Featured Book

Sarah Pink (2008) Doing Sensory Ethnography, London: Sage

Doing Sensory Ethnographyresponds to a recent an explosion of interest in the senses across the social sciences.

Sarah Pink suggests re-thinking the ethnographic process through reflexive attention to what she terms the 'sensoriality' of the experience, practice and knowledge of both researchers and those who participate in their research. The book provides an accessible discussion and analysis of the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of doing sensory ethnography, drawing on examples and case studies from the growing literature on sensory ethnographic studies, and from the author's own work.

Doing Sensory Ethnography is the first book to concentrate on outlining a sensory ethnographic methodology. It will be of great interest to researchers and students from all disciplines interested in enriching their ethnographic work through a focus on the senses

NEWS

October-December 2009

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Honour for CRC member

Ruth Lister has been elected Fellow of the British Academy.

Her two main areas of academic work are poverty and citizenship, with considerable overlap between the two and with a strong gender perspective and an interest in children. Key books are: Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives; Poverty; and (with F. Williams et al) Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe. Click here for Ruth Lister's British Academy entry.

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Britain’s Other Music Hall Michael Pickering has recently contributed to a BBC Radio 4 programme on blackface minstrelsy in Britain. The programme was broadcast on Tuesday 10th November 2009 and was produced by Geoff Ballinger. Michael’s contribution drew on his expertise in this tradition of popular entertainment, which lasted from the early 19th to the late 20th century. He has published the first critical history of blackface entertainments in Britain – Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (Ashgate, 2008) – which has been described in reviews as a ‘comprehensive and penetrating study of an unjustly forgotten subject’, ‘deeply impressive in its willingness to confront uncomfortable topics with controlled ambivalence and thoughtful analysis’. Publications by CRC members Michael Billig Billig, M. (2009). Psychologie discursive, rhetorique et la question de l'agentivite . Semen, 27, 157-184. Billig, M. (2009). Reflecting on a critical engagement with banal nationalism. Sociological Review, 57, 347-352. Billig, M. (2009). 'Banalni Nacionalizam'. Belgrade: Biblioteka XX (Serbian translation of 'Banal Nationalism' with new introduction. Billig, M. (2009). 'Xiao Sheng Yu Chao Nong : You Mo De She Hui Pi Pan'. Hong Kong: Weber Publications (Chinese translation of 'Language and Ridicule'). Liz Stokoe Benwell, B., & Stokoe, E. (2009). University students resisting academic identity. In P. Griffiths, A.J. Merrison, & A. Bloomer (Eds.), Language in use: A reader. London: Routledge. Stokoe, E. (2009). "I've got a girlfriend": Police officers doing 'self-disclosure' in their interrogations of suspects. Narrative Inquiry, 19 (1), 154-182. Stokoe, E. (2009). "For the benefit of the tape": Formulating embodied conduct in designedly uni-modal recorded police-suspect interrogations. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 1887-1904. Stokoe, E. (2009). Doing actions with identity categories: Complaints and denials in neighbour disputes. Text and Talk, 29 (1), 75-97. Maggie O"Neill Sex Work: prostitution, policy and politics, (a co-authored book with Teela Sanders and Jane Pitcher) was published by Sage in October 2009 Making Connections: Ethno-mimesis, Migration and Diaspora is published in the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Volume 14, Issue 3 (September 2009)

Presentations by CRC members Michael Billig gave the 2009 Samuel Becker Lecture in Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. The title of the talk: 'Why social scientists love to write so badly'. Liz Stokoe recently consulted on the Eden Project's Big Lunch initiative, investigating the 'State of Britain's Neighbours' (2009). She has also been working extensively with neighbourhood mediation centres developing training materials and running workshops. Maggie O'Neill "Beyond Binaries: abjection, narrative and sex work." to Talking Health Matters: Personal Stories in Professional Practice - Workshop and Conference: 16th and 17th June 2009. Venue: Northumbria University. "Making Connections: Arts, Migration and Diaspora" Plenary Speaker at the Glocal Imaginaries Conference University of Lancaster and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Sept 9-12th.

External visits by CRC members Maggie O'Neill spent one month (May 2009) as guest professor at the Institute for Sociology, University of Graz, Austria.