Mass-Observation

First conceived of by a trio of strong personalities in January 1937 – Charles Madge (1912–1996), Humphrey Jennings (1907–1950), and Tom Harrisson (1911–1976) – the Mass-Observation (M-O) movement mobilized participant-observers across Britain to observe and to document everyday life. At its best, M-O exemplified the fruitful intersection of various emerging disciplines in the humanities and social sciences at mid-century, including public survey methodology, popular cultural studies, everyday life studies, participant observation techniques, behavioral science, and film aesthetics (particularly documentary film).

Precisely because its early leadership presented a broad range of emerging competencies and interests, M-O’s operational stances were not required to harden into specific ideologies or preferred methods. Madge, for example, considered himself foremost a poet; prior to M-O he was, for a time, a Communist-inspired reformer who wrote upon the earliest impacts of French...