The University of Sheffield. School of Architecture. ARC6853 Theory and Research in Design. January Submitted by. Name: Reza Fallahtafti

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1 The University of Sheffield School of Architecture ARC6853 Theory and Research in Design January 2011 Submitted by Name: Reza Fallahtafti MA Architectural Design Registration No:

2 Introduction This paper will discuss, draw comparisons and criticises two talks which were delivered in At Home Forum held in the University of Sheffield, school of architecture, on November The first talk is about artefacts of identity and narratives of migration in Pakistani origin families living in Rotherham and the second one is about Irish- Romanian homes and sensation of home amongst Romanians migrated to Ireland. These two talks are chosen due to a quite similar theme they both discuss and quite different methodologies they employ to approach the subject. First each talk will be discussed in separately and comparisons and similarities are explained in the following paragraphs. Artefacts of Identity and Narratives of Migration: A study of home artefacts in Rotherham (Kate Pahl) Kate talked about families that have migrated from Pakistan about 60 years ago and now she is researching about the artefacts that have remained or have been inherited from the previous generation and the narratives and the stories behind them. She also discusses day to day objects such as a suitcase that signify a story. She redelivers these stories in an exhibition with help of the families in an inclusive approach. Kate s research question is as following : 1. What artefacts were important to families of Pakistani origin living in Rotherham? 2. How did these artefacts instantiate identify narratives? Study of home artefacts.

3 Her theoretical point of view towards her research was quite clear. Ethnographic approach Mapping the community through use of cameras and art work Reflexive voice, continual discussion with families Zahir Rafiq as advisor to the project helped with trust in the community Research group is consisted of a multi-admini partners including : University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, Creative Partnerships, Clifton Park Museum Rotherham, Rotherham Central Sure Start, Ferham School. Research group is based on a Community context. In community context, research project is not conducted by a person and everything is about a network and part of the methodology is to understand part of this network; for example, you walk into a library and know librarians of the community champion most of the people that come. It is maybe called outreach different cultures community development rather than a research. As she herself mentioned in her talk, a very important factor in ethnographic approach is size of the site which can be a community, a street, a family, etc, and to return over and over to the site to observe the specificities of the site. 1 Method : She started her ethnographic approach by doing several sets of interviews, but changed it to conversation with a purpose during the research project. She already had an interview with a woman called Roxana but the tape recorder did not work and she is pleased of that. She went back and rediscussed some of the themes that had come up from the first interview. Some of the key themes that came up from the interviews are : gold, textile, travel, family values, toys, growing up in Rotherham, weddings. 2 Therefore, if we put her interview method steps in order, it would be : 1,2 Kate Pahl, The case of the disappearing object: a study of home artefacts in Rotherham, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12 th November 2010

4 Idea returning to the space leave go back (home is a site to revisit) The project also has a participatory section that engaged families themselves with some activities : Women s art project, based at Rotherham Central Sure Start, a family learning project, recruited women from the community into the project, created artwork focused on identity and community, including self-portraits and mapping community Visual artist, Zahir Rafiq, worked with children from Ferham school in a series of art workshops, created website for schools and families with children, funded by Creative Partnerships Ethnographic interviews in homes by researchers, Kate Pahl and Andy Pollard who also curated the exhibition with Zahir Rafiq as advisor and designer Exhibition and website created March April 2007 Most of the objects shown in the exhibition came from homes of the families, some of them were lost and had to be duplicated, some of them that were valuable were photographed. They didn t just take objects, families were part of the exhibition, they discussed very closely with families what object to select, they helped write labels, etc. 3 If we summarise her research process, we will have : Her theoretical frame work starts with : Material culture studies Relationship between objects and cultural practice Relationship between narratives and material objects Timescale and objects 3 Kate Pahl, The case of the disappearing object: a study of home artefacts in Rotherham, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12 th November 2010

5 The process of the research from applying methods to outcome : Source: Tate pahl.ppt She started with interviewing families, she drew some codes from interviews and decoded the codes, she took those the codes back to the families and created the boxes from the themes ( exhibition ).

6 She talks about a suitcase that Roxana s father took with himself everywhere that he went; Pakistan, China, Kuwait, New York, Afghanistan, and Rotherham. The other families might have had a similar story before settling down in Rotherham. I believe it might have been very useful approach if she had mapped the places to which the families have been before migrating to Rotherham. This mapping could be done for the objects as well; For instance, what places these objects in the exhibition have been to before being displayed in the exhibition. Besides, she clearly talks about objects, stories and narratives behind them in short timescales and long timescales, but she only discusses about objects that were inherited from previous generation, or objects that was taken from Pakistan. They are not Pakistani families anymore, they are British-Pakistani families (as she mentioned in the research topic) but British part has been omitted in this research. She could also talk about objects that have entered into their life after their migration to the UK, such as British-specific objects that have become part of their home during this years or maybe how the Pakistani objects and the British objects are integrated in their life. Can we now demarcate between their Pakistani life and British life? She said British- Asian people but only studied their Pakistani part. That also might be a quite interesting topic for research. To recap, apart from the mapping that was pointed out earlier on, research methods were good, so was the research process. But it was not conclusive at all.

7 You should hear my cousin scream in the shower Sensation of home among Irish- Romanians (Adam Drazin) Adam s research studies notions of Irish-Romanian home in terms of routines and rhythms of life through the day, and also binary opposition of home against work. The method has been ethnographic, definitely 'participant observation', and this means that the best research questions often change - by trying to spend time with people, and fit into their lives, researcher finds out whether his initial questions are valid, or whether more interesting issues emerge for people, to produce an account which incorporates both informants' own perspectives and paradigms, and the anthropologist's. 4 The initial questions regarded intentionality, openness and material culture. People who move from Romania to Ireland do not have a clear and concise way of phrasing their 'future' in words; but objects are one way in which people do negotiate futures. For example, buying a house, a car, or a cup of coffee is in each case a projection into a future for a certain period of time, of an idea of certain relationship or exchange. So by looking at the material forms of 'home', we might interpret how objects relate to futures for this particular group of people. Secondly, the way in which 'futures' have been negotiated since 1990 in Europe and eastern Europe is through the idea of an 'open society' - that is, in the wake of communism, a range of projects were established to build 'open' societies involving free discourse, critique and political expression. So the second area of interest was how people live 'openness' - and to look at Romanian ideas of being 'open' as Romanians, and having 'open homes'; and look at Irish media discourses of being 'open' through talk. The project aimed to bring together these two areas, looking at futures and openness through domestic material culture. 5 4,5 Adam Drazin, Irish-Romanian Homes Question, to Reza Fallahtafti, 11 th January 2011

8 Adam discussed three different elements of his research that is writing for a book at the moment : 1. Take a critical look at the material culture of migration : small, mobile objects or immense, impassable ones? he compares his work with Kate s research and a lot of works on migration which look at very small, mobile objects, hidden things and documents. He declares that he is not working on objects in homes (as Kate did) but the home itself An understanding of home as an interface, like a sensation, as an alternative to a place... sensations of home and recurring themes of draft of hot and cold, the feeling of being in Ireland with humidity that a lot of people talk about it.this is something that can be seen as a Romanian characteristic. Ethnic narratives of being Romanian can be drawn out of this. He discusses that it is quite different in the Irishman scape that what is Ireland like, what is humidity in Ireland, etc. 7 This is where the anthropology of uncertainty comes in - material forms are often unequivocally seen as stable, certain, and social life often seen as a quest towards certainty. But there are physical forms which are about uncertainty, and social lives which focus on uncertainty more than certainty. One way of looking at the Irish-Romanian home involves the paradoxes of ideas about social life and 'integration'. Many people from Romania are keen to integrate, indeed to leave Romania, never return, and become something else. The expectation of socialising in Romania is in the home (domestic hospitality, openness); but in Ireland it is in public (pubs, workplaces; few people invite you home, it is even avoided); this leads to a situation where the Irish-Romanian home is in some senses consciously divorced from those places where people are trying to actually integrate and socialise; an awareness of the 'outside', as you are in the home. 8 6,7 Adam Drazin, You should hear my cousin scream in the shower Sensation of home among Irish-Romanians, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12th November Adam Drazin, Irish-Romanian Homes Question, to Reza Fallahtafti, 11 th January 2011

9 3. Migration as a moment of immobility...the moment that you realise that you are migrant. It is often a moment of immobility, it is in fact the moment that you realise you can t go back. 9 His research method is a bit different from Kate s. He himself lived in Romania for several years and has a good feeling of the ambiance; the scent of perfume, the presence of toiletries in the shops, the feeling of clothes washed with starchy homemade soaps, or changing fabrics against the skin 10. His initial method involved networking in order to talk with people from different backgrounds, in two stages: looking at home in Romania, home in Ireland, and future homes; and where possible, being invited to peoples' actual homes to try to record the actual objects. 11 The approach and methodology that he employed to do his research is quite interesting, but unlike Kate that has followed a very organised research method, his work in terms of research process was very unclear and ambiguous. He acted as an observer amongst Romanians, but could, like what Kate did, arrange a kind of participating activity to engage Romanians in it. An activity or exhibition or something else that has come from a Romanian mind that has an Irish-Romanian essence. Maybe he could also do the same as what Kate did that is conversation with purpose or even use some sets of questionnaires to get his work more organised. His work was more or less like a story of an engagement with Romanians in the past several years in Romania and Ireland at not conclusive at all. A survey of people as a site (like Kate) that have migrated to Ireland. It might have been also interesting if he had done some mappings. He talked about some Romanians that have been to Spain before coming to Ireland and it is a very interesting case to prepare a diagram of their way to Ireland. And he could also spot the places in Romania that people are coming from and places in Ireland that people choose to work in. This can lead to a very useful conclusion. 9 Adam Drazin, You should hear my cousin scream in the shower Sensation of home among Irish- Romanians, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12th November Adam Drazin, Work in Romania, Adam Drazin s web page < 29 December 2010] para 1 of Adam Drazin, Irish-Romanian Homes Question, to Reza Fallahtafti, 11 th January 2011

10 His research unlike a lot of migration studies that discuss mobile objects (and also artefacts that Kate did research about), explains different types of life styles in Romania and Ireland, how Romanians adapt themselves to Irish lifestyle and how much they tried to preserve their own habits, different essence of a Romanian home, Irish home and Irish-Romanian home and this is a major difference between Kate s work and Adam s work. Conclusion Having analysed two different approaches to a research project, it can be understood: There is absolutely not a fixed framework of doing research. In some cases, such as Adam s case, research question may vary and more interesting issues emerge as the project progresses. Choosing different methodology can lead to employ different methods and consequently it totally changes the way research goes. Participating with people is the key to a prosperous research project and any other discipline such as architecture that involves with people. When working with people, it is necessary to engage them in activities and let them have their word. Building a network is a quite useful method of doing an anthropological research. A network of families, communities, friends, etc.

11 Bibliography Kate Pahl, The case of the disappearing object: a study of home artefacts in Rotherham, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12th November 2010 Adam Drazin, You should hear my cousin scream in the shower Sensation of home among Irish-Romanians, talk delivered at school of architecture, 12th November 2010 Adam Drazin, Irish-Romanian Homes Question, to Reza Fallahtafti, 11th January 2011 Drazin, Adam, Work in Romania, Adam Drazin s web page< 29 December 2010]