Research clusters
Sociology/CCSR at Manchester has national and internationally-recognized expertise in four areas of the discipline. Each member of staff is attached to one or more of them and they are important hubs of activity for colleagues with shared research interests. Such activities include reading groups, seminars, workshops and conferences, business meetings and so forth. The clusters facilitate the sharing of research by providing the forum in which colleagues talk to each other about their individual work, take the step to write together on a topic, develop research proposals and do research collectively. They support colleagues in their individual endeavours and promote much team working. They sustain and enhance collegiality to which considerable importance is attached.
Stratification and Culture
This research cluster has developed a distinct approach to stratification which focuses on the role of economic, cultural and social assets and how they have been mobilized by a wide array of actors in the reproduction of inequalities. Much of this research has been done by colleagues associated with two ESRC-funded centres: namely, the Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) and the Centre for Research into Innovation and Competition (CRIC). Embracing a relational approach to class, for example, research has looked at the role of local belonging in articulating social identities such as class identities and the mobilization of resources amongst the advantaged middle classes in the UK and US.
Considerable theoretical and empirical work on cultural and social capital have shaped research on consumption, especially in relation to taste and food, and the relationship of production and consumption, again, through food. This socio-cultural approach to stratification has been extended to the study of race and ethnicity in relation to class and gender and also age, generation, period and place via the quantitative analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). The effects of the post-colonial condition and its consequences for ethnic relations in the UK and beyond is the subject of research as is the interplay between racial and national identities and social inequalities of class gender and ethnicity.
Personal Life and Everyday Lives
This cluster explores personal and everyday lives as a way of recognizing the importance of ordinary practices and theorizing the relationship between aspects of the personal and the socio-cultural. Much of this work is undertaken by colleagues involved in the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life, Realities which is part of the ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods and the European Work and Employment Centre (EWERC). Specific substantive areas have included research on divorce and separation, gay and lesbian marriage and civil partnerships, lone motherhood, childhood and differential association, biography and genealogy. Ordinary domestic life has been explored with reference to time, household rhythms, work-time structures and household relationship and labour market outcomes.
A variety of methodological approaches have been used to study all these aspects of family, kinship and gender. Historical, archival work, for example, has been employed to understand the changing social practices of young women with reference to femininity and an understanding of gender, feminism and cultural change. The development of qualitatively-driven methodologies in the ESRC funded Real Lives Methods Node has shaped new research on understanding kinship and relationality in personal life in relation to family resemblances in the social relations of kinship and family backgrounds and how they are negotiated in everyday family practices and rituals. All of this research involves new forms of multidimensional research practice.
Practices, Interactions and Networks
This cluster is focused on the conceptual and empirical issues in the sociological study of social practices, interactions and networks. It is influenced by the Manchester school’s distinctive form of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, symbolic interactionism and associated philosophical developments. These have influenced thinking on epistemological relativism and the philosophy and sociology of science. There is a related interest in interaction with information technology and social interaction and embodied practices. The intellectual life of this cluster has focused around the Manchester Ethnography Group, the annual Mind and Society conference, the ESRC-funded National Centre for E-Social Science (NCeSS) and a NCRM seminar series.
The study of collection action and interaction, with specific reference to social movements, is an important component of this research cluster. The range of social movements research are diverse and include varied forms of extra-parliamentary politics from social moments in mental health groups, labour moments, charitable practices and the voluntary sector to recent anti-corporate protests. Finally, arising out of this substantive area is a growing interest in social networks and an interest in promoting social network analysis in the UK. While much of the work of social networks has taken a quantitative form to date, there is an interest in broadening the study of social networks to embrace qualitative methods and techniques.
Quantitative Methods and Research
This cluster comprises of colleagues from the Cathie March Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR) who are all members of Sociology and there is much sharing of ideas and research practices between colleagues in CCSR and Sociology. The development of quantitative methods is closely linked to two ESRC-funded programmes which provide research development and support for the UK’s Samples of Anonymised Records and for large-scale government surveys as part of Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS). It is the home of the ESRC’s £5m Research Methods Programme, which included the innovative and very popular Research Methods Festivals held in 2004 and 2006 attended by some 1,600 participants.
The development of innovative quantitative methods has been applied to address social questions of national and international importance drawing on a range of social science disciplines beyond sociology and statistics. Examples of this work include research on the population dynamics of Britain’s ethnic groups, patterns and trends in residential segregation and immigrant integration, and ethnic inequalities in the labour market with reference to the low economic activity rates of women and high levels of unemployment. There is an important body of research understanding civic engagement, embracing all forms of political behaviour, especially in its geographical contexts. Finally, there is important research on religious participation and diversity.