In 1937 Tom Harrisson founded the Mass-Observation Project. He had previously conducted anthropological research in Sarawak using a variety of observational methods, noting everything that he saw or heard, to form what we might today call a data base from which he could go on to hypothesise and write up his research. On his return to Britain he suggested that the same methods might be used to record and study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. He chose to base his work in the north of England industrial town of Bolton, renaming it “Worktown” for the ...
