Hear the 'Echo', Seeking the 'Answer' - Critical Social Research, Power and Justice

Critical social research has exposed and questioned the foundations of ‘official discourse’, mainstream knowledge and the dynamics of institutional power. It seeks out alternative accounts in derived and reproduced in people’s daily endurance of inequality and oppression; evident in the realities of marginalised communities fractured by class, ‘race’, sectarianism, gender, sexuality and age. Reflecting on his personal journey and drawing on his published in-depth research Phil Scraton explores the profound challenges involved in bearing witness to the ‘pain of others’, foregrounding their social, political and economic rights in the processes of investigation and inquiry. From his early research with travelling communities, through the inner-city uprisings in the early 1980s and deaths in controversial circumstances, through to his long-term work on Hillsborough, in prisons and in communities he asks, ‘What is the role and what are the responsibilities of the critical social researcher?’ Recounting personal testimonies ‘from below’, revealing institutionalised deceit and pursuing ‘truth recovery’, this talk proposes that dissenting voices are the foundation of hope, resistance and transformation.