Overview

This ethnographic drama script is adapted from observations conducted in a large city centre library in the UK. The action focuses on the staff room in the library, where the fictionalised characters of four customer experience assistants, threatened with redundancy, take their lunch and tea breaks. The ethnographic drama is a creative curation of field notes, transcripts, audio recordings, video recordings, conversations and observations. It tells a story of political tension in everyday life at a time of austerity.

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9781800415171

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If Brecht had done ethnography, it might well have turned out like this. Blackledge and Creese have always put the human centre-stage, here literally so: fieldwork becomes playscript to explore contexts personal and political in ways both inspired and inspirational for anyone seeking new ways to do research. I can't wait for their next production! * Frank Monaghan, The Open University, UK * Carefully distilled from ethnographic data, a multivoiced scenario unfolds that vividly captures the liminal moment of the dismantling of a public sociocultural institution under the conditions of neoliberal policies. A riveting reading experience and a milestone in the quest for new ways of presenting research findings. * Brigitta Busch, University of Vienna, Austria * Blurring the personal and the political on the page as in life, this creative curation of ethnographic data captures people in the middle of life-changing events. From debating stroganoff recipes to political party leadership candidates, this drama of the everyday traces the human cost of the largest award-winning library in Europe disintegrating into a body without a soul. It's impossible not to be moved. * Maggie Kubanyiova, University of Leeds, UK *

Author Information

Adrian Blackledge is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Stirling, UK. He has published widely on both multilingualism and sociolinguistics. He was Birmingham Poet Laureate from 2014-2016. Angela Creese is Professor of Linguistic Ethnography at the University of Stirling, UK. She has published widely on multilingualism and ethnographic methods. Together with Adrian Blackledge she is the author of Voices of a City Market: An Ethnography (Multilingual Matters, 2019), Interpretations – An Ethnographic Drama (Multilingual Matters, 2021) and Volleyball – An Ethnographic Drama (Multilingual Matters, 2021).

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