Jon Dean
Biographic Data
| ID | 3692811 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jon Dean |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jon |
| FAMILY NAME | Dean |
| SIGNATURE | DEAN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sheffield Hallam University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3338-1957 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Researching Voluntary Action
The Good Glow
The Good Glow
We praise those people who do things for others. But the symbolic power of giving means individuals can take advantage of the glow of ‘goodness’ that charity provides. This book analyses the reality of how charity operates in the social world; how the personal benefits of giving and volunteering are vital for getting charitable acts to happen; how the altruism associated with gifts isn't always what it seems; how charity misbehaviour or bad manag…
Desert island data
The nature of qualitative research means that the personal values of an individual researcher can and do (unwittingly) shape the way in which they analyse data sets, and the resultant conclusions drawn. However this phenomenon is under-studied in social research and this article seeks to help rectify this. This article presents findings from a small research project focused on discourses of class, masculinity and work among British male comedians…
Reflexivity in the field
So far, our examination of reflexivity has stayed largely theoretical and structural. In focusing on Bourdieu, the feminist contribution to method, and various other examples, the previous chapters have sought to provide the reader with a concrete rationale for doing reflexivity, to highlight how it is a potentially political process within research, and to introduce some of the myriad ways it can emerge as a research issue. This chapter, however…
Putting yourself in? Bourdieu’s reflexive project
Bourdieusian reflexivity can be read first as the requirement for researchers to be aware of their own habitus, such as their own predispositions, knowledges, and competences while undertaking research, in order to produce if not objective, then honest and open research. This adherence to or belief in epistemic reflexivity is presented as a regulative idea which should undergird intellectual and methodological practice. For example, in The Weight…
Prelude
The reflexive me
To find the source of trouble we must look into our own heads. (Saul Bellow) In Shamus Khan’s (2011) research at St. Paul’s there was an instant where he went from being a figure of suspicion, to being accepted and rewarded with access. Khan only found himself on the side of his colleagues after several months in the field when he stood up to school management and demanded staff reject a new policy on grounds of academic inadequacy. By chance, it…
Conclusions
This concluding chapter seeks to do three main things. The issue of narcissism has arisen throughout this book, and it will be tackled head on, offering a stern rebuke to the accusation that at the root of reflexivity sits the researcher keen to do little more than talk about herself or himself. It will then ask how we can build spaces for reflexivity, looking at how the internet and the form and practice of academic writing and publishing can be…
Pierre Bourdieu and the development of theory
The goal of sociology is to uncover the most profoundly buried structures of the various social worlds which constitute the social universe, as well as the ‘mechanisms’ which tend to ensure their reproduction or their transformation. (Bourdieu, 1996: 1) This chapter serves to provide an overview of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological project: his focus on social and cultural inequality, his development of habitus as an explanation for the logic of pra…
Introduction
I know a scrupulous adherence to rules of method will not lead to objective truth. Surely this is in part because being a social scientist does not preclude having strong opinions, values, or feelings. But here it demands a willingness to be public about the way they affect one’s standards and the claims one makes. One of the great barriers to maintaining standards is the strong attachment one develops with one’s subjects, which can lead to emoti…
Standpoints, disciplines, spaces
In 2015, I published a piece of research on how potential charity donors see homeless people (Dean, 2015). Utilising a creative visual method of drawing, I gave participants pens and paper and asked them to ‘draw what homelessness looks like’. Their images overwhelmingly showed dishevelled men, sleeping rough or begging on the streets: stereotypical depictions of scenes of homelessness which we know represent only a small element of the huge and …
Prelude
Do not copy nature too much.Art is an abstraction
Desert Island discourses
In a recent study from fivethirtyeight.com, the analytical news website founded by the American statistician and election pollster Nate Silver (who famously correctly predicted the winner in 50 out of 50 states in the US Presidential election of 2012), the major discrepancies which can be found in quantitative research are made apparent. The study was part of a concerted effort by the science writer Christie Aschwanden (2015) to show how difficul…
Index
Coda
Coda: on writing in the social sciencesAcademic writers are often little more than figures of fun.Derided for the opacity of our jargon-filled prose, we swim often unnoticed at the shallow end of the literary pond.(Back, n.d.)The point of research is not to promote oneself narcissistically, or to further oneself -it is to gather and provide information which others may find interesting or useful.If that information is poorly communicated, in an i…
Doing reflexivity
Recruiting young volunteers in an area of selective education
This article presents findings from a small qualitative case study of a youth volunteering brokerage organisation in England, operating in an area of selective state education. Data show how brokerage workers felt grammar schools managed their students in a concerted way to improve students’ chances of attending university. Conversely, workers expressed difficulty in working with comprehensive schools, feeling they were less willing to utilise vo…
"Submitting Love?" A Sensory Sociology of Southbourne
This article seeks to remember the Southbourne building of Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom, which housed students, academics, and administrative staff until August 2014. Data were collected from an ethnographic observation study of students handing in completed coursework. Findings are presented in the form of an audio "soundscape" and a literary narrative. It is argued that these hypermodal tools should form a growing part of qualita…
Drawing What Homelessness Looks Like
This article presents findings from a creative qualitative study, where drawing was used as a methodological tool to investigate university students' awareness of homelessness. Previous research ( Breeze and Dean 2012 ; 2013) has shown that homelessness charities often utilise stereotypical images in their fundraising campaigns, focusing on the arresting issue of rough sleeping (rooflessness) as opposed to other, more widespread experiences of ho…
The Role of the Reflexive Self in Mailer's Proests
In The Armies of the Night (1968) and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968/2008) Norman Mailer details the exploits of the anti-Vietnam war protestors and his role in the protests. With an ethnographer’s eye for detail and a novelist’s eye for imagery, he constructs a picture of youthful fear and exuberance, a totalitarian reaction to protest, and documents an America which he realises is slowing eating itself. In these nonfi ction novels, he pla…
Manufacturing Citizens
Foucault's governmentality framework perceives the policy process as one of steering citizens into uncontroversial behaviors. This article argues that the call to create a "Big Society" of volunteering and engagement in the UK is a natural extension of such governmental practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews with volunteering professionals in England, the article analyzes the creation and implementation of youth volunteering policy, asking …
Doing reflexivity
Desert island data
The nature of qualitative research means that the personal values of an individual researcher can and do (unwittingly) shape the way in which they analyse data sets, and the resultant conclusions drawn. However this phenomenon is under-studied in social research and this article seeks to help rectify this. This article presents findings from a small research project focused on discourses of class, masculinity and work among British male comedians…
Drawing What Homelessness Looks Like
This article presents findings from a creative qualitative study, where drawing was used as a methodological tool to investigate university students' awareness of homelessness. Previous research ( Breeze and Dean 2012 ; 2013) has shown that homelessness charities often utilise stereotypical images in their fundraising campaigns, focusing on the arresting issue of rough sleeping (rooflessness) as opposed to other, more widespread experiences of ho…
"Submitting Love?" A Sensory Sociology of Southbourne
This article seeks to remember the Southbourne building of Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom, which housed students, academics, and administrative staff until August 2014. Data were collected from an ethnographic observation study of students handing in completed coursework. Findings are presented in the form of an audio "soundscape" and a literary narrative. It is argued that these hypermodal tools should form a growing part of qualita…
Manufacturing Citizens
Foucault's governmentality framework perceives the policy process as one of steering citizens into uncontroversial behaviors. This article argues that the call to create a "Big Society" of volunteering and engagement in the UK is a natural extension of such governmental practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews with volunteering professionals in England, the article analyzes the creation and implementation of youth volunteering policy, asking …
The Role of the Reflexive Self in Mailer's Proests
In The Armies of the Night (1968) and Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968/2008) Norman Mailer details the exploits of the anti-Vietnam war protestors and his role in the protests. With an ethnographer’s eye for detail and a novelist’s eye for imagery, he constructs a picture of youthful fear and exuberance, a totalitarian reaction to protest, and documents an America which he realises is slowing eating itself. In these nonfi ction novels, he pla…
Manufacturing Citizens
Foucault's governmentality framework perceives the policy process as one of steering citizens into uncontroversial behaviors. This article argues that the call to create a "Big Society" of volunteering and engagement in the UK is a natural extension of such governmental practices. Drawing on qualitative interviews with volunteering professionals in England, the article analyzes the creation and implementation of youth volunteering policy, asking …
Drawing What Homelessness Looks Like
This article presents findings from a creative qualitative study, where drawing was used as a methodological tool to investigate university students' awareness of homelessness. Previous research ( Breeze and Dean 2012 ; 2013) has shown that homelessness charities often utilise stereotypical images in their fundraising campaigns, focusing on the arresting issue of rough sleeping (rooflessness) as opposed to other, more widespread experiences of ho…
Recruiting young volunteers in an area of selective education
This article presents findings from a small qualitative case study of a youth volunteering brokerage organisation in England, operating in an area of selective state education. Data show how brokerage workers felt grammar schools managed their students in a concerted way to improve students’ chances of attending university. Conversely, workers expressed difficulty in working with comprehensive schools, feeling they were less willing to utilise vo…
"Submitting Love?" A Sensory Sociology of Southbourne
This article seeks to remember the Southbourne building of Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom, which housed students, academics, and administrative staff until August 2014. Data were collected from an ethnographic observation study of students handing in completed coursework. Findings are presented in the form of an audio "soundscape" and a literary narrative. It is argued that these hypermodal tools should form a growing part of qualita…
Reflexivity in the field
So far, our examination of reflexivity has stayed largely theoretical and structural. In focusing on Bourdieu, the feminist contribution to method, and various other examples, the previous chapters have sought to provide the reader with a concrete rationale for doing reflexivity, to highlight how it is a potentially political process within research, and to introduce some of the myriad ways it can emerge as a research issue. This chapter, however…
Putting yourself in? Bourdieu’s reflexive project
Bourdieusian reflexivity can be read first as the requirement for researchers to be aware of their own habitus, such as their own predispositions, knowledges, and competences while undertaking research, in order to produce if not objective, then honest and open research. This adherence to or belief in epistemic reflexivity is presented as a regulative idea which should undergird intellectual and methodological practice. For example, in The Weight…
Prelude
The reflexive me
To find the source of trouble we must look into our own heads. (Saul Bellow) In Shamus Khan’s (2011) research at St. Paul’s there was an instant where he went from being a figure of suspicion, to being accepted and rewarded with access. Khan only found himself on the side of his colleagues after several months in the field when he stood up to school management and demanded staff reject a new policy on grounds of academic inadequacy. By chance, it…
Conclusions
This concluding chapter seeks to do three main things. The issue of narcissism has arisen throughout this book, and it will be tackled head on, offering a stern rebuke to the accusation that at the root of reflexivity sits the researcher keen to do little more than talk about herself or himself. It will then ask how we can build spaces for reflexivity, looking at how the internet and the form and practice of academic writing and publishing can be…
Pierre Bourdieu and the development of theory
The goal of sociology is to uncover the most profoundly buried structures of the various social worlds which constitute the social universe, as well as the ‘mechanisms’ which tend to ensure their reproduction or their transformation. (Bourdieu, 1996: 1) This chapter serves to provide an overview of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological project: his focus on social and cultural inequality, his development of habitus as an explanation for the logic of pra…
Introduction
I know a scrupulous adherence to rules of method will not lead to objective truth. Surely this is in part because being a social scientist does not preclude having strong opinions, values, or feelings. But here it demands a willingness to be public about the way they affect one’s standards and the claims one makes. One of the great barriers to maintaining standards is the strong attachment one develops with one’s subjects, which can lead to emoti…
Standpoints, disciplines, spaces
In 2015, I published a piece of research on how potential charity donors see homeless people (Dean, 2015). Utilising a creative visual method of drawing, I gave participants pens and paper and asked them to ‘draw what homelessness looks like’. Their images overwhelmingly showed dishevelled men, sleeping rough or begging on the streets: stereotypical depictions of scenes of homelessness which we know represent only a small element of the huge and …
Prelude
Do not copy nature too much.Art is an abstraction
Desert Island discourses
In a recent study from fivethirtyeight.com, the analytical news website founded by the American statistician and election pollster Nate Silver (who famously correctly predicted the winner in 50 out of 50 states in the US Presidential election of 2012), the major discrepancies which can be found in quantitative research are made apparent. The study was part of a concerted effort by the science writer Christie Aschwanden (2015) to show how difficul…
Index
Coda
Coda: on writing in the social sciencesAcademic writers are often little more than figures of fun.Derided for the opacity of our jargon-filled prose, we swim often unnoticed at the shallow end of the literary pond.(Back, n.d.)The point of research is not to promote oneself narcissistically, or to further oneself -it is to gather and provide information which others may find interesting or useful.If that information is poorly communicated, in an i…
Doing reflexivity
Desert island data
The nature of qualitative research means that the personal values of an individual researcher can and do (unwittingly) shape the way in which they analyse data sets, and the resultant conclusions drawn. However this phenomenon is under-studied in social research and this article seeks to help rectify this. This article presents findings from a small research project focused on discourses of class, masculinity and work among British male comedians…
The Good Glow
The Good Glow
We praise those people who do things for others. But the symbolic power of giving means individuals can take advantage of the glow of ‘goodness’ that charity provides. This book analyses the reality of how charity operates in the social world; how the personal benefits of giving and volunteering are vital for getting charitable acts to happen; how the altruism associated with gifts isn't always what it seems; how charity misbehaviour or bad manag…
Researching Voluntary Action
Sociology (16 works) · Reflexivity (9 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Law (4 works)