Sociology of Everyday Life in the Past and Future Uses of the Mass Observation Project: Methodology, Materiality and Personal Life

This article, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sociological Research Online, explores the sociological uses of the Mass Observation Project (MOP) for the study of everyday life. Mass Observation has been entangled with British sociology since the growth of the movement in the early 20th century, but has found most use as an archive for historians. After a hiatus in the mid-20th century, MO was renewed in the 1980s, with a new panel of respondents, as the Mass Observation Project. Directives for MOP started to come from sociologists in the 1990s, and following a series of digitisation efforts, the MOP has found increasing use in contemporary sociology. The article reviews some of the ways in which MOP has been written about in Sociological Research Online. It explores thinking on qualitative methodology and the particularities of mass observation data; material culture in and of the archive; and family and personal life. We explore and reflect upon the disconnection between publishing on mass observation as a methodology, and using mass observation data to explore sociological themes, arguing for a more synthetic approach that understands the value of the archive’s nature in understanding sociological issues. We conceptualise this as ‘dual materiality’ and conclude by posing some questions about the sociological futures of Mass Observation.