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Conclusions and beginnings ...

Our intention finally is to lay down a number of trails which we hope those engaging in new ethnographic research will consider in terms of practice, theory and representation. We are aware of the fact that these are, in many respects, inextricably interlinked.

Future practice

In view of the problems of representation already outlined and the increasing amount of good research being done by young academics into popular culture, it is critical that prospective researchers are familiar with the territory which they are to study. In the postmodern age there are few sociologists of the exotic, and it is rare for one to enter 'the field' innocent of what we may find. The ethnographer needs the ability to understand the signs, signals and nuances of a culture which may be implicit to the everyday world of a particular culture yet which are not articulated explicitly to the researcher. They require the ability to make explicit 'the systems of operational combination' (de Certeau, 1986) which compose a culture; to understand both the individual and group stories along with the background noise of the practices of everyday life.

Similarly, if we aim to evoke the essence of a particular culture or set of cultural practices then we will need a degree of emotional investment in it which is, at present, anathema to the persistently scientific methods favoured by sociology. Empathy cannot be manufactured in the text nor can it be secured by the distanced dispassionate observer, it comes from involvement with and an immersion in the field. The other side of the same coin is recognizing that in the process of doing ethnographies, the culture will effect the researcher just as much as they will effect it (Harrison & Lyon, 1993, p.105). The construction of separate worlds between the ethnographer and the subject has long been used as some sort of critical juxtaposition and the coevalness of the ethnographer with the Other has for the most part been denied (Fabian, 1983). Moreover we would assert that this so -called problem of 'contamination' (Burawoy, 1991, p.2) is rapidly becoming one of a different research age; where there were clearly identifiable research 'subjects' with whom the ethnographer had a relatively distanced and controllable relationship. As we have said above, the situation whereby an ethnographer can be active alongside city planners, business people, the person in the street or in a position of 'cultural policy' decision making, challenges the academic 'purity' of non-intervention.

There is a case then for seeing ourselves as privileged and accountable delegates from the culture (our culture) which is being studied. In the process something of an awareness of the equation of means with ends needs to be demonstrated. In this respect three questions stand out: 'who constitutes popular culture?'; 'from where are they speaking?' and 'for what purpose?' (Schirato, 1994). Since the aforementioned new relationships between academia and the rest of society are most evident in the field of popular culture, it is important that the 'intellectual intermediaries' here set an example for sociology in general.

Future theory

A crucial ingredient in the move toward theorizing the new ethnographic practice is positioning 'popular culture' in such a way that it has both a basis in empirical research unlike the Frankfurt School and some of their postmodernist equivalents and is at least engaged with or consumed by its authors (the subjects) on a reasonably regular basis. Far from following either the collapse into relativism or the retreat into absolutism we suggest that it is possible to celebrate in postmodernism what others (Berman, 1992; Walzer, 1987; de Certeau, 1988) have seen in modernism: an opportunity to clarify values, to embrace heterogeneity, pluralism and to mix the pessimism and optimism, the possibility and danger of everyday life. Thus in turning to 'low modernism' we are able to convey and evoke what was 'Other' to high modernism but has never really been ascribed with the same degree of intellectual seriousness. Here we can learn from Benjamin's figural vision of 'the flaneur' as a model for a new kind of intellectual observer; one at ease in the crowd and fascinated, not alarmed by the constant flow of commodities and constantly changing signs and images of the arcade, of the street, of the city. It suggests a modernism which is open ended and contingent, characterized by the uncertainty normally associated with the postmodern where 'a thousand little stories' compose rhizomic ephemeral cultures of the contemporary urban milieux (Deleuze & Guatarri, 1981). We would concur with Walzer when he suggests that 'we would do better to study the internal rules, maxims, contentions, and ideals, rather than detach ourselves from it in search of a universal and transcendent standpoint' (1987, p.ix). Such a standpoint does not lead to the abandonment of values or principles but stresses the values of the lived experience where, as Laclau puts it, 'if the word of God can no longer be heard, we can start giving our own voices a new dignity' (1989, p.14).

The implications of this may be unpleasant for some, particularly because it puts the history of the sociology of culture on trial for being political through a policy of theoretical exclusion. However, by conducting research as outlined above, and adopting a 'low modernist' position which is equally theory, artform and text spaces can begin to emerge in the knowledge monopoly, as 'real life' becomes fused with research. Our own experience at Manchester Institute for Popular Culture has sometimes felt akin to jumping backwards and forwards through epistemological hoops, as other departments and institutions have struggled with the interdisciplinary nature and content of our research. This is their problem not ours.

Future representations

Readers can be forgiven for thinking that thus far we have assumed that if new ethnographic practices and theories are followed then some coherent representation will automatically follow. This however is not the case. As has been only too clearly observed by Latour (1988) it is when the new ethnographers get to work that the problems of representation become even more pronounced, as theorists believe that either through different writing styles or jargon there is always some final level of meta-reflexivity which can be reached. Here, even in the most iconoclastic of genres the sociology of scientific knowledge and the 'new ethnographies' we see the spectre of ideology rising from the ashes of ideology.

In this respect we warm to the notion of de Certeau's that each time we attempt to call up the popular, or more specifically popular practice by scientific representation there is a death. This death applies equally to trying to read texts authentically as it does to writing them. As noted earlier, Tyler (1986, p.137) claims that to try and depict reality is merely to engage in mimesis, and that every attempt will inevitably produce situations where crucial factors will be missed with the end result a representation which borders on the verge of fantasy. This of course is not a problem if it is recognized that in trying to represent the unrepresentable (i.e. living popular cultures) one is really drifting into the art of story telling. Marcus argues convincingly for the development of this craft for story telling through the form of 'the modern essay' which by definition undermines realist accounts 'by seeking to evok(e) the world without representing it'(1986, p.190). For him the modern essay:

... opposes conventional systematic analysis, absolves the writer from having to de velop the broader implications of his thought (while nonetheless indicating that there are such implications) or having to tie loose ends together. The essayist can mystify the world, leave his subjects actions open ended as to their global implications, from a rhetorical posture of profound half-understanding half-bewilderment with the world in which the ethnographic subject and the ethnographer live (ibid. p191).

Stories also play an important role in the work of de Certeau. As Schirato notes:

... he refers to the 'transgressive stories' of Foucault and Bourdieu, where the law, the system, and theories are re-told and at the same time undone by the interpolation of certain moments in the story what he calls 'coups' when 'thinking otherwise' becomes possible (1991).

For de Certeau story telling and story writing is not a substitute for reality merely a move in a game, yet a move which can contest hegemonic meanings and 'create space out of place'. So rather than aiming to present holistic views of systems, communities or events the story telling of the modern essay 'legitimates fragmentation, rough edges and the self-conscious aim of achieving an effect that disturbs the reader' (Marcus 1986, p.191). The interpretive task becomes shared as the stories of the subjects weave around themselves and those of the ethnographer. With the ethnographer foregrounded yet another story emerges, and we need look no further than the Gospels of the Bible to reveal how representation can work in this fashion; there is a break with reality but the fragments and evocations of the events allow us the impression of an experience (see Tyler, 1986).

In this respect the treatment of popular culture by sociology could learn more from art than science, and perhaps receive more respect and a degree of legitimacy from those who it is claiming to represent. We also must face the fact that the conventional sociological text itself has a 'sell by' date on it and that other modes of representation should be ex plored. To follow Redhead (1993) we feel that it is vital to recognize that so called 'pulp' or 'trash' novels about popular, and particularly, youth culture may well capture and inform us more about what it means to be involved with them than yet another academic exposition. The telecommunications revolution in the form of interactive information distribution only serves to underline this point.

We are living in an increasingly DIY culture where the means of entertainment to the means of employment, the means of exchange to forms of representation are being at tempted with varying degrees of success outside of formal institutions. If sociology is not to become another redundant craft and the ethnographic researcher just another outmoded artisan it is important that we think creatively about that craft and that we are allowed to take the risks necessary to produce meaningful research. The rediscovery of the values and principles of low modernism along with the experimentation implicit in it, may allow both the form and context of ethnographic writing to create a space for the marginalized practices of popular culture to emerge and contest versions of both the 'high' and the 'post' to provide space for thinking otherwise.

Note and acknowledgement

The story of this chapter is an ethnography in itself, and at times it has felt as though we have been trying to take on the entire history of the sociology of culture. This has not been something we have been afraid of more that it has set us wondering if anybody else is on the same planet! Fellow iconoclastic terrestrials include Justin O'Connor, Steve Redhead, David Muggleton, Bernice Martin and Richard Smith and we thank them for their encour agement and helpful remarks on this project.

1 Here we deliberately utilize de Certau's use of the word 'tactic' (the makeshift creativity and disruptions of the popular) as opposed to the disciplinary 'strategies' of the establishment of which sociology has become embedded.
2 Characterized by Adorno's and Horkheimers derisory reference to 'girls in the audience' in The Culture Industry.
3 Here we recall recent programmes such as the Cook Report for ITV on drug gangs in the inner city (July 1994) and Panorama's (BBC) exposure of protection and extortion on several of Britain's most notorious housing estates (January 1995).
4 Numerous documentaries during 1994/5 on rave culture, New Age travellers, anti-roads direct action groups to name a few illustrate this point all executed with sober accuracy and depth.
5 Woolgar (1988) in particular draws attention to the fact that scientific knowledge these days is no longer regarded as a special case in the field of knowledge suffering from the same social constructions as the humanities. See also Bijker, Pinch and Hughes ([eds.] 1987).
6 William Mitchell from MIT recently 'placed' his forthcoming book City Of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahnon the Internet for 'comments in the margins' which could then be incorporated into the 'hard' copy. Website at http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/City_of_Bits/welcome.html.
7 For a rigorous critique of CCCS and especially Paul Willis' Learning to Labour see George Marcus in Clifford and Marcus (eds.) Writing Culture 1986 pp.175-188.
8 For instance, Purkis, whilst participating in a radio feature as an academic 'expert' on the anti-roads movement in November 1993, was only too aware that he hadn't said anything more profound than the people he was supposed to have been assessing (the Donga Tribe of Twyford Down fame).
9 See Knights (1995) for the problems of representation in Business Studies and Economics and Hollway (1989) for organizational and behavioural psychology.

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