About the research
In his project ‘Popular Social Identities in England, 1950-2000’, Mike Savage examined the thorny issue of social change in post-war Britain. As part of this research he analysed the data from a selection of ‘classic works’ of post-war English sociology including Goldthorpe, Lockwood, Bechhofer and Platt’s famous study Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, 1961-1962, Elizabeth Bott’s Family and Social Network, 1930-1953, and studies from Ray Pahl and Brian Jackson.
In this Leverhulme Fellowship research Mike Savage re-read and coded data, in particular from the Affluent Worker, into a coding frame he developed for this project. Specifically he was interested in workers attitudes, perceptions and sense of workplace satisfaction. These coded data provided detailed evidence for his recently published book Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940 (2010).
This book has been acclaimed as offering an original interpretation of the development of social science research methods in the post-war period. In Savage’s view, these methods facilitated the elaboration of new class and individual identities which have persisted to the present day.
He also addressed how the social sciences (and especially sociology) rose in popularity during the 1960s. In his argument, they were seen to offer a more scientific and progressive way of understanding the nation compared to previous framings drawn predominantly from the disciplines of literature and history.
A key theme of the book is the need to celebrate the legacy of social research pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. Savage contends that these researchers developed a critical perspective which sought neither to stigmatise or nor to pathologise deviant groups, but rather to find new ways to elicit people’s ordinary lives.
Savage also reflects on how the desire to understand national patterns led to a shift in emphasis away from the role of place in people’s lives, thus limiting important aspects of the sociological imagination. He therefore hopes that his book is not only an exercise in sociological history, but also a tool to provoke new ideas about the role and direction of the social sciences in the twenty-first century.
Publications
Savage, M. (2010) Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Savage, M. (2010) ‘Using Archived Qualitative Data: Researching Socio-cultural Change’ in Understanding Social Research: Thinking Creatively about Method, Jennifer Mason and Angela Dale, London: Sage.
Savage, M. (2008) ‘Elizabeth Bott and the formation of modern British sociology’, Sociological Review, 56(4):pp 579-605.
Savage, M. (2008) ‘Affluence and Social Change in the Making of Technocratic Middle Class Identities’, Contemporary British History, 22(4):pp 457-476.
Savage, M. (2005) ‘Working Class Identities in the 1960s: revisiting the Affluent Worker Studies’, Sociology, 39(05):pp.929-946.