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An archive of feeling? Mass observation and the mid-century moment

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 02:39 authored by Claire Langhamer
This working paper has two objectives: one is methodological and the other is empirical. First it explores the issues at stake in accessing feelings in the past. How do historians ‘get at’ emotion and what feeling-evidence is available to us? Here I am particularly interested in identifying sources that allow access to the feelings of ‘ordinary’ people and to the messiness of everyday emotional life. I will focus in particular upon the material generated by the British social investigative organization – Mass Observation – in the middle years of the twentieth century. In the second part of the paper I will demonstrate how a small sample of this Mass Observation material – discursive responses to open ended questionnaires sent to a panel of volunteer writers in May and August 1945 – can be used to enhance our understanding of the British transition from war to peace. Specifically I will use Mass Observation material to illuminate the work that emotion did, and was called upon to do. I will argue that emotion-management was a powerful frame for individual as well as public reconstruction narratives; that individual feeling and experience was valorised within this context; and that an emerging ‘right to feel’ was an important aspect of a broader post-1945 rights discourse.

Funding

Institute of Advance Study Fellowship; G1520; DURHAM UNIVERSITY

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Insights

ISSN

1756-2074

Publisher

Durham University

Issue

4

Volume

9

Page range

1-15

Department affiliated with

  • History Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-08-30

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-08-30

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-08-29

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