In the footsteps of a quiet pioneer: revisiting Pearl Jephcott’s work on youth leisure in Scotland and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Pearl Jephcott’s (1967) research on Scottish teens, Time of One’s Own, is one of the first sociological studies of leisure in the postwar period. This research is remarkable not only for its emphasis on ‘ordinary’ young people but also for its ambitious and eclectic research design, which incorporates field research, sample surveys and task-based participatory methods. The (Re)Imagining Youth team revisited Jephcott’s Scottish research alongside her survey of The Situation of Children and Youth in Hong Kong (1971) as part of a contemporary study of youth leisure and social change. This paper outlines our attempt to reimagine Jephcott’s work for the contemporary context, highlighting the ways in which her method was both a product of its time and ahead of its time.


Introduction
In the mid-1960s, Pearl Jephcott was employed by the Department of Social and Economic Research at the University of Glasgow to lead a research project on how young people in Scotland used their spare time. The resultant publication, Time of One's Own, 1 captured the habits of fifteen to nineteen-year-olds at an important point in social (and sociological) history, a period characterized by increasing affluence, leisure time and the commercialization of youth culture. On leaving Glasgow in 1970, Jephcott then travelled to South East Asia to conduct a survey of The Situation of Children and Youth in Hong Kong for UNICEF. 2 Again this work was remarkably prescient, documenting the everyday lives of under-twenty-fives in the period between the 1967 youth riots and a subsequent series of wide-ranging social reforms.
From a sociological perspective, the existence of these previous studies, conducted in two very different cultural contexts, represents a rare opportunity to interrogate contemporary debates relating to youth culture, globalization, and social change. Within the field of youth studies, the changing nature of youth leisure has been widely discussed with recent writings exploring the impact of globalizing processes on young people's cultures and identities. 3 One of the central debates is 'the extent to which young people from different societies may be experiencing the increasing convergence of youth cultural practices or whether globalization is providing new tools to explore and promote distinct local cultures and social identities'. 4 The (Re)Imagining Youth team has recently completed a study of youth leisure in Glasgow and Hong Kong that sought to illuminate these issues, using Jephcott's original research as a starting point from which to explore continuity and change in two sites over time. There is very little comparative multi-sited research on youth leisure, and none that compares youth leisure across space and time. 5 Adopting a qualitative case study approach, (Re)Imagining Youth revisited one of three areas from Jephcott's Scottish study 6 and a Hong Kong fieldsite with matched demographic characteristics. In doing so, the study sought to retain the spirit of the original research while 'reimagining' Jephcott's work for a contemporary context. As the following article will demonstrate, working with Jephcott's research in this way not only contributed to our understanding of youth leisure in a changing world, but also sharpened our appreciation of the methodological challenges involved in developing such an understanding.
The paper has three broad aims. First, it offers an introduction to Jephcott's two studies, highlighting the most significant features of her scholarship-particularly her eclectic combination of field research, sample surveys and task-based participatory methods. The second aim is to situate Jephcott's practice in the context of developments in postwar British sociology, focusing particularly on the politics of method (as characterized by Savage 7 ). Finally, the paper discusses our attempt to reimagine Jephcott's work for the contemporary context, taking into account subsequent developments in sociological research practice. In doing so, it endeavours to show the benefits of adopting a historical sensibility in sociological research, specifically the value of revisiting the work of pioneer sociologists as a means of better understanding the present and anticipating the future.
First, however, the paper begins by reflecting on how the Principal Investigators on the (Re)Imagining Youth study, Alistair Fraser and Susan Batchelor, came to be interested in Jephcott's work.

In the footsteps of a quiet pioneer
Our first encounter with Pearl Jephcott was in 2007, when Alistair came across Time of One's Own during a library search for material on young people and leisure for his PhD: I vividly recall opening Time of One's Own and being struck by the list of contributors in the inlay-teachers, church leaders, community residents, all of whom had voluntarily participated in the data-collection, and who had been trained in interviewing. Here was the form of community-led research that I was trying to do myself (much less successfully), carried out some fifty years previous. It was like Pearl had reached out and tapped me on the shoulder and told me what I was doing was OK. I read and devoured, re-read and analysed, and came to form a view that youth leisure activities had changed far less in the past fifty years that you'd think. What had changed was the way we research.
Not long afterwards, Jephcott's name cropped up again, but this time in Susan's research on young women who offend. Again it was Jephcott's way of working that caught her attention: I was aware of Jephcott's work on young people, as a result of supervising Alistair's PhD, but knew nothing about her research with girls and young women-despite this supposedly being my own area of expertise! After her name was mentioned in a couple of articles I was reading, I sought out her early publications: Girls Growing Up and Rising Twenty: Notes on some ordinary girls. 8 I was immediately struck by the pioneering nature of this body of research, both in terms of its focus on the hitherto invisible world of working-class girls and its articulation and illustration of the research process. Indeed its very existence challenged what I had learned about the history of women's studies, which is commonly presented as beginning in the 1960s.
As detailed further below, Jephcott wrote about dimensions of the research process that were rarely discussed at the time, providing comprehensive accounts of the genesis of each project, alongside illustrative reflections on experiences in the field. Her accounts of the lives of her research participants were equally detailed and broad-ranging, thanks in large part to her adoption of auto/biographical methods. Susan continues: It was Jephcott's ability to balance the minutiae of the everyday with the totality of girls' lives that really made an impression on me. The use of diary extracts and autobiographical essays gave 'voice' to her participants in a way that indicated the interplay between personal and the social, contributing to a more humanized and multifaceted account of their experience. For example, girls' delinquency-their drinking and smoking, their thieving and their gang involvement-were not singled out for special attention, but rather were embedded in personal testimony of girls' families, communities, work, education, leisure, and future aspirations. This spoke to my increasing disenchantment with the criminological context that I was working in, which had a tendency to individualize and pathologize young women.
For both Alistair and Susan, then, there was a sense that Jephcott's research spoke to contemporary themes and debates, challenging the ways in which young people's lives are popularly (mis)represented. More than this, however, it offered an inspiring example of research practice that encouraged us to think more imaginatively about our use of sociological methods.
Our final serendipitous encounter with Jephcott occurred after Alistair had completed his PhD, and secured an academic position at the University of Hong Kong: Before moving out to Hong Kong from Glasgow, I was messing around, looking for literature on Hong Kong, and turned up a tantalizing reference to Jephcott's report on The Situation of Children and Youth in Hong Kong. On reading the report, I felt for the first time that I was following in the footsteps of a quiet pioneer. In just the same way that I was seeking to make sense of and understand Hong Kong from a grounded, sociological perspective, here was a 200+ page report that documented precisely Jephcott's activities half a century previous. The differences with Time of One's Own were striking-in the 1960s, though linked by a corrosive corridor of colonialism, Glasgow and Hong Kong operated in different worlds, in different registers, with widely divergent stakes in the global economy. In the present, if anything, the tables had turned. This was an enticing prospect for a research study-what had changed for young people, and why?
When the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (RGC) issued a joint call for collaborations between social scientists in the UK and Hong Kong it gave us a welcome opportunity to continue Jephcott's legacy.

Situating leisure: Jephcott's research on youth in Scotland and Hong Kong
Both Time of One's Own and The Situation of Children and Young People in Hong Kong were commissioned by external agencies to inform the development of policy and provision of services for young people. The book Time of One's Own was based on empirical research commissioned by the Standing Consultative Council on Youth Service in Scotland and the Scottish Education Department to 'describe and evaluate the leisure time interests and social attitudes of young people in Scotland'. 9 In the UK, leisure emerged as a prominent sphere of social life (and of social intervention) during the inter-war period, as a result of growing concerns regarding the stability and direction of British democracy. 10 This intensified in the postwar era, as a result of increased affluence, free time and consumerism, with commentators raising concerns regarding leisure's degenerative influence, particularly on those of adolescent age. 11 Focusing on the 'middle group' of young people (aged fifteen to nineteen years) who made their own leisure without recourse to any formal youth organization, Jephcott's Scottish research was intended to address these concerns, providing recommendations for future youth leisure provision. Her report for UNICEF was broader in focus, offering an 'analysis of the overall condition of that section of Hong Kong's population which is aged 0-24, and to indicate action on major needs'. 12 The background to this latter study was not dissimilar, insofar as the Hong Kong authorities identified young people hanging about the streets as a cause for concern and pointed the potentially corrupting influence of 'dubious cabarets and dance halls'. 13 As in Scotland, the youth population in Hong Kong was increasing. However, while the young people in Scotland were experiencing an increase in leisure time spending on music, fashion and consumerism, teenagers in Hong Kong were working long hours, in poor conditions, for low pay-a factor which played a major contributory role to the 1967 riots, in which fifty-one people were killed. 14 Notwithstanding their different aims and emphases, Jephcott approached both projects in a very similar fashion, engaging a range of community stakeholders and using an eclectic range of methods to amass a wealth of primary data. This approach is described in detail in Time of One's Own and helpfully summarized in her Hong Kong report: As regards the methods adopted, the obvious one was, of course, to consult informed opinion and here [the author] was given every facility from officials, the staff of the voluntary agencies and private individuals. Working on the assumption that one cannot make effective provision for young people unless one knows something about parental aspirations and what youngsters themselves want, the writer spent much of her time in the places where young people to be found-homes, factories, streets, schools, clubs, recreation grounds etc. She talked with them wherever possible and, with much help from adults, got a considerable number to write … their views on various topics. 15 In addition, in both studies, Jephcott commissioned local art teachers to make illustrations of various neighbourhood scenes, and asked young people to draw pictures for the studysome of which are replicated in the pages of Time of One's Own (but sadly not her Hong Kong report).
Based on the summary above, Jephcott's approach can be characterized as field research, involving detailed participant observation and informal discussion intended to elicit young people's views and experiences. However, in Time of One's Own, these qualitative methods are combined with structured face-to-face interviews with over 600 young people, designed to establish the 'facts' of youth leisure: 'the what, when and how'. 16 The resultant data are presented in table format, using descriptive statistics, as illustrated in Table 1.
Jephcott's Hong Kong report is also littered with statistical tables, but this time drawn from a range of secondary sources and charting everything from age distribution of the population to welfare expenditure and examination results. In both sites, Jephcott's interview data indicates surprising continuities in youth leisure over time, with considerable free time spent 'hanging out' in public space, or 'strolling about the streets'. Dancing, cinema, and cafés also feature prominently in the Scottish data-though the majority of leisure is reported as being spent at home, watching TV. 17 One of the most distinctive features of Jephcott's research with children and young people was her use of task-centered, creative methods including writing activities, diaries, and drawing. In Time of One's Own this type of material was provided by approximately 1,600 young people, whom were accessed via a variety of educational institutions, employers and youth groups. Sets of young people, aged fifteen to nineteen, were asked to write responses to a range of questions and prompts, such as 'Describe a really enjoyable Saturday' or 'If the Corporation consulted you on how to spend £10,000 for teenagers in part of the city, what would you advise them?' Examples of participants' answers are provided within the text, often as illustrations of 'typical' or 'interesting' comments. For instance, in response to the question, 'What do you think older people do not understand about younger people?' one participant is quoted (verbatim) as follows: Well you parents for a start. Their idea of fashion is rotten, they want you to wear big baggy trousers and big notted ties and big daft shoes called beatle crushers and take the police you might have been walking along the street and they pull you up in a close and If you have a wepon they will kick your head In. (Written material provided by fifteen-year-old boy) 18 Similar material is cited in Jephcott's Hong Kong report. For example, in response to the prompt, 'My idea of a really enjoyable Saturday' one thirteen-year-old responded: In the morning my dog and I go to the hill and play. I rest some time and then I do my homework and learn English. Afternoon my father and my mother and I go to the street and buy clothes for me. At the night we are to go to the hotel to eat supper. (Written material provided by thirteen-year-old boy, not translated) 19 From a contemporary perspective, the use of such methods is seen to offer a number of advantages, for example empowering participants to 'tell their own stories' in a way that dilutes the effect of adult-young people power relationships. 20 Jephcott's sensitivity to voice is indicated by her use of verbatim quotes, uncorrected for grammatical errors. Her sensitivity to power relations is indicated by her discussion of the importance of ensuring anonymity by asking teachers 'to see [the respondents] did not put their name on their papers'. 21 Evidence that young people were empowered in this process can be gleaned from the examples of 'fallacious or salacious' papers provided. According to Jephcott's account, young people were unafraid 'to give the occasional rap', as in the case of one boy who, on being asked whether he thought café going was a waste of time, responded 'I think what you are doing is a waste of time'. 22  Dancing  62  76  69  69  59  72  69  Cinema  83  81  81  83  80  82  82  Café  57  46  51  53  50  52  51  Pub  16  6  3  25  2  13  11  Skating  6  7  7  7  5  7  7  Bowling  3  3  2  4  5  2  3  Spectator sport  8  1  4  6  6  4 5 Source: Jephcott, Time of One's Own, p. 164.
The distinctive voices of Jephcott's young participants also come across in the various diary extracts provided. One example reads as follows: Today I was not at work so I got up about 11 o'clock. After I had my dinner I went into town with my brother in law and my niece. We just looked about the shops and then we went and had our tea … When we got back in the house one of our neighbours was in with my mother.
After she went away about 5.30 pm my mother had to get ready to go to the hospital to visit my brother. We walked down Duke St … and I went to Galls to get wool and then we came home and had our tea. After we had our tea … I just sat and watched television and then went to bed about 11 o'clock. (Diary entry for a Sunday in October 1965, provided by seventeenyear-old shop assistant) 23 What is striking about this material is the level of detail captured regarding the mundane and repetitive aspects of young people's everyday lives-and the contemporary resonance of the activities and attitudes reported. In the following extract, for example, a teenage girl from a peripheral housing scheme in Glasgow reflects on the lack of amenities available locally, the boredom of just 'hanging about', and potential for 'Trouble' (which Jephcott referred to with a capital T!): In our district there is no entertainment. There is only a couple of dance halls and they have a bad name. We have to travel to the pictures or to go swimming. At night girls and boys just walk about the streets and hope for the best. We just go with the boys and have a carry on. Even then there is too much police about. (Written material provided by girl, fifteen years) 24 A preoccupation with 'Trouble' featured prominently in youngsters' accounts, with youth gangs being identified as a particular concern. As in the current period, however, these gangs largely comprised of loosely knit friendship groups, engaged in recreational violence as a source of excitement and status. 25 Contemporary concerns are also apparent in the Hong Kong excerpts, which point to the constrained nature of young people's leisure lives. Living conditions at the time were extremely cramped, with thousands of young people growing up in vast multi-storey housing estates, squatter settlements or even boats. Families of six or seven people typically occupied one small room, with little space available for recreation. Appropriate outdoor spaces were also in short supply, due to new building or redevelopment.
Because of financial pressure, I gave up school at the age of thirteen and worked in a textile factory … To other people 'factory girl' was the lowest grade amongst all workers. That is why I hated the term 'factory girl' … In order not to be despised for the rest of my life, I enrolled in an evening college … I also shifted from factory to factory because the textile factories always required their workers to work overtime but I refused to miss my classes for that. (Written material provided by seventeen-year-old factory worker) 26 Compulsory education was introduced in Hong Kong in 1971, meaning that young people today no longer work long hours in factory jobs, however they still spend more time studying than their Scottish counterparts, and there is still an emphasis on leisure activities that offer possibilities for self-improvement. Taken together, these data suggest that-across both contexts-contemporary leisure habits and dispositions remain rooted in previous generations. 27 The final noteworthy aspect of Jephcott's research is her use of image, particularly her commissioning of professional drawings of her respondents. In recent years, there has been growing interest in the potential of visual methods across the social sciences, 28 particularly within the field of youth studies, which has a longstanding commitment to developing more 'participatory' or 'collaborative' approaches to research with young people. 29 Yet whilst it is increasingly common for researchers to request that their participants capture images or create collages for analytical interpretation, it remains relatively rare for them to commission professional artists to produce artwork for analytical representation. 30 Jephcott's thinking behind the use of visual material was 'the assumption that the artist sees that much deeper than the man [sic] in the street'. 31 As Jephcott suggests, matters of meaning are not only shaped through the tools we use, but also by the perceptual frames we adopt. Artists and sociologists attend to the social world in different ways and from different perspectives. For example, whereas sociologists tend to see the general in the particular, artists are more attuned to detail; whilst sociologists attempt to rationalize the world around them, artists encourage us to feel it. This alternative 'way of seeing', 32 Jephcott claimed, resulted in a more nuanced, less disparaging representation of the teenager: 'These sketches, together with certain ones produced by boys and girls aged 14 and fifteen suggest that adolescence … is far less uniform that implied by the blanketing and vaguely denigratory image evoked by the word "teenager"'. 33 In a time of her own? Jephcott and the politics of method in British postwar sociology The eclecticism of Jephcott's methodological approach can be explained in part by recourse to wider developments in postwar sociology, in particular the transition from what Savage describes as a 'gentlemanly social science'-based on observational fieldwork and the mapping of morally dubious populations-to a new technical and empirical project, employing 'objective' methods to illustrate the ordinary features of social life. 34 As Eldridge notes, British sociology in the 1960s was 'an untidy subject, with blurred boundaries, theoretical disputes, arguments about its purposes and disagreements over the role of value judgements'. 35 Consequently, research practices of the time were heterogeneous, reflecting the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of the new generation of professional sociologists, alongside wider traditions of social philosophy and social policy. 36 Prior to the 1960s, social research in the UK was characterized by a tradition of social observation, premised on the 'unquestioned moral authority of the educated researcher'. 37 By way of example, we can look to the pioneering studies of Booth and Rowntree in the late 1800s, both of whom deployed a combination of empirical observation and 'moral' interpretation to construct maps of poverty and respectability in London and York respectively. Their investigators were a mixture of volunteers (e.g. school board visitors) and professional interviewers, drawn from the upper or middle classes, who utilized their own personal observations alongside local knowledge gleaned from key informants to assess the quality of particular streets and households. Later poverty studies combined this household 'visiting' approach with an early form of time-use diaries, intended to reveal the details of people's daily routines and constraints 38 Residues of the observational tradition are apparent in both Jephcott's Hong Kong report and Time of One's Own. For the latter, as was fairly common in British empirical sociology of the period, Jephcott recruited a team of voluntary fieldworkers on the project, 50 or so men and women employed in various professions (including health visitors, welfare officers, teachers, lecturers, secretaries, members of uniformed organizations, a marriage guidance counsellor and a county councillor), to assist her with the research. In addition to conducting all of the interviews with young people, and piloting the interview schedule, this team of 'helpers' was tasked with assessing the quality of youngsters' leisure on a five-point scale ranging from 'unusually satisfactory' to 'unusually unsatisfactory'. The interviewers then had to provide a justification for their assessment in their notes. The two following assessments are provided as examples: Boy, 19, welder: A rather thin kind of leisure, adult in character (pubs; smoking; some dancing; billiards). His father told me when I saw him that this boy does not know what he wants. The father thinks that a girlfriend might be the answer. A rough sort of chap though pleasant enough. (Interviewer fieldnote) 39 Schoolboy, fifteen: Seems a highly intelligent lad with unusual initiative. Has developed keen interest in angling and plays table tennis frequently at a club to which his school was invited. Appears very mature and quickly appreciated the purpose and possible outcome of the survey. Verbalised on his special position in that his schoolmates came from all parts of the city, etc. Is probably classifiable as 'Unusually satisfactory' (Interviewer fieldnote) 40 Other material gleaned from interviewer fieldnotes is sprinkled throughout the background chapters, used to illustrate the approach taken to data collection rather than as data in their own right (e.g. 'Had a brief chat to T's mother … The house from what I could see from just standing at the doorway looked very poor and dirty … Found T. perfectly happy to chat on the stairway'). 41 A less detailed account of methodology is provided in the Hong Kong report, but examples of Jephcott's observational approach can still be found, for instance, in the following impressionistic description of 'the general character' of education: To western eyes … much of the schooling seems to be extremely poor by modern standards. In Government primary schools classes are large, about 40 children. There is a great deal of sitting still, chanting in unison, memorizing, copying down from the blackboard and burdening the children with irrelevances. 42 Jephcott's reliance on 'key informants', usually knowledgeable professionals, is also apparent in both studies, indicated the relevant acknowledgements sections.
Given her undergraduate education in history, and her professional background in youth work, it is perhaps unsurprising that Jephcott's approach to social research was influenced by what might be regarded as a rather patrician form of social observation, informed by the assemblance of evidence of various kinds. In the 1930s and 1940s, both history and youth work remained predominantly middle-class pursuits, speaking to middle-class concerns and practiced by middle-class professionals. The youth clubs movement, for example, was motivated by anxieties emanating from the more affluent parts of society about the threat posed by 'uneducated' and 'unorganised' working-class youth hanging about the streets. 43 Jephcott's comments regarding boys and girls who were 'at risk' as regards their leisure certainly reflect these concerns, especially her emphasis on the second rate cultural resources available to working-class young people and the need for more 'activities associated with the Arts'. 44 Overall, however, there is a sustained attempt in both studies to resist pathologizing (or indeed exoticizing) the young people involved and to refuse the role of all-seeing or all-knowing 'expert' (indicated by the caveats provided about the limits of her expertise 45 and the gratitude expressed to 'informed' individuals, including parents and young people).
Alongside this tradition of observational research, Jephcott's work also incorporates many of the features of the new specialist sociology that was developing in the UK in the 1960s, a defining feature of which was the generation of original empirical material. 46 Unlike their intellectual forbears, postwar sociologists tended not to originate from the upper or middle classes, but came from more modest, often provincial, backgrounds. 47 Following on from their experiences as Service personnel in the war, they regarded contemporary society as an outmoded status hierarchy and the disciplines of social work and social administration as 'the dispirited descendants of Victorian charity'. 48 Sociology was envisioned as a more modern, more vital subject, whose focus on the ordinary and everyday should be studied using 'objective' methods such as the sample survey and in-depth interview. 49 The resultant marginalization of women researchers and women's ways of knowing during this period is well-documented. For example, Ann Oakley, writing about the London of School of Economics (where Jephcott was employed as a contract researcher prior to her move to Glasgow), reflects on how, under the guardianship of her father Richard Titmuss, an established group of older, mainly female social work educators were displaced by a new cadre of young, male social policy researchers. 50 In the years that followed, women sociology graduates were disproportionately employed on temporary research contacts, or recruited as research interviewers, rather than appointed as tenured academics. 51 These wider currents can be seen not only in relation to Jephcott's own career trajectory, but in her evolving research practice, especially her use of interviews in Time of One's Own to establish the 'facts' of youth leisure (and the bracketing off of these from her qualitative data on young people's 'views'). According to Jephcott's account, 'views prove nothing in a quantitative way. All they do is illustrate what some boys and girls thought about some of the subjects which bore down on how they choose to spend their leisure time'. 52 The use of the word 'illustrate' is instructive here, because it suggests something quite different from the process of rigorous analysis and 'constant comparison' expected of qualitative researchers today. From a contemporary perspective, Jephcott's preoccupation with distinguishing 'facts' from 'views' or 'opinions' also appears rather naive, insofar as interviews are no longer unproblematically assumed to offer unmediated access to 'factual' information. In the 1960s, however, the interview was an emergent-and contested-method within British sociology. Previously deployed by a range of applied professionals to elicit information on families and/or households and thereby assess people's right to claim assistance, interviews were claimed by sociologists as a means of generating social scientific insight into the lives of ordinary individuals, as well as being used as a mechanism for eliciting the social survey. 53 This explains why what Jephcott refers to as an 'interview' in Time of One's Own might be more accurately identified as a sample survey. Her 'informal discussions' are more suggestive of present-day qualitative interviews.
It is notable that in her empirical work Jephcott does not adhere to any overarching theory, or indeed engage (explicitly at least) with any identifiable sociological concepts or debates. This is understandable, given the funding and focus of each study, but means that from a contemporary point of view her analysis can be read as rather superficial. That said, Jephcott's work does move beyond mere description, making sense of young people's experiences in light of their social location and the limits placed on them by wider society. 54 Not only is this a resolutely sociological way of looking at the world, 55 it is also distinctively 'Jephcottian', 56 exploring interrelationships between children, youth, family, community, work, leisure, housing, space and gender. For example, in considering what young people had to say about alcohol, Jephcott directs her critique towards adult society: Such matters as affluence, the increase in leisure, alterations in the patterns of women's lives have changed relationships between the sexes have reflected themselves in drinking habits … The youngsters' attitudes were plainly influenced by local traditions of hard drinking and the adult world's tacit acceptance of the fact that much of the Trouble among young people is associated with it. 57 What is important and distinctive about Jephcott's work, then, is that is weaves the various threads of post-war research together to provide a richly textured account of the everyday lives of ordinary young people. Unlike many of her sociological contemporaries, Jephcott was not constrained by the sample survey method, but drew on a longer tradition of observational field research, as well as utilizing creative means of accessing and representing young people's experiences. Apparent within this eclectic mix of methods is an understanding of social life as situated in specific places, and a willingness to experiment with different ways of seeing in order to offer a more contextualized appreciation of participants' views.

Researching across difference: (re)imagining Jephcott's work for the contemporary context
Having demonstrated that Jephcott's work needs to be understood within the context of postwar British sociology, the paper will now move on to discuss how her work informed the (Re)Imagining Youth study, this time situating our approach in relation to current debates about the nature of sociological research practice.
In the late 1960s/1970s mainstream British sociology was preoccupied by issues relating to social class, explored primarily via use of the sample survey. 58 The next decade, however, was dominated by feminist sociology, 59 and a focus on previously neglected areas such as domestic labour, motherhood, and sexual violence. An emphasis on giving voice to women and their everyday experiences resulted in a preference for qualitative methods, particularly the in-depth interview. Feminist sociologists also highlighted the need for greater reflexivity within empirical research practice, the need to situate the researcher in relation to the research, and to acknowledge (and attend to) power relations in the production of knowledge. 60 Jephcott's work presaged many of these developments, scrutinizing everyday domestic routines, privileging women's voices, challenging mainstream approaches to collecting and presenting data, and attending to the connections between power and the production of knowledge. 61 The reason it is possible to offer such a thorough exposition of her research practice is because of the level of detail she provides for the reader in her accounts, particularly Time of One's Own. Contrary to the academic conventions of the time Jephcott includes a detailed explanation of how, where and by whom the various data were collected, alongside a candid description of the development of research processes and practices. In doing so, she describes conflicting views among the team (about whether or not it was possible to assess the 'quality' of youth leisure, for example) and how these were resolved, offers examples of fieldwork approaches that were unsuccessful as well as successful (comparing the fieldworkers' experiences of interviews arranged by formal appointment, versus more impromptu conversations), and reflects on difficult and disconcerting research encounters: The very informal conditions under which an interview might take place were illustrated in one home where, money for the electric light having presumably run out, adult and boy conducted a lengthy conversation by the light of a small fire and against a background of noise from what seemed to be a roomful of children, birds and dogs. The interviews were often interrupted, as when the family's two-year-old sidled up to the interviewer with the engaging information that he was about to pee. 62 In addition, Jephcott describes how adult gatekeepers and young participants responded to university researchers coming to ask them questions: Apart from a limited number of households who figuratively and literally slammed the door in the interviewer's face, and a few curmudgeonly parents who refused the interview without ever consulting their youngster, relatively few families were impatient with the study nor did they seem to regard an unannounced visit as an intrusion. Indeed many parents were generally pleased that anyone, and particularly someone from the University, should take an interest in their adolescent children. The youngsters themselves gave the impressions that they were rather flattered to be consulted. It made them 'feel somebody'. 63 Such reflections are interesting, not only because they offer an insight into the novelty for ordinary people of engaging in social research in the 1960s, but more importantly because they help demystify the process of knowledge construction. Throughout Jephcott's work there is a sharp appreciation of the relationship between research methods and knowledge claims, as well as sensitivity to the socially situated nature of knowledge. These are issues that preoccupied social researchers throughout the 1980s and 1990s 64 and were a particular focus for postmodern and postcolonial perspectives, both of which highlighted the politics of difference and diversity. 65 Diversity in this context encompasses methodological plurality, allowing different voices to be heard and different truths to be known within the same research project. While Jephcott's work can be seen as a (very) early exemplar of this approach, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of her research practice from a postcolonial perspective. For example, Jephcott does not address her role within the research, which is particularly problematic in the Hong Kong context where she can be viewed as a Western researcher constructing knowledge about marginalized others from a position of power. Jephcott says nothing about processes of interpretation or representation, but rather implies that the data speaks for itself. Yet, as Ramazanoglu and Holland emphasize, 'Producing knowledge through empirical research is not the same as acting as a conduit for the voices of others, or assuming that experience can speak for itself. Interpretation is a key process in the exercise of power'. 66 Beyond these developments, there has been a marked shift towards qualitative methods in British sociology over the past 30 years, with in-depth interviews and focus groups replacing the sample survey as the favoured method of research. 67 This has prompted concerns that, as a profession, British sociologists lack the statistical and technical skills required to exploit the opportunities of new data sources: The issue here is whether the research tools which sociologists pioneered in the middle decades of the twentieth century-notably the qualitative interview and the sample survey-are reaching the end of their shelf life given the deluge of digital data of all kinds that now proliferates and opens up new possibilities of conducting social research. The world is now a laboratory in which digital traces abound-so who needs sociologists when biologists, physicists or mathematicians can get to work by crunching huge data sets? … And who needs sociologists to do interviews when the media specialize in them, and when the world of Web 2.0 allows people to present themselves so easily without skilled interviewers? 68 Additionally, and no less importantly, sociologists face the challenge of a global world in which social relations and interconnections exist across space and time. This poses a particular challenge for traditional, place-based methods-yet coexists with an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine social research, particularly though the use digital multimedia. 69 This was the backdrop against which the (Re)Imagining Youth study was developed. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, we revisited one of the three areas from Time of One's Own (Dennistoun, in Glasgow) alongside a Hong Kong fieldsite with similar demographic characteristics (Yat Tung, Lantau Island). Like Jephcott, we combined observational field research with semi-structured interviews and focus group discussion designed to elicit the views of young people (aged 16-24 years) and 'key informants' (local councillors, youth workers, police officers, etc.). We also supplemented these traditional, place-based methods with a range of visual, digital and mobile methods designed to attend to 'spaces of flow': drawing, photo diaries, walking interviews, and an online survey. In total, over 300 young people participated in the study, across two fieldsites. 70 A key advantage of the generation of digital visual data was that we were able to share research data across fieldsites, inviting participants to engage with the material collected concurrently in the other location (in focus group discussions, for example). Visual methods were also an important means of addressing the problem of language, assisting in the democratization of knowledge production processes. In both sites we held a public exhibition of material generated during the research, including images from Jephcott's original research alongside contemporary images created by researchers, research participants and specially commissioned artists. Within the exhibition, we also sought to recreate some of the spaces of youth leisure (recreating the inside of a typical Glasgow/Hong Kong bedroom, for example, and constructing a Glasgow/Hong Kong close, and inviting visitors to add their own graffiti). We also ensured that all members of the research team had the opportunity to spend time physically in the alternative fieldsite, and met up regularly ourselves online. These are the kind of approaches that we imagine Jephcott would have used, had she conducted her research today.

Conclusion
This paper has sought to offer an introduction to Jephcott's work on youth leisure in Scotland and Hong Kong. In doing so, it has sought to celebrate her commitment to privileging the voices and experiences of ordinary young people, but also her sensitivity to alternative ways of seeing the social world. By locating Jephcott's research practice within the context of postwar British sociology, an emergent discipline keen to establish itself as an empirically grounded subject but still very much influenced by its roots in social philosophy and social policy, the paper has tried to articulate how she was both a product of her time and ahead of her time. What was innovative about her approach, particularly when viewed from a contemporary sociological perspective, was the eclecticism of her methods and her willingness to experiment with novel ways of documenting everyday life. 71 This attentiveness to other ways of knowing expands the sociological imagination, as originally envisioned by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959. 72 In an era where empirical sociology is commonly characterized as being 'in crisis', 73 Jephcott's approach offers an exemplar of how to do good sociological work. She encourages us to get alongside the people we seek to better understand, to attend to the details as well as the contexts of their everyday lives, and to adopt a creative approach to the collection of data, adopting whatever methods and materials that yield useful information-which in the contemporary context includes taking advantage of digital social media. 74 Of course this is not to say that Jephcott's research practice is without limitations, particularly from a contemporary point of view. By reflecting on what Jephcott does not do, and touching upon key developments in sociological methods since the 1970s, the paper has identified a number of challenges for present-day researchers, particularly around issues of interpretation and representation.
More generally, engaging with Jephcott's work in this way has highlighted the benefits of adopting a 'historical sensibility' 75 in sociological scholarship, and the potential synergies between historical and sociological imaginations. 76 Revisiting the narratives collected by early sociologists, for example, has the potential to enrich the work of postwar historians, offering an alternative source of primary data on ordinary people's everyday experiences, as well as insight into contemporary practices of knowledge production-and their impact on wider social and cultural identities and debates. 77 As a range of other authors have noted, there is an increasing historical sensitivity within sociological scholarship, as well as an interest in privileging the temporal. 78 Indeed (Re)Imagining Youth can be understood as part of this broader shift, particularly that strand of work that involves revisiting the contributions of sociological pioneers. 79 According to Savage, this turn to the past is 'the usual search for "tradition" which is pervasive when the future is uncertain'. 80 Indeed, we have found Jephcott's work reassuring, as our opening reflections attest. There is a sense of security afforded by following in the footsteps of a 'sociological pioneer'. But beyond this, Jephcott's work has also inspired us to take risks: to explore new paths of enquiry and explore destinations off the beaten track. In doing so, she has encouraged us to extend our sociological imaginations, to develop methods that integrate social, biographical, and historical versions of reality, but which also move with the social world.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
The article refers to research supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and Research Grants Council of Hong Kong bilateral scheme: '(Re)Imagining Youth: A comparative study of youth leisure in Glasgow and Hong Kong' [ESRC project code ES/K010409/1]. Susan Batchelor and Alistair Fraser were co-Principal Investigators on this project, assisted by Leona Ling and Lisa Whittaker who were employed as field researchers.

Notes on contributors
Susan Batchelor is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow. Her current research activity revolves around intersecting issues of youth, culture, globalisation and social change. She has recently completed an ESRC-funded study (Re)Imagining Youth: A Comparative Sociology of Youth Leisure in Scotland and Hong Kong, alongside a smaller project on gang identity in Glasgow.