PhD Musings

Being A Punk versus Identifying WITH Punk Something that's come out of a few interviews and which I've now been incorporating into my future interview questions/themes is this idea of being a punk being quite distinct from identifying with punk. It's been interesting seeing whether people see this distinction as relevant to them and how they place themselves within it. At first I wasn't sure how much this related to my original research aims (particularly as I intended to be focusing on age/body with older punk women) but as I did say I was interested in identity then this seems central to this. Sampling I've been thinking more about the limitations of my sampling method recently - in that I am recruiting largely using online social media and perhaps this is cutting out potential participants if they don't use this. I've also been wondering whether I should speak to some younger females punks to act as a point of comparison. Perhaps this will depend on time. But it's something worth thinking more about.

PhD Musings: sampling, transcribing and facing up to my own opinions

Sampling

Recruiting participants for my research is still proving a little difficult and I need to consider how I'm going about this. My aim was to find participants through snowball sampling. Problem is, none of the participants so far have passed on any details of further possible participants. So the snowball element, not really happening. I need to think about why that might be the case. I've asked a facebook friend to pop a call out on their facebook zine page and perhaps I now need to consider further things along those lines. Or just get my ass out to gigs but then there's the issue of it being about me approaching people I think would be suitable. And also even deciding which gigs to go to in the first place involves my values/opinons/definitions. Besides, gig element might now have to wait until I've popped and bit later down line baby wise. So for the time being, some pestering (in the nicest way possible) of previous participants to consider anyone who might be interested and looking into further call out avenues as well as utilising any existing contacts I have who might be able to put me in touch with people.

Transcribing

So far I've transcribed three out of five interviews. I started the fourth this morning which feels it's going to be less time consuming then some of the others due to quality of the recording and the slower pace of conversation involved. Plan is to get these last two transcribed and get some analysis of my first five before the next supervisor meeting in six days time. And then that'll be my last meeting as I'll be on maternity leave, gulp. But I'm determined to keep interviewing/transcribing and analysing during my leave.

Facing up

An interesting emerging issue whilst listening back to interview has been my own value judgements I seem to bring to them concerning what punk is/isn't. I know that punk means different things to different people and I think I need to explore that more in my own research as sometimes something will come out in an interview which I don't think is relevant but then I have to keep stopping and reminding myself that that's their interpretation of punk which may or may not match my own. So this is something I'm finding quite interesting at the moment and hopefully something I can explore further.

Obligatory pregnancy aside, today marks 32 weeks! Check out the bumpage!

Post-Youth Punk Women

So as well as trying to be better at updating this blog, I'm now opening it up to include things related to my PhD and perhaps also my sociology teaching. Not that it's going to be that much of a divergence since gender is a prevailing issue within both. I'm in my second year of a part-time PhD in Sociology. The working title is Typical Girls? An Exploration of Post-Youth Punk Women 'Being' and 'Doing' Punk and I want to explore questions such as: How do ageing female punks maintain a punk identity? How is this punk identity expressed? How does a punk identity interact with an ageing identity and life events? What is the relationship between femininity, the body, ageing and 'being punk?' What, if any, significance does the internet/virtual communities hold for post-youth punks?

It's getting to the point now where beginning to actually do research is approaching and a main concern for me is the digital side of the research; how to go about it, whether it's going to be of any use. A second concern is actually finding post-youth punk women who are willing to talk to me! So these are issues I'm thinking about right now. Get in touch with anything you think might be of interest to me.