Henrietta O'Connor

Parenting gone wired: empowerment of new mothers on the internet?

The extension of information and communication technologies is purported to provide great opportunities for women, with the potential for empowerment and feminist activism. This paper contributes to the debate about women and cyberspace through a focus on the role of the internet in the lives of a group of technologically proficient, socially advantaged white heterosexual new mothers. The internet played a central role in providing virtual social support and alternative information sources which increased these womens real sense of empowerment in the transition to motherhood. Simultaneously, however, very traditional stereotypes of mothering and gender roles persisted. A paradox is evident whereby the internet was both liberating and constraining: it played an important social role for some women while at the same time it encouraged restrictive and unequal gender stereotypes in this particular community of practice. An examination of new virtual parenting spaces therefore has a contribution to make in understanding changing parenting practices in the new millennium.

On-line with e-mums: exploring the Internet as a medium for research

This paper contributes to the emerging debate about the value of on-line research. Drawing on the experience of an Internet-based Cyberparents project, it explores the possibilities and limitations of web-based questionnaire surveys and on-line synchronous interviews. It discusses some of the implications of conducting research in the virtual arena, with particular emphasis on sampling, on-line interactions and computer-mediated conversations. Although on-line research holds promise, its potential should not be exaggerated: many of the issues and problems of conventional research still apply in the virtual venue.

Cyber-Mothers: Online Synchronous Interviewing using Conferencing Software

The potential of the Internet as a valuable methodological tool for social science research is increasingly being recognised. This paper contributes to the debate surrounding virtual synchronous interviews and the value of online research. Specifically it introduces the use of a software conferencing technique - Hotline Connect - and discusses the implications of using the technique for Internet- based research. In particular issues of interview design, developing rapport, the role of insiders and outsiders in the research process, language use and the virtual interface are considered. The paper draws on the experience of a recent research project entitled ‘Cyberparents’ and concludes that the use of conferencing software holds great potential for synchronous online interviewing. However, this must be combined with sensitive, ethical handling of both the research process and the data to overcome both the weaknesses of this particular method and those inherent in any interviewing situation.

Continuity and change in the experiences of transition from school to work

Using previously unanalysed data from Norbert Elias’s lost study of young workers in Leicester —the Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles (1962–1964), and data from a subsequent restudy of the same respondents in 2003–2005, this paper focuses on three main themes. First, we critically examine the concept of transition as it is currently used in education and youth research. We argue that the vast majority of what is written about the transition process focuses upon how the process has changed over time. However such approaches, whilst clearly documenting important aspects of social change, ignore and underestimate continuities and similarities in the young people’s experiences of transition, regardless of their spatial and temporal location. For example, despite significant labour market changes in the UK, young people still have to make the transition from full‐time education to whatever follows next, be it employment, unemployment or further and higher education. Second, we examine the young workers’ experiences and perceptions of the transition process in the 1960s. Building upon analyses offered elsewhere the data suggests that the young person’s experiences of school to work transitions in the 1960s had many similarities to the transitional experience today – namely that, as now, the transition process was characterised by complexity, uncertainty and risk. Finally, the impact of these early transition experiences on subsequent careers are also examined as revealed in the life history interviews of the restudy. Despite a drastically changing local labour market, and the fact that most of the workers were no longer working in the industries of their youth, the analysis reveals the sample retained a strong sense of occupational identity based on their initial transition experiences. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the findings of this particular data set. The data is unique because it provides a rare insight of the outcomes of decisions made by school leavers some forty years ago on their experiences of the labour market. As such it provides an invaluable glimpse of the lasting impact of the school to work transition on individual working lives.

Online Methods in Geography Educational Research. Resources.

Geographers are fully engaged in the debate surrounding the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICT) and there has been a proliferation of research on the impact of ICT on geographical education. This includes analyses of how ICT may affect geographical learning paradigms (Hill & Solem, 1999; Rich et al., 2000; Solem, 2000) and the role of multimedia in enhancing learning and teaching in geography (Castleford et al., 1998; O’Tuathail & McCormack, 1998; Lemke & Ritter, 2000; Vincent, 2000; Reed & Mitchell, 2001; Johnson, 2002; Shroder et al., 2002). Specific studies on ICT and geography higher education include discussions on the value of web-based resources (Gardner, 2003), the role of virtual fieldtrips (Stainfield et al., 2000) and cultivating study skills in web-based environments (Goett & Foote, 2000). Furthermore, there is a considerable and growing body of research exploring how online learning can enhance higher education more generally (Ehrmann, 1995; Bennett et al., 1999; Housego & Freeman, 2000; Speck, 2000; Davenport, 2001; Carmichael & Honour, 2002; Lapadat, 2002; Mason, 2002; Singh et al., 2003). The results of such studies are mixed. Lapadat (2002), for example, takes a positive view, stressing that the interactive nature of online learning fosters constructivist learning environments in which the learner’s conceptual development occurs through practical experience, discussion and problem solving. By contrast, Speck (2000) is more critical, arguing that the academy has embarked on the commercialization of online courses without giving sufficient attention to training and academic integrity. Yet despite this expansion of work into the virtual geographic world, less has been written about the potential of ICT as a medium of research for geographers in higher education. This is surprising given the great methodolog-

Norbert Elias and the Lost Young Worker Project

Forty years ago, between 1962 and 1964, fieldwork was carried out on the research project ‘Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles’. Using archived materials relating to the little known Norbert Elias project, this paper has two aims. First, to introduce this largely unknown aspect of Eliass work to a wider audience. Second, to explore in detail Eliass contributions to the project by piecing together his ideas and hypotheses from archived materials. During the early stages of the research, Elias suggested that the transition from school to work constituted a ‘shock’ experience and that young people would experience initial difficulties in adjusting to their new role. He suggested that difficulties would emerge in their relationships with older workers, with family and with their new income. For the first time this paper presents Eliass ‘shock’ hypothesis, and his thoughts on school to work transitions. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of the shock hypothesis and the possible impact that the ‘Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles’ project may have on Eliass standing in British sociology.

Revisiting Norbert Elias's sociology of community: learning from the Leicester re-studies

Since 2001 we have been engaged in a re-study of three linked Leicester projects: The Employment of Married Women in a Leicester Factory (1959–1962), The Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles (1962–1964) and The Established and the Outsiders (1965). The three projects contain a number of striking overlaps, not least Eliass formulation of communities as figurations through which communal behavioural standards are established, learned and maintained. Whether in the different Zones of Winston Parva, or in the large hosiery factories of Leicester, people learned the self-control of drives and affects ‘according to the pattern and extent of socially given drive and affect regulation’ of that time and that community. In this paper we outline the background to the three re-studies and link them to Eliass work on community and the broader canon of community studies. We then consider methodological lessons learnt from our re-studies – in particular, the practical process of re-studies, the definitional problems of what constitutes a re-study, and the value of visual images and walking the field. We conclude by reflecting upon the analytical promise of community re-studies.

Utilizing data from a lost sociological project: experiences, insights, promises

In 2000 data from a little known sociological study was ‘re-discovered’, stored in an attic office. The archived data comprised original interview schedules that documented the early work experiences of Leicester’s youth in the 1960s. Forty years on, the original respondents have been traced and re-interviewed as they make the transition from work to retirement. This article examines the complex methodological issues associated with reanalysing, tracing and reinterviewing respondents after such a considerable time lapse. We examine our methodological approach using the concept of qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) as a framework for understanding this process. We also reflect on the value of such longitudinal qualitative research. We conclude by drawing out some of the issues surrounding QLR and the implication of our experiences and insights for those who are now building such longitudinal datasets and the promise such data hold.

Engineer, mechanic or carpenter? Boys’ transitions to work in the 1960s

In this paper, we seek to examine the gendered nature of boys’ school to work transitions for a group of young male workers entering employment for the first time in the 1960s. We argue that such an enquiry is important because past studies of transitions have not problematised boys’ school to work transitions in terms of gender. Moreover, where gender has been employed as an analytical category, it has been used as shorthand to describe the experiences of women. We draw upon data from Norbert Elias’s largely unknown ‘Adjustment of young workers to work situations and adult roles’ project to examine the boys’ experiences of the transition process in terms of reflections on school, thinking about work, finding and adjusting to work and thinking about the future. Analysis of these data reveals that young males do experience the transition to work as a gendered process and paid employment confirms aspects of their male identity.

Notions of fantasy and reality in the adjustment to retirement

ABSTRACT During the early 1960s, Norbert Elias led a research project on the adjustment of young workers to work situations and adult roles. The data from this project, which consisted of 851 interviews with young people, were recently rediscovered and the participants, now approaching retirement, were re-interviewed as part of a restudy. In this paper we argue, that, in the context of the dramatic changes to the transition to retirement that have taken place in the United Kingdom, it is possible to use Eliass unpublished work on the transition to work as a theoretical framework for understanding of the transition from work and to retirement. In particular, we focus on the themes of fantasy and reality in the perception of retirement; changing interdependencies in the transition to retirement and the extent and impact of retirement preparation on the perception of the change in status from full-time worker to retiree. We conclude by suggesting that the implied advantages of being the ‘baby-boomer’ generation are far from the reality, with the experiences of this group being similar to those who have gone before and face an adjustment to retirement marked by uncertainty and anxiety.