Sam Hillyard

Village schools in England : at the heart of their community ?

Recent debates within UK rural studies have stressed the shifting interplay of economic, social, political and cultural forces, with a concomitant blurring as to what constitutes rural living, rural spaces and even rural occupations. This article situates the rural school within this social, cultural and political landscape and attends to the frequently heralded discursive policy conviction that ‘local schools are at the heart of many rural communities’. The research applies an inclusive model of ethnography, drawing on participant observation, interviews and documentary analysis, to facilitate a multifaceted engagement, and holistic exploration of the role and place of the village school in two contrasting English rural localities.

Making Time for Management: The Careers and Lives of Manager-Academics in UK Universities

Academics who take on management roles in universities, whether reluctantly or enthusiastically, face many personal and institutional dilemmas connected with time. Examining these dilemmas sheds light on how current ideas about public service management and organizational practices are affecting academic careers and the academic labour process. This chapter draws on 79 recent interviews with male and female Pro-Vice Chancellors (PVCs), Deans, and Heads of Departments (HoDs) in UK universities. Time dilemmas encountered by manageracademics1 include the question of when in an academic career to take on management roles, the impact of management responsibilities on research and teaching, and the apportionment of time between work and non-work. For manager-academics, work time is often given a high priority in their lives: ‘The social world that draws a person’s allegiance also imparts a pattern to time. The more attached we are to the world of work, the more its deadlines, its cycles, its pauses and interruptions shape our lives’ (Hochschild, 1997, p. 45).

Ethnography’s Capacity to Contribute to the Cumulation of Theory: A Case Study of Strong’s Work on Goffman:

This article discusses how ethnography can contribute toward the development of sociological theory. It uses a case study of one theoretical idea refined through ethnographic fieldwork—Phil Strong’s (1979; 1988) work on Erving Goffman’s theory of ceremony.The article argues that Strong effectively applied Goffman’s ideas to different settings and successfully extended Goffman’s ideas on ceremony. In doing so, Strong demonstrated how ethnography can be more productive in developing theoretical ideas, but this productivity relied on his personal enthusiasm for theory and fieldwork. Strong’s theoretical empiricism provides an exemplar of how theory and conceptual refinement can grow as a result of doing ethnography the right way.

'The fieldworker not in the head's office' : an empirical exploration of the role of an English rural primary school within its village.

This paper presents the findings of a project exploring the role of an English primary school inside its rural village. The fieldwork discovered that the school had lacked a full-time head teacher for a number of years and the paper explicates three dynamics to unravel why: (1) interpersonal issues (high staff turnover and the legacy of a former head); (2) the political–economic development of the village and its shifting local ‘squirearchy’; and finally (3) the construction of the spatial environment of the village (post-war expansion and the situation of amenities). These three dynamics possessed a synergy and this was key in seeing the complexities of this rural environment and its bearing upon social relations such as the absent head. It therefore supports recent theorising positioning interpersonal power alongside the temporal and spatial character of a local environment. The paper concludes by using this insight to consider what problems the school—and any new head teacher—might face in the immediate future. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2009–2011.Using a multi-strategy research approach, the paper draws upon participant observation, interview, documentary, visual and historical material in support of its analysis.

Community strikes back? Belonging and exclusion in rural English villages in networked times

The paper draws upon ethnographic research of two contrasting English primary schools and their villages to explore the themes of belonging and exclusion in contemporary rural contexts. The paper first describes the schools and the villages. A second, conceptual section explores the meaning of rurality in relation to the themes of class, belonging and exclusion. The final section of the paper then weaves these sections together through an analysis of the experiences of three incomers to the villages. Collectively, the empirical data demonstrate that the rural sphere is shaped by historical and geographical circumstances, as well as the arrival of networked individuals.

School choice in an English village: living, loyalty and leaving

In late modernity, the marketisation of public services has become a global policy phenomenon. In the case of schooling, this has resulted in parents discursively positioned as consumers of education making a choice between providers of education. To date the majority of research on parental choice has focused on the urban; this paper is concerned with the rural. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews (N = 24) and observations in one English village, it explores the ways in which parents engage with primary school choice. The research draws on Bourdieus interrelated concepts of field, habitus and capital to discuss how the dispositions and resources parents had impacted upon the school choices they made. In presenting its findings, the paper distinguishes between the long-term residents (villagers) and more recent arrivals (newcomers) to suggest a differentiated commitment to place and schooling.

Shotguns and Firearms in the UK: A Call for a Distinctively Sociological Contribution to the Debate:

The outcome of a UK government’s Home Affairs select committee’s discussion of the regulation of gun ownership called for reform. The impetus for the review was the shootings in Cumbria and Northumberland in 2010. This article challenges why the social science community has had little to say about the legal ownership and use of guns in the UK and argues that opportunities to shape the debate have been lost. This article demonstrates that there is a substantial knowledge base, but that this is ecological and environmental rather than political or sociological. It suggests that a distinctively sociological analysis is needed if the complexity of participation in shooting is to be understood. This article explores three specific aspects of the topic: (1) legal and policy aspects, (2) methodological issues and (3) the meaning and activity of participation in shooting. All are discussed critically as a means to stimulate sociological discussion.

Ethnography’s capacity to contribute to the cumulation of theory: a case study of differentiation–polarisation theory

The paper sets out to examine the role that ethnographic work can and should play in the development of sociological theory, focusing on the case study of differentiation–polarisation theory. It provides a detailed discussion of the work of Hargreaves (1967), Lacey (1970) and Ball (1981) and assesses the degree to which their work was ethnographic in contemporary terms. It argues that the model of theory development they offer does not need to be understood in the manner adopted by Hammersley in his account of their work as a model for theory development and testing in the sociology of education. Rather it requires the ethnographer to be more attuned towards setting and maintaining a theoretical agenda, by (a) being more preoccupied with refining existing or established theoretical ideas and concepts and (b) retaining the capacity for the fieldwork setting to inform and direct the study.

Rural putsch : power, class, social relations and change in the English rural village.

The paper uses ethnography to discuss a political putsch – a move from Old Guard to newcomer dominance – in an English rural village. Applying the conceptual ideas of Goffman on symbols of class status and Thrift (2012) on space and an expressive infrastructure, it responds to Shucksmiths (2012) call for research into the micro workings and consequences of class power in rural contexts. The analysis stresses the relevance of ‘sticky’ space (the residue of past social relations shaping the present, the dwindling amenities and a contemporary absence of pavements) and a contemporary blurring of rural and the urban identities (Norfolk/ London). Moreover, both Goffmans restrictive devices and class symbols (who garners support and who does not) and the temporal dimension of an expressive infrastructure (informing individual dispositions and orientations – class affect) now construct rural spaces. The paper therefore retains a flavour of sociologys obstinate interest in geographic milieu, but the stage is now one of a global countryside both influencing and influenced by local politics and elites. A global recession and the rural penalty, whereby rural residents’ experience is more acute, has meant that not all spaces or agents are equal and some are therefore better placed to adapt, accommodate or resist change (Shucksmith 2012). In a climate of various rural crises (fracking in the ‘desolate’ North of England and the contentious culling of badgers), this paper uses ethnography to study the operation of rural micro-politics and by doing so highlight the value of an ethnographic approach for sociology for understanding the local in the global.

THE CASE FOR PARTISAN RESEARCH: ERVING GOFFMAN AND RESEARCHING SOCIAL INEQUALITIES

The recent narrative, if not postmodern, turn within the tradition of ethnographic research has not eased difficult questions concerning how best inequalities can be researched by the social sciences. Whilst important additions have been made to traditional concerns with social class, race and gender, such as age (but not purely gerontology), disability and the rural/urban divide, epistemological questions remain over how theoretical and conceptual concerns about inequality also be met in field research.