Community Studies and Re-Studies in the 21st Century: Methodological Challenges and Strategies for the Future

The case for community studies and re-studies

Taking a broad approach, returning to or learning from communities in the past is characteristic of a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Historians in the UK studying changes to society after the Second World War now routinely plunder findings from the classic community studies of the period (see, for example, Kynaston, 2007, 2009; McKibben, 1998; Sandbrook, 2005). Certain geographical areas have always exerted particular fascination for writers and researchers from a range of disciplines. Hence, the regular ‘returns’ to cities such as London (and especially the East End of London) where psycho-geographers rub shoulders with sociologists, historians and others documenting social change (Ackroyd, 2000; Dench et al., 2006; Sinclair, 1997, 2009). If we follow Morgan's (2008: 38) idea of community as a ‘nexus of stories’ contributing ‘to a sense of personal identity and connectedness’, then it makes sense to collect as many stories as possible and from a range of disciplines. Understanding community has, in this context, become an exemplar of multidisciplinary (and potentially interdisciplinary) study with investigators drawing upon a wide range of resources to understand the ‘interconnectedness’ of community life (Bell and Newby, 1971). Indeed, the point might be made that community studies have been a test bed for working through links between disciplines, for example geography and sociology (for example, in the work of Pahl, 2008), and sociology and social anthropology (eg, Rosser and Harris, 1965).

From a sociological perspective, the argument for community studies has focused on the way in which they are able to illuminate processes of social change. Put another way, Crow (2002: para. 1.3) highlights their capacity to: ‘reveal the local expression of macro-social forces and their impact on ordinary people's everyday activities as they are lived out in the locality’. Indeed, this may be of particular significance for communities undergoing changes associated with economic recession, high levels of in or out-migration or urban or rural regeneration. As this would suggest, most studies have wider ambitions to comment on general changes to economic and cultural life, whether linked to industrialization (or deindustrialization for many communities), changing family life or urban development. Hence, motives for re-studying are inseparable from traditional sociological concerns with belonging and identity, but with these linked to ideas associated with geography, local association and place.

Having laid out a brief background to the idea of community (re-) studies, some more specific reasons might be advanced for their existence. Here we might take as a starting point the idea that in some senses community studies are for one (sociological) generation a ‘natural’ way of thinking about studying social change. David Morgan (2005: 641) hints as such when he notes: ‘In common with many sociologists of my generation and since, I was brought up on community studies and Family and Kinship in East London and Coal is our Life were among the first studies I read’. Indeed, it was precisely the power of studies such as those in Bethnal Green (by the Institute of Community Studies), or Swansea (Rosser and Harris, 1965) or later in time Sheppey (Pahl, 1984), that convinced many of the value of taking sociology seriously.

Community re-studies have, though, reasons for their existence over and above their fascination for a particular generation. Rectifying the omissions of previous studies is one important dimension, illustrated by the work of Lassiter in this issue. Documenting the impact of new social (often migrant) groups is another aspect – the importance of the Bangladeshi community in stimulating a wave of new community-based research in Tower Hamlets (of which Bethnal Green is now part) providing an obvious example (Eade, 1997; Gardner, 2002; Gavron, 1997; Phillipson et al., 2003). And the more general impulse, as already noted, to understand the way in which social change is unfolding is a crucial dimension, reflected in return visits to the diverse communities studied in Charles et al. (2008) and Phillipson et al. (2000). Using community studies to track changing social divisions and inequalities is another important motive. Mumford and Power's (2003) East Enders: Family and Community in East London, with its focus on low-income neighbourhoods, is one illustration of this type of work. Community re-studies may also be significant in exploring the validity of general theories of social change, for example those associated with the impact of globalization on neighbourhood life. Janet Foster's (1999) research – in London's Docklands – highlighted changes arising from urban regeneration while noting as well continuities in the organization of community life (see also Savage et al., 2005).

All of the above raise issues about what is meant by the idea of a ‘re-study’ and the form that it might take. In fact, revisiting is never a straightforward matter of returning to a particular community and repeating the same methods and questions to a fresh group of respondents. A decision has to be made first of all about the status of the community being revisited. Geographical boundaries, for example, may have substantially changed (eg Bethnal Green's incorporation into Tower Hamlets) with implications for the drawing of comparisons between past and present. More generally, questions might be raised about the extent to which the idea of community is still viable as a way of thinking about social change, especially given changes associated with geographical mobility and the rise of transnational migration (see further below). A second issue is that social science theories and methods will almost certainly have altered from the original study, creating the basis for a different approach and perspective. In the case of surveys, repeating or replicating questionnaires may be possible (see, for example, Charles this issue) but will almost certainly involve significant modifications. More feasible may be to see the original study as offering a ‘baseline’ of information against which new ideas, findings and observations can be tested. Added to this will be questions about how ‘partial’ or ‘complete’ any re-study is likely to be. Most re-studies are likely to be around the middle of a continuum, retaining many aspects of the design and methods of the original study, while incorporating new approaches and perspectives that have emerged in the intervening years (Davies and Charles, 2002).

Doing a return visit

This section explores some of the issues behind a re-study involving three areas which were the subject of classic community studies carried out in Bethnal Green, Wolverhampton and Woodford. The idea behind the research was to assess how the family life of older people had changed in the 50 to 60 years since the original research had been carried out (Phillipson et al., 2000). The studies which were the focus for the research were:The Social Medicine of Old Age (Sheldon, 1948); The Family Life of Older People (Townsend, 1957); Family and Kinship in East London (Young and Willmott, 1957); and Family and Class in a London Suburb (Willmott and Young, 1960). Clearly, these are diverse studies in equally diverse areas. However, the case for revisiting was that the findings from the original research made important (and influential statements) about the centrality of family life for older people. This was demonstrated to be the case not only in working-class Bethnal Green and (largely) working-class Wolverhampton (by Sheldon) but also in (largely) middle-class Woodford (by Willmott and Young).

Re-visiting three areas was ambitious and the different types of studies involved ruled out simple replication. Instead, attention was given to finding a research question which would reflect the assumptions of the studies involved and would provide a basis for taking forward the research. The starting point was the very general question: how different is it to be an older person now in comparison with the late 1940s and 1950s? To assist in answering this question the research drew upon Frankenberg's (1966) observation that the early community studies had demonstrated that older people were surrounded by what he termed an ‘environment of kin’. This phrase was used to develop a number of specific research questions which could be tested through data collection and field work.

Taking the above approach left unresolved how the research would actually go about measuring the extent to which families were still important in the lives of older people. A number of options were available: using questionnaires which raised similar themes to those covered in the original studies was one possibility (eg questions about experiences of support and informal care); combining fieldwork with some observational work at a community-level also seemed desirable. On the other hand, our research objectives had a fairly precise requirement: we needed to know the full range of relationships which were important to older people, and the place of the immediate and extended family within these. Moreover, a technique was required which would allow people freedom of choice in identifying such ties, rather than being forced into a limited range of options.

Based on the above points, the research turned to consider the value of using a social network approach to the collection of data about the relationships of older people. Network methodology had a number of advantages for our research. First, network perspectives make no assumption about the nature of the ties in which people are involved – the extent to which these are dominated by kin, or by other types of relationships, becoming the focus of attention. Second, network methods are viewed as offering a practical and flexible method for exploring community life, enabling researchers to work with dynamic notions of what ‘community’ means to people (Crow and Allan, 1994). Thirdly, the network approach can be used to examine issues related to personal change over time (Antonucci, 1985; Kahn and Antonucci, 1980), and within different social settings. Finally, networks can be viewed as providing resources which may serve different functions at various points of the life course and, in terms of our concerns, may have an important part to play in supporting people in old age (see, further, Phillipson, 2008).

The measurement of social networks – through a technique where people nominated people with whom they were ‘close’ (Kahn and Antonucci, 1980) –was supplemented with the collection of extensive social and demographic data, qualitative interviews, observational work and interviews with formal organizations. One of the most revealing elements of the study was to interview someone else within the social network of the older person. In our study this was someone with whom they had a ‘close’ or ‘intimate’ tie. The technique adopted (although not without ethical problems) did provide very striking insights into the social world of the older person and the role played by family members and friends (see, further, Phillipson et al., 2000). This approach provided a means of overcoming the limitations of network data, namely, that it provides valuable information on the range and quantity of ties but has much less interesting things to say about the meaning and value of such relationships in daily life. This raises implications about the range of approaches that might be appropriate in a community context to which we shall return to in more detail in the section below.

Lessons from a revisit

The findings from the above study have been presented elsewhere and will not be reviewed in detail in this paper (Phillipson et al., 2000). Instead, particular findings will be used to ask questions about the strengths and limitations associated with community studies and re-studies in particular. One issue for both community studies and the genre of re-visiting concerns the question:how much is gained from focusing on a particular locality? Do we really acquire new or added knowledge which a more general survey wouldfailtoprovide? Our own study, to take one example, found that the family had indeed retained an influential role in the lives of older people. To be sure, it was a different kind of family – different ‘types’ of family supporting or being supported by different ‘types’ of older people. But the family in some form could still be identified as playing acentral role in later life. Yet this finding could hardly be said to be novel and could indeed be replicated in many national surveys (Young et al., 2005).

Given the last observation, what does the community study or re-study offer over and against other methods? What, in particular, does it tell us about the nature of social change? One answer would focus on the theme of ‘interconnectedness’ highlighted earlier in this paper. Thinking about how the lives of older people are shaped and connected to immediate local contexts (as well as national and transnational ones) still makes considerable sense. Bell and Newby's (1971: 18) comment that ‘there is no study that has demonstrated that nobody has any local relationships’ remains accurate. Indeed, given demographic changes since the 1950s, with the increased proportion of older people in the community, it is almost certainly the case that people (especially, but not exclusively, older people) have more rather than fewer local relationships. There is therefore a strong case for seeing how these complement or substitute for other kinds of ties. Arguably, this can only be done by examining people's lives in local contexts, exploring the full range of individuals, groups and organizations through which every-day life is built and maintained (Crow and Allan, 1994: 196).

Second, and linked to the above, drawing comparisons with communities at different time periods can allow some important points about social change to be developed. For example, our own study of Wolverhampton suggested the maintenance of a form (drawing on Willmott's 1986 typology) of ‘local extended family’. In this instance, our findings suggested that ties to kin and neighbourhood had undergone less fragmentation than might have been expected since the baseline study. On the other hand, there was also a suggestion that for people losing a tie of central significance in their lives (for example with the death of a spouse or partner) there often appeared fewer ‘strong’ relationships to fall back upon. Indeed, this itself reflected an important finding that in comparison with the 1950s, the ‘couple relationship’ had moved to centre stage, with older people (men in particular) more often viewing their partner as a confidant (Jamieson, 1998), this is in sharp contrast with the tension between husband and wives conveyed in studies such as those by Townsend (1957) and Dennis et al. (1956).

Selecting suburban Woodford as a backdrop to study family change also proved instructive. Respondents here provided examples of what might be termed a ‘dispersed extended family’ where regular contact (often weekly or more) was maintained through telephone (more probably e-mail and text messages now) and by car. On the one hand, older people in Woodford seemed to illustrate Rosenmayr and Kockeis's (1963) notion of ‘intimacy at a distance’, viewing the geographical mobility of children as part of a natural cycle of change within the family. On the other hand, intimacy was also maintained through enduring friendships representing long-standing members of older people's (in Kahn and Antonucci's 1980 terms) ‘social convoy’. In this regard, the world of the Woodford elderly appeared at least as much friendship as kinship based, a pattern laid down in the 1950s in the move to a suburban and largely middle-class world. In both these examples, placing family life against contrasting community backgrounds, helped illuminate processes of change, especially when judged against the template provided by the baseline studies.

Third, and following on from the above, a further argument for re-studies might be linked with Morgan's (2008) advice that communities are still ‘good to think with’ because of the way they help us frame and analyse sociological questions. Here, the argument for some form of re-studying might be that immersion in how communities were studied in the past, and the conclusions these studies came to, provide us with a template for anchoring findings from the present. Thus the particular findings about family life in Bethnal Green, Wolverhampton and Woodford in the 1950s assisted us in thinking about the continuities and changes revealed in studies of these areas at later points in time. Indeed, the powerful image which these studies had conveyed of ‘family groups’ operating in support of older people directly helped to focus on what might have changed over the intervening time period. The conclusions of the study suggested a mixture of positive and negative changes since the baseline studies. With different points of emphasis, the lives of older people in Wolverhampton and Woodford demonstrated involvement with diverse social networks, some family-focused, others comprising a mixture of family, friends and leisure associates. These continue to provide the mainstay of supportive needs, emotional as well as practical. At the same time, our finding about a new ‘type’ of old age was also important, that is, the shift from an old age experienced largely within family groups to one (following the work of Wellman, 1990) framed within ‘personal communities’. This insight was also important in shifting our perspective from one which viewed older people as dependants within their family circle to viewing them as active participants within a larger network, a network to which they provided support as well as receiving it.

Fourth, an under-explored potential for re-studies and community studies in general concerns developing an understanding of the changing nature and distribution of power. Again, Bell and Newby (1971: 219) made the important observation that: ‘Whilst British community studies have certainly been concerned with stratification, and at least have provided perceptive descriptions in terms of class and status, power seems to have been largely ignored’. Yet the case for thinking about how power operates and is mobilized at a local level is exceptionally strong, especially in the context of debates aimed at fostering new forms of engagement. Community studies may be especially helpful in understanding the emergence of new sources of power – the rise of protest groups providing one illustration. Tracing the influence of political parties –both new and established – within neighbourhoods is also important (see, for example, Birch, 1959) complementing work carried out at national and regional levels.

Strategies for community studies and re-studies

What is the prospect in the 21st century for doing community studies and in particular for undertaking re-studies? Given the shifts associated with globalization and related changes, is ‘doing’ community studies (however defined) still possible? And if so, are there particular approaches or strategies which might be developed to assist further research in the community studies tradition? A starting point might be to observe that almost by definition the strategies developed in the 21st century will almost certainly be different from those in the mid-20th century. A major reason for this stems from the dramatic changes to many communities when contrasted with the early post-war period. Buonfino and Mulgan (2006: 6) refer here to the consequences arising from what they refer to as the ‘collateral effects of deindustrialisation’ and what they see as the ‘partial disappearance of poor and working class Britain from public view and power’. Jones (2011: 233), surveying changes to working-class life, reaches a similar view:

Both of the above views represent statements that need testing through studies based on particular communities. But if their arguments are anywhere near correct, this will need to be done very differently than was the case in the 1950s and 1960s. Here, the strength (as well as the weaknesses) of working-class institutions was precisely that which engaged a generation of researchers. The idea of a community-based, working-class culture underpinned numerous studies of the period. The apparent fragmentation of this culture, and its retreat from public view, raises a significant challenge for how research is conducted. Against this, the importance of examining how communities are changing – making ‘fragmentation’ a question rather than a statement of fact – has become a key sociological issue. Communities are changing: becoming disconnected and re-connected in different ways. Communities have probably become more ‘fluid’ rather than ‘fixed’ around particular institutions (although research may discover that new institutions are emerging with characteristics not completely dissimilar to the old). But how to study volatile and often excluded populations is a challenge for researchers. This has never been done with much success in the UK. Research in the 1950s and 1960s was conducted in a period when: ‘Working class power and prestige was at its height’ (Buonfino and Mulgan, 2006: 6). In the 1970s and early 1980s, when working-class institutions began to ‘decompose’, community research was largely discredited (arguably at a point when it was most needed). In the second decade of the 21st century, the task is to identify new types of fieldwork and analysis with individuals and groups who may be largely disconnected from the national and local state – socially excluded populations in some cases, wealthy and more privileged in others – both tending to escape from community ties in their traditional form.

All of the above suggest that there are significant methodological challenges in undertaking community re-studies. Social contexts change dramatically over time – ethnic composition is one example, the emergence of more varied family and household forms another. Issues relating to class and gender are transformed over time in public understanding and perception. What is culturally significant is also the subject of rapid change, as particular lifestyles fall in and out of fashion. And the economy – local, national and global – will play a vital role influencing life chances and the transitions made from youth to adulthood and from mid-life through to retirement. Davies and Charles (2002) highlight these points in their analysis of contextual changes since the original research by Rosser and Harris (1965) in Swansea. In exploring these, however, they also demonstrate that it is possible for a re-study to test the implications of new social forms while retaining comparability with the original research. Where this is achieved they conclude that: ‘[re-studies] … can be a very worthwhile and valuable contribution to social analysis – one that is likely to increase our understanding of both the original object of study and the sociological account of it, as well as the contemporary object of the re-study and the intervening processes by which one was transformed into the other’ (Davies and Charles, 2002: para. 9.2).

It might even be argued that particular aspects of social change can themselves be used as justifications for community re-studies, with the impact of globalization providing one illustration. Economic and cultural changes associated with globalization developed as a major area of research over the period of the 1990s. Initially, the nature of the debates seemed merely to confirm the likely eclipse of locally based identities, and the rise of new forms of communication liberated from geographical boundaries. However, Savage et al. (2005: 3) point to what they refer to as a ‘subtly different approach to globalization’ represented in the writings of researchers such as Robertson (1995) and Castells (1997): ‘These writers did not emphasise the erosion of place but rather focused on new forms of connection and mobility, and their potential to re-work social relationships and to re-construct localism’. Savage et al. (2005: 3) go on to make the point that from this perspective: ‘the local is not transcended by globalisation, but rather that the local is to be understood through the lens of global relationships’. Studying what is ‘local’ in the context of what is ‘global’ does in fact open new avenues for community-based research. Single streets (eg Atlee, 2007, on the Cowley Road in Oxford; Lichtenstein, 2007, on Brick Lane in London), with their range of cultures and life styles, offer the possibility of understanding how ‘change and diversity [can be] concentrated into a small area’ (Atlee, 2007: xviii). Understanding the social consequences of ethnic diversity certainly benefits from research at a local level, as numerous examples (including ‘return visits’ such as those by Dench et al., 2006) make clear. The corrosive impact of poverty can certainly be best understood when placed in a community context (Scharf et al., 2003). And different types of communities – from new towns (Southerton, 2004) to ‘gentrifying’ communities (Butler with Robson, 2003) –provide clear examples of the benefits of local investigations. All of the above are examples of social processes affected by global change, but with these developments best understood at a local level.

Finally, if the focus of community studies in the past has often been on ‘constrained’ and ‘deprived’ communities (typically those dominated by single industries such as coal mining or shipbuilding), the more recent idea of ‘elective communities’ suggests an important shift in focus. The concept of ‘elective belonging’ has been given clearest expression by Savage et al. (2005) in their exploration of lifestyles and identities in the context of globalization. This concept refers to the way in which the historical associations and ‘place biographies’ of particular localities have become less important for some groups, as compared with their personal biographies and identities. Increasingly, it is argued, people are making conscious choices about where they want to live and the lifestyles they wish to live by – place of residence emerging as a central feature of this development.

Many of the insights drawn from studies of retirement migration – that of multiple place attachments, transnational mobility, identification with particular lifestyles or social groups – incorporate the theme of retirees choosing locations which link in some way with their past and their expectations about life in the future (see O'Reilly, this issue). Thus, although Gustafson (2001) emphasized the different types of attachment to Spain among his sample of Swedish migrants, the uppermost theme is of people shaping their new location according to particular biographical choices and priorities. In this context, however, there is no agreed form of belonging to their new community: some migrants focus on cultural adaptation to Spain; others emphasize their links to the local Swedish community; others simply see themselves as temporary visitors to a different cultural setting. Settlements of retirement migrants underline the observation of Savage et al. (2005: 29) that the experience of belonging can in certain circumstances be detached from that of a fixed or defined community. This point was anticipated by Longino and Marshall (1990), whose studies of Canadian ‘snowbirds’ (retirees who seasonally migrate between Canada and Florida) concluded that: ‘[they] were nomadic in the sense that their social ties were primarily with the same migrants in the communities they shared at both ends of the move. Their ties were not to places but to the migrating community itself’ (cited in Katz, 2005: 222, emphasis added). Examples such as these demonstrate both the continuing relevance of the idea of ‘community’ for understanding social life, but also changes in its meaning and interpretation by different groups.