Mass Observation and the University of the Third Age

Abstract

Following on from the first two chapters, which have established the primarily intersubjective nature of everyday human experience and the centrality of narrative to participation within, and the understanding (whether self-understanding or sociological understanding) of, such intersubjective experience, it becomes apparent that there is a necessity for a reliable mode of investigation capable of capturing something of the multiplicity of intersecting narratives that constitute everyday life. Historically, this role in Britain was fulfilled by MO: ‘the most studied, and arguably the most important, social research institution of the midtwentieth century’ (Savage 2010: 57). While MO was founded in 1937, its underlying ideas first began to take shape the year before, in a list by Charles Madge written under the perhaps surprising title of ‘Popular Poetry’ (see Hubble 2010: 77). The ideas here, including ‘Coincidence clubs’ and ‘exercises for imagination’, were discussed with Jennings and other members of a group that met at Madge’s home in Blackheath and eventually realized in MO’s idea of the image, which evolved from Ezra Pound’s concept of ‘that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time’ (cited in Jones 2001: 39); mass observers were famously asked to record the dominant image of the day.