Page - 220 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 material, economic, andpolitical aspectsof formallyorganized shared reading, or,MassReadingEvents (MREs). Asresearcherswhoareintriguedbytheusesthatpeoplemakeoftheirreading, especiallythewaysthattheymightchoosetoshare theirreading,MREsprovided an ideal objectof investigation.They take thepracticeof shared reading,which has a long history in the UK andNorth America, and repackage it as a con- temporary twenty-first-century cultural formation. The events require funding andgenerallyattractvarioustypesofprivateandpublicsponsorship;theyengage withdifferentmedia;andtheyattempttobesocially inclusive.7MREsgaveusan opportunity to investigate the meanings of reading in the early twenty-first century in three northern industrialised nation-states where, historically, dis- coursesof readingasbothcivilisingandliberatinghadshapedattitudes tobook reading.As a cultural formation thatwasmediated throughmassmedia, ideas about literary celebrity andother aspects ofpopular culture,wewanted to find outhowreaders andeventorganizersnegotiatedquestionsof literary taste and culturalvalue.Of thevariousmethodsweemployed,threewereaimedatreaders: participant observationof selectedMREevents; anonline questionnairewhich ran for five weeks in each field site and focus groups with readers who had participated inanMREand thosewhohadnot.8 Focusgroupsweredefinitely ‘notonmymap!’Assomeonetrainedoriginally in literary studieswhohad slipped sideways into cultural studies I had learned qualitative interviewing on the job as part ofmyPhDwork. But focus groups: were theynotpartofmarket research? Ihadoncebeen ina focusgroup for the SouthAsianArts groupSAMPADinBirmingham: the aimof itwashow toget BritishpeoplewhowerenotofSouthEastAsiandescenttogotomoreSAMPAD events.Weallgotfreeticketstoaperformance–minewasforKathakdance–and then I sat in a room in the contemporary art gallerywith otherwhite,middle- class,over-educatedpeoplediscussing issuesofsocial inclusion intheartswhile eatingupscalesnacks.Infact,ascontrivedandcontradictoryasthisexperienceof being in a focus group sounds, it turned out to be goodpreparation for using focusgroupsasaresearchmethod– includingtheinclusionofupscalesnacks(of which,more later). Although focus groups initially appeared tomyuntrained eye to be an effi- cientway of talking to several people at the same time, as Peek andFothergill point out “designing and implementing research that utilizes focus groups is often time consuming and requiresmuch forethought and skill.”9Fortunately, DeNelhadtheskillandpriorexperiencetoguideusintermsof thequestionswe 7 Fora full descriptionandhistoryofmass readingevents, see Ibid., p. 19ff. 8 Ibid., p. 259ff. 9 Peek/Fothergill2009,p. 35. DanielleFuller220 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0