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Integrated knowledges, integrated publics? classificatory practices, boundary crossings, and public space at The Hive, Worcester
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Quinn, Katherine (2019) Integrated knowledges, integrated publics? classificatory practices, boundary crossings, and public space at The Hive, Worcester. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3501241~S15
Abstract
This thesis is an ethnography of one library, The Hive (Worcester), and asks the question: What does the story and daily life of The Hive tell us about the challenges facing public knowledge, public education and public space in Britain today? The study contributes to an understanding of public space in contemporary Britain through an exploration of this simultaneously unique and emblematic institution which sits at the meeting point of many other processes and institutions of public life.
As a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) between the University of Worcester and Worcestershire County Council, the library brings together two institutions of public life under one roof in an ambitious integration project. As such, it brings into proximity questions of public goods, public space and public education. The library therefore sheds light on the complexities and contradictions of appealing to groups like “the public” and “the university” in contemporary Britain. The ethnography examines this one project as a container of interlocking processes related to the privatisation of public space, education, and the library profession under the period of austerity.
My ethnography followed a slow and inventive methodology which focused on engagement with methods of dwelling, doodling and describing. In analysis, I engage with The Hive through three “lenses”: institutional, professional, and affective. I argue that threads of classification and classificatory practices interplay with ideas of “worth” throughout these lenses, at the levels of policy, work practices, and encounter on the library floor. As such, one of the thesis’ contributions is to our understanding of public space as a site of negotiation.
My thesis further contributes to fields of sociology concerning public life, higher education, and ethnographic methodologies by engaging theories of affect and labour with an empirical study. By embracing messiness and rescinding control I argue it becomes possible to sense and explore how the ostensibly limiting structures that dominate public life – such as PFIs, Higher Education, Councils – interplay with affective encounters and events to create an institution with both hopeful and fractious affects.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z719 Libraries (General) |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Public spaces -- Social aspects -- England, Public libraries -- Social aspects -- England, Knowledge, Sociology of, Doodles -- Social aspects | ||||
Official Date: | September 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Pettinger, Lynne ; Lambert, Cath (Catherine Ruth), 1971- | ||||
Sponsors: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 222 leaves : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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