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Hello. Thank you all – colleagues, friends andfamily – for coming here this evening and thankyou John2 for your generous introduction.

I plan to use this lecture to reflect on mytwenty years of working at London MetropolitanUniversity and to speak about the many oppor-tunities I’ve had, as well as the ideas and part-nerships that have mattered to me during thistime.

Before I go on, I’ll just say that I also did somethings before coming here. I grew up and went toschool in Salisbury. I studied history and sociol-ogy at the University of East Anglia as part of aBA in European and Social Studies. I studied foran MSc in Medical Sociology at Bedford College,London and I completed my PhD in CulturalStudies in Australia, at the University of Tech-nology Sydney. I worked as a social researcher ina health centre and was engaged in numerousactivities – discussion, writing, campaigning –connected with health politics. Broadly, thataccounts for 20 years of academic life beforeLondonmet. And so, Londonmet…

In January 1994, I started work at LondonGuildhall University (LGU), later to merge withthe University of North London to form London

Metropolitan University. I joined a small team,teaching a BA in Communications and Audio-Visual Production Studies that was quicklyexpanding. Almost immediately, two things hap-pened that have profoundly influenced my workever since.

First, I was asked by course leader Mo Dod-son to teach a module entitled ‘Cultural History:Methods and Perspectives’ and to include a sec-tion on oral history. Second, I met fellow new lec-turer Deidre Pribram with whom I began talkingabout the unrecognised but nevertheless palpa-ble influence of emotion on academic and cul-tural political life. In part, this was connectedwith the pressures of coming into a fast-changingsituation, with a rapidly increasing number ofstudents. As it happened, I was also connectingwith two shifts in academic thinking in thehumanities and social sciences: a turn to biogra-phy and the beginnings of a turn toemotion/affect. Later, it became clear that therewere significant tensions as well as resonancesbetween the two.

The focus on oral history was exciting andnew to me, although I was familiar with qualita-tive interviewing in my job as a social researcher

Looking for trouble: exploring emotion,memory and public sociologyInaugural lecture, 1 May 2014, London Metropolitan University

by Jenny Harding

Abstract: This article is a verbatim record of an inaugural lecture,1 reflecting on twenty yearsof working at one university. In this lecture, I discuss the ways in which academic inquiry, teach-ing and community engagement have been linked in specific oral history projects. I focus onopportunities for working across disciplinary boundaries. I discuss culturalist understandingsof emotion and memory and their implications for oral history research.

Key words: emotion, memory, oral history, public sociology, cultural studies

REFLECTIONS

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and through my doctoral research. Oral historyinvolves working with memory to produce newunderstandings of the past. Oral historians inter-view people about the past as they have lived itand now reflect on it. As oral historian Alessan-dro Portelli wrote over thirty years ago, oral his-tory ‘tells us less about events than about theirmeaning.’3 More often than not, oral historiansfocus on the everyday experiences of subordinategroups or political minorities unrecognised inofficial written records. Oral history is part ofboth academic inquiry and a community-basedmovement directed at democratising history (byincluding more people in knowledge production)and empowering subjects (by recognising theirexperience). As Katharine Hodgkin and Susan-nah Radstone suggest, oral history offers a frame-work for ‘contesting the past’, that is, rethinkingwhat the past ‘contained’, who can speak aboutit and how it can be represented.4

My interest in emotion at that time alsotouched on something seemingly unrecognised.In the mid-1990s there had been little investiga-tion of emotion within Cultural Studies. This wassurprising. Cultural Studies is particularly con-cerned with studying meaning and power rela-tions. Stuart Hall defined culture as a set of his-torically specific practices, representations,languages and customs, ‘concerned with the pro-duction and exchange of meanings’. Culture, hesaid, is about ‘feelings, attachments and emo-tions as well as concepts and ideas’.5

There had been earlier indications of howemotion might be viewed as cultural (as well aspersonal) and linked to power relations: in fem-inist philosopher Alison Jaggar’s conceptualisa-tion of ‘emotional hegemony’ (in the 1980s) andcultural theorist Raymond Williams’ concept‘structures of feeling’ (in the 1960s).6 Jaggar wasone of a number of feminist philosophers andcritics of science writing in the 1980s who soughtto disrupt a series of (gendered) conceptualdichotomies underpinning Western thought:specifically, culture and nature, mind and body,reason and emotion, objectivity and subjectivity.7

Reason was considered necessary to the pro-duction of objective and reliable knowledge andemotion as likely to subvert inquiry. Jaggar usedthe phrase ‘emotional hegemony’ to describe aprocess whereby dominant political and socialgroups (usually white, middle-class, male) werealigned with reason and objectivity and subordi-nate groups (usually black, working-class,female) with subjectivity, bias and irrationality.She argued that being understood as essentially‘emotional’, where this is equated with beingirrational, disqualified subordinate groups fromacademic inquiry and political leadership andjustified their continuing subordination.

Williams’ concept structure of feeling refersto ‘the felt sense of the quality of life at a partic-ular place and time’.8 Williams was trying to

address the phenomenological question of howone lives the complex historical articulation ofmaterial, social, economic and cultural elementsthat make up culture ‘as a whole way of life’.9

Williams does not explicitly link structures offeeling to power relations or hegemony, but suchconnections have since been made, for example,by Lawrence Grossberg in his writings on ‘affec-tive economies’.10

In the mid 1990s, these concepts - ‘emotionalhegemony’, ‘structure of feeling’, ‘affectiveeconomies’ – were important starting points fordeveloping a cultural analysis of emotions. Ofcourse, emotion had been extensively studiedwithin various branches of psychology and psy-choanalysis. But, there was a tendency in thesedisciplines to locate emotions primarily in theminds and bodies of individuals and treat them asuniversal entities. The turn to emotion in thehumanities and social sciences was to bring otherconcerns into the frame: investigating how emo-tions vary between cultures; how they changeover time; how they are shaped by social struc-tures, institutions, ideologies and power relations.

When I started at LGU, I was publishing arti-cles and a monograph based on my doctoralresearch on feminist theory and embodiment.11

From the late 1990s, Deidre Pribram and I wereco-writing articles on emotions12 and co-editinga book, which aimed to bring together emergingliterature – from cultural anthropology, history,sociology and cultural studies – and to define anew field of emotion studies within cultural stud-ies.13 So, oral history and a cultural analysis ofemotion shared some intellectual territory: afocus on something un- or under-recognised,experience and meaning.

Oral history in teaching and researchOral history as part of the undergraduate cur-riculum presented opportunities and challenges.It generated learning opportunities for studentsand possibilities for collaboration with agenciesbeyond the university as well as linking teachingand research. It also raised questions about thenature of participation, memory and experience.

There was already a commitment to oral his-tory at London Guildhall University when Iarrived in the mid-1990s. Colleagues Mo Dod-son and Karen Goaman were running a moduleentitled ‘Communication History’ in which theyasked students in their first semester of study tointerview a family member and write the inter-view up in both an academic and journalisticstyle. One of the important things about thismodule was that students were invited to par-ticipate in producing knowledge and, it washoped through this, discover the university to bea less alien place. That our students were mainlyfrom local London boroughs and often the firstperson in their families to go to university wasa major factor in the success of this initiative. In

Jenny Harding,Inaugural lecture, The Graduate Centre,London MetropolitanUniversity. Photo:Steve Blunt.

those days, around 400 students took this mod-ule each year.

This initiative inspired me and, I think, manyof our students. In my second year module, ‘Cul-tural History Methods and Perspectives’, stu-dents learned how to critically analyse an oral his-tory interview, reflecting on the research processand comparing oral history with other historicalmethods. Many students interviewed a familymember or neighbour. Often their stories told ofmigration and settlement, work (often in nurs-ing, the catering industry or transport), child-hoods lived in other countries, and also, but lessfrequently, the un-swinging 1960s and variousforms of political activism. In the early years,around 200 students a year took this module.

In 1997, keen to find new learning opportu-nities for students, I met with the oral historycurator at the Museum of London. We arrangedfor cohorts of second year students to work withsections of the museum’s oral history collection:for example, one group listened to, analysed andwrote summaries of interviews about early twen-tieth century housing conditions in the East End.Gradually, others got to hear of our interest inoral history and a number of collaborations fol-lowed.

In 1998 the LGU chaplain, William Taylor,approached me about developing a project whichinvolved students in talking to local ‘disadvan-taged’ people and used storytelling to createimages of London from its margins (as an alter-

native to more glamorous images produced tomark the millennium). In response, third yearstudents taking a module entitled ‘Oral History’worked as a team with me to: first, volunteerweekly for a month at a day centre for homelesspeople in Aldgate; and second, interview peopleusing the centre about their experiences of home-lessness. Two small cohorts of students (eighteenin all) were involved in ‘Talking About Home-lessness’ (2000-2001) and seventy-six peoplewere interviewed.14

Around this time (1999/2000), I met JohnGabriel, who was also very interested in oral his-tory and this was the beginning of many years ofworking together on projects. Connections withthe Museum of London and ‘Talking AboutHomelessness’ led to two new projects: ‘CareStories’ and ‘The Refugee Communities HistoryProject’. Julia Granville, a family psychothera-pist and social worker at The Tavistock Clinic,had heard about ‘Talking About Homelessness’and invited us to develop a project with youngcare leavers. ‘Care Stories’ involved seven thirdyear students getting to know seven young careleavers and interviewing them about their expe-riences of being in care. Postgraduate studentsfilmed interviews and these were edited to makea twenty-minute film highlighting the voice ofthe young person for use in professional train-ing.15 Our partners in the project went on to pro-duce a further film and booklet contextualisingthe first film, as part of a resource pack used,

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nationally and internationally, in the training offoster carers.

In 2000, thanks to the Museum of Londonconnection, we became partners with the EvelynOldfield Unit, the Museum of London, and fif-teen refugee community organisations (RCOs) inan oral history project documenting the eco-nomic, social and cultural contributions made byrefugees settling in London since 1951. ‘TheRefugee Communities History Project’ (RCHP)endured a long period of gestation, but eventu-ally secured funding from the Heritage LotteryFund (HLF) and Trust for London. Between2004 and 2007, John Gabriel and I were involvedin the project steering group and training fifteenfieldworkers (one from each RCO) to conductinterviews and develop a variety of outcomes,including contributing to a final exhibition at theMuseum of London.16

These projects took seriously the importanceof participants not only of getting to speak abouttheir lives but also being heard by an audienceboth in the present (through interview) andimagined future (through exhibition, broadcast,publication, theatre and web pages). In otherwords, different forms of cultural productionwere crucial to how the ordinary voice was notonly elicited, but also amplified and heard by(disparate) others.17

Training for the RCHP was delivered via twoMA-level modules, which became the buildingblocks for an MA in Life History Research,which I later developed. We also delivered someof the MA course content as short courses sup-porting other HLF-funded collaborative projects.For example, we worked with Eastside Commu-nity Heritage on ‘Working Lives of the ThamesGateway’ (2008-2010), which documentedexperiences of working in the disappearingindustries of east and south-east London. Weworked with IARS (a youth-led organisation)and the Women’s Library (2011-2012), to makea documentary film focused on Muslim women’sparticipation in sport since 1948. Sporting Sisters:Stories of Muslim Women in Sport is on YouTubeand has had 15.5 thousand hits.18 We have beenvery fortunate to work with Suzanne Cohen, whohas made an invaluable contribution to audio-visual production in recent projects.

These projects have involved looking beyondthe university, to enhance student experience andengage in conversations with different commu-nities. At this point, I’d like to say somethingabout the title of this lecture.

‘Looking for trouble’ refers first to my sensethat this is what academics do (they search forproblems that are complex and hard to unpick),and second to the idea that ‘memory’ and ‘emo-tion’ are especially troublesome ideas. ‘Publicsociology’ is another way of talking about ideasthat matter to me and making connections withinand beyond the university.

Five or six years ago, John Gabriel and formercolleague Peter Hodgkinson stimulated debate inthe faculty around the idea of public sociologyand, specifically, the work of American sociolo-gist Michael Burawoy. Burawoy wrote that soci-ology is motivated by a desire to improve society(although this may mean many things to manypeople). He proposed a fourfold typology of soci-ology comprising: professional, policy, criticaland public.19

Public sociology brings sociology into conver-sations with multiple publics. The traditional pub-lic sociologist investigates debates within orbetween publics, but might not actually take partin them. The organic public sociologist works ‘inclose connection with a visible, thick, active, localand often counterpublic.’20 Of course, for many,this was not new. Patricia Hill Collins pointed outthe term ‘public sociology’ simply gave a name towhat she had been doing for years.21 The oral his-tory projects I have described, with their focus oncommunity-based research and ‘subaltern knowl-edges’,22 enacted a kind of organic public sociol-ogy. They enabled us to engage in multiple con-versations with multiple publics: first, studentsengaged in work-based learning as interviewers;second, professionals from community-basedorganisations; third, a number of marginalisedgroups; and last, numerous diverse audienceswho respond to various media outputs from theseprojects.23 At the same time, these publics werenot discrete and clearly distinguished: academicswere part of the projects’ steering groups anddesigners as well as providers of education andtraining. In the case of the RCHP, the participantswere both ‘students’ and members of refugeecommunity organisations and, in some cases,refugees themselves.24

To be clear, I am not trying to subsume oralhistory under public sociology. But, I would saythat public sociology is a useful term in so far asit provides a basis for conversations across disci-plines, within and beyond our faculty. As col-leagues and I have argued,25 public sociologyframes much of the faculty’s activity, specifically,through its commitment to: promoting social jus-tice; widening access to higher education; sup-porting research that seeks to shape policy andenhance service delivery; and, finally, workingcollaboratively with marginalised communitiesusing participatory methods in capacity-buildinginitiatives. Public sociology is both a descriptionand aspiration.

Now, I’d like to highlight some issues emerg-ing from the oral history projects I’ve mentionedand to make some critical connections with mywork on emotions.

Experience, emotion and memoryIn late modernity, things have turned increasinglypersonal. And, memory, emotion and experienceare entangled in processes of personalisation.

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Biographical narratives consist of individualreflections on experience of the past, with par-ticular focus on meanings and feelings. Yet, expe-rience as a potential source of knowledge con-notes authenticity to some and provokesprofound suspicion in others.

Elizabeth Tonkin suggests that oral accountsof the past are often social activities in which nar-rators claim authority to speak to particular audi-ences.26 In ‘Talking About Homelessness’, sev-eral interviewees clearly staked out theirauthority to tell based on their own unique expe-rience of ‘being there’ – on the streets – andhence the impossibility of someone who has notbeen there fully understanding what it is like.27

… if someone wants to see what it’s like,they’ve got to do it, then you know what it’slike …28

… I’ll tell you something lass ... never say toanybody ‘I know what you’re going through’,never say ‘I understand what you are doing’cos you’ve never done it yourself, cos youdon’t, you don’t.29

Their statements reveal the limits of repre-sentation, the fact that tellers’ words are not the

same as the past they have lived30 and, as Spivakpoints out, that what is known is always in excessof knowledge, which is never adequate to itsobject.31

Students readily accepted the privileged sta-tus of those same ontological moments and thelimits to their own understanding (based on inex-perience) and, thereby, helped to co-produce theinterviewees’ authority to tell. At the same time,they insisted that listening to interviewees’ sto-ries constituted significant ‘ontological moments’for them as students. Repeatedly, they wrote (inthe diaries they kept) that learning (about thelives of homeless people, voluntary agencies andthemselves) from ‘being there’ – at the drop-incentre – was superior to reading: because you‘experienced it yourself’.

Autobiographical narratives communicateauthenticity in so far as they are understood toexpress unique experience and a genuine sense ofwho the narrator is. Emotion plays a part heresince, in contemporary Western cultures, theindividual is imagined as a bounded private selfwith emotion at its core: expressions of emotionreveal who a person really is (inside and beneathappearances). Expressions of emotion are seen assimultaneously expressions of individual identityand authenticity.

The Graduate Centre,Holloway Road,London MetropolitanUniversity. Photo:Steve Blunt.

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Now, there are some sticky issues here. Theentanglement of experience with identity andemotion in the individual story potentially threat-ens to personalise social issues. So, work needsto be done to link individual biographicalaccounts with social patterns and change. I thinkthis requires radical contextualisation. How?

If we view biographical accounts as a meanswhereby the subject makes sense of his/her jour-ney through history, and change, then we mightalso acknowledge that ways of giving meaning –language, norms and systems of judgement –have their own histories.32 And, we mightacknowledge that individual stories are affectedby social relations, cultural narratives and dis-courses in the present. Indeed, a number of the-orists (Bourdieu, Stanley, Steedman, Ricouer)claim that the concerns of the present – one’splace in the world and relations with others –inevitably insinutate and shape the past in story-telling.33 We might also understand identity(understood as a coherent sense of self over time)and experience as products rather than causes ofthe personal story.

But, does this line of thinking – radical con-textualisation – diminish the potential signifi-cance of individual biographies to history, andagency? Not necessarily. Anna Green suggeststhat we can both acknowledge the significance ofcontexts and discourses and re-assert the value ofindividual remembering and capacity of individ-uals to critically assess and contest these.34 How-ever, I would tend to view those capacities as alsosocially generated.

Contexts‘Talking about Homelessness’, ‘Care Stories’ and‘The Refugee Communities History Project’ gen-erated many hours of recorded interviews cov-ering a great many topics, but had some themesin common. Interviewees spoke at length (andmovingly) about loss, home and (a sense of)belonging. Questions that interested me partic-ularly were: how do people come to tell partic-ular stories, in particular ways? How do partic-ular stories come to matter to others? So, inwriting about these projects, I have focused onthe cultural, historical and discursive contexts inwhich auto/biographical stories were told.

Contexts include the problematisation of cer-tain social groups (homeless, looked after,refugee) and certain ways of understanding andtalking about topics. Context also includes (relat-edly) the aims and agenda of a project, researchrelations (between interviewer and interviewee)and the interview process and questions. It alsoincludes cultural narratives, which insinuate theinterpretation and articulation of experience ininterview and subsequent forms of cultural pro-duction.

Retrospectively, I came to see that emotionwas entangled with all contexts, processes and

relations: that specific emotions might be part ofthe dynamics of unequal relations, working (asSara Ahmed has argued) to ‘align some subjectswith others and against some others’.35 Forexample, ‘The Refugee Communities HistoryProject’ was conceived against a backdrop ofgrowing hostility in policy debate and media cov-erage towards asylum seekers, refugees andimmigrants (all conflated). Critics had identifieda change in the nature of discourse on asylum,involving a withdrawal of sympathy for forcedmigration and a focus on the problem of asylumseekers in terms of increased volume and itsimplications for British society and the econ-omy.36 This discourse identified asylum seekersas a source of public fear and anger among dis-advantaged groups (thought to perceive them-selves to be in competition for resources and ser-vices, and presumed to be less tolerant). In thisway, a cultural politics of fear was enmeshed witha politics of inequality.37

‘The Refugee Communities History Project’had some ‘emotion work’ to do in contesting neg-ative public images of refugees as bogus, a drainon national resources and a threat to nationalidentity and security, by producing a counter-dis-course based on refugees’ own words.38 Thedesign of the project – through its aims, selectionof interview subjects and interview questions –encouraged the telling of certain kinds of narra-tives. These emphasised authenticity in seekingasylum and the positive contributions of refugeesubjects to the history, culture and economy ofLondon. A strong focus on contribution, in theproject agenda and in individual interviews, cre-ated the idea of the successful or ‘good’ refugeeas someone who gives something back.39 But,‘giving something back’ meant different things todifferent people.

For some it involved success in mainstreamsociety through conventional achievements: highstatus and/or well-paid occupations, or gainingUK qualifications. Others described sacrifices –such as low-paid work, more than one job, work-ing long hours as well as caring for family – madein order to support their children’s ‘success’ inconventional terms. Some described working inthe areas of paid/unpaid refugee sector work.Many of those interviewed articulated a sense ofthemselves as passionately committed to socialjustice, community and helping others. Theyelaborated an ethics of existence that focused lesson individualism and individual attainment andmore on collective political action. For example,a woman who arrived in 1975 from Chile (at theage of twenty) talked of the importance of beingpolitical:

… as a political animal, in, in a way, you, youknow I would always find a way to be political,in, in that sense. So, in a way … because youare driven by, by, by it somehow, it doesn’t

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matter whether you end up in Kathmandu,or Kenya, or wherever, you know, you willfind, what your place is, you know? So interms of, my personal gain, my personal posi-tion, I didn’t have any intents. Of politics Ihave a hell of a lot, yes, and in that sense Iwould, yeah, participate in everything thatwas going …40

So, interviewees offered a critical take on‘contribution’. They were also critical of the idea(underpinning the project) that ‘refugee’described an identity. The project invited indi-viduals to speak about their experiences asrefugees, positioning them as ‘authentic sources’by virtue of a pre-existing (refugee) identity,which was further consolidated and reinforcedthrough speaking. But, some sought to distancethemselves from the label ‘refugee’, on thegrounds that they felt it stuck to, diminished anddisempowered them. They felt subordinated byrepresentations of the refugee both as bogus andgenuine. Acknowledging the realities of perse-cution and the need for protection, some felt thatdominant understandings of ‘the genuinerefugee’ as incapacitated by ‘sadness and loss’took over, making them into perpetual victimsand objects of pity. Instead, some emphasisedtheir anger at the circumstances in which theywere forced to migrate: ‘What I had was rage – Iwas very, very angry’.41 Unlike pity and compas-sion, perceived as subordinating, anger and ragewere considered empowering, providing aground for collective political activism. Here,emotion provided a vocabulary for talking about,enacting and contesting unequal power relations.

Interviewer and interviewee relationsThe research relationship – specifically, thedynamic interaction between interviewers andinterviewees – also helped to shape the narrativesproduced. In ‘Talking About Homelessness’ and‘Care Stories’, students were apprehensive aboutinterviewing: specifically, they were concernedabout being able to respond adequately toaccounts of (potentially) distressing experience.But, they were prepared in seminars, throughbackground research on homelessness and thecare system, and learning interviewing andrecording skills. They had a chance to get to knowinterviewees and develop rapport in advancethrough volunteering at the day centre (‘TalkingAbout Homelessness’) and through meetings andsocial activities (‘Care Stories’). Project partnersalso set up support systems for interviewers andinterviewees, so that they could talk to someoneabout issues that came up in interviews.

Here, I’ll say a bit more about ‘Care Stories’.Interviewees and interviewers had more in com-mon: age, shared leisure interests, as well as someaspects of social and cultural background. Theygot on very well with one another and engaged in

mutually-reflective conversations about what itmeans to be a young person and the emotionalresources needed to develop a sense of indepen-dence. In all the interviews, interviewee andinterviewer communicated with warmth, enthu-siasm and openness. Project partners felt that thestories told were very frank and the result of aspecial chemistry in the interview relationship.42

Young care leavers were asked about theirexperiences of being in care. They described lack-ing stability, love, support, a sense of belongingand trust. One consequence of moving fre-quently between foster carers and social workerswas that young people had to begin new rela-tionships and tell ‘their stories’ over again. Sev-eral said they were reluctant to repeatedly ‘openup to’ and trust yet another professional and anx-ious about the growing number of people whoknew a great deal about them. They were con-cerned that they had little or no control over howinformation about them circulated. One youngwoman spoke of the notes written about her,unseen by her, which preceded her in every newplacement, shaping in advance each new carer’sexpectations of her:

… When you leave a house and you’re pack-ing your clothes and you’re packing yourbooks and you’re packing everything in yourlife. You’re also packing, em … an in ... whatis it called? An invisible package there aswell, which is the piece of papers that youcan’t see that is obviously floating aroundyou and everybody else is reading about youand they know about you, they’re doingcourses about you … coz like it just ... youdon’t know what to say or what to do aboutit. Coz like if it was in front of your face youcould just say ‘look, yeah, I don’t think that’sright.’ But they don’t show it to you, theyshare that information among themselves.43

Obviously, our project also placed the youngpeople in the position of being expected to telltheir stories again in interview. Ironically, thevideo made from the interviews was to be shownto people ‘doing courses’ on looked after chil-dren. Perhaps, the difference here was that theyoung people chose to participate and criticallyreflect on their experience of foster care, andwere given an effective medium (film) for doingthis and access to an audience of relevant pro-fessionals. They were keenly aware of potentialaudiences beyond the interview. One young mansaid forcefully: ‘Those kids in care they want tobe heard’ and, turning to camera, ‘Whoever isgoing to look at this [film] please sit down andlisten and try to understand.’44

Listening to the voices of the young people –how they speak as well as their words – conveysa sense of the intensity of feeling and how muchthings mattered. It is possible to sense the elusive

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chemistry of the interview and the entanglementof self-confidence, authority and vulnerability.

Anne Karpf has argued that the embodiedhuman voice is sometimes ignored in oral history.Instead, voice is treated as an instrument orresource, as illustration or figuratively (as polit-ical or authorial).45 Analysis often fails to takeaccount of what the voice – through intonation,tone, rhythm, volume and so on – communicatesbeyond the words spoken. But, it is possible tothink of emotion in relation to oral history asboth topic (in the design of projects and contentof interviews) and texture (in the chemistry,intensity and inflection of interviews).

Cultural theorists (such as Brian Massumi,Lawrence Grossberg and Elspeth Probyn) dis-tinguish ‘affect’ from ‘emotion’ (in part, as aresponse to a perceived over-emphasis in culturalstudies on representation and meaning).46 Theyunderstand affect as intensity or energy that isbeyond conscious knowing and organising sys-tems of representation; that is, as unstructuredand a-semiotic. Affect is not linked to identityand is pre-personal. Emotion, on the other hand,is equated with the quality of an experienceachieved through semiotic processes: it is narra-tively structured and organised.47 That is, emo-tion is intensity recognised, owned and made per-sonal: it is biographical. Emotion is, perhaps,more amenable to analysis.

Recent work on emotionRecently, I have been working on a monographentitled Media, Emotion and Identity. This hasproved very challenging, not least because itbrings together three major concepts, informedby an increasingly large body of academic work.In this book, I examine emotion as a cultural phe-nomenon through close analysis of selected mediatexts and technologies. Much of the book focuseson meaning, working with the idea that mediatexts participate in the production and circulationof meaning and creation of everyday culture. Ianalyse texts which have helped to give promi-nence to individual emotion: for example, medi-ated debate on an economics of happiness; exam-inations of loss and grief in the Danish crimedrama The Killing; the negotiation of intimacy inUS drama In Treatment. I explore the culturalpolitical implications of an intensifying focus onindividual emotion.

Excessive focus on individual emotion may bea matter for concern in so far as individual emo-tion becomes the prime lens through which toview the world and our relations with others48

and the source of social problems: that is, wherenegative feelings of self-worth and unhappinessare seen to impact on social and economic, as wellas personal, life.

In Media, Emotion and Identity, I also analysethe ways in which emotion has been talked about

The Graduate Centre,London MetropolitanUniversity. Photo:Steve Blunt.

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as a more collective phenomenon in recent mediacoverage and academic discussion of the UK riots,the Olympic and Paralympic Games and newsocial movements. There has been limited acade-mic inquiry into collective emotion and media. But,Stephanie Baker has written about the UK riots49

and Manuel Castells has written about the emer-gence of new forms of protest, from the ArabSpring to Occupy Wall Street.50Broadly speaking,these two academics argue that protest starts withthe emotions of individuals, angered or outragedby specific (unbearable) events, who connect andshare feelings with others via an effective (in thiscase, digital) channel of communication. Mutualrecognition of shared emotions – cognitive empa-thy – made possible through the internet engendersfeelings of togetherness and possibilities for acting.

This is interesting work and important. How-ever, I am critical of it on the grounds that itassumes a highly self-aware subject, and imaginesindividuals as separate from the social environ-ment to which they respond and the technologiesthey use. I have sought to question establishedbinaries: such as rational/emotional, individ-ual/social, human/technology. Also, a focus on theself-aware individual tends to neglect thoseaspects of lived existence that are not yet recog-nised and clearly articulated, but may neverthelessinfluence lives.

In exploring ways of conceptualising emotionas both individual and collective, personal andcultural, I have turned to a number of differenttheorists. I have also returned to RaymondWilliams’ concept ‘structure of feeling’. Structureof feeling is not quite the same as emotion oraffect. Apart from anything else, it suggests some-thing more enduring. Structure of feeling refersto lived experience, which is simultaneously per-sonal and social.51 It refers to ‘the felt sense of thequality of life at a particular place and time.’ It islived at the historical intersections of (I think wecan infer) unequal – social, economic, material,cultural – relations and at the limits of semanticexpression.52 Williams developed and appliedstructure of feeling as a class- and period-basedconcept in the analysis of literature, proposingthat a pattern – of feeling rather than thought,consisting of impulses, restraints and tones – isdetectable across a range of otherwise uncon-nected works.53 He argued that a structure of feel-ing – unacknowledged in official records – is tan-gible in a set of works as an articulation ofexperience, which lies beyond them and findssemantic recognition.54 But, he acknowledged,‘an articulate structure of feeling’ is not neces-sarily equivalent to ‘an inarticulate experience’,and the difference reflects uneven access to themeans of cultural production.55

Structure of feeling signals what is not cap-tured by representation, drawing attention to agap between ‘what can be rendered meaningful orknowable and what is nevertheless liveable.’56

Structure of feeling might be used in the analysisof auto/biographical accounts. For example, thereflections of participants in the UK riots (col-lected as part ofReading the Riots, a collaborativeundertaking between the Guardian andresearchers at the London School of Economics)can be analysed for what they might tell us aboutthe felt sense of the quality of life in austerityBritain for some sections of the population.57

The co-produced accounts highlight specificemotions such as anger at the shooting of MarkDuggan and euphoria linked to a sense of empow-erment through interviewees’ participation in law-lessness that the police struggled and failed to con-tain.58 A seventeen-year-old young woman said‘People were just passing fags from the counters’and ‘You know what? For once it felt like you hadso much power.’59 But, the narratives also (poten-tially) tell of longer term structures of feeling con-sisting of resentment towards the police, large cor-porations and the government. Those interviewedresented police practices of stop and search,harassment, disrespect and humiliation. Theyresented big business, advertising and media cor-porations for fuelling a consumerist culture fromwhich the jobless felt excluded. They resented thegovernment and its austerity policies, which hadled to benefits cuts and unemployment; lack of jobopportunities; removal of EMA; and increasedtuition fees. They resented the disparity betweenthe jobless and bankers receiving huge bonuses.60

Using structure of feeling as an analytic tool iden-tifies an affective dimension to unequal relationsand a potential arena in which to contest inequal-ities and dominant understandings of events:potentially challenging the idea that rioters wereacting mindlessly and the de-politicisation of theprotest at the shooting of Mark Duggan.

I have argued that we need to pay more atten-tion to emotion in academic inquiry and culturalpolitics. I have been wary of an apparent over-emphasis on individual emotion in contemporarycultural life. I am not against individual emotion– far from it – but this has been extensively stud-ied in the ‘psy’ disciplines61 and I think we needto also investigate it from other perspectives. Weneed to be critical of how emotion is thought andtalked about. A cultural analysis of emotionfocuses attention on the broader contexts – his-torical and hegemonic – in which emotion fig-ures, or not, and how it helps to align subjectswithin unequal power relations. Ideally, it inves-tigates specific emotions and troubles bordersand distinctions: between the individual and thesocial, the articulated and the unarticulated.

Other connectionsI have spoken about some of the collaborationsand ideas that have been important to me. I’d liketo (briefly) mention some on-going associations.I have been fortunate to work with colleagues SueAndrews, Mick Williamson and Dipti Bhagat in

Autumn 2014 ORAL HISTORY 103

the CASS62 to establish a digital photographicarchive. Initially, we worked with local photog-rapher Paul Trevor to edit his vast collection ofphotographs of everyday life in London’s EastEnd in the 1970s-1990s and curate a collectionof 250 images deposited with VADS (an onlineresource for the visual arts).63 From there, theCASS East End Archive developed, collectingbodies of work by photographers variouslyengaging with the idea of ‘the East End’. I nolonger lead the project, but am still associatedwith it and hope soon to get to grips with one ofits original aims: to develop a related oral historycollection.

Despite the regrettable closure of the MA LifeHistory Research, some of its content and con-cerns – with oral history and community engage-ment – have survived in a new module – ‘Mediaand Communities’ – designed and taught with mycolleague Peter Lewis, an expert in communitymedia. Students work with local communityorganisations, interviewing them about their activ-ities and histories in order to make a radio or filmdocumentary. We’ve yet to see what this year’scohort will come up with but last year studentsproduced some very good films: for example, onthe independent cinema The Phoenix and, work-ing with Rowan Arts, on religion and homeless-ness.

Since 2007, I have been associated with theOral History Society as a trustee and one of theeditors of the Oral History journal. This has beenan important connection and a source of inspira-tion. Here at Londonmet, we hosted and co-organised with the Oral History Society two con-ferences on ‘Community Oral Histories’ (in 2001and 2007).

FinallyI hope this lecture has given you a sense of what Ihave been up to over the years at Londonmet. I’vemoved across disciplines and departments. Some-times, I worry that I’ve been too nomadic, notputting down deep enough roots anywhere. But,this has been a fascinating journey and, I think,often productive. With modest funding (from theHeritage Lottery Foundation, Higher EducationActive Community Fund and the King’s Fund)we’ve developed some interesting projects andcontributed to some engaging outcomes (not onlyacademic papers but also websites, films, exhibi-tions and so on). And, I have greatly valued theopportunity to combine research, teaching andengagement with local communities.

London Metropolitan University has experi-enced a number of problems in recent years andthese are well known. Some are common to thehigher education sector; others are more local.We have lost undergraduate and postgraduateprogrammes and some experienced colleagues. Idon’t want to deny or diminish the ramificationsof these events. But, I would like to say that Lon-donmet is also a place of great energy, creativityand opportunity (for students and staff). I havehad opportunities to work in a way that I don’tthink I would have had in most other institutions:at least, certainly not when I started out.

I am delighted to be awarded the title of Pro-fessor at London Metropolitan University andlook forward to many more collaborations andconversations.

I’d like to say thank you to my family, friendsand colleagues for supporting and encouragingme over the years. Thank you all for coming heretonight and for listening.

An inaugural lecture is given to an invited1.audience by an academic recently promotedto professor. Jenny Harding was awarded thetitle Professor of Cultural Studies andCommunications at London MetropolitanUniversity in August 2012.John Gabriel, Professor of Sociology and2.

Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences andHumanities, London Metropolitan University.Alessandro Portelli, ‘What makes oral3.

history different?’, in Robert Perks andAlistair Thomson (eds), The Oral HistoryReader, second edition, London and NewYork: Routledge, 2006, pp 32-42 (p 36).This article was first published in Italian in1979 and in English as ‘On the peculiaritiesof oral history’ in History Workshop Journal,no 12, 1981, pp 96-107. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah4.

Radstone (eds), Contested Pasts: ThePolitics of Memory. London and New York:Routledge, 2003. Stuart Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Stuart Hall5.

(ed), Representation: Cultural

Representations and Signifying Practices,London: Sage/Open University Press, 1997,pp 1-11.Alison M Jaggar, ‘Love and knowledge:6.

emotion in feminist epistemology’ in AlisonM Jaggar and Susan R Bordo (eds),Gender/Body/Knowledge: FeministReconstructions of Being and Knowing, NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp 145-171; Raymond Williams, The LongRevolution, Harmondsworth, Middlesex:Penguin Books, 1965 (1961).For example, see: Sandra Harding, The7.

Science Question in Feminism, Milton Keynes:Open University,1986; Jane Flax,‘Postmodernism and gender relations infeminist theory’, in Linda Nicholson (ed),Feminism/Postmodernism. New York:Routledge, 1990, pp 39-62; Evelyn FoxKeller, A Feeling for the Organism: the Life andWork of Barbara McClintock.New York: WHFreeman, 1983; Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflectionson Gender and Science. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1984; Hilary Rose, ‘Hand,

brain and heart: a feminist epistemology forthe natural sciences’ in Sandra Harding andJean F O’Barr (eds), Sex and Scientific Inquiry,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987,pp 265-282; Jaggar, 1989.Williams, 1965, p 63.8.Lawrence Grossberg, ‘Affect’s future:9.

rediscovering the virtual in the actual’,interview by Gregory J Seigworth and MelissaGregg, in Gregory J Seigworth and MelissaGregg (eds), The Affect Theory Reader,Durham, NC and London: Duke UniversityPress, 2010, pp 309-338.

Lawrence Grossberg, ‘Postmodernity and10.affect: all dressed up and no place to go’ inJennifer Harding and E Deidre Pribram (eds),Emotions: A Cultural Studies Reader, Londonand New York: Routledge, 2009, pp 69-83;Lawrence Grossberg, Bringing It All BackHome: Essays on Cultural Studies. Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 1997; LawrenceGrossberg, We Gotta Get Out of This Place:Popular Conservatism and PostmodernCulture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

NOTES

104 ORAL HISTORY Autumn 2014

Jennifer Harding, Sex Acts: Practices of11.Femininity and Masculinity. London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage, 1998;Jennifer Harding, ‘Bodies at risk’ in AlanPeterson and Robin Bunton (eds), Foucault,Health and Medicine, London and New York:Routledge, 1997; Jennifer Harding, ‘Sex andcontrol – the hormonal body’, Body andSociety, vol 2, no 1, 1996.

Jennifer Harding and E Deidre Pribram,12.‘The power of feeling: locating emotions inculture’, European Journal of Cultural Studies,vol 5, no 4, 2002, pp 407-426; JenniferHarding and E Deidre Pribram, ‘Losing our cool?Following Williams and Grossberg on emotions,’Cultural Studies, vol 18, no 6, 2004, pp 863-883 (p 872); Harding and Pribram, 2004.

Harding and Pribram, 2009.13.Jennifer Harding ‘Talking About14.

Homelessness: a teaching and researchinitiative in east London’, Teaching in HigherEducation, vol 7, no 1, 2002, pp 81-95.

Jennifer Harding and John Gabriel,15.‘Communities in the making: pedagogicexplorations using oral history’, InternationalStudies in the Sociology of Education, vol 14,no 3, 2004, pp 185-201.

Annette Day, Jenny Harding and Jessica16.Mullen, ‘Refugee stories: the RefugeeCommunities History Project, partnership andcollaboration’ in Hanne-Lovise Skartveit andKatherine Goodnow (eds), Museums andRefugees: New Media, Play and Participation,Paris: UNESCO, 2008.

Jean Burgess, ‘Hearing ordinary voices:17.cultural studies, vernacular creativity anddigital story telling’, Continuum: Journal ofMedia and Cultural Studies, vol 20, no 2,2006, pp 201-214.

Sporting Sisters: Stories of Muslim Women18.in Sport film: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FE

Michael Burawoy, Amercian Sociological19.Review, vol 70, no 1, 2005, pp 4-28.

Burawoy, 2005, p 28.20.Patricia Hill-Collins, ‘Going public: doing21.

the sociology that had no name’, in DanClawson, Robert Zussman, Joya Misra, NaomiGerstel, Randall Stokes and Douglas LAnderton (eds), Public Sociology, London:University of California, 2007, pp 101-116.

Burawoy, 2005, p 18.22.John Gabriel, Jenny Harding, Peter23.

Hodgkinson, Liz Kelly and Alya Khan, ‘Publicsociology: working at the interstices,’American Sociologist, vol 40, no 4, 2009, pp 309-331.

Gabriel, Harding, Hodgkinson, Kelly and24.Khan, 2009.

Gabriel, Harding, Hodgkinson, Kelly and25.Khan, 2009.

Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating our Pasts. 26.The Social Construction of Oral History,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Harding, 2002.27.

H interviewed by M, April 1999.28.G interviewed by K, April 1999.29.Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History, London:30.

Routledge, 1991.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak In Other31.

Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, New York:Routledge, 1987.

Nikolas Rose, ‘Identity, genealogy, history’32.in Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans and PeterRedman (eds), Identity: A Reader, London:Sage/Open University Press, 2000, pp 313-326 (p 314).

Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The biographical33.illusion’, in du Gay, Evans and Redman, 2000,pp 299-305; Paul Ricouer, ‘Narrative andtime,’ Critical Inquiry, vol 7, no 1, 1980, pp169-90; Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for aGood Woman: A Story of Two Lives, London:Virago, 1986; Liz Stanley, The Auto/biographical I, Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1992.

Anna Green, ‘Individual remembering and34.collective memory: theoreticalpresuppositions and contemporary debates’,Oral History, vol 32, no 2, 2004, pp 35-44.

Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of35.Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress, 2004, p 42.

Alice Bloch and Carl Levy (eds), Refugees,36.Citizenship and Social Policy in Europe.London: Macmillan, 1999; Liza Schuster andJohn Solomos, ‘The politics of refugee andasylum policies in Britain: historical patternsand contemporary realities’ in Bloch and Levy,1999, pp 51-75; Miranda Lewis, Asylum.Understanding Public Attitudes, London: IPPR,2005.

Lewis, 2005.37.Jennifer Harding, ‘Emotional subjects:38.

language and power in refugee narratives’ inHarding and Pribram, 2009, pp 267-279.

John Gabriel and Jennifer Harding, 39.‘On being a “good” refugee’ in GargiBhattacharyya (ed), Ethnicities and Values in aChanging World. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp135-154.

MV interviewed by D, January 2006.40.MV interview.41.Jennifer Harding, ‘Questioning the subject42.

in biographical interviewing’, SociologicalResearch Online, vol 11, no 3, 2006.

K interviewed by E, November 2003. 43.M interviewed by T, November 2003.44.Anne Karpf, ‘The human voice and the45.

texture of experience’, in this edition of OralHistory, pp 48-53.

Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual:46.Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham, NC:Duke University Press, 2002; Elspeth Probyn,‘Everyday shame’, Cultural Studies, vol 18, no2/3, 2004, pp 328-349; Grossberg, 1992.

Massumi, 2002.47.Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating48.

Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, London:Routledge, 2003.

Stephanie Baker, ‘The mediated crowd:49.new social media and new forms of rioting,’Sociological Research Online, vol 16, no 4,21, 2011.

Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and50.Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age,Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012.

Williams, 1965, p 63.51.Williams, 1965.52.Raymond Williams, ‘On Structure of53.

Feeling’, in Harding and Pribram, 2009, pp35-49 (p44).

Williams, 2009, p 47.54.Williams, 2009, p 47.55.Grossberg, 2010, p 318. 56.The UK riots took place between 6 and57.

12 August 2011. Reading the Riots.Accessed online at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdf, 27 January 2014.

Twenty-nine-year-old Mark Duggan was58.shot on suspicion of handling a gun and waskilled by police in Tottenham, north London,UK, on 4 August 2011. News spread quicklyand on 6 August about 300 people gatheredoutside Tottenham police station to protest atthe shooting and demand justice. The protestlater developed into a major disturbance astwo police cars were attacked and set alightand local shops were looted. Images ofburning police cars and looting werecirculated via social media and more peoplearrived to join in. Disturbances involvingarson, looting and destruction of policeproperty followed in other London boroughsand other UK towns and cities (Birmingham,Manchester, Salford, Nottingham andLiverpool).

The Guardian, Paul Lewis, Tim Newburn59.and Dan Roberts, Reading the Riots:Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder,London: Guardian Books, iPad edition, 2011,p 21.

The Guardian, Lewis, Newburn and60.Roberts, 2011, p 21.

See Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul,61.The Shaping of the Private Self, secondedition, London and New York: FreeAssociation Books, 1999. Rose uses the term‘psy’ to refer to psychology and relateddisciplines and expertise. He argues that psynot only refers to ideas, cultural beliefs andspecific practice but also plays a significantrole in contemporary forms of political power(p vii).

The CASS Faculty of Art Architecture and62.Design is one of the four academic faculties atLondon Metropolitan University.

VADS [web page]. Accessed online at63.www.vads.ac.uk/collections/EEP.html, 28 April2014; Jenny Harding, ‘The Eastender ArchiveProject’, Activate3, 2007, pp 2-3.

Address for correspondence: j.harding@londonmet.ac.uk

www.vads.ac.uk/collections/EEP.htmlhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots(published).pdfwww.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FEwww.youtube.com/watch?v=qOC7qfv90FE