, helping, working, making, talking — new ideas come from doing.
