AN INTERGENERATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF SCHOOL DISAFFECTION IN A POST-INDUSTRIAL COAL-MINING AREA.

The principal topic of this doctoral inquiry is an ethnographic examination of intergenerational experiences of educational ‘disaffection’ in four former Derbyshire coal mining communities during a period of de-industrialisation, exploring the intersection between education and aspects of class, gender, community, culture and history particular to those communities. A key focus is the investigation of school disaffection as an affective aspect of local historical geographies of resistance and conflict relating, in particular, to the 1984-85 miners’ strike.The inquiry makes an original contribution to knowledge in the following ways. First, by producing and analysing a 250,000 word data-base of ethnographic materials, it extends the empirical knowledge of lived experiences of educational disaffection in de-industrialised and post-conflict settings. Secondly, in disseminating related research products throughout the international research community, it establishes a case for seeing school disaffection as significantly related to affective contexts of class experience and thus makes a contribution to the international literature. Thirdly, it contributes to the development of an innovative interdisciplinary account of the social flows of affect as they impact on education. Fourthly, it contributes methodologically to the field of educational ethnography by proposing that the discernible impact of such flows of affect on young people’s educational identities necessitates a reimagining of the educational ethnographic project in line with the ‘affective turn’ (Clough, 2007) in social theory. Finally, it draws out some implications for youth support provision in de-industrialised and post-conflict communities by theorising a new form of critical intergenerational youth support practice.