Always stories

Out of all the fascinating studies that we've published in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy there's one that holds a special place for me, and I return to it with regularity. We published it in 2002 and it's a case study of two London children who share the same birthday and attended the same school, but are different in significant ways, ways that are likely to have influenced their educational chances (they must be adults by now, hence the past tense). In essence, Liz Brooker's study is a careful analysis of cultural capital. Not the cultural capital that Ofsted have recently defined as 'the essential knowledge that children need to prepare them for future success', but those cultural resources that Bourdieu suggested pattern social inequality. That aside, it is the eloquence with which Liz explains the enduring power of ethnographic research that repeatedly draws me back. She talks about how the detail of descriptive studies sticks with us. And surely that is true. She doesn't go as far as to say that 'the stories we tell' count, but that's what I take from it. In my first university job I leant that the biggest put-down of a colleague's work was to call it journalism. Journalism was a code word for description, and using it was a way of discrediting anything that strayed too far along the qualitative route. In a department then dominated by psychologists it warned against the excesses of storying your research. Of course, there's a clear line between the rigorous collection of data that supports Liz's work and something that is cherry-picked, biased or over-sensationalised - as in bad, misleading or lazy journalism. But telling different stories is as important now as it always was. And that goes for journalism and research.  Crossing the line into fiction - perhaps this is different line altogether, continues to intrigue me. What William Gass describes as 'a sudden slip over the rim of reality' not only evokes a sort of unmooring, but also holds the potential to speak back to the mundane in powerful ways. Isn't that what good stories always do? And that leads me on to wonder whether story could be a research method, too?

Radio isn't dead

I like radio, I grew up with it on. In those days it was mainly the Home Service and the Third Programme, and it was the hey day of British broadcasting. We called it the wireless. We called it listening to the wireless, but wireless means something else now - but then so does radio. Radio isn't dead. I don't have radio on in the house any more although I do own three old valve radios - wirelesses from the late '50s and early '60s. Not a collection I've just ended up with them. They're all in good working order but I never listen to them. I do go through phases when I flip on the radio in the car though. I listen to bits of things - very 21st Century. Last week, for instance, it was lovely hearing Isaac Julien interviewing Stuart Hall. Slightly creepy though. Stuart Hall died in 2014. But he had a really beautiful and sonorous radio voice. Listening to him is like sinking into a really comfortable, well-upholstered armchair. It's a luxurious comfort. His voice is (the present tense seems appropriate) always reassuring, it's reasonable and it's deeply critical all at the same time. You could say that he was one of the last great public intellectuals. And he was a staunch advocate of  British diversity, an insightful commentator on what it means to be black in Britain, and a key theorist of identity politics. But how could Isaac Julien be interviewing him live? It turns out it's an engaging format in which the guest - Julien in this case - interacts with someone, now dead, that they admired. The producers use excerpts from audio archives to simulate conversation. Meanwhile the guest has no idea what material will be used. Ingenious. And it makes for good radio. As it turned out we had a fascinating exploration of art and politics, identity, diversity and the Windrush generation. Stuart Hall was as engaging and eloquent as ever and his mellow tones reminded me of how good radio could be. If only I could listen again on a valve radio I would.