Criticism
Mass Observation has been criticised by some as an invasion of privacy. Participants were not only reporting on their own lives; they often commented on their neighbours and friends as well. Such an atmosphere of surveillance was in keeping with the rising culture of espionage, which dominated the Second World War, although Mass Observation was an independent, not a government, effort aimed at education rather than manipulation of the public.
Mass Observation had set out to turn the tools of anthropology used to study foreign cultures on Britain's; to be "The Science of Us." Criticism of the scientific validity focusing on the experiment parameters began fairly early, continued throughout its existence, and was a key element in its eventual demise. Because of the self-selecting nature of the observers, they did not represent a scientifically balanced cross-section of British society as a modern public opinion poll would. Although geographically and occupationally diverse, the participants tended to be middle-class, educated, literate, and left of centre.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)