SociologistThe Lancaster

Our postgraduate newsletter•June2013

strangers in a strange landLearning to live as a Lancaster postgraduate

Photo by h.koppdelaney/Flickr

02

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

Hello and welcome back to the Lancaster Sociologist! You may notice a few changes since the last time we met. We’ve opted for a slightly more specific name for one thing: we liked being The Sociologist, but people did keep mistaking us for being a bit more of a professional publication than we can really claim to be. We thought we’d best be a bit more specific.

We’ve also got a brand new editorial team, and all of the teething problems you would expect to come with that! Don’t worry though; soon we will have all the bite you would expect from a premium department magazine.

Magazine is what we really want to focus on feeling like. We all know being a Lancaster Sociologist is a lot of fun, and we want to reflect this. So, while you will still find us dealing with serious matters we also want to let our hair down a little. We’re not here to compete with journals or essays: we’re a magazine you can judge by its cover. We are the Lancaster Sociologist, complete with all the cake and Floorball you can handle.

If that sounds like something you want to be a part of drop us an email at lancsoc@gmail.com.

Welcome to the new Sociologist

Lizzie Houghton, Editor: I’m a MA Sociological Research student who needs to spend more time on her degree. My hobbies include taking on more than I can handle, bossing people around, being a terrible proof reading, and drinking gin. Harris Kaloudis, Assistant Editor: “Harris” is a registered trademark of the Entrepreneurial_PhD Holding Company registered at the Cayman Islands. The ownership, directors and operations of the company are confidential information. If you would like a signed declaration of the legality of these arrangements by a leading UK law and audit firm, please send a cheque of £100 to Room B112, Sociology.

Lucy Ryan, CGWS Editor: I’m doing a PhD looking at adoptive parenthood. 15 years ago I used to proofread SCAN in Furness bar of a Thursday evening and now I have finally hit the big time as the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies

Editor of this esteemed publication. If you want to contribute to the next edition, come and see me. Bring hot chocolate (or gin!)

Peter Fuzesi: I belong to the STS tribe with some tendencies towards social theory. My research is concerned with technological innovation for disabled, especially blind and partially sighted people. In regard to hobbies, I don’t have any. Generally I am quite boring.

Lula Mecinska: a dual PhD student, with one leg here and the other at the GSSR in Warsaw. As a mother of a toddler she studies guerilla-style, but being Polish she seems culturally preconditioned to only win this way anyway. It is all about tactics, not strategies.

Tiantian SHI: a visiting Phd student from Sun Yat-sen University. She is doing research about tourism, globalization and place, supervised by Prof. John Urry in Lancaster.

The new team

03

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

NewsReturn of the SociologistAs evidenced by the paper in your hand, the department’s in-house magazine is back. We’ve got a brand new editorial team, and a new(ish) name, but we hope you’ll like us as much as our ancestor.

Our resurrection is down, in no small part, to Clay Garland, Imogen Taylor and Celia Roberts who arranged the first contributors meeting back in Lent term (which conveniently coincided with a visit from the Vice Chancellor). Easter saw some minor miracles as content started to come in and a general structure was agreed on, despite everyone’s deadlines.

We aim to produce one magazine a term filled with thought provoking content with a dash of fun.

View from the top (of the league tables)Lancaster was recently ranked third in the Guardian’s sociology league table, with a fantastic 93% of respondents being satisfied with the course. This bronze medal placing came off the back of being ranked fifth in the county in this year’s Complete University Guide, jumping six places up from last year’s position. The leaps take us above the likes of Surry, Exeter and the London School of Economics. If you’re reading this in the department place you hand on you back and proceed to pat.

Summer (conference) lovin’In two weeks the department will be hosting its annual Intellectual Party Summer Conference: an opportunity for around the world, to present your work in a friendly and encouraging environment, and to meet and

engage with some of Lancaster’s renowned academic staff. Perhaps more importantly it’s a chance to have some good, clean, academic fun.

This year’s conference sees the first ever Three Minute Thesis competition, with a prize for the student who can find the best (an funnest) way to present their life’s work in 360 seconds or less.

We will be sure to let you know who comes out on top!

PhD CongratulationsWe’ve got a few of them to catch up on, so well done to Sandra Kytir; Natalie Gill; Yi-Ping Cheng; Katerina Psarikidou; Liwen Shih; Julien McHardy; Muzi Pandir; Gemma Maltese; and finally Erkan Ali on gaining their PhDs.

04 - So you think you know sociology?

06- A fish called Marketisation08 - The end of history010 - Puzzling done Hastily012 - Lonely department014 - Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies016 - Interview with Imogen Tyler018 - Reviews020 - Facebook shaming023 - I am seen therefore I exist024 - Postgraduate desk025 - Guess who?028 - Introducing, Floorball

In this issue...

04

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

It might seem absurd to ask this, but have you ever wondered how Sociology came to be understood, taught and practiced the way it is? Well, maybe you have never thought about it, or at least not until you came to Lancaster and discovered that your karate is somewhat different from the style of this place. Or maybe, if you are a foreign student like me, you live in acute awareness of having to straddle two different traditions, combining study at two institutions which are as different as, well, as different as two Sociology departments can be, never mind in two different countries. With some luck there will be continuity and overlaps – some big names we can agree on perhaps. Like the Big three: Marx, Durkheim and Weber. Or was

it Durkheim, Comte and Spencer? Now, now what about Simmel, Veblen and Tönnies? See what I mean now?

While we could maybe all agree on a definition of sociology as the scientific study of human society, its organisations and institutions, development and processes of social activity, structures, and functions, we might still be focusing on other aspects, looking at completely different things. Where I come from macro level is king: a sociologist will be most likely to look at structure, systems and such. They will be best pals with political scientists. Most research will be quantitative and there will be some shyness with regards to declarations of any political orientation – you know, we are meant to be ‘objective’. A lot of the work will

So, you think you know sociology?

by Lula Macinska

Photo by Sociology at Work/Flickr

05

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

be theoretical, analytical, but stop short of any critical interventions. Which is why, perhaps, sociologist are quite often featured in news programmes, telling people “how it is”.

Institutions and organisations are the fascinating stuff. Those who want to deal with questions of individual agency, even problematise it, the interactionists and those with an interest in people, looking at a more micro level, are seen as perhaps not

very ‘sociological’ in their orientation (and it was not so long ago that things were quite similar in this country, by the way – see the introduction to Ken Plummer’s Intimate Citizenship, if you find it hard to believe). And wanting to effect social change? Well, this is plain naught social engineering.

So as you can see, by sheer accident of birth, one may find oneself in an absolutely alien sociological universe. Talk about fragmentation: sociology is practiced and consequently taught differently depending on where you are from. And we haven’t even gone outside Europe! I guess that is why about 10 years ago, an ESA workgroup meeting on History of Sociology led to the creation of the ANOVASOFIE project, funded by the European Commission.

The project tried to analyse the reasons for the fragmentation of the European sociological community and looked for ways to overcome it. Christian Fleck and Reinhard Müller coordinated the project from the University of Graz, Austria, with

teams from Ireland, France, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, England, and Germany. The teams were headed by Andreas Hess from the University College Dublin, Laurent Jeanpierre, University Paris XII, Sven Eliaeson representing the Centre for Social Studies in Warsaw, Hedvig Ekerwald from the University of Uppsala and Nilgün Celebi Department of Sociology at the University of Mugla, Eva Stina Lyon from London South Bank University, and last, but definitely not least, Dirk Kaesler from the University of Marburg. And yes, these names could mean something to you, or not. But try this for exercise: look up Dirk Kaesler on Wikipedia, in English and in German, and have a think.

Between 2004 and 2006 the teams took up two different streams of research – one was the creation of a virtual library of sociology in Europe and the other looked at the role of public intellectuals in the 20th Century. As you already know, ‘key figures’ are insanely difficult to decide on, so instead, within the project we (ah, well) looked at networks and institutions, migration of thought and some interesting case studies – all of which you can find on the anovasofie.net page. The colleagues working on the virtual library looked at the process of choosing publications which represent a country and its sociological tradition – texts and research about Ireland, Turkey and Austria are available on the webpage. In the process they came up with a series of questions, which help us understand how different the sociology-as-we-know-it may be from the one of our neighbour (go check out Ireland, you will be amazed).

So just for shits and giggles, try answering these:

• What was the first book with “sociology” in its title? (I’d like to know which was the last!)

“key figures are insanely difficult to decide on”

06

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

• The first textbook of sociology? (Someone had to be first – and it wasn’t Giddens, go figure!)

• The first sociological journal? (and how many sociological journals from your country can you name?)

• What was the first sociological association? (Cue massive fights if there is more than one!)

• Who got the first professional chair in sociology? (you mean they weren’t always there?)

• Which university had the first institute or department of sociology? (Should be easy, not!)

• If you wanted to study sociology way back when, where would be the first place in your country to offer you a chance to do so? (And when was that exactly – this could be a surprise!)

Sadly, as happens all too often, there was no funding to go any further and the project died before it could reach its goal. We may not know it, because on the surface level we have access to the same journals, we are often members of the supranational sociological organisations, like the ESA, LASA, APSA or ISA, or refuse to join clubs that would have us as members and go for other networks instead. The “big books” of the 20th Century are slowly translated into various languages, but many can also read them in English (French and German if you are lucky). Various “classics”, important for a wider view of the discipline, are being thawed and reintroduced onto the curricula, a powerful and telling exercise in un-forgetting. And yet when I look at the list of books I need to know for my PhD final “discipline-specific” exam I know that space is not the final frontier.

And if you are interested, the list is available at http://info.css.edu.pl/sns/doc/Lista_Lektur_Egzaminacyjnych.doc

A fish called MarketisationEce Kocabicak explores the

consequences of university fees

Two and half years ago a group of students chanted in the streets of London: “education for the masses, not just for the ruling classes”. I was there because I knew that if university fees were increased, the majority of working class students would not have the opportunity to go to university. The opportunity of high-level education would be collected in the hands of the elites - like many other resources. I was protesting the unequal distribution of wealth in this society; I was struggling against capitalism.

During those days I was reading Marx, who argued that capital is not only money, raw materials or physical machinery; capital is a social relation. I was quite sure that I got his point. Nowadays, however, I am realising that I did not properly understand what he meant.

Starting from this academic year, university fees have almost tripled, and it seems to me that the problem is not only the increased gap between the rich and the poor: it is not only that the majority of working class people continue to be excluded from the opportunity of a degree-level education, but the diffusion of capital into university education as a social relationship.

You may say that the capital-led transformation began before the tuition fee increase. But the budget cuts in education seem to be an advanced stage of this transformation. More importantly, aspects of this

07

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

transformation demonstrate that the unequal distribution of wealth is a mechanistic understanding of the impact of capital.

Education is becoming a service that is sold by an institution and bought predominantly by individuals (and sometimes other institutions) through the process of commodification. It is not very different to ordering a four week sushi course from a Japanese catering school: instead of working with a master chef for many years, you get four weeks’ worth of experience in sushi making. The master chef does not choose you by assessing your abilities. It is the customer who chooses: you make your choice among various institutions, you pay for it, you do your best and you graduate from the sushi course. New customers buy this course each year otherwise the institution could not survive.

Under conditions where customer satisfaction is more important than improving the art of making sushi, the master chef will have to consider the customer satisfaction in challenging your abilities. Thus, the motivation

of master chefs is changing and the content of the course changes as well. The autonomy of the master chef to define how to reach the necessary qualifications is limited. The method of teaching does not aim to improve the art of making sushi. Moreover, the potentialities and the limitations of each student are standardised with respect to their training. Thus, the level of expectation from the student is mostly set by the logic of capital accumulation.

Can you blame the master chef who is now waged for their role in this course? Can you blame the student who wants to learn how to make sushi? I guess the answer is both yes and no. However, for me, what is more important is the whole transformation of the university education under the dominance of capital.

What would happen if there were many Japanese catering schools providing many sushi courses? How can a specific institute in such a market attract new customers? Here, the second aspect of transformation appears: marketing. As we all know, marketing is the name of a practice in

Photo by chrisjohnbeckett/Flickr

08

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

which a company makes a promise to deliver a set of values, if you choose them against their competition. How can you continue to sell a sushi course if you talk about the long hours of working, if you mention the experience of cutting raw and smelly meat each and every day? Can you really talk about the risk of cutting your fingers? You can’t. Either you should manipulate the real situation in a clever way, or you do the reverse: changing the existing case and making it same as the attractive world of marketing. The result is representing university education as a fun, joyful, creative, and glittering-future-promising experience. In doing so, the market share of the institution can be increased more than the others.

The following advert of Goldsmiths, University of London says a lot: “I’d like to know what Pepys, Shakespeare and Orwell thought of New Cross. And I can tell you a lot about samba”. You are invited to buy an education which teaches Orwell in a way which will not disturb your life and preferences. There is not space for you to deeply feel the injustice that Orwell wrote in his novels. No space for anger, discomfort, and the motivation to change something deeply wrong in the society. Orwell has to come with fun and joy. Subsequently there is not a space for the self-realisation and the self-satisfaction as well.

I always believe that one can write a book which can change the lives of many. However, the capital driven social transformation of the universities becomes an obstacle itself for those books to be written. Thus, our struggle against university fees has been beyond the unequal distribution of the resources between the rich and the poor. Our struggle targets the capital as a social relationship, and our struggle still continues.

I never expected that moving from undergraduate History to an MA in Sociological Research would feel like a particularly large step. After all, I reasoned to myself, I had specialised in modern history, something I considered at the time to be basically the same as sociology, and had often found myself straying rebelliously into the sociology section of the library. My final year dissertation on communes also drew largely upon sociological texts. In fact, at several points during the course of my undergraduate study, I could be heard to remark ‘I’m in the wrong department, I should be a sociologist!’. I longed for a discipline in which research material was not just located in dingy archives. Sociology, in contrast to long, lonely days spent in the archives, seemed to glimmer with the elusive appeal of something that so often seemed far removed as a history student: relevance to the modern world.

Yet how wrong I was that moving from history to sociology would be a painless, easy process! My experiences of the two disciplines have in fact been very different: at times, this has caused me frustration and feelings of low academic confidence; at others, the differences have served to widen my intellectual horizons.

First, and with apologies for what might be considered an inevitable rant, I cannot help but feel irritated

The end of history

Emily Winter on the trials and tribulations of changing

disciplines

09

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

by many sociologists’ poor usage of history and historical explanation. Too often, the history presented is a past which is far too neatly periodised and schematic to capture the complexity of historical change, its idiosyncrasies and its refusal to submit to overly neat categorisation. As a former history student, I am not only perturbed by this all-too common mechanistic vision of history, but also by the lack of historical evidence. When reading Foucault, for example, I can almost hear some of my previous history lecturers lament “but where is his evidence?”.

This rant aside, the most significant difference I have encountered between the two disciplines is sociology’s far more theoretical nature. As a result, I have found sociology texts a lot harder to read than their equivalent in history, and I often find myself getting frustrated with the opaqueness of many sociologists’ language and the subsequent lack of clarity. I still maintain that it is possible to express complex concepts and ideas without succumbing to completely incomprehensible language. I have also struggled with the meta-theoretical encampments that sociologists seem obliged to situate themselves within; are you a structuralist, a critical realist, a post-modernist?

Though I may change my mind if I

find a theoretical framework in which I feel I fit, right now, I experience sociology as a somewhat tribalistic discipline, in which you join a particular sect based around the theoretical position you subscribe to. Far more than in history, there is a consequent preoccupation with particular theorists. I can scarcely remember the names of any historians whose work I read and utilised in my undergraduate degree. Now, however, I have a whole list of important sociologists, and sometimes it feels like a bit of a name game, in which certain theorists seem to become fashionable and thus attract obsessive, dogmatic devotees.

Enough of the frustrations. One thing I have definitely gained from studying sociology is the greater depth of thought applied to the choice and use of methods. I cringe looking back at my undergraduate degree and the extent to which I naively deployed my choice of method, interviews, with little consideration of what I was doing, why and how. I also feel far more stretched and challenged than I did studying history, and this must be a good thing, surely?

Almost a year on, I don’t feel like a historian anymore. But do I feel like a sociologist? Not yet anyway. And my concern about relevance? There, at least, is one similarity between the two disciplines. The existential pains of being a postgraduate student!

010

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST What are you doing now? What

happened since you’ve completed your PhD?

Soon after finishing my fieldwork I moved to Berlin, primarily because my partner found a job there. While writing up, I was a visiting student and the Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt University, which is an interesting hybrid between social anthropology and cultural sociology with a small group of people involved in great STS-inspired research. After my viva I was a visiting scholar at the Technical University in Berlin, at a research group called “Innovation in Governance”. At the moment I work in Frankfurt with Professor Thomas Scheffer. I met him at the Institute for European Ethnology. He had been a post-doc in Lancaster and has been involved in an ethnographic study of the German Parliament. Given our shared Lancaster experience and that my PhD research took place in the Hungarian Parliament, we found many common themes of interest. Last year he was appointed as a professor in Frankfurt, and made a generous offer to work with him, which I accepted.

Puzzling hastily Done

Endre Dányi completed his PhD last year, which was a material-semiotic analysis of liberal

democracy in Hungary. He was supervised by Professor Lucy Suchman and Professor John Law. Currently he works at the University of Frankfurt in Germany and is interviewed by

Peter Fuzesi.

Is the academic world very different in Germany?

There are some important differences. Being a professor in Germany is almost like running a small company, where one can appoint people to do teaching and research. Generally speaking, the communication is more hierarchical (although it’s not at all the case in our group). In the UK people call each other by their first names and there is much less formality in everyday interactions. In Germany people are often addressed by their official titles. I communicate and teach in English and so try to blur some of the boundaries, for example, by addressing most people by their first name.

Another important difference is that whereas in the UK in a starting position one has to teach undergraduate students and it is the professors who hold the advanced seminars, in Germany the case is the exact opposite. I teach mostly postgraduate students, and I can offer courses in practically any subject I am interested in, which is great.

011

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

Do you think that doing a PhD is very different in Germany?

Yes. I think, it is somewhat easier to get funding, but the PhD is structured differently. Doing a PhD counts as work experience and one is often expected to work on a research project unrelated to one’s topic. One typically works alone and meets the supervisors less frequently than in the UK.

What exactly does your recent position involve? Do you do research?

I am working on my habilitation project. This is to be completed after the PhD and it takes three to five years. Whereas in a PhD programme one has to work on a narrowly defined and original research within sociology, in the habilitation project one is expected to address a wider academic audience. One has to relate to sociology as a discipline, take a position and develop strategies in relation to different sociological theories, whether one agrees with them or not.

As for research, I am very much interested in how numbers, which often start off as weak and approximate entities, have the tendency to become strong agents of ordering. This is particularly relevant in periods of crises. I’m currently in the process of developing a research project that ethnographically examines how ‘crisis numbers’, like some indicators issued by the European Central Bank, are produced, and what political realities do they in turn help to produce.

What advice would you give to someone starting a PhD now?

Nowadays people are expected to complete their PhD in three to four years. Hence they have no time to be really puzzled by the theoretical

and practical implications of their research. One needs to know what one is doing even before starting a three-year project. Therefore it is a great advantage to do a masters beforehand, think carefully about the PhD project, and allow oneself an extra year after the PhD, too. It makes sense to look at the thesis not as a complete work, but as relatively raw material that can be transformed into journal articles or a monograph. While publishing in academic journals is essential, I think there is a great virtue in thinking about book-length texts.

What do you think about the direction sociology is heading?

I identify myself primarily with science and technology studies. At the last big conference in Copenhagen Michael Guggenheim said that while by now STS has become a widely accepted approach or subdiscipline, it has become much harder to identify a common ground. Perhaps there is no common ground, but I do think we need to invest more energy into keeping different STS projects in conversation with each other. Looking at sociology, earlier there was a stricter division of labour between sociology and other disciplines. Sociology today seems to be much more in a productive conversation with anthropology and history, which I find very inspiring.

Is there anything you really miss from your time as a PhD student?

The people, and the exceptional level of collegiality. In my experience people in Lancaster are really unpretentious and generous when it comes to helping students. I greatly benefited from this ethos while working on my PhD, and try to adhere to it in my old and new academic relations.

012

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST I have been in the Sociology

department since October. As a PhD student from a different system, I, a newcomer, spent a few months trying to fit into my new environment. Communication helped me through this challenge, and I would like to share my experience in the hope that it will prove helpful to other newcomers, and help them to adapt to their new environment as soon as possible.

The most important thing I found when trying to fit in is making use of information available from a wide range of resources. There are many resources here: the regular supervision of supervisors for PhD students; the modules/courses provided by our department; our faculty and the other faculties in the whole university; which can be found in the information of the official websites; the books and journals related to your research topic; and plenty of other support, like the English writing assistant in FASS, and workshops or seminars run by various departments. All of these resources are helpful, especially when you encounter some frustrating

Lonely department

Tiantian Shi provides new students with a survival guide to studying in a new country

moments in your research. How did I find these resources?

The Sociology department helped. I still remember that the department organized a welcoming activity in the first week where many staff and senior students introduced the department, and many senior PhD students participated in an informal discussion. Celia and Maggie organized that day which really provided a good chance for us to collect information about what it is like to study and research here. They also prepared a folder where we could find a lot of detailed information about the modules and the department guidelines, and I recommend that you have it to hand during the first few weeks so that you can check and learn from it when you are free.

The lectures and seminars are important, as they provides a formal chance for you to communicate with other PhD students about what are they doing. The offices and other public spaces like the kitchen provide the physical platform for daily discussions and support from other students. I will always remember

013

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

and appreciate my discussions with other PhD students and the help they’ve given.

Remember that all of the staff will have been PhD students once and have experienced the whole process, so they can provide deep and broad insights which could bring a sudden moment of inspiration for your own research.

There are also many funny and special events in our department, which bring with them a good opportunity for fun and communication. Do check your emails frequently, as most of these events are advertised that way.

All of these resources provide careful and humanized support for the PhD students here to help them get through the long journey from a being student to a PhD. A good routine is essential for making full use of these resources.

Being honest, in my first term here I did not have a good routine to utilise these precious resources: I kept un-

regular hours and didn’t manage the right mix of entertainment and work, which lead to everything being a bit of a mess: I did not finish the necessary readings for some modules, I did not focus enough on my own topic at the beginning, etc. I found allocating time for rest, work, play and eating helpful in forming my better routine.

Experiencing different walks of life is another thing we get to do as a newcomer, which brings a more colorful vision of the world. The staff and students in the Sociology department come from all over the world contributing to the international atmosphere here, which is a good platform for discovering and understanding the world. This inspires my willingness and enthusiasm to chat with others, whereby I gain a more interesting knowledge of the world. This contributes to understanding others, which helps to cultivate a peaceful and harmonious mood for further communication.

Photo by Wilson180/Flickr

014

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies

Welcome to the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies. Although we are housed in the Sociology Department we are inter-disciplinary in focus and welcome anyone interested in research with a focus on gender, sexuality and feminism.

In this edition of The Lancaster Sociologist, the CGWS section has various exciting articles for you. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. We start with what we hope will become a regular feature – “At the Intersection”; a column from former MA in Women’s Studies student Jhana Bach who is taking Lancaster feminism back to the Pacific Northwest. Kate McNicholas Smith interviews Women’s Studies and Media & Cultural Studies lecturer Imogen Tyler (who also adds being co-director of CGWS to her many roles!) about her research, life at the university and the launch of her much-anticipated first book. Laura Edwards tackles the issue of sexism in online media, an issue which has recently become a prominent debate, especially on twitter. Ruth Hanson shares with us some of her impressive range of feminist photographic work.

The Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies offers a regular

series of seminars and workshops, a selection of recent events have also been reviewed in this edition. For more information about forthcoming activities for CGWS please check out our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter (@cgwslancaster). If you would like to contribute to the CGWS section of the next edition of The Lancaster Sociologist or if you have any ideas for issues you would like to see included then please email me (l.ryan@lancaster.ac.uk). We will also be looking for volunteers to review any events they have attended, whether these have been organised by CGWS or externally, so if you are going to (or have been to) something that may be of interest please let me know.

We hold a regular coffee and cake morning between 9.15 and 10.15 on Tuesdays in term time in the Sociology postgraduate kitchen. Everyone is welcome and it is a good opportunity to meet people from various disciplines who are interested in issues of gender and sexuality or in feminist research. Lots of good ideas are shared and developed here, plus we have a lot of fun and laughs, so please come along and join us.

A different agenderby Lucy Ryan

015

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

The number five bus starts north of Seattle and winds through the neighborhoods of Shoreline and Greenwood before I get on across the street from the popular Café Vita and The Yoga Tree studio. This morning, the bus is nearly full. Amongst the blur of iPod- and latte-toting commuters, a gracefully headscarved woman and a small boy are seated in the sideways folding seats. Beyond them, facing forward, sit two white-haired men, one with a seaman’s cap and an unkempt beard. They discuss the Captain’s upcoming liver ultrasound (“I hope it looks beautiful!”) and the antacid properties of cheddar cheese.

As we make the first stops downtown, near Worksource and the hospital, the Captain gets off and is replaced by a heavily dreadlocked young man with a yellowed paperback novel. We move south through the heart of the city, passing the Columbia sportswear flagship store, the bleached Aryan mannequins in the Macy’s windows. I transfer to the number 36 at Seneca Street, sheltering beneath the sleek glass eaves of the symphony hall. When the 36 arrives, a man with a broad straw hat parks his wheelchair on board and strains to see over each

At the Intersection: a phenomenology of the bus

Jhana Bach graduated from Lancaster University with an MA in Gender and Women’s Studies in 2012. She returned to Seattle from where she is applying

for PhDs and writing a regular column for us.

shoulder to see behind him. He knows the driver by name.

We pass a designer doughnut shop, banks, striking workers picketing in front of one of the last, anonymous highrises, diners, and then the courthouse and the Union Gospel Mission. The composition of the bus has shifted from mostly white, working and middle class people to a poorer class, the majority of whom are people of colour.

At the next stop, a woman walks up the aisle and launches herself into the coveted double seat near the front, the one with extra legroom. She verbally abuses the man already there, accusing him of stealing her spot. The argument escalates until she slaps his cap off his head, then she moves to the front of the bus and exits at the next stop.

As we turn to go up through the International District we pass lampposts garlanded in dragons, Chinese herbalists, and Vietnamese cafes. At 8th, under the freeway, we let off half a dozen elderly folk with rolling tote bags, who take their places in the queue at the Asian food bank.

I disembark, looking for a way to capture all the Seattles the bus passes through.

016

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST To what, or whom, do the ‘revolting

subjects’ of the title refer? I knew that I wanted the book to

be about the politics of disgust and about abjection, but I also wanted it to have some sense of material forms of resistance. I also wanted it to have some kind of psycho-social dimension, so I wanted the term subjects in there. Then I came up with revolting, then ‘revolting subjects’. It’s basically about the ways in which people or minority populations are produced as ‘revolting’, as objects of disgust, but also about the ways in which people revolt against abjection.

You also talk in the book about these ‘revolting subjects’ as figures.

What I’m interested in doing in the book is tracking the way in which there’s an accumulation of messages about particular populations in different media forms, and by media I don’t just mean popular culture but I mean policy or government rhetoric or all kinds of things in everyday life, the way people talk about different groups of people for example. So, those accumulations cluster to recognisable figures, what I also call

She’s revolting!Dr Imogen Tyler, senior lecturer in the Sociology

department and co-director of CGWS, sat down with Kate McNicholas Smith over coffee

this week to discuss her recently published (and brilliant!) book, Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. Here’s a somewhat abridged version of their

chat.

national abjects in the book, things like the welfare scrounger, or cheat. These figures become stereotypes, but more than that they shape the way in which we think and see the world or people. At the same time what these figures do is they make people consent to things which actually deepen inequalities. And if you are interpolated by a figure then it’ll impact on your subjectivity in some fundamental way. It in part produces your sense of who you are. You might resist it, but even in resisting it it’s impacting or shaping your sense of self.

Mediation and the ‘politics of aesthetics’ are central concerns of the book, why is paying attention to them so important for social and political change?

One of the things I think sociologists and social scientists are really bad at is understanding the ways in which ideas and knowledge are mediated. We can’t escape those processes and practices of mediation, they’re what shape the world.

You talk about attempts to transform class itself into a

017

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

revolting subject and the need for a new vocabulary for class struggle today. Can you say a bit more about that and what that new vocabulary might be?

I wanted to get away from a ‘clean’ notion of class that just refers to social class and open up the question of class to notions of systems of classification (gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, disability etc) and how they intersect to produce inequalities, injustices and struggle. At the same time I wanted to give an account of the way in which social class was written out of the academy and the way it’s returning.

You say in the introduction that you hope the book can contribute to the development of a new political imaginary for these revolting times. How do you see that new imaginary being taken up?

More than anything it goes back to trying to legitimate the more left politicised history of cultural studies and an unashamed return to issues of inequality, injustice, power and how they relate to questions of culture. The bigger question about political imaginary, and it’s a term that Paul Gilroy came up with when he was talking about the aftermath of the riots in 2011, is about asking what do you actually do politically.

And moving forwards for you, what’s next?

I’m really torn between two projects. One is a project about feminist activisms. It would be a little bit like Revolting Subjects but it would be global and would focus on feminist movements around the world. The other project is on stigma, trying to think about stigma as a mode of governmentality. Probably looking at unemployment and young people in a series of different settings. So, I’m not sure which of those I’m going to

end up working on yet, I’ll probably do them both!

Imogen on universities:It is a really hard job in many

ways, but you know, ultimately, it’s an incredibly privileged job and every day I remind myself of that. Those of us in these positions of privilege need to use that privilege to speak out about the things we think are wrong, unethical or unjust within the university. That might be protesting about border controls and their impact on the way we take classroom registers, it might mean protesting because an arms company is giving a conference on campus or supporting our students in their protests. It might be by creating spaces like Celia and I have tried to do in Women’s Studies which are open to anybody to come and be part of a supportive and critical community. It might be to recognise the exploitations of precarious labour within the institution, those on part time contracts, temporary contracts, researchers and post graduate teachers and to try and work to improve their conditions.

On the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies:

One of the things that Celia and I have tried to think about in running the centre is how to use that to the advantage of the people who identify with the centre. To try and understand the centre as an assemblage of different individuals, groups and parts who perform or become the centre in different ways at different times. We’ve tried to really rethink the centre in particular as a feminist graduate school for anybody within the university who identifies with and is concerned with the politics of gender, sexuality or inequality more generally, and wants to partake in it. We love it!

018

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

ReviewsPerforming Post-Post Feminisms: a review by Donna Humphery

The Performing Post-Post Feminisms workshop united Film and Television Studies, Sociology and Theatre Studies through exploring the shifts in attitude towards feminism within contemporary culture. We heard from Charlotte Brunsdon from the University of Warwick, and Geraldine Harris, Debra Ferreday and Rebecca Coleman of Lancaster University. Charlotte Brunsdon opened the workshop with a presentation on the representation of female police officers in British television, how this has changed over the years and how this speaks to contemporary ideals of feminism.

Topics discussed included the tension between femininity and its relationship to feminism, the link between the representation of women in powerful positions with vengefulness and the performance of ‘girlishness’. Questions were raised around the impact the credit crunch has had on post-feminism, given its strong association with consumer cultures. We then heard from Geraldine Harris, who compared the feminist discourse in the stage productions of Jumpy and The Awkward Squad.

Topics discussed included the play’s use of generational antagonism in regards to feminist ideologies, and it was highlighted that the contemporary class division is significantly deeper than that faced by feminists of the second wave, and asked what contemporary feminism looks like with such extreme class divisions.

This was followed by Debra

Ferreday, delivering a presentation entitled; “We are the Media: Body image, Resistance and New Digital Feminisms”. Ferreday explored the cyber reframing of the relationship between consumption/femininity and feminism and highlighted the move away from mainstream capitalism within DIY communities. The reclaiming of the labour of femininity as site of commonality and the refiguring of spectatorship was also discussed. We ended the day by hearing from Rebecca Coleman, with her presentation: “Immanent feminist theory, proximate viewing and makeover television”, in which ideas of transformation in make-over programs and its link to a better future and the collapse of the self into the body were discussed.

Queering Anarchism: a review by Ruth Hanson

Unusually for the beginning of an academic seminar, we were invited by Jamie Heckert (co-editor of Anarchism & Sexuality) to meditate, an act which turned out to be fitting to a discussion on ‘queering anarchism’. Since meditation brings us to the edge of consciousness, it set the scene for a presentation on that which is at the margins. It also connected us to an anarchic sense of permission to ‘check ourselves’, dismissing policing of our bodies by another.

Queer emphasises that which fails to fit into neatly categorised boxes. To queer anarchism is to find the edge between two political landscapes, to radicalise and acknowledge sexual politics, class politics, and disability politics, and to recognise that the

019

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

conformity on which the state is based is a system which must be questioned.

Heckert stressed a sense of self-governing individuality in which one finds life truths for oneself, perhaps involving a process of telling stories that do not fit the boxes. When drawing upon utopian fiction, anthropological works and listening to voices usually ignored, we learn of stories which reveal other truths which deserve equal attention and compassion.

We should be paying attention to what is already happening, focusing on all of the quotidian anarchies and intimacies that are working well, in order to find energy to queer and question the things that are not. We should be cultivating compassion for pain - allowing it to exist without getting caught up in it and perpetuating it. Just as we meditated and watched memories of the past and thoughts of the future float by, so we were encouraged to compassionately let pain be, and let pain go. We were also encouraged to address the roots of suffering directly, recognising our capacity to deal with certain injustices through selfless direct action.

We gain greater dignity from listening to ourselves and each other, and earn respect from an awareness of our own and others’ boundaries and safe spaces.

Feminist TechnoScience Summer School: a review by Peter Fuzesi

The third of Lancaster University’s annual Feminist Technoscience Summer School was held last month. The event was organised by

the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies. The Summer School was taught by both Lancaster and overseas researchers, and attracted participants from Australia, Israel, and Sweden.

While it was very intensive, the Summer School also offered a unique opportunity for students: given that it is taught by four staff of the CGWS, participants had the opportunity for much more interactive discussions, and consultations.

One of the overarching themes of the School was how developments in biology present new challenges for policy and the social sciences. Under this year’s topic Minds, Brains and Bodies participants could listen to lectures about new waves of biologism and evolutionary thinking, artificial life research, biological approaches to parenting, mental health care and public engagement in health-care policy. While in today’s highly compartmentalised academia it is rare to venture beyond disciplinary boundaries, the Summer School was a good demonstration that feminism can integrate and discuss together diverse themes. This might be especially important since new findings in biology, have and increasing impact on our lives. These policy challenges can be better tackled by a politically engaged approach like feminism.

Among this year’s visiting researchers we could welcome Dr. Anni Dugdale from the University of Canberra and Professor Gillian Einstein from the University of Toronto. The event was closed by an introduction to Alexander Technique by CGWS alumna Ceri Mumford.

020

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST Last month Facebook published a

blog post regarding “controversial, harmful and hateful speech” after two groups (Women, Action and the Media and The Everyday Sexism Project) launched a combined campaign to address representations of rape and domestic violence on Facebook. The campaign involved over 5000 targeted emails sent to Facebook’s advertisers and the coordination of petitions, which collected over 200,000 signatures. The result? Fifteen companies, including Nissan and Nationwide, decided to withhold their advertising from the site, while others such as Dove pledged to work with Facebook to attempt to solve those issues.

Subsequently, a number of sexist pages, such as the Rate Your Shag groups that have been proliferating from various universities were deleted by Facebook. The Vice President of Global Public Policy, Marne Levine, has revealed that in some cases subject matter that is unwanted is being removed rapidly, whilst other cases have proven that content which should have been removed has been “evaluated against outdated criteria”.

Facebook shaming: social media’s problem with women

I am led to question whether this campaign would have been anywhere near as significant had the balance sheet of Facebook not been threatened. To think otherwise, is to me, more than a little naïve.

For a start, groups on Facebook such as Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs are just the beginning.

They are extreme and disturbing versions of a social media culture that acts to support patriarchy, oppress women, trivialize and normalize rape and violence against women. However, there are more examples. Take our very own OMG Lancaster Uni Confessions page. It drips with disdain for women in general. Posting pictures of young women in various states of drunkenness and undress and shaming them as “sluts” and “whores” whilst celebrating the men who decided that sharing these details with the cyber-verse is an honourable thing. These pages also encourage others to remove the victim’s anonymity and publicly ridicule them not just on the social networking platform, but off it as well.

The case of 17-year-old Rehtaeh

by Laura Edwards

021

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

Parsons, who died in hospital on 7h April 2013 following a suicide attempt is a severe example of the consequences of cyber bullying. Parsons was allegedly gang raped approximately 18 months before her death and pictures of the event were shared online after being subjected to “slut shaming”, bullying and harassment. Whilst these types of “confessions” pages are seemingly innocuous, they are capable of having far reaching and devastating consequences.

It might be a good idea if any woman in a compromising position was treated with respect and dignity, and not “slut dropped” at the opposite end of town, placed in

a position of potential physical and emotional harm and laughed at in the process. Rather, we should be criminalizing the person who was taking the photographs and posting them, rather than justifying such behavior as “banter.”

“Banter”, “lad culture”, “misogyny”, “raunch”; whatever you wish to call it, there are a number of stark similarities. We take a group of people from a wide range of ages and backgrounds, gather them together in one place and treat another set of people as less than they are, and actively work, knowingly or not, to trivialize the feelings and experiences of those who have been exposed to violence, harassment and bullying.

022

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

Ronnie Rowlands, contributor to SCAN, Lancaster’s student union newspaper, recently wrote a high profile article attracting retweets not only from Stephen Fry, but also Professor Liz Kelly (a Lancaster Sociology department favorite) and a number of other high profile feminist academics. His article challenged some of the basic notions of “banter” put forward by Jack Rivlin in an article posted on The Telegraph website. Rivlin’s poorly researched and badly

written, and misrepresented an important piece of research by the National Union of Students looking at female students’ experiences of “lad culture” in higher education. Skipping over the key points, Rivlin equated the report to one that branded all young men as rapists. As Rowlands’ article astutely points out; “Rivlin is essentially dismissing women made to feel intimated as uptight Mary Whitehouse types who don’t get the ‘banter’.”

Speaking to Rowlands, I wanted to ask him what he thought we could realistically do to end this type of culture. He tells me that not only do we need more well-written intelligent articles challenging these issues, but we also need to actively challenge behavior that we dislike. He goes on to say, “…those being challenged

need to listen – all too often it’s a case of immediate dismissal. Whereas, actually if a shedload of intelligent people are telling you that what you are doing is oppressive and insulting, you should probably listen rather than remain clinging to the shit justifications for your behavior.”

Indeed, we do need to challenge such behavior. We need to get out there and provide information and we need to challenge big corporations, like Facebook, on their moral responsibility to hold up their own community standards policies and support their users. The content that Women Action and the Media and The Everyday Sexism Project have campaigned to remove is the very beginning. A number of feminist groups have detailed many occasions on which oppressive, violent and or sexist content has been reported as gendered hate speech, yet moderators have made decisions to allow this content to remain available.

Images of mothers breast feeding their children and topless pictures of Tunisian activists making political points have been reported by some as distasteful and offensive, and subsequently removed. And yet, pictures that comment negatively about those who do not meet the ideal skin tone, dress size and sexuality endlessly pop up in our news feeds.

While tackling these issues and gaining a high profile, proactive response from a global corporation like Facebook is a huge leap forward, there is definitely still further to go.

Take Lancaster University as an example. A seemingly progressive and welcoming campus that works hard to meet standards of equal opportunity, yet we still have the Overheard and Confessions pages to endure. We need to start here at Lancaster and work to rid Facebook of these groups as we lead the way in turning this culture around.

“we need to challenge big corporations, like Facebook, on their moral responsibility to hold up their own community standards policies”

023

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

These photographs are part of a larger series on the topic of women existing due to being seen. They bring into play ideas of femininity as performance, with garments masquerading as identities. They also bring to mind the concept of the gaze, as the viewer must confront each photograph, and be confronted by the woman that looks back. The images present the potential to demonstrate that female identity is just a play with visual codes, and that having moved from one performance, for example by undressing from one outfit, we simply begin another.

I am seen, therefore

I existby Ruth Hanson

024

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

My desk at the department, at least it is less messy and cluttered than the one at home. I wouldn’t post a photo of the one at home. I even keep the door closed when we have visitors.

Note the absence of any decorations: no pictures or posters and no plants (I am known to kill desert-hardened cacti through sheer, relentless neglect; the desert is more giving and caring). My office door on the other hand is covered in posters, flyers etc. It even has a whiteboard (leave a message if you go by, I may have blue-taced sweets on it as well).

What you probably cannot tell is that the state of my desk reveals that I have not been writing much recently (which is also what my supervisor would also be able to tell you). If I had, it would be much tidier. I write my first drafts in pen and paper and then type them up. So I move the laptop out of the way and free as much of the desk surface as possible for all the papers involved. I am paranoid of losing any hand-written notes so I tidy them neatly in the right, numbered order – only up until I have finished whatever I need to write. After that, it’s return to chaos – good luck with trying to retrieve stuff in the future (the future is too far away anyway).

I have to say that I do like my office

My postgrad desk by Harris Kaloudisspace. A lot. I appreciate having it. I talk with friends working in other departments or universities and they are either in open-plan offices or in large offices of more than 10 people – as bad as slave galleys practically. I remember when I did my MSc that the lack of my own space on campus was very keenly felt. My office is my base. It’s almost part of my identity as a postgraduate student. Which brings me to the next thing: I like the arrangement of a post-graduate corridor. At its best, it has a village-square feel to it – the place to meet your peers in a random, free-flowing, unplanned, serendipitous way and then withdraw again back to your study cocoon – we would only need to have chairs outside our rooms and to occasionally sit on them knitting, or watering the vine or jasmine outside the door, or playing backgammon, or arranging a wedding to complete the Mediterranean, village-square feel. At its worst, it is like a ghost town. I focus and concentrate better against a level of noise and commotion. I am more productive when resisting competing distractions I think.

So, feel free to have a chat outside my door and excuse me if I don’t come out to join you: I am using the opportunity to do a bit of reading and writing done before it’s quiet again.

025

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

What brought you to Lancaster and what’s keeping you here?

It was a while ago now, but I wanted to move somewhere not too big and I quite liked the city. Probably the fact that I visited on a rare sunny day helped sell it. I’m still not tired of the place, even though there’s nothing to do really.

Why do a PhD?I enjoy pursuing things

academically, learning about my topic and (hopefully?) maybe might be able to help do some good in the world.

What’s your biggest ambition?Just passing my PhD seems big

enough for now.

Favourite place in campus?It used to be Trev, but then they

ruined it. Grad Bar is still nice though.

What are you good at?I’ve played guitar for a long time, so

hopefully I’m okay at that. I used to be in a couple of bands, but the lack of practicing since then has left me a bit rusty.

Favourite musician?I spend too much of my time and

money listening to music, so to pick one person out from all that would seem rude to all the rest. I’ve been getting into Bowie recently, so for the

Guess who?sake of argument I’ll just say Bowie. And Tom Waits.

Do you have a favourite hero or anti-hero?

I don’t like idolising people, it just seems weird.

Furthest vacation you’ve ever taken?

According to Google maps - the Canary Islands. Other than that I’ve never been outside of Europe. Do the Canary Islands even count as outside of Europe? I’m not sure.

What would you change in the world today?

I’d shift the clock back a few hours.

Non-academic book you’re currently reading?

I’ve got a collection of Jorge Luis Borges short stories on my desk for when I need a break from working, and at home I’m reading “Railsea”, by China Mieville. He’s my favourite author right now - a fantasy writer, but not the boring high-fantasy Tolkein-like stuff. His stories take all sorts of interesting technological and magical ideas and explore how they might actually work in the world. A lot like Borges, actually.

Kitchen quiz1. In Monopoly, the green set

consists of Bond Street, Regent Street and which other?

2. What does UNESCO stand for?3. Who was the first non-royal to

appear on a UK postage stamp?4. Sir James Galway is famous for

playing which instrument?5. Stalingrad was renamed in

1961. What is it now called?

Guess Who?:Clay Garland. 1) Oxford Street 2) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation 3) William Shakespeare (in 1964) 4) The flute 5) Volgograd

Harris interviewed someone in the department, but who?

026

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

It’s safe to say our department has something of a sweet tooth, so we thought every issue we’d offer up a recipe to tempt the taste buds (and possibly make an appearance at the next department welcome day/party/any-old-excuse).

This edition Lizzie Houghton offers up her culinary fail safe: key lime pie.

Ingredients:1 pre-prepared 9-inch pastry crust1 can sweetened condensed milk(go light if you want to be good)The juice of 3 medium limes1 teaspoon grated lime peel300ml whipping cream8 thin lime slices (optional)

Preparation: 1. Beat the condensed milk and

lime juice in small mixer bowl until combined; stir in lime peel. Pour into the crust.

2. Whip the cream and spread on top of the lime mixture.

3. Refrigerate for two hours or until set.

4. Garnish with lime slices.5. Eat.

The Department Kitchen Coming up...

DEMAND Seminar with Catherine Grandclement25 June 2013, 12.00 pmFASS Meeting Room 3Smarter and more transparent than you. Technicians and users scripting the user’s role in smart grid experiments

Techno-futurists scenarios of “the smart grid” treasure the “active consumer”, a consumer who will be able to “interact” with the electricity grid: get informed especially through price signals and manage its consumption but also production accordingly. In this presentation, Catherine will recount the story of two real-scale smart grids experiments and the role they gave to the end-user.

Contact: k.wright@lancaster.ac.uk

Global Conference ‘Future Mobilities’4 September 2013, 12.30pmLancaster House HotelLancaster Centre for Mobilities Research is pleased to announce the Global Conference on Mobility Futures.

Contact: p.drinkall@lancaster.ac.uk

027

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

Inspired by the impact and success of Wordsworth Walks (wordsworthwalks.com), Maggie Mort has drawn on her research project The Health and Social Consequences of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic in Cumbria: footandmouthstudy.org.uk to develop a new series: Foot and Mouth Disease Walks.

Participants will begin with a period of orientation by listening to extracts from contributors to the original study, for example: footandmouthstudy.org.uk/?page=99. They will then proceed to the guided tour of the major FMD burial sites in Cumbria, including Great Orton where half a million animals were interred.

Skirting the beautiful Lake District and calling at the small towns and villages at the epicentre of the 2001 disaster, ramblers will share a unique developmental experience as they hear the narrative of the unprecedented events which began at lambing time that year. Mort received an Enterprise Challenge Grant for this ground-breaking initiative, enabling her and the FMD research team to offer the first day-long guided walk at a reduced price of £300.

Places are limited due to strong interest from regular clients DEFRA and The Cabinet Office, so early booking is advisable. Contact the FMD Walks Team at SOCIN: Dept of Sociology & Social Innovation, Lancaster University.

Foot and Mouth Disease Walks

Photo by maraker/Flick

028

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

Floorball is fun. To play floorball is to run around with a plastic stick whilst you and your teammates encourage a plastic ball into a small goal. Even if you’ve never heard of

it you already know the format. To the casual observer, and to many of those who play it at Lancaster, it looks and feels much like hockey, adapted for playing indoors and

Introducing, Floorball

by Janine Morely and Elizabeth Shove

029

THE LAN

CA

STER SOC

IOLO

GIST

without the hard ball. But whilst it’s clearly related, floorball has actually developed and arrived in Lancaster through a rather different route, making it an especially distinctive and playful phenomena.

Floorball originated in Scandinavia, and is related to bandy, a form of winter hockey once played and formalised on the fens of England in the late 1800s, from where it was exported across Europe (and subsequently died out in the UK). A group of students starting playing an indoor version of that game in Sweden in the early 1970s, with plastic sticks imported from a toyshop in Holland. Within a few years one of them was manufacturing his own sticks and selling them in kits throughout neighbouring countries. When the game took off in Finland, it was known as sahly (meaning mess) and had very few rules. As it was played repeatedly, and as more players took it up, rules were formalised and the game became a sport. In 1986, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland formed the International Floorball Federation. Today, it is possible to play floorball very seriously and very skillfully. But messy and informal forms persist.

In 2004, Elizabeth Shove introduced just such an idea and some sticks to Lancaster University. For several years, it was with played by a small group of regulars and quite a few occasional players including academics, administrative staff and students from a number of departments. As well as being a fun part of the week, it was also an experiment in the ongoing making of a practice, a topic of sociological research which has shown that what it is to play floorball remains inextricably tied up with those who play it.

Despite getting off to a strong start, and despite having been a regular

feature of Tuesday lunchtimes, the past couple of years have been an unstable time for floorball in Lancaster, complicated by the move into the new sports centre in 2011. To begin with, the move was not

so much of a problem, but in the new setting the game experienced a chaotic boom in numbers including new and much younger players. It changed again when highly skilled and serious players from Scandinavia joined for a year or so, and again when this cohort graduated and moved on. Then in 2012, the Tuesday lunchtime slot was made impossible by the introduction of punitive peak pricing policy. As always, but perhaps more poignantly than ever, the fate of floorball in Lancaster depends on its ability to compete with other practices.

This year we have been playing for an hour on Fridays at 11am. But it has not been possible every week, and sometimes we try a different slot. When we do play it’s as fun as ever, and we are delighted to welcome newcomers. No previous experience is required. All you need are trainers and something comfortable to run around in. We do not keep the score and there are almost no rules. It’s part of the distinctive Lancaster sociology experience: if we can help the game capture a few more recruits, floorball will continue to re-make itself around us, its carriers. So come on, give it a go!

Contact Janine on j.morley@lancaster.ac.uk for more details.

“as well as being a fun part of the week, it was also an experiment in the ongoing making of a practice”

030

THE

LAN

CA

STER

SO

CIO

LOG

IST

We’ll see you in Michaelmas

In the meantime check us out at lancsoc.wordpress.com and @LancSocIf you’d like to write for us contact lancsoc@gmail.com

Unless otherwise stated the views expressed in The Lancaster Sociologist are those of the author and not the Lancaster Sociology Department.