Abstract
The Mass Observation Archive presents numerous methodological issues for social researchers. The data are idiosyncratic, difficult to analyze, and the sample design is nonsystematic. Such issues seriously challenge conventional social research protocols. This article highlights a further characteristic of the archive: its unwieldy materiality. Focusing on the sensory experiences of the archive and its particular type of data, the article shows how the experience of getting ‘dirty with data’ plays a real and dynamic part of conducting Mass Observation research. Building on these observations, and drawing on two recent projects that have used the Archive, we reflect on the extent to which these issues are genuinely methodologically problematic, and how far the materiality of method and the sensuousness of data play a part in other research sites and methodological approaches too. In doing so, we emphasize the physical and logistical practicalities involved in engaging with all kinds of data, and highlight the opportunities as well as the constraints that these pose. We draw attention to the sensuous ‘cues’ and ‘hints’ offered by the Archive's materiality, and explore different ways of responding to these and their likely implications for the type and status of outputs produced. Finally, we consider the implications of our discussion for possible future attempts to digitize the contents of the Archive.
Highlights
1.1 The Mass Observation Archive is known to be methodologically problematic to those more accustomed to traditional modes of social research
Focusing on the sensory-material experiences of the Archive and its particular types of data, we show how this unwieldy materiality is intrinsic to conducting Mass Observation Archive research, offering both constraints and opportunities
We summarize our approach to the materiality of method and how we link the material form of the Archive to social research in general
Summary
1.1 The Mass Observation Archive is known to be methodologically problematic to those more accustomed to traditional modes of social research. How respondents' use of materials comes to embody and preserve their thoughts, feelings and orientations to the world is something, we suggest, that might be observed and noted, both in our research process and in its final outputs, as a way of doing justice to the singularity of the correspondents and their reflections (Pollen 2013; Highmore 2002).
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