First posted September 2022 but constantly revised
Part 2: London in the '80s - Life on the edge of society
John Cook - 29th September 2022
Overview of project (Part 2)
"There has been much coverage through the years of punk, post-punk and the acid-house era of the early 90s. But the scene surrounding independent guitar-based music of the 1980s in Britain has been largely overlooked” (Knee, 2013).
I was a minor player in this ‘scene in-between’ (Knee, 2013) in London in the early 1980s. I was aged 22 in 1980 and decided to move to Camden Town in London with School friends from Bradford to play in indie music bands and to squat. I am convinced that the creative people that I encountered at this time really shaped me and helped me to become a successful, but outsider, research Professor and a good father! Of course all this is hard to prove, but I believe the experience provided me with agency. I am able to draw heavily on Halvdan Wettre's photo archive from this time (Wettre, 2021), called The Albert, in which I and the people I know feature. I originally wanted to examine my past connections and experiences and see where it leads me in a Grounded Study (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) approach using photo-story method. However, as I started to use photo-story method I found that I naturally drew on the Giddens extended framework (see below) to describe what I was doing. The Grounded Study approach was put on hold.
My photo-stories blog is part of my my autoethnographic undertaking, which follows:
- Adams, T. E., Jones, S. H. and Ellis, C. (Eds.) (2021). Handbook of Autoethnography, Second Edition. Routledge.
- Bartlett, B-K and Ellis, C. (Eds). (2009). Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing / Making Music Personal. Australian Academic Press.
Specifically, I intend to mix up the following elements in my forthcoming, weekly photo stories about my take on London in the 80s.
- My recollections, diary entries and observations. Please correct me if I get things wrong.
- Old photos mainly taken from the excellent Facebook archive called The Albert set up by Halvdan Wettre. Because many of the subjects knew and trusted Halvdan, we have this collection of fab photos. If photos are by 'another', credit is given if the source is known.
- Artifacts (e.g. my personal books, my copies of magazines like The Face).
- The music that I was into at the time. I provide a ranked list with YouTube Video link plus comments. I also provide a link to a Spotify playlist version of My Top Songs (with a nod to Nick Hornby).
- I definitely want to hear stories from others and maybe even see your photos from that time. When I contacted Miranda last Sunday for permission to use her photos, she provided me with her amazing story from the time, more photos and gave me permission to include it in my blog. See: Miranda's Story.
- Because I am an academic, I will be looking at everything using an extended Giddens, socio-cultural framework that I developed with colleagues. Photo-story method, as I have adapted it, intends to make “private stories” (of my own or those of others) and “the personal”, visible and public; but I will only make a private story or post on this site public (e.g. in an academic paper) with the informed consent the participant(s) concerned.
- If I can get some takers, I would like to do some photo portraits of people who appear in the old photos. I just want to get better as a photographer.
Research methods
Strauss and Corbin (1990) suggest that grounded theory is especially useful for complex subjects where little is yet known – as arguably is the case in this here. This is because of the flexibility of the methodology which can cope with complex data and which is characterised by continual cross-referencing. This allows for grounding of theory in the data, thus uncovering previously unknown issues. I have found grounded techniques useful as a way of guiding my research in the past (Cook et al., 2008), where concepts are classified and grouped together under higher order, more abstract formations called categories. However, as I started to use photo-story method I found that I naturally drew on the Giddens extended framework (see below) to describe what I was doing. The Grounded Study approach was put on hold.
Photo-story method (Varvantakis and Nolas, 2021), as I have adapted it, intends to make “private stories” (of my own or those of others) and “the personal”, visible and public; but only making stories public with the informed consent of any other participants. This method involves conversations, old photos and stories, artifacts like music and relevant art work (e.g. covers from the The Face magazine), and where possible or discovered, new photos and new stories.
Theoretical framework
I spent 2-3 weeks sifting through The Albert archive (Wettre, 2021). Various categories started to emerge and I then choose the following theory. The theoretical framework for analysing my time in the early 80s will be the triangular relationship of structures, agency and (changing) cultural Practices (Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010), shown below.
Our monograph (Pachler, Bachmair and Cook, 2010) had been cited 1140 times when I checked Google Scholar on 28-09-22. This triangle of structures, agency and (changing) cultural practices derives from an expansion of structuration theory. The original structuration theory was developed by Giddens (1984, p. 1-40) to describe societal and social development as an interrelationship of pre-given structures and people’s agency to deal with their world. Pachler, Bachmair and Cook (2010) pointed out that this bilateral interplay needs to be widened theoretically to encompass the dominant and changing cultural practices such as the appropriation of mass media platforms (structures) like Facebook; or in the case of London in the early 80s the appropriation of music and art performance, and its means of delivery, often under the overarching banner of political activism. By drawing on this triangular relationship, developed with my colleagues, I widen and adjust the structuration theory to take account of the ongoing cultural transformation, like the post-punk attitude that anyone can pick up an instrument and just have a go. This was what the rise of indie bands was all about, a scene in between as it has been called (Knee, 2013): in between Punk and Acid. Attendant to this, we saw the emergence of many independent record labels that challenged the dominance of the big labels and distribution systems. Consequently, this inquiry seems needed.
Blog
I developed my photo stories blog using WordPress and the Mira Theme, which is designed for photo blogging. This set up already had the ability to tag a post with a user defined 'Category', which is used in Grounded Theory.
Contribution
It will add to our understanding of the socio-cultural processes at work at the time and provide a novel case study of the triangular relationship between structures, agency and (changing) cultural Practices.
Ethics
I will follow Bera ethical guidelines: https://www.bera.ac.uk/resources/all-publications/resources-for-researchers
Funding
Self-funded with a view to use the approach to gain funding for a larger project.
My Résumé
References
Adams, T. E., Jones, S. H. and Ellis, C. (Eds.) (2021). Handbook of Autoethnography, Second Edition. Routledge.
Bartlett, B-K and Ellis, C. (Eds). (2009). Music Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing / Making Music Personal. Australian Academic Press.
Cook, J., Pachler, N. and Bradley, C. (2008). Bridging the Gap? Mobile Phones at the Interface between Informal and Formal Learning. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, Spring. Available online
Knee, S. (2013). A
Scene in Between: Tripping Through the Fashions of UK Indie Music
1980-1988. Cicada Books.
Pachler, N., Bachmair, B. and Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices. New York: Springer.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage Publications, Inc.
Wettre, H. (2021). The Albert, Facebook Group, created on 23 November 2021, https://www.facebook.com/groups/thealbert
Varvantakis, C. & Nolas, S.-M. (2021, November 9). Picturing What Really Matters: How photo-story research makes the personal, visible [Online]. The Sociological Review Magazine. https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.mtsg8567
Contact
johnnigelcook@gmail.com