Ben Fincham

A price worth paying? Considering the 'cost' of reflexive research methods and the influence of feminist ways of 'doing'

Drawing on analysis of relevant literature, focus groups, and web-based discussion board postings, assembled as part of an inquiry into risks to the well-being of qualitative researchers, it is argued that emotional harm is more prevalent than physical harm and may be particularly associated with reflexivity and the important influence of feminist research methods. The particular concern of feminist researchers with reflexivity, with research relationships and with the interests of research participants may make them especially vulnerable to emotional harm.

The Impact of Working with Disturbing Secondary Data: Reading Suicide Files in a Coroner's Office

The article discusses the effects on the researcher of reading disturbing secondary data (defined here as evidence gathered by someone other than the researcher). The case study is a qualitative sociological autopsy of suicide, and the secondary data—written documents and photographs—are all from case files in a British coroners office. Following ethnographic detail about the research setting and research process, there is discussion of the diverse secondary data sources in these files, particularly in relation to the impact on the researcher. Some general observations are made about emotion in the research process and potential strategies for responding to emotion. The authors locate their responses to reading about suicides within the broader context of the social processing of death and distress, and also consider whether emotional reactions to data have any analytical purchase.

'Generally speaking people are in it for the cycling and the beer': Bicycle couriers, subculture and enjoyment

From a study comprising of interviews, ethnography and a survey, this paper examines the cultural affiliation of a group of workers in a dangerous and unconventional occupation – bicycle couriering. Returning to the work of Howard Becker, this article examines cultural practices and sensibilities of bicycle couriers, principally in the UK. The idea of a distinct ‘courier culture’ is found to be important to couriers. The article also contributes to debates surrounding the concept of ‘subculture’, arguing that it is still a relevant descriptive concept. Further, the role of enjoyment as a factor in the subcultural affiliation of bicycle messengers is examined.

Unprepared for the Worst: Risks of Harm for Qualitative Researchers

This paper draws on the results of an Inquiry, commissioned by Qualiti (Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact), a node of ESRCs National Centre for Research Methods, into the physical and emotional harm suffered by qualitative social researchers. It argues that junior researchers and PhD students, the main recipients of such harm, are being let down by some principal investigators and PhD supervisors who are failing to manage researcher risks effectively. This record of the universities in researcher risk management compares poorly with the management of risks in cognate organisations, such as the management of risks to journalists in media organisations and of risks to fieldworkers in aid agencies. This deficiency in university risk management is arguably a matter of culture rather than deficient structures: an analogy is drawn with Mary Douglass work on different cultural orientations to risk.

Documenting the quick and the dead: a study of suicide case files in a coroner's office

In keeping with recent critiques of literature on the body and the life course, the argument of this paper is that social identities can, to a certain extent, be constructed post-mortem and in the absence of a living body. The authors make this case with reference to a sociological autopsy study of a hundred suicide case files in a coroners office in a medium-sized British city. The research draws on ethnographic approaches to the study of documents. There is discussion of some of the diverse artefacts in the coroners’ files: medical reports, witness statements and suicide notes. The identity work revealed in these sources is as much about the living as the dead and is especially bound up in the process of avoiding blame.

The sociology of fun

What is fun? How is it distinct from happiness or pleasure? How do we know when we are having it? This book is the first to provide a comprehensive sociological account of this taken for granted social phenomenon. Fincham investigates areas such as our memories of fun in childhood, the fun we have as adults, our muted experiences of fun at work and our lived experiences of having fun. Using first-hand accounts and a new approach to interpreting fun, the paradox of fun as not serious or unimportant whilst at the same time essential for a happy life is exposed. Addressing questions of control, transgression and the primacy of social relationships in fun, The Sociology of Fun is intended to provoke discussion about how we want to have fun and who determines the fun we have.

Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain: Walker/Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain

Based on recent data gathered from employees and managers, Work and the Mental Health Crisis in Britain challenges the cultural maxim that work benefits people with mental health difficulties, and illustrates how particular cultures and perceptions can contribute to a crisis of mental well-being at work.

Lessons for Prevention

Our aim in writing this book was to disseminate both the method and the findings of the sociological autopsy study. We begin this final chapter by summarising what we see as the book’s contribution and then we address the question of suicide prevention, including the ways in which our sociological autopsy study can potentially inform prevention.

Conclusions: Mobilising Methodologies

Throughout the process of proposing and editing this volume we have been wary of offering any reductive or restrictive suggestions. In this spirit the following commentary is not offering any kind of final word on methodologies and mobility. Indeed this volume is intended to be a starting point in the concentrated development of distinctly mobile methodologies — tools for interrogating social relations formed through mobile practices and the sorts of contexts illustrated by the various contributors to this book.

Fun at Work

Work is not fun—they are not mutually inclusive concepts. Work is not intended to be fun. Definitions of work are notoriously slippery. As Strangleman and Warren suggest, it can mean effort or labour or more specifically what a person does to earn money (Strangleman and Warren 2008: 1). The ways in which we deploy the term are many and various. However, one thing that is not a definitional characteristic of work is fun. If a person does have fun whilst at work, this is a happy by-product of the real purpose of work—which is to be productive, in whatever form that might take. This is no more apparent than in the rhetoric of work/life balance. The term itself implies that work is a distraction from those other elements of life that are fulfilling, joyful and meaningful.