Mass-Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History, Theory (review)

The Mass-Observation studies of mid-century working-class life in Eng-land are iconic examples of twentieth-century social science. Like the earlier social-survey tradition that examined urban poverty and social class—for example, Charles Booth’s study of Londoners’ lives (1886–1903), the Russell Sage Foundation’s Pittsburgh Survey (1907–1908) or Richard Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd’s Middletown studies of Muncie, Indiana, during the 1920s and 1930s—the “M-O” studies have had an enormous impact on social-science methods and on the general understanding of the social and class relations of their day. Also like the work of Booth, the Chicago School, Kinsey Associates, or the Lynds, the studies have recently generated a theoretical and historical literature examining the motives and intentions of the original researchers, the day-to-day practice of the studies, as well as re-examinations of the original data in light of later developments in cultural theory and the social sciences. Hubble adds to this literature by placing his history of the Mass-Observation project into the larger context of mid-twentieth century intellectual life and later theoretical debates about class and culture in Britain.

The Mass-Observation project was the creation of Tom Harris-son, (an ornithologist and anthropologist), Humphrey Jennings (a film maker), and Charles Madge (a journalist and poet) in 1937. They proposed to create a “science of ourselves” using “volunteer observers” to monitor and record the everyday life of ordinary Britons (5). One part of the project involved the observers reporting data from questionnaires developed by the project leaders; another involved a community study of Bolton and Blackpool, named “Worktown” in the publications. The published studies and data collection continued through World War II into the early 1950s. In 1970, the University of Sussex acquired the original data; in the early 1980s, the project was revived at Sussex. It continues to collect and archive data using volunteer observers. Details are available on the Mass Observation Archive website, http://www.massobs.org.uk/index.htm .

The project’s ambitious social and political goals were embedded in the larger political debates of the period. For example, Madge, Harris-son, and Jennings began data collection during the 1937 abdication crisis, convinced that the journalistic coverage of the crisis did not capture working-class attitudes toward the decisions of Edward VIII to follow his heart and abandon his throne. The project’s survey of working-class attitudes about saving money helped to develop and evaluate Britain’s wartime fiscal policy, including the practice of income-tax withholding.

This book is a dense and detailed study about twentieth-century social science and cultural theory. For secondary users of the original data today, as well for those interested in the history of the social sciences and debates about twentieth-century class politics, Hubble provides an exhaustive investigation into the origins of the Mass-Observation studies as well as into their influence on successive generations of intellectuals and social critics.