Creative Labour, Laborious Creation
Mres Research Design 2013/14
Creative Labour, Laborious Creation: articulations of
creativity in post-industrial economics
Mres Research Design
2013/14
Word Count: 5,426
Abstract
Research Questions
Introduction: the abstractions of government and cultural studies
Posing the Questions Anthropologically
Methods, ethics and pragmatics
Bibliography
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Abstract
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Current debates regarding ‘cognitive capital’, ‘immaterial labour’ and ‘creative
industries’ are characterised by a lack of attention to both ethnographic detail and
long-term historical influence. Thus it is the aim of this project to critically reexamine
the notions of ‘creative industries’ and ‘creativity’ through the granularity and thick
description offered by ethnographic fieldwork, and through close examination of
historical archives with particular attention paid to longer-term historical influences.
This is to be achieved through an ethnographic study of ‘livework’ accommodation
specifically target at ‘creatives’ and arts fuelled regeneration projects in Haringey, and
through a historical examination aiming to go beyond the scope and timeframe
commonly applied in discussions of the ‘creative industries’. It is hoped that such an
approach to this area will allow for a problematisation of the dominant approaches to
this topic, which are characterised by overarching categories and a mostly short-term
view of history on the part of theoretical discourse, and uncritical, hegemonic
application of concepts on the part of policy discourse. This, it is hoped, will bring into
light the manner in which these notions may be tied up in certain conceptions of
human life.
This document is divided into three sections. The first gives a very brief
overview of existent literature on and understandings of contemporary forms of
capitalism and ‘creative industries’. The second outlines how these questions might be
brought within the reach of anthropological analysis. The third discusses methods,
ethics and practical issues.
Research Questions
•
What is the position of the notion of ‘creativity’ within contemporary
politicoeconomic discourse?
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•
How are the ideas of innovation, creativity and labour articulated and
experienced by those working in ‘creative industries’?
•
What historical trajectories have led to contemporary conceptions of
‘creativity’?
•
Is it possible to speak of a form of labour characteristic of ‘creative industries’;
or, is it appropriate to speak of labour in the ‘creative industries’?
•
To what extent do ‘live-work’ sites targeted at ‘creatives’ demonstrate diffusions
of labour beyond its traditional limits?
Introduction: the abstractions of government and cultural
studies
The emergence and development of post-Fordist and neoliberal economic models,
and the resultant transformations in labour and value, have been discussed across a
range of academic disciplines and perspectives. These transformations, generally
identified as having their roots in the political movements spearheaded by Regan and
Thatcher in the 1970s and 80s (Harvey 2007), have been pointed to as demonstrative
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of new forms of capitalism (Jameson 1991; Lash & Urry 1996; Mandel 1998; Virno
2004; Berardi 2009; Marazzi 2011; Moulier-Boutang 2012). One prominent
characteristic of these new forms of capitalism, as outlined in theoretical models, has
been an increasing diffusion of the logics of capital to areas of day-to-day life
previously considered beyond the reach of the free market. Such a diffusion of capital
has been discussed using a range of models and terms, such as immaterial (Lazzarato
2006), or affective (Hardt & Negri 2001) labour, an increased focus on
communicative-linguistic valorisation (Marazzi 2008; 2011) or virtuosity (Virno
2004) and modes of valorisation such as produsage (Bruns 2008; Brown & Quan
Haase 2012) which put activities beyond the traditional limits of labour at the service
of value production. These transformations have been summarised by Negri under the
concept of the “becoming-woman of labour” (n.d.), through which he argues that “it is
no longer possible to imagine the production of wealth and knowledge except through
the production of subjectivity, and thus through the general reproduction of vital
process” (ibid).
In a similar manner the temporal limits of labour, as outlined by Marx in The Working
Day (1986), are said to have become increasingly unclear. The regimentation of time
that developed alongside industrial capitalism (Thompson 1967), and that spatially
and temporally controlled and segmented the body of the worker (Foucault 1991), has
transformed with the emergence of such forms of labour. This has lead to an
“increasing indistinugishability between productive labour and immaterial, creative
activity” (Lorey 2011: 83). Such a diffusion of the temporal limits of labour has been
said to result in the increasing incorporation of personal development and creative
practices to the domain of value production (Fleming 2009; Raunig 2013; Stiegler
2013). What such understandings demonstrate is an increased incorporation of areas
previously considered beyond the reach of the free market to the domain of economic
control, in short a diffusion of the economic sphere to everyday life.
The position the notions of ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ take within political and
economic discourse and models is said to be particularly demonstrative of these
transformations. Following from Schumpeter’s notion of the entrepreneur as
practitioner of ‘creative destruction’ (2003), innovation economics (Atkinson & Ezell
2012) grants a central position to the concept of creativity. Highly influential works
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consider creativity as the motor of the post-Fordist urban economy (Florida 2002;
2005), and numerous policy reports proclaim the economic potential of creativity and
the creative industries (DCMS 1998; 2001; EC 2010; Hasan, Hargreaves & MateosGarcia 2013). The application of these notions has developed in such broad terms that
they begin to be hollowed out of meaning (Morke 2011: 110). Further, these notions
are so widely accepted as self-evident that any questioning of the underlying
assumptions appears absurd (Schlesinger 2007). The idea of ‘creativity’ is applied in
such discourses as an element of “common sense” (Gramsci 1978: 323-43) and
becomes deeply interlinked with the foundational assumptions of neoliberalism, such
as the sovereignty of individuals, the ability of the free market to ensure freedom, and
the capacities of individual entrepreneurship.
Within the policy and economic discourses, and the theoretical models which
seek to critique these discourses, the movements of postmodern capitalism are
presented as being relatively homogenous, and the discussion is rarely advanced
beyond the deployment of theoretical generalisations. As has been shown, albeit in
somewhat differing circumstances by Mollona’s ethnography of steel workers in
Sheffield (2009), the development of post-industrial capitalism does not advance in a
homogenous all encompassing manner as reading these theoretical accounts may
suggest, but rather it is experienced in different, layered and complex ways. As such,
in order to move beyond discourses characterised by hegemonic enshrinement of
generalised categories, on the part of both government and critical theory, more
attention must be paid to the granularity and singularity of lived experience.
Posing the question anthropologically
As briefly demonstrated, this is an area of study that does not lack theoretical
categories or attention. There is however, little working being done to bring these
questions within the reach of anthropological analysis, or that pays attention to the
granularity of lived experience, or historical influences prior to the mid-20th century.
In general, the academic discourse on the creative industries is identified as starting
with Adorno and Horkhiemer’s Dialectic of the Enlightenment ([1944] 2010) which is
said to have started the narrative on culture industry that would then give birth to that
of the creative industries (Garnham 2005; Raunig 2011a; 2011b), and the economic
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and policy discourse is associated to the rupture brought about by the political
transformations spearheaded by Thatcher and Regan. Toby Miller, for example,
identifies Regan’s The Creative Society (1966) speech as the origin of the current
conception of creative industry (Miller 2009). Whilst Miller is to some extent correct
to point to the conservative revolution led by Regan and Thatcher as a key moment in
the emergence of the notion of creative industries, his somewhat simplistic attempt to
identify a clear origin leads to a failure to recognise far longer standing influences.
Miller, like so many others, characterises the current conception of creative industry
as marked by a radical difference in as much as the notion is severed from both its
long-term historical trajectories and the specificities of contemporary articulations
and influences.
What the common approaches fail to achieve is at least twofold. First, there is not
enough attention paid to the lived experience of those who are identified by these
discourses as belonging to creative industries, their localised embedness within
various networks, and their own articulations and understandings of creativity and
labour. Second, there is not enough attention paid to the question of what old elements
remain operational within an apparently new mode of economic organisation. Those
notable exceptions which do pay attention to the longer term historical trajectories
informing contemporary conceptions of creativity, such as Raymond Williams’
discussion of ‘the creative mind’ in The Long Revolution (1965) and Władysław
Tatarkiewic’s discussion of creativity in A History of Six Ideas (1980), were conducted
prior to the more recent emergence of the discourses concerning the creative
industries. In this respect, whilst many interpretations of creative industries would
often be described as post-modernist, these approaches fail to move beyond the
modernist preoccupation with the new, that is with continual progress and the
originality of the current age and its avant-garde (Krauss 1985). Rather than remain
within this framework, this project seeks to more carefully pose the question, “[w]hat
difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?” (Rabinow 2008:13). That
is, the project will hope to explore the research questions “in terms of the emergence
and articulation of forms within which old and new elements take on meanings and
functions” (Rabinow 2008: 24).
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The coupling of the terms creative and industry is not as new as the arguments
of many theorists on the topic would suggest. The creativeness of industry has long
been discussed, preliminary research has identified examples dating to the 1800s—at
this point however the focus of creative industry is on nations, not individuals (cf.
Lomet 1803: 200; Keer Brown 1825: 30). Likewise, the notion of the Creative Class,
discussed by Florida (2002; 2005), was also previously articulated at least as far back
as the 19th Century (Walsh 1836: 429). What contemporary discourses on creative
industry, cultural industry and cognitive capitalism often fail to take fully into account
is the long standing division of labour within industrialised capitalist systems and
beyond between creative and menial labour, the former corresponding to the
imaginative and rational and the latter corresponding to the repetitive and bodily, or,
in terms of labour process theory, the former corresponding to conception and the
latter to execution (Braverman 1974; Buroway 1979a; 1979b). Further, such a
separation appears to be potentially associated to the split between episteme and
techne, and form and matter in Aristotelian thought, which still holds influence on
today’s hylomorphism (Ingold 2013: 24-6). Of course, whilst it is important not to
fetishize Ancient Greece as another location of origin, it is important to acknowledge
the influence the works produced by the likes of Aristotle and Plato have had on the
formation of discourse following them.
In Cratylus Plato identifies the Greek word anthropos, meaning human, as that
which reflects upon what it sees (n.d. 399c). Plato appeals, as many have done since
him, to the application of reason as that which separates humans from animals. The
contemporary association of creativity and the subjective or cognitive is perhaps not
entirely unrelated to this distinction that would place the mind hierarchically above
the body as a definitive characteristics of humanity. Further, as Tatarkiewicz
(1980) has pointed to, discussions of creativity as a human characteristic, rather than
as a faculty of divinity, occurred following the Enlightenment and developed as the
privileged position of God waned in the shadow of an advancing humanism. It is
perhaps not coincidental that the famous declaration “God is dead!” (Nietzsche 2006:
90) appears at a time similar to that which Tatarkiewicz identifies as the beginning of
creativity being considered as a faculty of the human mind. It may be considered that
the continuation of divinity within the secular conceptions of humanism, pointed to by
Stierner
(1910), has been highly influential in the contemporary conception of
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creativity and in particular its deployment within economic frameworks that could be
considered to assume a role that religion once did (Nelson 2002).
As Virno has considered, in contemporary discourse “the term ‘creativity’ is
employed in such broad terms that it becomes coextensive with human nature” (2011:
101). As such, the current deployment of the concept of creativity should be of central
concern to anthropology, for what is at stake is a certain, arguably normative,
conception of anthropos. The centrality of this question becomes particularly salient
if we consider the role of anthropology, not being the same as ethnography, can be to
“join with people in their speculations about what life might or could be like, in ways
nevertheless grounded in a profound understanding of what life is like in particular
times and places” (Ingold 2013: 4). The question of the current position of creativity
concerns historical trajectories that have lead to a certain conception and application
of anthropos, which currently is highly influenced and contextualised by neoliberal
values. As such, the archival element of this project will take several angles. Attention
will be paid to the separation of mind and body and the associated splits such as form
and matter and design and execution. Theological and humanist understandings of
creation will also be useful in examining the transference of powers of creation from
divinity to humanity at a times ‘adjacent’ (Rabinow 2008) to industrialisation and
Enlightenment. Finally, attention will also be paid to archives concerning the
organisation and division of labour, and how these intersecting narratives may have
affected one another.
As well as the archaeological (Foucault 2010) and genealogical (Foucault 1977)
approaches to discursive history outlined above, this project will also seek to examine
the formation of these notions through consideration of the historical longue durée
(Braudel 2012), that is “as ensembles of changing relations forming configurations that
are constantly adapting to one another and to the world around them through definite
historical processes” (Tomich 2008). To such ends attention will also be paid to
narratives in archaeology, such as ideas on the emergence of ‘cultural modernity’
(Wadley 2001), which takes it’s starting point as the externalisation of symbolic
information outside of the human brain, and to archeo-anthropological discussions on
the developments of human techniques and technologies, such as those advanced by
Leroi-Gourhan (1982; 1993).
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In addition, to further bring these questions within the reach of an anthropological
approach, at least one year of ethnographic fieldwork is to be conducted. It is through
ethnographic fieldwork and participant that anthropological approaches are able to
begin to get close to the granularity of lived experience and the specificities of localised
articulations. The position of labour and work will be central to the fieldwork for
various reasons. First, a focus on labour will allow the project to approach the day-today activities of those identified as belonging to the creative industries. Second, labour,
being identified by Foucault (2002) along with ‘life’ and ‘language’ as being central
concepts to the formation of the human sciences, is a useful starting point in order to
approach questions concerning the formation of a particular conception of anthropos.
Third, examining labour as a peformative “world-making activity” (Harney 2002: 86)
will allow the project to begin to approach the question of how creativity and creative
industries are experienced, articulated and continually made and remade on the
ground, that is beyond the pages of policy reports and theoretical monographs.
In order to approach some of the questions raised by the theoretical conceptions such
as immaterial or affective labour, where day-to-day life and value production are
increasingly inseparable, this project will take ‘live-work’ accommodation in Haringey
as a focus point. Such a focus will allow the project to address what theorists have
discussed as an increasing inseparability between labour and daily life. Through this
focus I will be able to explore whether or not such practices constitute forms of
immaterial labour, or may perhaps be better understood as forms of cottage industry
or assemblages of various modes of value production. As the majority of these sites are
to be found in ex-industrial areas, such a focus also allows an examination of the
development of urban post-industrial economics and transformative regeneration.
Haringey is of particular interest due to the local political economy. Being located in
the ‘Upper Lea Valley opportunity area’ (GLA 2013) the borough is a focus of
regeneration efforts that seek to introduce new forms of industry, including creative
industries. Further, as the identified starting point of the 2011 London Riots the
borough has become a focal point for such regeneration efforts and is caught up in a
complex political economy of a far reaching nature. In addition to these reasons,
Haringey council has recently established a task force to “tackle unauthorised living in
industrial areas” (2014), many of which are live-work accommodation. Shortly after
the publication of the intent to establish such a task force the national government
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released the Budget (2014) which outlined intentions to consult regarding changing
planning regulations to allow easier conversion of land status from industrial to
residential. As such, there are a range of controversies and tensions reflective of wider
movements in political economy but that are particularly salient within Haringey and
which will potentially prove productive in the development of ethnographic material.
Due to the nature of such live-work accommodation, and its position within a wider
political economy, the examination of labour is inextricably caught up in an
examination of regeneration efforts in the local area, and the conception of what labour
is. As such, labour cannot be presented as the a priori of the project, as though there
is a form of labour that is applicable to particular cases. In approaching labour, it must
be remembered that “there is no necessary convergence to a common form” (Buroway
1979a: 243). Rather labour must be approached as peformative, and constantly being
made and remade. The analysis must seek to explore both how the limits of labour are
set, that is how work, daily life and labour are constitutive of one another, and how the
notions of creativity are performed and continually remade within this interplay. In
order to critically approach both the question of labour and creativity, the question of
what it means to bring heterogeneous practices under these two banners must
constantly be posed and continual attention must be paid to the specifies of actions
that are brought under both the heading of labour, and creativity.
One means of approaching labour and creativity in such a manner will be through
attention to the embodied practices and techniques brought under the banner of
creative. As outlined, theories on post-industrial economics and labour place a heavy
focus on cognitive, subjective and linguistic capacities being put to the service of value
production. In order to readdress this focus, and bring into light nonlinguistic forms
of knowledge, as discussed by Bloch (1991), close attention will be paid to the bodily
techniques and practices that become defined as creative. From preliminary interviews
and participant observation, tools and techniques have recurred as a key theme, for
example, a photographer working in the field of conceptual art develops their practice
through close bodily engagement with the camera. Such repetitive engagement is as
important as supposedly immaterial forms of labour or subjective process and as such
should receive close attention. The body of literature that exists on craftsmanship
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within anthropology (i.e. Marchand 2009; 2010; Ingold 2013; Yarrow 2014) and
beyond (i.e. Sennett 2008) will prove useful in approaching these questions.
Further to this material on craftsmanship and embodied techniques many of
the approaches to fieldwork advanced by ANT will be particularly useful in
approaching these questions. The method of initiating inquiry symmetrically, that is
allowing both humans and non-humans to have power of action and acknowledging
the inseparability of subject and object (Latour 1999), will prove useful in approaching
the questions of the mind-body, technology and of tools. Further, ANT’s focus on the
peformative nature of the relations, in that if relations and connections stop being
made they no longer exist, will be useful in critically re-examining both the notions of
creativity, as they are deployed in political and economic discourse, and the ideas of
immaterial and affective labour, as they are deployed in theoretical discussion. The
aim of ANT to “let the actors have some room to express themselves” (Latour 2007:
142) will also prove a useful means of ensuring that the voices of those with whom field
work is conducted can be heard in the study of an area characterised by grand political,
economic and theoretical discourse.
To this end the use of theory and discourse analysis in this project will seek to
be that of infra-philosophy (Viverios de Castro 2012: 67) and infra-language (Latour
2007), in the sense that it will constitute a conversation between the narratives of
actors and the narratives of theoretical, political and economic discourses with none
being granted supremacy over the others. By such an approach discourse is to be
deployed as an actor-network, rather than as a means of explaining away the words of
informants. Such an approach requires a total equality of knowledge, or what Rancière
describes as panecastic philosophy, that is philosophy “interested in all discourses, in
every intellectual manifestation, to a unique end: to verify that they put the same
intelligence to work, to verify … the equality of intelligence.” (1991: 136). Such an
approach, one that does not hierarchize forms and modes of knowledge, is a useful way
of preventing the reproduction of the split between the creative, linguistic and
cognitive faculties of the mind and the mundane, repetitive and gestural action of the
body that appears to be at work in discourses on the creative industries and immaterial
labour.
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Methods, ethics and pragmatics
This project will seek to employ various methods. Such an approach is in part
due to the fragmented and dispersed nature of the subject of study. In seeking to
approach the dispersion, application and effects of an idea, such as that of creativity,
or an object of economic discourse, such as that of creative industries, it seems
appropriate that the methods should reflect the diffuse nature of that which is studied.
It seems unlikely that continual fieldwork for 1-2 years in one delimited geographic
location would allow the questions being posed by this project to be brought into light.
As such, the project is being designed, from the offset, in a manner that might reflect
the dispersed and often elusive nature of the categories and ideas to be interrogated.
Participant observation
One year of participant observation based fieldwork is to be conducted in and
around the London borough of Haringay. The focus of the fieldwork is to be ‘livework’
units, previously industrial units that have now been converted—sometimes legally,
sometimes not—into live-in studios. These units are often advertised as being for
‘creatives’ or being part of a ‘creative community’. As such, these sites allow the project
to begin to approach questions concerning granular articulations of creativity, work,
the blurring of value production and day-to-day life. Haringay is also of particular
interest due to it being identified as an ‘opportunity area’ for ‘regeneration’ by the
Greater London Authority, particularly since its identification as the starting point of
the 2011 London Riots following the death of Mark Duggan. As such, Haringay is
deeply embedded with various layers and scales of political economy, engagement with
which may prove productive for this project when examining the questions regarding
the wider organisation of capital within London, and the effect and motives of the
deployment of concepts such as ‘creative industries’.
Interviews
Interviews will prove a useful means of initiating research with a number of
participants, and engaging with those who may be unable, or unwilling, to partake in
longer term participation. Whilst potentially limited by its dialogic form, unstructured
and semi-structured interviews will be used to begin to explore and continually reengage with participants with whom extended participant observation is not possible.
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Even in cases where participant observation is possible, it is anticipated that interviews
will prove a productive space in which to focus on specific issues in more depth. The
material obtained from interviews, however, will not be subject to formal analysis that
might seek to find the meaning behind the words, such as discourse analysis. Rather,
the aim will be to deploy the content obtained through interviews on its own terms, in
its own language and with its own consistency, in order to bring it into conversation
with other perspectives and theoretical, economic and political discourses.
Collaborative visual production
Due to the embodied, complex and heterogeneous nature of the techniques and
practices brought under the banner of creativity the question of how to examine such
practices “from the inside” (Ingold 2013: 5), or on their own terms (Latour 2007), is a
difficult one to answer. The apprenticeship model proposed by Bloch (1991), and
practiced by Marchand (2009) and Wacquant (2006), cannot easily be applied to the
creative industries where not only is the range of practices brought under the category
highly diverse and incommensurable, but so too are the skill sets of individual people.
People categorised as working within the creative industries may include software
developers, conceptual artists, musicians or classical animators, and as such an
apprenticeship-based approach seems unfeasible. Further, often the skills of each
person are highly diverse and mixed, having been developed over many years and from
a range of sources. For example, preliminary fieldwork has been conducted with a
claymation animator who has developed a range of highly singular skills from areas
such as traditional art practice, film making, set building and editing, combining such
diverse techniques to form what could perhaps be preferred to as their practice.
In order to begin to approach some of these practices in such a manner this project
will seek to engage in a select number of collaborative visual projects. This method will
aim to take an idea or narrative from anthropological or philosophical theory and
express it in the medium of the collaborator. For example, one collaborative
production could be a portrayal of Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of the “becomingwasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp” (2004: 11), or of Latour’s ideas
regarding the agency of objects (1999), in the medium of stopmotion animation. The
reasons for the application of such a method are numerous. First, as discussed it will
allow, at least partially, an exploration of practices on their own terms. Second, it will
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examine the equality of forms of knowledge. By approaching questions regarding the
convertibility of ideas from one medium to another, and the relationship between form
and content, it seeks to readdress the apparent hierarchy that would place conceptual,
immaterial and textual practices in a position of superiority to embodied technical
skill, and in so doing acknowledging that both forms of knowledge are made. This will
allow a practical application of the ideas regarding infra- (Viverios de Castro 2012;
Latour 2007) and panecastic (Ranciere 1991) philosophy outlined earlier. Third, such
an approach will respond to the call of an anthropology with, rather than an
anthropology of (Ingold 2013), that would allow for equality between the place of the
investigator and informant in that both are engaged in a collaborative process of
making knowledge. Fourth, the products of such an approach may prove a useful way
of assessing the commensurability of the varied practices that are brought under the
banner of creativity. It is envisioned that the final works could be displayed in an
exhibition space of some form, thus instigating a dialogue between the differing
practices and process that have gone into each one, and also bringing the collaborators
together in order to initiate discussion regarding the comparability of their techniques
and practices. Finally, such an exhibition may prove to be a possible means of
disseminating the findings of the project to the wider community of Haringay and thus
beginning to address some ethical questions regarding the sharing of knowledge with
research participants and community.
Archival research
The historical component of the project is to be conducted through archival research
initially to be based at the British Library, although as research progresses it is
anticipated that more specialist collections and archives at other locations may
emerge. The focus of the research, initially, will be threefold, although it is anticipated
that as research progresses other areas may become prominent whilst those outlined
here may fade or take on different forms. First, attention is to be paid to bifurcations
between conceptions of mind and body, and, language and gesture.
Second, theological and cosmological understandings of creation will be explored and
continuities with humanist notions of creativity will be sought. Third, documentation
regarding the organisation of labour and work will be examined, both since the
emergence of capitalism and before. Together, it is hoped that these three lines of
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archival inquiry, combined with explorations of anthro-archaeological approaches
(e.g. Leroi-Gourhan 1982; 1993), will provide the basis for beginning to explore the
historical formation of contemporary conceptions of creativity across temporalities of
varying rhythms. This approach, it is hoped, will make use of ideas such as those of the
longue durée (Braudel 2012), in order to complement the shortterm event-based
history that characterises contemporary discussions of creative industries that would
generally start from the 20th century and beyond.
Discourse analysis
As previously mentioned, the material obtained from participant observation and
interviews will not be subject to discourse analysis. However, the methods of
archaeological and genealogical discourse analysis outlined buy Foucault (1977; 2002;
2010) may prove useful when seeking to understand the more dispersed and diffused
narratives of economics and policy, as well as the historical formation of ideas. Such
analysis will be employed, not in order to uncover the truth behind the words, but
rather to locate associations and exclusions that may prove productive when exploring
both historical trajectories and contemporary articulations. The key point here,
however, is that discourse is to be deployed as an actor-network engaged with others,
rather than as a means of explaining away the views and voices of all other actants.
Quantitative discourse analysis
This project will also seek to make use of existing and historical quantitative data
regarding Haringay in various forms. The production of statistical information will be
critically explored, with attention being paid to what is included and excluded the
production of data, and the uses to which such data is put. This, it is hoped, will provide
a further means of exploring the effects of certain economic discourses, and their uses
of data, and illuminating certain elements of the history of the area. Efforts will be
made to present trends in data, and the uses of data, in various visual ways, such as
those explored by Edward Tufte (2001; 2006). The project will also seek means of
plotting such data, and its uses, on maps and network graphics of various types,
inspired in part by the works in the volume Else/Where (Abrams & Hall 2003). This,
it is hoped, will provide a useful method of not only displaying, but also exploring
through making, some of the applications and meanings of data, and networks, in the
area.
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Ethics
Any form of fieldwork brings with it ethical considerations. Whilst the subject matter
with which this project engages may appear to be relatively unproblematic, attention
must still be continually paid to the ethical implications of research. For the most part
the ethical considerations will be a recurring, case-by-case, consideration in order that
the ethical implications of working with each participant are considered in their
singularity. All participants will be fully informed of the aims of the research, as well
as any changes in direction. Continual attention will also be paid to the ethical
guidelines of the various anthropological professional bodies. Each participant will be
offered anonymity should they wish it, however it will be made clear to each that it is
not possible for me to entirely guarantee the protection of their identity as it may be
possible for those who are in similar social circles to establish the identity of
participants from the context of the discussion.
A primary ethical concern for this project is to ensure that something is ‘given back’
to the participants who inform the research. It is hoped that the ‘collaborative visual
production’ method outlined above will go some way towards this. In addition to this,
I shall continually be looking for means of collaboration and co-production in which
the project might engage.
Timetable
Mres year 1 (part-time)
•
Methods training
•
Preliminary fieldwork
•
Research
council
funding
applications
Mres year 2 (part-time)
Phd year 1 (full-time)
•
Methods training (especially visual
and quantitative)
•
Further preliminary fieldwork
• Fieldwork
17
Creative Labour, Laborious Creation
Mres Research Design 2013/14
Phd year 2 (full-time)
•
Writing
up
of
ethnographic material
•
Archival research
OR
Phd year 3 (full-time)
•
6 months continued fieldwork
•
6 months writing up and archival
research
•
6 months archival research and
writing up
•
6 months solely writing up
18
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Mres Research Design 2013/14
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