Trying to find a single word that best encapsulates the research that Pearl Jephcott undertook, and her research ‘style’, has been quite hard. Variously we have described it as ‘innovative’ and even ‘Millsian’. However neither of these terms do the work justice. Pearl’s work is, of course, innovative and she was a methodological innovator in the true sense of the word. She used a wide range of methods within and across her various research projects seemingly testing, adapting and refining as she went along. If one method did not work she moved onto the next. Yet innovation is only one aspect. Millsian does not quite do it either. We have used Millsian as Pearl, as Mills advocates in The Sociological Imagination (1958) ‘kept files’ and her archived materials are as detailed as they are extensive. We have also argued in this blog that her work was ‘Millsian’ in the sense through her research ‘speak the politics of truth to power’ (see Mills 2008[c1944]). Jephcott’s concerns were fundamentally for the individuals who she had researched and portrayed in her writings. Yet again these are only aspects of her research. More broadly it is impossible to delineate Pearl’s work tightly in terms of ‘theme’ – she writes about youth but is not a youth studies scholar in the strict sense of word. She cannot be confined to a single thematic strand as she had such a wide range of interests and preoccupations.
So we came up with JEPHCOTTIAN – the features of which we outline in the slide below and which seem central to her sociological pratice.
For many the area of Notting Hill has become synonymous with urban gentrification, the ‘romantic comedy’ as well as the internationally renowned annual August carnival. Yet long before the London riots of 2011, or the inner city riots of the early 1980s, this area of North Kensington became synonymous with the race riots of 1958. Local ‘teddy boys’, inspired not least by a resurgent whiff of fascism, attacked members of the expanding black community. The riots themselves have been well documented and subject to much discussion (see below) yet one now largely forgotten exploration of the causes of these riots is well worth revisiting. Pearl Jephcott’s ‘A Troubled Area: Notes on Notting Hill’ is a detailed consideration of ‘the causes of the general malaise of North Kensington’ (Jephcott 1964:18). Jephcott worked on the research from 1st May 1962 to November 1963. The City Parochial Fund funded the…
As we have suggested (Goodwin and O’Connor 2013b) our first encounter with Pearl Jephcott was not a direct one. We were not aware of her books, beyond the occasional citation, and we were certainly unaware of the sheer breadth and depth of Jephcott’s contribution to British social science. We became interested in Jephcott be cause of her apparent links to Leicester via the Married Women Working research or what in Leicester became to be known locally as ‘the married women project’. Although not a well-known research collaboration there are tantalising references to this research in the literature. For example, as Smith (1961) reports:
One of the striking aspects of Pearl Jephcott’s archive in the University of Glasgow Library is the breadth and depth of her research activity. For her seminal study on high-rise living, ‘Homes in High Flats’, Pearl carried out extensive research on the development of tower blocks in the UK and overseas. Her archive contains numerous folders filled with articles, photographs and maps of high rise living ‘from places such as far apart as Melbourne, Philadelphia, Caracas, Prague and Moscow’ (Jephcott, 1971:2). Maps are a regular feature of her work and it is no surprise that as part of her study of high-rise flats in Glasgow Pearl began by carrying out a mapping exercise illustrating the locations of the new housing developments. The map featured in this blog is taken from her archive and shows how she used the city map to indicate new housing developments that…
Pearl Jephcott - Gender, Youth, Community, Methodology and More 