Since the early 2000s, I have devoted considerable time to reworking, reconsidering, and revisiting legacy studies in sociology. Be it Elias, Jephcott, or many others, one of the things that intrigues me is the connections between academics and academic communities. Of course, at the time of the studies that interest me – 1940s-1960s – the sociological academic community was much smaller, and one might expect closer connections, especially for those working in cognate areas. It is interesting how often the same names appear in correspondence and writing – connections of direct and indirect. For example, Richard Titmuss ‘managed’ Pearl Jephcott at the time of Married Women Working. Titmuss then ‘offered’ that project to Neustadt for a replication in Leicester – although it was not his to give1. Jephcott and Carter wrote the Societal Background to Delinquency, one of the few printed copies of which ended up at Leicester and clearly offered some inspiration for The Established and the Outsiders2. Giddens and Mackenzie’s (1982) Neustadt’s festschrift also contains a dedication to T. H. Marshall… it goes on.
However, one area that, for me, still remains a surprise is how these connections intersect, adjoin, or overlap with my own biography. For example, I was a sociology undergraduate at Loughborough. The founding Head and Professor of the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University from 1966 until his retirement in 1984 was Albert Cherns. Albert Cherns worked for the Department for Scientific and Industrial Research in the 1960s and was the main point of contact for Elias and Neustadt on the Young Worker Project. I was taught at Loughborough by Teresa Keil, and she also supervised mt undergraduate dissertation. Teresa was a researcher on the Young Worker Project, and it was Teresa who recommended I go to Leicester to do a PhD. Teresa’s husband, Ian Keil, also taught me at Loughborough. When starting work on the restudy of the Young Worker Project, I literally bumped into Tereas at a British Sociological Association Conference. She said she knew that someone would eventually return to the Young Worker Project, but she could never have predicted it would be me. She wrote
No need to tell you that NE [Norbert Elias] and that project arouse strong feelings… (personal correspondence Keil/Goodwin 30th May 2000)
Teresa’s concerns expressed here are worth noting. Not all of these academic connections and collaborations were straightforward, easy, or free from conflict. Oakley’s (2014) Father and Daughter offers clear examples of this. Instead, the connections speak to the academic and gender politics of academic work, the challenges of fieldwork, and the complexities of academic coproduction.
References
Elias, N. and Socoston, J. (1965). The Established and the Outsiders. London. Cass.
Giddens, A. and Mackenzie, G. (1982). Social class and the division of labour: essays in honour of Ilya Neustadt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jephcott, P. with Seear, N., and Smith, J.H. (1960). Woman, Wife and Worker. H.M.S.O., London – Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
Oakley, A. (2014). Father and Daughter: Patriarchy, Gender and Social Science, Bristol: Policy Press.
Notes
1. Goodwin, J. Married Women Workers in 1950s Bermondsey and Leicester: A Tale of Two Projects, forthcoming.
2. Goodwin, J. Social Pathologies of Delinquency. The Social Background of Delinquency (1954) versus The Established and the Outsiders (1965) – paper proposed for the conference “Social Pathologies: Developmental and Processual Perspectives on Contemporary Malaises”, to be held at University College Cork, Ireland, from 2–5 December 2026.
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