Kate Fox is a social anthropologist and Public Relations director, leading the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC). Her work delves into societal themes, employing her background in anthropology and philosophy to offer a distinctive perspective on contemporary life. Fox examines how cultural and social forces shape our behaviors and beliefs, seeking to uncover the hidden meanings within everyday phenomena.
From rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts, join Kate Fox takes on an entertaining and eye-opening journey through the lives of these extraordinary women whose lives and achievements have too long been hidden.
Why do we go to pubs? How do we choose a pub? How do we behave in pubs? What rites and rituals do we engage in? What do we talk about? Why is the pub such an important part of British culture? What is pub life all about?The Brewers' Society commissioned MCM Research to find out, with the help of "manwatcher" Desmond Morris.Equipped with tape recorders and notebooks, the MCM research team - led by Joe McCann and John Middleton - visited over four hundred pubs in England, Wales and Scotland. They interviewed publicans, bar staff and customers of all ages. They travelled with pub darts, pool and football teams. They talked to pub musicians and entertainers, went "circuit" drinking with the lads, played cards with the pensioners, and pulled pints on busy nights. As participant observers, they became involved in every aspect of the pub culture. From this wealth of material, MCM Research Director Kate Fox, in conjunction with Desmond Morris, has produced an informative and entertaining anthropology of pub life.
In WATCHING THE ENGLISH anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more . . . Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.