ABSTRACT
Working-class studies is an interdisciplinary field, and questions about methodology and methods raise key issues for all those interested in working-class studies: What counts as evidence about working-class lives? What is the relationship between theory and evidence in thinking about class? What role does who we are as researchers (including our class backgrounds) play in how that research is conducted and the results we end up with? And how does the fact that we’re living in an increasingly media-centric world shift possibilities not only for how we do our research but also to whom it is addressed and how we engage others? This paper uses the ‘transmedia’ or multimodal Exit Zero Project as a vantage point for reflecting on questions of method. It examines why writing in the first person or auto-ethnographically has become common in working-class studies scholarship and asks how ‘stories’ count as evidence and relate to theory. It argues that methods that combine analysis of texts, objects, and images and that work across media increase opportunities to address and collaborate with non-academics and to expand the scope and depth of working-class studies scholarship.
