Jonathan Dean

Drawing What Homelessness Looks Like: Using Creative Visual Methods as a Tool of Critical Pedagogy:

This article presents findings from a creative qualitative study, where drawing was used as a methodological tool to investigate university students’ awareness of homelessness. Previous research (Breeze and Dean 2012; 2013) has shown that homelessness charities often utilise stereotypical images in their fundraising campaigns, focusing on the arresting issue of rough sleeping (rooflessness) as opposed to other, more widespread experiences of homelessness. In drawing ‘what homelessness looks like’ the images students produce are often rooted in familiar local scenes - local roofless people they see regularly, or replications of common media images, with a tendency to depoliticise and individualise homelessness as a social issue. These drawings show striking similarities, common themes, and indicate a lack of critical engagement with the complex problems within personal homelessness narratives. The efficacy of the methodological approach is assessed, with the role creative methods such as drawing can play in stimulating critical discussion of issues, such as gender and the media, highlighted. The article also argues that such methods can play a role in critical pedagogy, encouraging deeply reflexive accounts of participants’ behaviour and knowledge. In policy terms however, this article concludes that it would be a risk for homelessness charities to utilise less stereotypical images in their fundraising materials, as the findings suggest such images align with those in the minds of potential donors.

Recruiting young volunteers in an area of selective education: a qualitative case study

This article presents findings from a small qualitative case study of a youth volunteering brokerage organisation in England, operating in an area of selective state education. Data show how brokerage workers felt grammar schools managed their students in a concerted way to improve students’ chances of attending university. Conversely, workers expressed difficulty in working with comprehensive schools, feeling they were less willing to utilise volunteering services. These impressions lead the volunteering organisation to focus intently on recruiting potential volunteers from local grammar schools. As a result there is a need to reframe current debates in the sociology of education around institutional habitus, with a focus on the perceived habitus/doxa of schools. It is ultimately this (mis)recognition of institutional practices that leads to unequal policy outcomes, in this case reinforcing the advantage of academically elite students attending grammar schools.

Desert island data: an investigation into researcher positionality:

The nature of qualitative research means that the personal values of an individual researcher can and do (unwittingly) shape the way in which they analyse data sets, and the resultant conclusions drawn. However this phenomenon is under-studied in social research and this article seeks to help rectify this. This article presents findings from a small research project focused on discourses of class, masculinity and work among British male comedians from working-class backgrounds, interviewed on the popular BBC Radio 4 radio programme Desert Island Discs. Six different researchers, from varying disciplinary, methodological and theoretical groundings, as well as from varying personal backgrounds, analysed three interview recordings and transcripts separately. All the researchers wrote up their individual analyses of these interviews and wrote reflexive pieces examining why they thought they approached the data as they did. The researchers then came together as a group to compare and contrast findings and approaches. The results from this study, including the discrepancies and distinctions and final group analysis, are reported alongside a thorough discussion of the project’s methodology. We find that the project evidenced how a diverse research team can bring out deeper and richer analyses, and was a refreshing way to try and answer questions of individual and collective positionality

“Submitting Love?” A Sensory Sociology of Southbourne

This article seeks to remember the Southbourne building of Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom, which housed students, academics, and administrative staff until August 2014. Data were collected from an ethnographic observation study of students handing in completed coursework. Findings are presented in the form of an audio “soundscape” and a literary narrative. It is argued that these hypermodal tools should form a growing part of qualitative inquiry as sensory social research. The historic application and practical impediments of such sensorial and aural techniques are discussed, alongside the challenge they provide to the received practices concerning how journal articles can be experienced.

Class diversity and youth volunteering in the UK : applying Bourdieu's habitus and cultural capital

This article utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and cultural capital to offer some explanation as to why there is a lack of class diversity in formal volunteering in the United Kingdom. Recent studies have shown that participation in volunteering is heavily dependent on social class revolving around a highly committed middle-class “civic core” of volunteers. This article draws on original qualitative research to argue that the delivery of recent youth volunteering policies has unintentionally reinforced participation within this group, rather than widening access to diverse populations including working-class young people. Drawing on interviews with volunteer recruiters, it is shown that the pressure to meet targets forces workers to recruit middle-class young people whose habitus allows them to fit instantly into volunteering projects. Furthermore, workers perceive working-class young people as recalcitrant to volunteering, thereby reinforcing any inhabited resistance, and impeding access to the benefits of volunteering.This article utilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and cultural capital to offer some explanation as to why there is a lack of class diversity in formal volunteering in the United Kingdom. Recent studies have shown that participation in volunteering is heavily dependent on social class revolving around a highly committed middle-class “civic core” of volunteers. This article draws on original qualitative research to argue that the delivery of recent youth volunteering policies has unintentionally reinforced participation within this group, rather than widening access to diverse populations including working-class young people. Drawing on interviews with volunteer recruiters, it is shown that the pressure to meet targets forces workers to recruit middle-class young people whose habitus allows them to fit instantly into volunteering projects. Furthermore, workers perceive working-class young people as recalcitrant to volunteering, thereby reinforcing any inhabited resistance, and impeding access to the benefits of volunteering.