The Historical Contexts and Contemporary Uses of Mass Observation embraces new approaches and themes that highlight Mass Observation’s long history as an innovative research organization, a social movement, and an archival project. Spanning the period from Mass Observation’s inception to the present day, essay authors discuss a wide range of topics including anthropology, history, popular politics, cultural studies, literature, selfhood, emotion, art and visual studies. Indeed, what emerges across this volume is confirmation that engagement with Mass Observation—whether its historical materials or those produced in the last decade—is crucial to understanding the vast array of experiences that make up British life.
List of Charts Notes on Contributors Introduction: Historical Contexts or Contemporary Uses? Mass Observation and the Politics of Continuity, Lucy Curzon and Ben Jones 1. Mass Observation, Literature and Cultural Studies, Ben Jones and Matt Taunton, (both University of East Anglia, UK) 2. Mass Observing Feeling, Claire Langhamer 3. Anyone Can Paint: Mass Observation and the History of Art, Lucy Curzon, (University of Alabama, USA) 4. ‘Anthropology’, MO, and a Bit of Surrealism: Past Encounters, Future Hopes, Jeremy MacClancy, (Oxford Brookes University, UK) 5. Subjective Cameras and Ekphrastic Writing: The Present and Absent Photograph in Mass Observation, Annebella Pollen 6. Mass-Observation and Popular Politics in Worktown, Jon Lawrence and David Thackeray, (both University of Exeter, UK) 7. ‘On receiving your letter, I promptly dreamed you a war dream the next night’: Writing the Citizen in Mass-Observation’s Dream Archive, Charlotte Hallahan, (University of East Anglia, UK) 8. Self-reflexivity, Class Consciousness and Social Change in Mass Observation Narratives, Nick Hubble, (Brunel University, UK) 9. Perforating Event and Narrative, Experience and Analysis: Beyond the Retro Eighties, Lucy Robinson, (University of Sussex, UK) Conclusion: Presence and Absence in the Archive: the In/visibility of Mass Observation Writers, Rose Lindsey, (University of Southampton) Index
Lucy D. Curzon is Associate Professor of Contemporary and Modern Art History at the University of Alabama, USA. She is the author of Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain (2017), which was awarded the 2018 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period after 1800. Benjamin Jones is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the author of The Working Class in Mid-Twentieth-Century England (2012), which was positively reviewed in Sociology, American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, Journal of British Studies, The Historical Journal, Economic History Review, Contemporary British History, Twentieth Century British History, and Planning Perspectives.
Reviews for The Historical Contexts and Contemporary Uses of Mass Observation: 1930s to the Present
Curzon and Jones are to be warmly congratulated for assembling such a delicious and distinctive set of contributions. Each chapter reveals scintillating new riches from the inexhaustible fount of felt thoughts and thoughtful feelings that is Mass-Observation. This is essential, engaging and delightful reading. * Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Histories, University of Sussex, UK, author of Lifestyle Revolution: How Taste Changed Class in Late 20th-Century Britain * Mass Observation has been one of the most important social experiments in British life since the 1930s, an ‘anthropology of our ourselves’ in the everyday and through extraordinary times. This superb and wide-ranging collection maps the importance of M-O to understanding modern Britain and offers critical new interdisciplinary perspectives. * Stephen Brooke, Professor of History, York University, Canada *
