Mass Observation Project

 The Economist Christmas issue of 18 December 2021 contains a delightful article on the above.

The project in question is a research project started by Prof. David Pocock, an anthropologist (specialization: Gujarati community)of University of Sussex, UK and it has continued after his retirement and even his death in 2007.

The objective of the project is to preserve for posterity the lives and views of common people. It also aims at tracking in microcosm the effects of political, economic and social changes in society. Prof. Pocock announced in New Society in 1981 that he was seeking correspondents from all walks of life, the more humdrum, the better. "The more ordinary people think they are, the more interesting their experience to us...All that is required is a willingness to write to us both about personal experience and things seen and heard in daily life."

Other professors raised questions about the lack of a sampling frame, questionnaires and context. Not rigorous research, they felt. Dr. Pocock ignored them. He was convinced that the material he would collect would help future historians to fill the gaps left by other studies and surveys and draw a full picture of our society and our times. He got very enthusiastic response from people.

Dr. Pocock would issue directives or topics for writing. He began with inflation and expanded the scope of subjects. He did not touch sex or intimate relations, however. An inmate of a prison - he had committed white collar crime - wrote regularly and he eventually became a prisons correspondent of The Guardian!

The university library has created special place for the archives of this project and other faculty members regularly bring their students to go through the letters. University of Sussex is known for its innovative and proactive approach to academic life.

Dorothy Sheridan who was Dr. Pocock's library assistant has continued the project and has expanded the scope of subjects or directives. About two-thirds of the writers are now women who write freely on topics considered taboo. During Covid 19 lockouts, the response went up considerably. 

MOP has been continued after the retirement of Ms. Sheridan. Respondent's interest has not abated. The idea that they are making or contributing to history tickles them and the archives keep growing.

Is this not better than the dry-as-dust sample surveys and number crunching in them that goes by the name of research in our universities? Nobody looks up the theses save an occasional PhD. student. They have no worth beyond the degrees they helped confer.