Joanna Bornat

Reminiscence and oral history: parallel universes or shared endeavour?"

There is a common methodology to reminiscence and life review with older people and oral history, and yet very little common literature. The distinguishing characteristics of these approaches are described and three areas of work are featured: interrogation, partnership and ownership. The discussion draws on a case study drawn from research on family break-up and reconstitution, and on the performance of a play devised and performed by a group of older amateur actors to an international conference. I conclude by identifying ways in which both approaches might benefit from a closer collaboration.

Stepfamilies and older people: evaluating the implications of family change for an ageing population

The changing nature of family life has become a major issue in contemporary Britain. Concerns that change will bring moral decline and social fragmentation are countered by a more optimistic view which focuses on a future of more equitable and flexible family ties. Research drawing on area-based data in Luton amongst older, middle-aged and younger people with experience of family change suggests that so far as inter-generational relations, caring, and transfers of family wealth are concerned, traditional attitudes towards blood ties, household independence and care and support survive alongside new step relationships. The research also suggests that although several respondents had more than one generation of experience of family change, the language of step relationships is still one which is not yet completely accepted, or one with which people feel completely at ease.

Difference and Distinction? Non-migrant and Migrant Networks

In recent years the role of social networks and of social capital in shaping migrants’ lived experiences and, particularly, their employment opportunity has increasingly come to be recognized. However, very little of this research has adopted a relational understanding of the migrant experience, taking the influence of nonmigrants’ own networks on migrants as an important factor in influencing their labour market outcomes. This article critiques the alterity and marginality automatically ascribed to migrants that is implicit in existing ways of thinking about migrant networks. The article draws on oral history interviews with geriatricians who played an important role in the establishment of the discipline during the second half of the 20th century to explore the importance and power of non-migrant networks in influencing migrant labour market opportunities in the UK medical labour market.

Timescapes secondary analysis: comparison, context and working across data sets

The article illustrates some of the strategies we are developing in the secondary analysis of Timescapes data and seeks to draw some general lessons for qualitative data analysts. We focus on three different areas of work. Across all of these we examine the potential explanatory value of working with data in a comparative way, and engage with some challenges presented by contextual specificity in the way qualitative data are generated. In the first area we consider the issue of how we situate qualitative data with reference to diversity across the population, and use an example of working between a single qualitative Timescapes data set and survey data. Understanding how qualitative data are situated offers a framework for internal comparison which maps onto wider diversity. In the second area we consider the outcome of bringing together primary researchers whose comparison of project data, as secondary analysts, allow them to ‘hear silences’ and, therefore, re-interrogate their own data within a revised conceptual framework. In the third area we describe how, as secondary analysts, we have worked across Timescapes data sets. Here we consider the challenges of undertaking secondary analysis across diverse, project specific, research contexts, and the potential of comparative working across data sets for enhancing understanding.

Women’s History and Oral History: developments and debates

Women’s history and oral history grew up together. Each developed from a commitment to reveal and reverse, to challenge and to contest what were perceived to be dominant discourses framed by gender and class. In this article the relationship between these two endeavours is explored. Beginning with the 1960s the influence of feminist approaches to research and representation are given due consideration and acknowledgement. In reviewing changes over the last four decades the dilemma for women of being both subject and object in research is explored. The tension in this dilemma is discussed in relation to developments in relation to subjectivity in the interview, the process of doing oral history, the developments in public history and remembering in late life. The article concludes with an overview of new work in the field and concedes that, whatever issues remain unresolved, oral history continues to interest and attract researchers working in a wide range of disciplines with the promise of yet more theorised and gendered explorations of the past in years to come.

Late life reflections on the downturn: perspectives from The Oldest Generation

‘The Oldest Generation’ project is concerned with the dynamic nature of older peoples relationships and identities in the context of these changing structures of intergenerational support. It tracks the lives over the months following the start of the economic downturn in September 2008 of ten people aged over 75. In this paper we review our data in the context of discussions of the early 21st-century downturn, drawing both empirically and methodologically based conclusions. Beginning with a brief overview of contemporary debates, we go on to present and discuss our data, arguing the need for multi- and inter-generational accounts in order that the impact of events such as an economic downturn can be understood as variable and interconnected within families and across age groups. Key findings include that apart from increased spending on fuel and food, the oldest generation seem to fear more for younger people than for themselves, focusing on other peoples futures rather than their own.

The co-marking of aged bodies and migrant bodies: migrant workers’ contribution to geriatric medicine in the UK

This article sits at the nexus between two bodies of work, gerontology and migration research, both of which have theorised the body as the locus of stigma. Gerontologists, while acknowledging the significance of perceptions of the ageing body for engagement and participation in society, have often evaded direct engagement with physical and medical understandings of older bodies. In parallel, research which focuses on migration, race and the body has focused on how the migrant body is stigmatised both because of its somatic markers and because of the status of the frail older people whom they tend. Drawing on oral history interviews with UK born and South Asian overseas-trained geriatricians, the article argues that the two bodies, which are usually seen in negative ways, came together in meaningful ways in the development of the specialty of geriatric medicine. Thinking of the body as an assemblage with many elements, some of which are stigmatised but which can nevertheless be recuperated, helps us to think beyond stigma in the context of body work.

Working with different temporalities: archived life history interviews and diaries

This paper explores the contrasts and complementarities of two different sets of archived data, life history interviews and diaries. Both are well-tried methods of data collection in the social sciences, but little attention has been given to ways of using them in combination. We begin with an outline of how we went about collecting data for archiving: recruiting 12 families, interviewing people aged 75 and over, and collecting diaries from other family members. We go onto present examples of the data from one particular family. We then compare what the interviews and diaries, analysed in combination, contributed to our understanding of time, concluding with comments on the relevance of different temporalities to current debates on family and intergenerational relationships. The archived data offer researchers interested in qualitative longitudinal investigations a complex and many-faceted understanding of temporality.

Revisiting the Archives: A Case Study from the History of Geriatric Medicine

Using two data sets in parallel, generated at different times by different researchers, the case is made for the re-use of archived qualitative data. Two sets of oral history interviews one, dating from 1990-1, with doctors and others who pioneered the development of the geriatric specialty in the early years of the National Health Service, the other, ESRC funded during 2007-9, with South Asian doctors who came to work in the UK and found work in geriatric medicine, are subjected to parallel investigation. The article argues that by considering the two sets of interviews together, each informs the other, leading to reconceptualisation and unexpected links between the data sets, new research questions and finally suggests additional dimensions to issues relating to the ethics of secondary analysis.

Epistemology and Ethics in Data Sharing and Analysis: A Critical Overview

This chapter has developed from discussion of and practical experience in the re-use of archived qualitative data. As an oral historian I am fortunate that the research methodology I adopt means that I cross over the disciplinary boundaries between history and sociology, engaging with researchers who often work in parallel and quite separately, exploring and developing approaches to the same problems but coming from different directions. This can lead to fascinating and stimulating learning opportunities as well as much debate. Re-use, or as it is also known, secondary analysis, is a well-known approach amongst researchers who work with large data sets of quantitative data. However, until fairly recently data sharing had not been identified or much adopted amongst qualitative social science researchers or oral historians. It has been carried out even less frequently by development researchers due to additional concerns relating to interest, time, quality, and translation. In what follows I will be exploring where resistance to data sharing lies, how methods of data sharing have subsequently developed, and what the outcomes have been for research practice. In particular I will discuss the nature of re-used data and their epistemological status, and will consider some ethical issues arising from the use of archived data. I will be drawing on experience from being a part of the Timescapes Programme1 which sought, as one of its central features, to embed re-use in its activity as an ongoing generator of research data and as a repository of data to be shared and re-used by others (Neale et al., 2012).