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Part II

Part III

We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves
(Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 1954).

The resistance of the popular occurs on terrains altogether different from that of culture in the strict sense of the word ... and it takes the most unexpected forms, to the point of remaining more or less invisible to the cultivated eye
(Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words, 1990).

Introduction

'These days they don't make academics like they used to do, do they?' And for some of us this is cause for celebration rather than nostalgia or the wringing of hands. The academic like God, history, or society is dead, long live the academic!

Such remarks would seem trite and needlessly provocative if it wasn't for the fact that there is more than a whiff of truth to them. The fact of the matter is that academia like the leopard is changing its spots. Increasingly in an underfunded education sector new relationships have begun to emerge, bridging the gap between the academy and cultural producers, the media and business. Just as there is a whole strata of 'cultural intermediaries' (Bourdieu, 1984) operating between business and the arts, so there now exists the (usually reluctant) intellectual equivalent (Featherstone, 1991). As cultural, social and urban policy is increasingly dictated by an amalgam of experts from each of these areas, so the academic is required to play a number of different roles and occupy a number of positions related to the work which s/he does.

This is not a new revelation obviously. There has always been something of a relationship between academia, politics, business and the media. Yet as a result of economic restructuring during the 1980s, massive expansion of the media and media driven knowledge systems and an increasing turn to (popular) culture in the regeneration programmes of many city centres, we are now witnessing both a changing role for the academic re searcher and the conditions of ownership of 'expert' knowledge within the field of popular culture. This is clearly a controversial assertion, but if one considers some of the implications of this in terms of the nuts and bolts of researching popular culture in a rapidly changing world system who does it? how is it carried out? who is it for? the answers to these questions may well be more complicated than they previously appeared to be.

This chapter focuses on the ethnographic research role within the sociology of popular culture; an interest fuelled by the observation that so much contemporary work in this area is being carried out by younger and younger academics, many of whom are already immersed in their chosen culture prior to intellectual engagement with it (Redhead 1993; Marcus 1992). In such circumstances, the role of the ethnographic researcher becomes problematic, both in terms of their 'tactics' and their identity for example, are they a fan, an interpreter, a researcher, an essayist, or all four? We want to suggest that by examining how research is done, and exploring its mode of operation in the field of popular culture, we can see the emergence of a new type of sociological researcher; one who may be called upon to adopt many different 'tactics' and identities during the course of their various research activities (Clifford 1986; Hobbs 1988).(1)

We feel that this view is vindicated by the changing circumstances within which the concept of 'culture' comes to be understood. In recent years there has been a conscious commitment in sociology to engage with popular cultural forms previously hidden from history or subject to a process of academic objectification (Schirato, 1991). Work by Chambers (1990), McRobbie (1994) and others suggests that there has been a 'turn to the popular', and integral to this switch has been the frustratingly complex debate surrounding postmodernism. Whilst it is not our intention here to revisit this extensive literature and comment on the relative merits of each of the various versions of postmodernism, we do welcome its controversial reputation in sociology, and see it as an opportunity rather than a threat. There has been a tendency for this debate to be read as the symptom of the disruptive ingression of popular culture into a previously privileged intellectual domain. In a sense then, this forms the second line of our inquiry: to assess the value of the theoretical material which informs the study of popular culture. In doing so, we take the view that understanding popular culture requires a theoretical flexibility putting empathy before explanation; thus avoiding the temptation to lapse into objectifying meta-theories of culture, be they the old (e.g. Marxism) or the new (e.g. Baudrillard). We would agree with Chambers that the world is no longer 'tied to traditional discourses, institutions and voices for information about its meaning' (1990, p.217), and proffer that new areas of study demand understanding on their own terms. Furthermore, the fact that new areas of study may emerge from groups previously marginalized by power relations, suggests that the theory and practice of popular cultural research can be done in such a way as to put some (political) principles (back) into postmodernism (if they were ever absent).

In this respect then we find ourselves turning to a reading of postmodernism that occupies a similar orbit to the 'low modernism' proffered by Marshall Berman (1984). Here Berman's 'low modernism' provides a cultural and political critique of the failed and failing meta-narratives of 'high modernity'. Accordingly, we have used this as a touchstone to explore some of the rocky extremities of the postmodern terrain. Berman's is a modernism characterized by movement, flux, change and unpredictability; characteristics which are conventionally associated with the postmodern but which, according to Berman, contain a substantial thrust of the modern (see also Lash and Friedman, [eds.] 1992). The work of Berman as we shall see is akin to that of Walter Benjamin, and offers a figural vision of the flaneur, of the popular, of the streets. Berman's low modernism wants to work towards an ethics but an ethics without blueprints, to develop 'principled positions' (see Squires, [ed.] 1993) which emerge from detailed exposure to the everyday worlds of the popular order and a consequential erosion of objectifying distance between the researcher and the researched.

It is this exposure that leads us to outline the essence of a new ethnography for popular culture. However, to reach this point we will first contemplate the sociologists place in a changing world, particularly how the study of culture has moved from the margins to the centre of academic interest, and at the same time effectively undermined its pedagogical role. Secondly we wish to examine the theory and practice of doing ethnography, specifically the need to avoid the pitfalls of 'realist' ethnography (Marcus 1986), and to recognize that the role of the 'new' ethnographer carries certain responsibilities which liberate yet complicate the researcher's task.

Intellectuals and the politics of the distribution of knowledge

We begin with the rudimentary observation that despite a partiality for experimentation with methodological and epistemological structures throughout its history, sociology is unquestionably a modernist discipline. It was part and parcel of Enlightenment rationalism and instrumental in the development of knowledge based state systems in Western democracies at the end of the nineteenth century. Subsequently the project of sociology has, until fairly recently, been one of producing scientific research in order to contribute to some sort of societal progress. Whether it has succeeded in achieving this is not our concern. The most significant factors for us are: that sociological research into culture does not befit the reflexive characteristics which modern institutions are supposedly embracing (Giddens, 1991); that instead of engaging with the uncertainties of contemporary cultural developments sociology chooses to deploy the certainties of particular modernist sensibilities and in so doing deposits its intellectual baggage upon the culture it seeks to understand.

Although the intellectual fear of mass culture can be traced back to the coming of industrialization , the die was cast by early sociologists of popular culture like the Frankfurt School. Their work was set in the context of the expanding capitalist leisure industry, with the emphasis on the stupefying effects which the consumption of 'popular culture' (the culture industry) had on people's ability to transform the world. The Frankfurt School, and in particular the work of Adorno, illustrates the legacy of an economic reductionist view of culture that leaves little space for treating culture as flexible in its own right (Gendron 1986). Deterministic assessments of the effects of 'mass culture' have also passed into everything from semiology and structuralism to both feminism and postmodernism. Much of this we would argue stems from a certain distance in terms of social and class between the academic and the 'object of study' (sic). This is an obvious but crucial point, as the academic has tended to occupy an extremely privileged position in society, and all too frequently is reflecting the aims and ambitions of a particular group. In the case of modernism, it was largely a project of a particular social and cultural class namely bourgeois white European men and the search for 'truth' in science, literature politics or history, was done on their terms and for their interests.

In the late twentieth century the challenge presented to sociology is to engage with the move away from the traditional cultural and intellectual projects of the white European male. For, if we are to believe the claims of authors such as Andreas Huyssen (1986) and Patrice Petro (1989), that the whole invention of modernism in the nineteenth century was driven by a deliberate attempt to distance serious male culture from the growth of a 'feminized' culture of the popular,(2) then there are good reasons for a feminist (along with other excluded) voices to want to reclaim some of the theoretical ground. What is clear to us, is that in the post-colonial world in which we live, the processes of globalization of culture and thought, further underlines the limitations and authority of the European Modernist vision (see Bauman, 1987; Owens, 1985). There are two factors which stand out here.

Firstly, the ivory towers no longer hold special status regarding the collection and dis semination and legitimation of knowledge, especially that of popular cultures. Secondly that the growth of lifestyle-oriented economics, and the rapid circulation of ideas and identities from the city to the Global Village, leads us to believe that studying these phe nomenon is not only academically imperative, but perhaps more importantly, that it is done in a way which reflects the sensibilities of the age. In the first instance we will illustrate our point with reference to the media and in the second turn to Walter Benjamin for inspiration.

(i) We would agree with Bauman (1987; 1988) for instance, that the changing relation ship between the state and the academy in recent decades resulting in a decline in the importance of large scientifically driven state sponsored research has led to a 'status crisis' within academia. This and the 'opening up' of culture through 'mass' consumption has ensured that intellectual debate has become both freer and more democratic. There is a sense now that alongside the 'new intellectuals' (Bourdieu, op cit) TV managers, cultural producers, publishers and so forth the academic is no longer elevated as a special case. In part this is a result of the rise of the multi-institutional research project, funded by city councils, leisure industries, development and tourist sectors of the market and local state, but also the growth of popular intellectual programmes in the media. There is, according to Featherstone (1992, p.45) 'a new breed of celebrity intellectual' afoot 'who have little distaste for, indeed who embrace, the popular'.

This populism often brings with it a different more media orientated research agenda with the 'new intellectuals' being afforded access to people and places where the academic of a previous age would never be.(3) Whilst in some cases there is little doubt that 'TV does it better', this will not always be so. Perhaps more important then is the wider access to research findings which the telecommunications age brings with it as academic claims are picked up and discussed in a variety of cultural mediums, such as BBC 2's The Late Show , Radio 4's Start the Week , the NME, The Face and so forth. Subjects for discussion and investigation are boundless and can vary from the latest Baudrillard book, debates about the impact of television violence, or the significance of the latest 'do -it-yourself' cultural phenomena.(4) Once again this is not to detract from the academy's critical role in the development of theoretical and empirical work within and for academic consumption but an attempt to highlight the opportunities for fruitful collaboration between the academy and other cultural intermediaries with a shared interest.

The sociological response to the media and to popular culture (often treated as one and the same thing) seems to be at best ambiguous and at worst damning. As is noted by McRobbie (1994, p.185) there is a tendency to relegate culture to 'the field of the arts and literary criticism or else package(e) it up with (the) political economy of mass communications'. This reflects a double pedagogical problem: that of interdisciplinary research and of the fragmented identity which many academics researching popular culture can not help but embrace.

Although sociology has long been a parasitic discipline (Urry, 1981) and draws upon all sorts of philosophical influences for inspiration, a central need for empirical validation from a standpoint of scientific correctness still exists (Strianti, 1994). This hangover from the days when most sociology was quantitative also applies to the flexibilities of the modern research role, whereby an academic researching into popular culture might spend some of a week in night-clubs or football matches, take time out to appear on or even present media programmes and still sit on academic committees and give lecturers. Such fractured lifestyles do not yet stand easy with many academics although the diverse requirements of the aforementioned multi-institutional research projects tend to suggest that the sociology of popular culture is starting to venture out of the security of the ivory tower.

We are aware of the importance of not confusing these developments with the legacy of Thatcherism, which throughout the eighties disenfranchized the academic more on the issue of funding specific projects rather than aiming to undermine their authority as such. Consequently we feel much more comfortable with the tradition of left libertarianism of writers such as Illich (1973) and Gorz (1981) who offer a critique of the modern institution educational, medical, or administrative in terms of its impersonality, unaccountability, and meritocracy. Thus we welcome the fact that new relationships are beginning to be forged with groups outside the academy, and also take inspiration from the fact that even within academia itself there has begun a slow but a healthy dismantling of the boundaries between disciplines, helped in particular by developments in the sociology of scientific knowledge.(5) These studies free qualitative sociologists of popular culture from the ideological questions of whether the research is scientific or not, and the blurring of disciplines has led to interesting relationships between the sociology of culture and art or literature (Chaplin, 1994; Fyfe and Law, 1988; McRobbie, 1994) in terms of both representation and subject matter (Marcus, 1992). Similarly, there are indications that in academic practice there are signs of openness also befitting the information age, particularly where sharing knowledge is concerned. These days we are used to the idea of working papers unfinished reports for wider circulation and discussion, whereas in the 1970s this was rare indeed (Clark, 1990). With the expansion of access to information technology, particularly the Internet, the time and space of the academic is on the move, and the mystique of the 'expert' swept away on a wave of possible new openness.(6)

(ii) To talk then of carrying out research into popular culture and to talk of modernist sociology in the same breath would seem incongruous, thus we feel that it is necessary to make the rather obvious distinction between high modernism and low modernism. If the former is as indicative of sociology historically certain, self-assured, scientific, distanced from the research that is done, and producing knowledge for select groups in society then low modernism is rooted in the culture of the popular: of the streets. It is uncertain, contingent, ephemeral, subjective and for de Certeau (1986) frequently subversive of the interests of dominant cultures.

Here we take inspiration from the work of Walter Benjamin, a low modernist in the lion's den of elitism: the Frankfurt School. Benjamin introduced an ambivalence and agnosticism to his writing on culture and the city (Docker, 1995) playfully evoking the disparate and often contradictory voices of the popular that echoes the spirit of other authors of low modernism such as Baudelaire and Dickens. The nineteenth century cities described by Baudelaire and those discussed by Benjamin were the sites of the artistic and intellectual counter cultures whose members sought to capture and evoke the essence of the age (Featherstone, 1992). Bohemians and intellectuals acted as (cultural) intermediareis in stimulating, formulating and disseminating the sensibilities of the age to wider audiences and publics (Seigal, 1986). Once more they pursued their task using the various media available to them in order to articulate the range of new sensations encountered. Thus the sense of closeness, immersion and participation evident in Benjamin's work strikes a chord with those of us engaged in contemporary cultural research in the city. We would concur with McRobbie that:

... Benjamin ... recognised with some urgency, the need to extend the role of the intel lectual in order to engage with the people and to do this through transforming the existing mass media while simultaneously making use of their technological advances (1994, p.96).

The growth in leisure-based economics, and new technologies such as the Internet with their democratizing possibilities provide both a framework for recognizing that the 'logic of late capitalism' (Jameson, 1985) is driven by cultural imperatives, and that it's analysis exceeds the parameters of the modernist sociological preoccupation with white male European bourgeois society. The question one is left with is this: if research into popular culture in particular and within sociology in general now operates within a different set of parameters, then how should it be conducted and how should it be consumed? If we take a lesson from the Situationist critique of society and culture (Debord, 1987; Plant, 1992), the popularizing of academic discourse is not necessarily anything special in itself if it is part of the same general power nexus. The postmodern celebration of the popular and the lowbrow means very little if it is done as though such phenomena were interesting only as a lifestyle and not linked into a capitalist power matrix. Academic driven knowl edge remains part of the spectacular rather than lived cultures; as de Certeau has demonstrated 'Knowledge remains linked to the power that authorises it' (op cit p.121). We feel that evocation of the essence of these lived cultures can be done through the re-discovery of the language and practice of the authors of low modernism, and it is to the specifics of its practice that we now turn.

Part II

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