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TEMPORALITIES, RITUAL, AND DRINKING IN MASS OBSERVATION'S WORKTOWN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2020

JENNIE TAYLOR  and
SIMON PRINCE Open the ORCID record for SIMON PRINCE [Opens in a new window]
JENNIE TAYLOR
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
SIMON PRINCE*
Affiliation:
Canterbury Christ Church University
*
Corresponding author: Simon Prince, School of Humanities, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, Kent, ct1 1qu[email protected]
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Abstract

In Bolton's pubs at the end of the 1930s, the research organization Mass Observation pursued answers to big abstract questions about time by studying small concrete actions. Drawing on field notes, draft manuscripts, and published works, this article sets out the different understandings and experiences of time documented by the team of investigators. Outside the ‘time-clock factory-whistle dimension of living’ and inside ‘pub-time’, individuals bought drinks for their companions, drank at the same pace, and engaged with everyone around them on an equal footing. Mass Observation presented such behaviours as proof that the pub fostered a socially harmonious, egalitarian community from a pre-industrial age. However, this article shows that the pub study's archive contains material that goes against the published findings. Observers turned in reports about authoritarian conduct, hierarchical power structures, and the intrusion of contemporary politics. Blurring the research subject and object, it was sometimes the investigators themselves who broke the spell of the pub. These moments of tension, confusion, and contradiction offer insights into the observers’ own perspectives on modern temporalities and subjective experiences of time. All the people in the pubs were caught up in a state of flux.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 2021 , pp. 1083 - 1104
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[email protected]

Thank you to Chris Hilliard for his generous assistance, the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Historical Journal for reading and commenting on this article, and the trustees of the Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, for their permission to reproduce material.

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