Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ABMeeting6 05 11
ABMeeting6 05 11
Present: Fiona Candy, Rachel Dilley, Caroline Evans, Jenny Hockey, Maria McClean,
Victoria Robinson, Gillian Rose, Rebecca Shawcross, Alex Sherlock, Efrat Tseëlon,
Wesley Vernon.
Apologies: Giorgio Riello, Kath Woodward, Sophie Woodward, Caroline Knowles.
So the proposal I developed with Vicki Robinson put embodied experience and
transition at the heart of its inquiry. The relationship between shoes and the body is
intimate – they take on its shape and they shape it. As people move between
contexts they may change their shoes – or the experience of wearing a particular pair
may be very different in different settings. So footwear seemed a useful lens for
getting at the processual nature of identity as an embodied experience. And when it
comes to more marked points of transition – the kinds Van Gennep was interested in
– shoes often hold symbolic potency. The mysterious nature of how we become who
we are – and how we might change – has also preoccupied story-tellers of all kinds –
and transition, for better or for worse, is key to fairy tales, pop songs, advertising –
and shoes often take centre stage here with Cinderella’s slippers as the obvious
example.
Once we had funding Rachel Dilley and Alex Sherlock joined us and the six page case
for support began to come alive. What Vicki brings to the project, both in developing
it and working on it is:
As Jenny has said, through working together on our previous ESRC projects on
heterosexuality and masculinity, we have both been passionately interested in issues
of embodiment, the processual nature of identity and the theoretical issue of
transition, amongst other aspects. I have also been interested, through my own work
on so called 'extreme sports', (a research area I share with Rachel) in the conceptual
framework of the mundane and the extraordinary. This is something I encapsulated
in my ethnographical research on British rock climbers, whose 'extraordinary'
sporting lives, full of risk and potential danger can, over historical and biographical
time become routinised and 'mundane' . I conceptualised this insight as 'mundane
extremities' which is a means by which to explore rock climber's embodied identities
over the life course. This engagement with the mundane and the extraordinary thus
taps into the symbolic potency of shoes that Jenny has just referred to. It is no
accident that a pair of climbing shoes are the most emotionally charged, and, at the
same time, most functional piece of equipment that a climber will own.
Rachel is the Research Associate on ‘If the shoe fits…’. She has a multi-disciplinary
background, having studied history, philosophy, gender studies, sociology, sport and
leisure studies. Her research centres on the sociology of the body, identity, gender,
the environment, extreme sports, qualitative methods, visual methods and multi-
sensory lived experience. Prior to taking up her post at the University of Sheffield,
she worked at the Macaulay Institute in Aberdeen (now the James Hutton Institute)
on a range of projects relating to the environment. It was here that she developed
her interest in visual methods. Rachel is particularly interested in how new
technologies can provide researchers with new ways of addressing methodological
challenges and the potential for visual methods to develop our understanding of
habitual, taken-for-granted, embodied, emotional, kinaesthetic and sensory
experience. In relation to shoes, Rachel is particularly interested in how the
technologies of different shoes mediate movement in and through different
environments; how this can create and develop different physical competencies and
various forms of comportment. She is interested in the relationship between cultural
discourses, social structures (such as gender, class, ethnicity) and the experiential
ways that we come know ourselves, others, the environment and the wider world.
Alex is carrying out her PhD in tandem with the research project and the aim is that
the PhD and the research project will co-inform one-another. Alex comes from a
practical fashion design and advertising background – both of which inform her
current PhD research. She started teaching contextual studies in the Fashion and
Textile department at Nottingham Trent University and completed an MA in Material
and Visual culture at UCL last year. Alex was new to anthropology last year and new
to sociology this year and is looking forward to any advice that the advisory and
virtual advisory boards might be able to give her with regards to the progression of
her PhD. It was during her MA that she found out about the project, at which point
she was immediately reminded of a personal experience when she drew a pair of
trainers before having to dispose of them – she realised that the act of drawing had
enabled her to examine the transformation of the shoe and it’s individual connection
to herself. It was this transformation that captured her imagination and this project
provided her with the opportunity to study this in much greater depth.
We have now been working together for 8 months. The exhilaration of receiving
funding/getting a job and a studentship at a time of serious financial stringency
meant that we were all determined to make the utmost of this opportunity. But as
well as revisiting its original aims from the perspectives of a whole team, we have
had to work hard to recognise the difference between what we would like to do and
what is possible within time, energy and budgetary constraints. The original research
design focussed on everyday experiences of shoe wear, as a means of getting at
embodied identity as a process, along with the status of shoes as memory objects
which fleshed out people’s personal narratives. How representations of shoes, in
historical and contemporary popular culture contributed to and reflected all this was
a parallel question. However we rapidly became aware of a whole range of shoe
‘specialists’: designers, podiatrists, sex workers, shoe collectors – and really wanted
to talk to them. We also thought more about investigating difference, that members
of the ‘non-specialist’ population were likely to have very different relationships with
shoes, depending not just on age and gender but class, ethnic identity, health status,
sportspeople of all kinds, self-confessed ‘shoe lovers’. And along with this we rapidly
became aware of the many other people with a research interest of some kind in
footwear – and the range of ways in which our project might have impact. Reviewing
all these possibilities led us to the following: interviews with ‘specialists’ was
something for which we didn’t have time or money – but we’ve been able to recruit
an Advisory Board with very diverse specialisms, from fashion, identity and podiatry
through to museum curating and shoe design. This list didn’t exhaust possibilities
and we added a Virtual Advisory Board which expanded these specialisms and
helped established contact with people working around shoes and identity in
different parts of the world. The original five focus groups has also been expanded
significantly to thirteen, to include shoe lovers, people with health problems, Black
and minority ethnic people. The richness of the data we’re currently gathering led us
to decide on a preliminary coding and analysis, before we begin our individual year-
long case studies, and to plan two papers based on these focus group data.
Meanwhile Alex Sherlock, who holds the project studentship, has been developing
the original plan of work for her part of the study.
Alex will commence her fieldwork in September. An early fieldwork outline proposes
a systematic content analysis of popular footwear discourses in the media and
popular culture. She aims to use this information in interviews and observations
carried out with various individuals who have a connection with the biography of the
shoe - from design to disposal. The focus will be on participants’ own personal
experiences of footwear and not their professional interests, and aims to shed light
on the connections between representation and lived experience.
Demographics
The gender split is currently uneven as two-thirds are women and a third men. All
participants have identified as heterosexual. With regards to ethnicity, all are white
British with the exception of four participants (Zimbabwean, Ukrainian, British Asian
and white other). Various forms of disability, including arthritis, hearing impairments
and Parkinsons, affect the older participants. Income ranges from Jobseeker’s
Allowance, student loans and pensioners up to £45000+. Most however are on lower
incomes.
Recruitment
Most of the focus group participants were self-selecting, responding to recruitment
postcards, posters, an article in the local newspaper or having had the details of the
project passed on to them by a friend. Recruitment postcards were distributed
around Sheffield in cafes, community centres, a Citizens Advice Bureau, via healthy
eating and parenting classes, at a private physiotherapists, a community farm, a
cinema, a bar, in newsagents shop windows, shoe shops and material shops. Posters
were put on notice boards in climbing walls. Rachel attended a meeting of a
diabetic’s organisation that was about foot problems and made an appeal for
volunteers there. A recruitment email was sent to undergraduates. There is also a
recruitment page on the website and Jenny promoted the project on BBC Radio
Sheffield. Two focus groups (older people and widows) were recruited via existing
community groups. A few people who were existing acquaintances of the project
team also volunteered.
A great deal of effort has been made to recruit Black and minority ethnic people,
initially with little success. Contact was made with community workers, Rachel
presented the project to a group of advanced English language learners, postcards
have been displayed Black and minority ethnic areas of Sheffield, contact has been
made with the main mosque and a direct approach has also been taken - discussing
the project with people working in shops and asking if they would be interested in
taking part. We have only recently successfully recruited participants for these
groups via a community worker.
Timetable
Completion of remaining focus groups - 3rd June 2011
Analysis of focus groups - Tues 31st May – 15th June 2011
Commence case studies – 4th July 2011 – Sept 2012 (so far we have 45
volunteers for these – we only need 20)
Matthew Bate collated beliefs surrounding sneaker tossing from around the
world and made a documentary, Flying Kicks.
mattbate@closerproductions.com.au
Geoff Budd of Sole Intentions has conduced a photographic study on the art
of ‘shoes from power lines’ featuring a collective mosaic from hundreds of
images submitted from around the world and next level street art from New
York’s ‘Skewville’. http://www.soleintentions.com/
Dissemination
Activities to date
September 2011
Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues Conference, Oxford
Paper entitled ‘Footwear: Transcending the Mind and Body Dualism in
Fashion Theory to be presented and included in subsequent publication
December 2011
First paper deriving from focus group data to be submitted for publication.
February 2012
Project position paper to be submitted for publication.
Easter 2012
Second paper deriving from focus group data to be submitted for publication.