Time, Place and Understanding

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Time, Place and Understanding

• Kate Moles
• Cardiff University
• molesk_at_cf.ac.uk

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What is place?

• the fish dont talk about the water
• Cresswell (2000)

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Time in a research setting

• Time and place
• Timespace
• Rhythm
• Fieldwork and time
• Traces

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Young People and Place

• Ethnographic research
• Young peoples understanding and use of public
  and private spaces in their community in the
  South Wales valleys
• In media res
• Evolving relationships/ evolving methods
• Different times and places of the research

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The times and places of the research

• Schools
• Youth clubs
• The street
• Skate park

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Three layers of temporality

• Participants accounts
• Time in a research setting
• The rhythms of research

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Participants accounts

• How the temporal is used to order accounts of the
  young peoples interactions with place
• Places as temporal, subject to change, fluid and
  linked to past-places and future-places
• Place as a verb, not a noun

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Aged places

• Participant up there up by the fence thats
  where the jumps were
• KM yes
• P so youd turn sharp and jump them
• KM thats brilliant
• P cos they were massive
• KM and who did that, you and what other boys?
• P ah it was like older boys who built them
• KM mm?
• P it was older boys who built them first
• KM yes
• P its like...the older boys built them and then
  we just started using them after and
• KM yes
• P and they like didnt want to go up there
  anymore cos they were like going to better places

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Times of the day

• Participant I go down there every now and again
  like with my friends like in the morning
• Interviewer yes, yes, yes
• P cos like the adults the older boys dont come
  down till like 2 oclock
• I ok
• P so its like all right till then
• I ok so weekends on the morning
• P yes
• I would you go before school?
• P yes...no I dont go before school
• I no, that would be too early would it?
• P yes!
• I (laughs) so ok so in the morning youd go down
  there, but not in the evening or afternoons at
  the weekend
• P no like when in the Christmas holidays when I
  had a new bike me and my cousin and my friend
  used to go down there like at 8 oclock in the
  morning so there was no-one, wed learn new stuff
  it would be empty and like no-one would come down
  till like 12 oclock something like that so wed
  have a couple of hours on our own
• I yes as soon as others arrive you just leave do
  you?
• P yes

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• Places are not made up of simple linear
  histories, which stretch from the past in smooth
  lines towards a vanishing point in the far off
  future. Histories scrumple up, times past pop
  into the present, modifying them for all time.
  Places in the present wobble as stories from
  the future and the past shimmer in front of them
  
• (Battista et al, 2005 439)

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Historically connected/ contemporarily
disconnected places

• BD Mme hmm. How come you go down to Ponty?
• Res Cos, well, cos you can only go down to
  Ponty. You cant go up to like Neath or Swansea
  up there. You cant because of the like tracks
  being taken apart so you can only go down west at
  Cardiff, Newport and up to Bristol then and down
  that way. You cant go up to the opposite
  direction. You can go down to Cardiff. Um, I
  dont know why, it hasnt been there for. They
  took the track out about twenty odd years ago.
• BD Aha
• Res So you cant go to Swansea or Neath or
  Brecon. You know, you go to Cardiff. The tracks
  obviously not there. The track stops in nearby
  townit is.

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Generational difference

• Becca was up at her nans house interviewing her
  mum for the other project, so I came in with S.
  Once inside, SD checked her mum was ok, went over
  to her, hugged her, and having seen she was,
  visibly relaxed. We went through into the kitchen
  where she showed me her two kittens, Axel and
  Rose. We chatted a bit about the kittens and
  about the big boxer dog that her nan had who was
  prowling around the kitchen, before heading back
  into the living room to sit in on Beccas
  interview. S began adding to this interview a
  bit. Ss nan came in then, from being out
  shopping. A beautiful older lady, she came in and
  they all began reminiscing about how town had
  changed, across their three generations living
  there. The differences were big when Ss nan
  was younger town had been at the centre of the
  valleys a cultural and shopping centre, where
  people had travelled to from across the valleys.
  Ss mum had remembered being brought there as a
  child, but had witnessed its demise during her
  time living here. S was a bit shocked at how it
  had been, saying there was nothing here nowTheir
  experiences of town were quite different, as
  were their location within it and relationship to
  it. For Ss nan, town had been a position from
  which she could travel from, somewhere she felt
  enabled her to do things from. It was a place
  that people traveled to, knew about, somewhere
  significant, which empowered her. For S and her
  mum, it wasnt like that it was somewhere they
  were trapped, even though they both felt it had
  lots of positives.

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• B Well I am not from town, but as a child I
  used to come up here. I used to- this used to be
  our day out, town park- oh, brilliant. Dad used
  to take me to town park. Do you know what I
  mean, because like we were over in other town,
  and there is no big parks or things like that
  like innit, and it used to be a big special
  event- erm, so we used- yeah, the area have
  changed a bit. I mean, there was a lot, I
  remember a market in market street down in town,
  and there is no market there now, used to be an
  outdoor market and there used to be a lot of
  events over here. As a child I can sort of
  remember always coming, there would be something
  happening, you know, there would be some sort of
  eventtown has been killed by another town
• A Yeah
• C town is boring

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Amount of time in a research setting

• Fieldwork takes time. Does that make time the
  central attribute to fieldwork? According to
  ethnographic tradition, the answer is yes
• (Wollcott, 1995 77)

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Amount of time in a research setting

• Just hanging around
• Spending time in the setting
• Understanding the interactions and rules of
  engagement through spending more time there
• Emic categories for example the Red Steps

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• Fieldnotes A group of girls appeared at the
  window of the youth centre. They were from
  nearby town, the blonde girl said, and were
  here to drink. We sprung into action, putting on
  our coats, turning on our GPS tracking. At first,
  because they were hanging out just by the youth
  centre, we walked the other way but then we went
  back and they were talking to blonde girl. They
  were trying to find out where the red steps were,
  and we approached them, Emma explaining that we
  wanted to know where that was as well. They were
  cagey, thought we were police, when we explained
  we werent that we were interested in what they
  did and where they went they giggled nervously.
  They werent too interested in engaging, sizing
  us up a bit. We wandered off towards the red
  steps they werent waiting to find out where the
  red steps are, they were trying to get drink and
  couldnt head up until then. We took photos of
  the stairwell that there had been kids singing on
  the top of when wed walked past before, and
  photos of the red steps that were deserted.
  However, we saw a man walking up the red steps,
  over a bridge behind them into the country park,
  carrying a big bag full of stuff. From the looks
  of it he was doing a drink run, bringing the
  requests to the young people. We walked up over
  the bridge a little and saw lots of young people,
  two distinct groups that we saw. We left them be.
  We head back into town, walked down towards the
  tescos, where there were the rows of parked up
  cars. About five of them were in a row We walked
  past them, through McDonalds, and headed back
  into town. As we walked back towards the youth
  centre, we met the nearby town girls again.
  They hadnt made it to the red steps yet, or
  beyond, and they hadnt the got their drink yet.
  We spoke to them a little while, asked how they
  got there theyd had a lift off the mother of
  one of them. We thought theyd maybe driven, but
  they laughed at that, if we had a car do you
  think wed be hanging around here?. While we
  were talking to them, two girls approached with a
  six pack of 2 litre bottles of white lightening.
  And the girls who were there initially said they
  werent theirs, and then one of the girls
  carrying the bottles called them over to retrieve
  it. They headed off towards the red steps.

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Rhythms of the research

• every rhythm implies the relation of a time with
  a space, a localised time, or if one wishes, a
  temporalised place
• Lefebvre (1996 230)

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Rhythms of the Young People

• INT Gosh. Theres so many things that have
  happened to you that its quite a striking story
  dont you think? Its a little bit different from
  the way other people are brought up.
• RES I dont know because Ive moved from place
  to place because I was born in area 1 and my
  first house was in area 1 but then my mum
  argued with this woman and this woman threatened
  her if she didnt leave area 1 shed kill her
  so shes bit of a psycho so we moved to area 2
  where my dads father was living and he hadnt
  seen him for almost like twenty odd years until
  one day grampy knocks on the door. I love my
  grampy but my dad hates him so its a kind of
  difficult relationship. Erm I havent spoken to
  my gran in over two years because shes a
  horrible bitch and we ended up having a massive
  fight and it all came out that when I was little
  she told my mum the river was down and she
  pointed towards the river. And then we found that
  out and then I had a massive fight with her I
  told her to never speak to me again and the only
  time I wanna see you is when youre dead. I never
  look back actually because my gran bullied my
  mother.

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• Fieldnotes I then drove up to place in town
  to meet S. As I parked up her, a boy who she held
  hands with briefly and a girl who lives just
  across the road from her came up from the house.
  S wasnt catching my eye. She said she didnt
  think shed do it today, that she thought she
  might go and see her Nan instead. I said that was
  fine did she want me to give her a lift to go
  and see her Nan? Her and the girl giggled, and S
  said that was fine, she needed to get ready. S
  wasnt engaging with me, she wasnt catching my
  eye, and had a different sense about her than
  before, when it was just the two of us. I asked
  her how the new school was and she said it was
  scrubbing, I hate it. I said Id get in touch
  next week to arrange to meet up again and she
  said yeaaa, fine and headed back into her house.

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Mixing up the rhythms

• Fieldnotes When we got to the youth centre,
  after a brief detour to a costumes shop for plans
  about weds, it was shut. There was a sign up from
  the guy who sells gold there normally, saying he
  hadnt known it was going to be shut either, and
  explaining where you could contact him. we were a
  bit lost, didnt expect that. We walked back to
  the car, parked in tescos, dumped our stuff and
  tried to get in touch with L and C. Neither were
  around, and so we decided to go for a walk.

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Removing (b)orders
the field is produced (not discovered) through
the social interactions engaged in by the
ethnographer. The boundaries of the field are
not given. Atkinson (1992)
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Considerations

• Places are constructed through the narratives of
  the participants
• Places are a combination of different traces
  (material, social and cultural from the past,
  present and future realandimagined)
• We, as researchers, construct the places we study
  through our interactions with them and the
  participants