No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
... Women workers emerged as educators through the channels of "the autodidact culture" (Rose 2010), the education they received as workers, as well as their political involvement in the European sociopolitical movements and in the American trade unions. Marie-Reine Guindorf left the editorial group of the first feminist newspaper in France to devote her free time to educating other young proletarian women, Jeanne Deroin worked hard and eventually became a teacher, while Désirée Véret-Gay experimented with Robert Owen's liberal educational ideas, founded and ran two schoolsalbeit unsuccessfullyand even published a book about the importance of mothers' involvement in the education of their children (Gay 1868). ...
... p. 244), her daughter grew up to become Principal of the Hillcroft Residential College for Working Women between 1933 and1946. This was perhaps because despite her indifference to cultural matters, Mabel's mother participated in "the rich autodidact culture" that Rose's (2010) important study has explored. Her husband taught her to read and enjoy Walter Scott and George Elliot, as he firmly believed in the importance of education according to his daughter (Ibid., p. 258). ...
This chapter follows genealogical lines in the history of the movement for women
workers’ education drawing on archival research with personal and political
writings in France, the UK, and the USA. In doing so, it unravels material and
discursive entanglements of this important cultural labor movement, mapping its
contested notions, porous boundaries, and diverse practices. What is argued is
that women workers’ presence as students, educators, activists, as well as creators
and writers was catalytic in this sociopolitical and cultural movement for social
change, while its radical pedagogical practices are still relevant in reimagining
what education is and what it can do.
... Second, it encourages a re-engagement with the practical and political purpose of those 20 th century movements for workers and working class education which were rooted in organised labour (Hughes, 1984;Holford 1994;Croucher and Wood 2017). This includes, for example, didactic and autodidactic traditions centred upon selfimprovement and placing learning and knowledge at the centre of emancipatory struggle (Foley, 1999;Rose, 2002;Brookfield, 2005). The relation to capitalist political economy in shaping the future of organised labour was as relevant then as now, as is the learning from struggles within it and to overcome it. ...
The global restructuring of the capitalist political economy of work has catalysed an existential crisis of trade unionism. The search for ways in which to renew and revitalise organised labour is the most urgent task of the global trade union movement.
In doing so however, this thesis asks firstly, when developing strategies for trade union renewal what role does learning and knowledge production play? Secondly it asks, how is that learning and knowledge gained through social action made material? The former question lays at the heart of this thesis investigation. The latter is a significant reflection of its findings.
This thesis explores the experience of an international body of trade unionists who completed the MA in international labour and trade union studies (ILTUS) at Ruskin College, Oxford between 2006 and 2016. The MA aimed to address the need for the renewal of organised labour, and exemplified Ruskin’s historical role in assisting trade unions internationally in addressing the ‘conditions for change’.
The thesis builds upon and expands in significant, original ways existing scholarship in the field of trade union education. It rests upon traditions of informal learning and knowledge production across social movement literature, which in turn is embedded in radical adult pedagogy including that of Freire and Gramsci.
Methodologically, the thesis applied a critical educational research approach to explore the impact of the MA learning experience. In doing so it involved students in a modified form of the co-production of research design. The research sought to explore degrees of transformation and agential outcomes as a result of MA radical pedagogic and curricula processes. This was supplemented by learner’s own critical reflexive analysis of impact on their movement practice. As such, the thesis applied the theoretical framework of renewal actor to analyse findings.
The findings of the thesis are based on empirical research comprising interviews with a purposive sample of current students and alumni. This methodological approach was allied to an online survey which was completed by the majority of those who enrolled on the MA.
The thesis finds that learners account for their experience of the MA in ways which reflect their embodied sense of trade union activism: that identity, consciousness and knowledge accrue as a result of informal learning undertaken through trade union struggle. Thus, a wholly original grounded theory of embodied activism forms the basis upon which findings attune to the renewal actor proposition. Findings however, move far beyond this proposition in epistemological and ontological terms to generate original grounded theories of knowing and being.
The thesis asserts that knowledge production processes and outcomes of MA learners mirror that of actors within allied social movements. As such findings argue for an education for renewal that draws on MA pedagogy to refresh trade union educational methodologies. This lays the basis for a more coherent set of relations with a wider of body of movements as part of an allied agenda for radical social change in the 21st century, and as means to achieve trade union renewal.
... The third section presents our research findings " " (Bartos and Severcan) and is itself subdivided into three. The first of these subsections draws on insights from critical and anarchist pedagogies and the working-class autodidact tradition to argue that children's sense of place is strengthened when they develop a feeling of ownership over their own history (Gagnier, 1987;Hopkins, 1975;Rose, 2010;Samuel, 1980). The second and third subsections apply Bartos' (2013) conceptual framework to demonstrate further how children make sense of place through engaging their emotions and physicality, and their senses. ...
The literature on a ‘sense of place’ often sidelines the voices of children. Consequently, little is known about how children can be encouraged to develop a sense of place. This matters because a sense of place involves feelings of belonging and attachment, and can contribute to children’s wellbeing and identity. Informed by the research of Bartos and Severcan, we deploy data from a qualitative research project in a primary school in a former coalfield area in the north-east of England to argue that children’s experiences of learning about their urban local history and heritage can help to develop their sense of place. Placing children’s voices centrally in our research, we explore how they engage with learning about local mining history, and the impact of place-based pedagogy. Emphasising the possibilities and importance of their deep involvement with their urban heritage, we show, firstly, the ways in which children’s sense of place is strengthened when they develop a feeling of ownership over their own history. Secondly, we explore how children develop a sense of place through engaging their emotions and physicality, and, thirdly, their senses. We conclude that learning about local history through place-based pedagogy allows children to create and interpret historical events and develop a sense of place. Taking ownership of their history makes the children active participants in telling the story of their place. Children can then develop new ways of seeing themselves in places, as they make connections between the past, present and future.
... Against the critique of the cultural industry and its concern with passivity, cultural studies work has rightfully shown that readers contest and creatively appropriate books' contents for their own needs in a wide range of contexts (Barton and Hamilton 1998;Sweeny 2012Sweeny , 2010. But while it is true that most readers are not cultural dupes, the full range of the relationships that people have with texts is not captured by the binary indoctrination/resistance. Reading can be critical of course and the attachment to books on this basis has been eloquently narrated by a plethora of readers, from autodidact workers in Britain (Rose 2001) to literary figures (Winterson 2012;Baldwin and Mead 1971). What these accounts of reading as awakening, salvation or a "way out" show is that reading is also an affirmative experience, a source of solace and joy. ...
... Rose revealed that in 1934, there were more than a hundred miners' libraries in the Welsh coalfield. 19 One former miner from the Rhondda recalled a link with this tradition when he shared with me how miners supported and benefited from their local institute, They had a system what they called 'poundage'. If you earned £10, you paid ten pence towards it on a weekly basis. ...
In this article, I argue that successive regeneration programmes have failed to address a historical and political legacy of economic and social decline in the south Wales Valleys. The Valleys continue to be associated with multiple social problems and a culture of dependency, cynicism and powerlessness. I argue that regeneration initiatives have failed because they did not address the core problem of structural unemployment. They failed as they were based on negative assumptions about Valleys people. Moreover, the lynchpin of community empowerment was exposed as an ideological term that stressed constancy rather than addressing inequitable relations of power. I conclude by calling for the creation of an alternative vision from Valleys people themselves
... Lefebvre's work is important, but the radicalisation of space and place is already a popular revolt: it comes from the people and cannot be attributed to individual political philosophers. Rather, the revolt builds on lessons learned from the history of working-class and popular education (Rose 2001); radical social movements and critical social science (Neary 2005); what we know about decolonising the university (Bhambra, Gebriel, and Nisancloglu 2018); and what we can learn from Indigenous knowledges (Whitt 2009;Meyerhoff 2019) and exilic spaces (Grubacic and O'Hearn 2016). Exilic spaces are like living on the edge of capitalism: not formal regions or nation-states but new sites of political settlements. ...
This article reviews an attempt to rejuvenate the concept of the civic university in the United Kingdom through the establishment of the Civic University Commission in 2018 by the UPP Foundation. This review is based on a critical appraisal of the concept of ‘civic’ on which the idea of the civic university relies. The review suggests another formulation for higher education: not the civic university but the university of the earth, built on a convergence of the social and natural sciences and Indigenous knowledges connected to world-wide progressive social movements and political struggles. The university of the earth supports an intellectual insurgency to deal with emergencies confronting humanity and the natural world.
... Scholars such as Darnton [43] and Chartier [44] defined the disciplinary area of Book History and realised the crucial role of readers within the "communications circuit". Historians such as Vincent and Rose gathered documentary evidence of the reading practices of working-class readers [45,46]. Literary and cultural scholars such as Flint and Jack have studied how reading interacts with gender identity [47,48]. ...
Large scale cultural heritage datasets and computational methods for the Humanities research framework are the two pillars of Digital Humanities (DH), a research field aiming to expand Humanities studies beyond specific sources and periods to address macro-scale research questions on broad human phenomena. In this regard, the development of machine-readable semantically enriched data models based on a cross-disciplinary “language” of phenomena is critical for achieving the interoperability of research data. This paper reports on, documents, and discusses the development of a model for the study of reading experiences as part of the EU JPI-CH project Reading Europe Advanced Data Investigation Tool (READ-IT). Through the discussion of the READ-IT ontology of reading experience, this contribution will highlight and address three challenges emerging from the development of a conceptual model for the support of research on cultural heritage. Firstly, this contribution addresses modelling for multi-disciplinary research. Secondly, this work describes the development of an ontology of reading experience, under the light of the experience of previous projects, and of ongoing and future research developments. Lastly, this contribution addresses the validation of a conceptual model in the context of ongoing research, the lack of a consolidated set of theories and of a consensus of domain experts.
... Za ilustraciju, Easthope navodi 16 načina interpretacije jedne pjesme G. M. Hopkinsa, a svaki se veže na postojeće pravce književne teorije i kritike (2005: 21-40). 85 Književnošću se bave studije s različitim metodologijama i fokusom, pa tako u njima može biti riječi, primjerice, o oblikovanju ženskog identiteta kroz čitanje ljubavnih romana (Radway 1991), o društvenim ulogama književnih klubova u zajednici (Hartley 2002, Long 2003, ili o povijesti intelektualnog života jedne društvene klase (Rose 2002). promjenljivih stremljenja većim ciljevima unutar zapadnjačke društvene misli, otada nastavlja karakterizirati socijalnu i kulturnu antropologiju" (Marcus i Fischer 1999: 19). ...
... As a later Chairman of the Arts Council, Lord Goodman, remarked, "a dose of culture could turn hooligans into citizens" (Mulgan 1996:207). 18. Key here was the BBC's Third Programme (1946 to 1967), which broadcast for six hours every evening on BBC Radio and was dedicated to disseminating the highbrow arts (Annan 1991;Rose 2001). 19. ...
How do elites signal their superior social position via the consumption of culture? We address this question by drawing on 120 years of “recreations” data ( N = 71,393) contained within Who’s Who, a unique catalogue of the British elite. Our results reveal three historical phases of elite cultural distinction: first, a mode of aristocratic practice forged around the leisure possibilities afforded by landed estates, which waned significantly in the late-nineteenth century; second, a highbrow mode dominated by the fine arts, which increased sharply in the early-twentieth century before gently receding in the most recent birth cohorts; and, third, a contemporary mode characterized by the blending of highbrow pursuits with everyday forms of cultural participation, such as spending time with family, friends, and pets. These shifts reveal changes not only in the contents of elite culture but also in the nature of elite distinction, in particular, (1) how the applicability of emulation and (mis)recognition theories has changed over time, and (2) the emergence of a contemporary mode that publicly emphasizes everyday cultural practice (to accentuate ordinariness, authenticity, and cultural connection) while retaining many tastes that continue to be (mis)recognized as legitimate.
... Education is something of a paradox. On the one hand, there exists a tradition of autodidacticism among the British working-class and, with it, a respect for education as a means to access activities which offer cultural reward and an improvement in material conditions (see Gramsci, 1971;Rose, 2002;Willis, 1988;Zweig, 1961). On the other hand, there is a wealth of evidence which demonstrates resistance to, or rejection of, formal institutionalised education (particularly where it is seen as a means of the inculcation of middle-class values) (see Charlesworth, 2000;Edwards, 2006;Willis, 1988;. ...
... Indeed, workers' study activities became a crucial part of everyday working-class life. This finding is not limited to Sweden (e.g., Friesen and Taksa 1996), and Jonathan Rose's famous book on the British working class testifies to the importance of workers' education for working-class culture in Britain as well (Rose 2001). ...
Crafting the Movement presents an explanation of why the Swedish working class so unanimously adopted reformism during the interwar period. Jenny Jansson discusses the precarious time for the labor movement after the Russian Revolution in 1917 that sparked a trend towards radicalization among labor organizations and communist organizations throughout Europe and caused an identity crisis in class organizations. She reveals that the leadership of the Trade Union Confederation (LO) was well aware of the identity problems that the left-wing factions had created for the reformist unions. Crafting the Movement explains how this led labor movement leaders towards a re-formulation of the notion of the worker by constructing an organizational identity that downplayed class struggle and embraced discipline, peaceful solutions to labor market problems, and cooperation with the employers. As Jansson shows, study activities arranged by the Workers' Educational Association became the main tool of the Trade Union Confederation's identity policy in the 1920s and 1930s and its successful outcome paved the way for the well-known" Swedish Model."
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/75479
... Nonetheless, its main focus was providing a mass readership with an enjoyable rather than abstract experience. It centered its works on the cultural practices of certain social strata seeking this kind of book (Hoggart 1998;Lahire 1993;Rose 2002), though they were by no means restricted to these strata. As a result, the social status of Romano Torres readers defeats any attempts to limit the publisher's production to popular books, taken as a natural, unquestionable concept. ...
This article sets out to understand the ways a publishing house can be an actor intervening in the agency of authors, guiding and even determining the performance of the writers, translators and adapters featured in the catalogue. The empirical angle is supported by an in-depth case-study of the Romano Torres publishing house, a Lisbon publisher which worked in the realm of the Portuguese language between 1885-1886 and 1990. To examine publishing in the case analyzed here is to understand how an intricate system of relations and their context shapes the action and dispositions of agents. This reveals how the autonomy of each field in cultural production and circulation can only be explained by its permeability. This article is interested in capturing the ways a mass-consumption publishing house ends up shaping a catalogue and its forms of circulation by being involved simultaneously in the transformation of the book market and ways of getting books to their readers.
It is generally known that Clement Attlee, leader of the Labor Party, 1934 to 1955, and Prime Minister, 1945 to 1951, was influenced by the writings of John Ruskin, especially Stones of Venice (1851–53). This essay does not merely gesture to the extension of Ruskin’s ideas into the radical post-war government led by Attlee but, rather, connects Ruskin to Attlee through the university settlement of Toynbee Hall. Established in 1884 by the Reverend Samuel and Henrietta Barnett in Whitechapel, Toynbee Hall was shaped around a commitment to serve the poor via education and recreation and, in turn, shaped a social movement dedicated to solving the problem of poverty in cities. The influence of Ruskin on Toynbee Hall will be examined from two directions. First, through the work of Octavia Hill and a charitable housing project in Marylebone for which she received early financial support from Ruskin. Second, through the ways in which the Barnetts modified and adapted the notion of the Gothic into a radical agenda for social change. That Clement Attlee was a resident of Toynbee Hall underlines how the movement crafted by the Barnetts in Whitechapel was formative not only for social workers but also the welfare state.
In asking whether the survey conducted for the Australian Cultural Fields project might be the last of its kind, this article reflects on the issues raised by the participants in this review symposium as well as those registered in the Fields, Capitals, Habitus book regarding the limitations of cultural capital surveys. It also draws on recent critical assessments of the degree to which the underlying principles of Bourdieu's sociology can engage adequately with the scale and character of the current escalating inequalities of class, age, race and gender. This brief analytical reflection paves the way for suggesting how cultural capital surveys might be adjusted to take account of both the issues canvassed in this symposium, as well as those needing to be addressed to engage with the inequalities that exceed the theoretical compass of the cultural capital tradition. It also acknowledges the need to reset the political compass of the forms of state action that critical cultural capital analysis proposed for reducing, if not eradicating, a range of inequalities. Despite the teasing provocation of our title, we do not finally call for cultural capital surveys to be decommissioned, but issue a challenge for them to be retooled to engage productively with new problematics and circumstances.
Sociologists have studied reading mostly as a product of, or an input to, the social structure. In so doing they have failed to capture why reading matters to people. On the basis of the intensive practices of reading fiction among women in the UK, this chapter begins to develop a cultural sociology of reading by showing how the pleasures of reading fiction support processes of self-understanding, self-care, and ethical reflection. A cultural sociology of reading is necessary because these readers’ experiences of meaning-making disappear when reading is explained within the binaries escapism/confrontation, indoctrination/resistance, which frame much of the current research on reading. The discussion is based on the interpretive analysis of three bodies of data: 60 written responses by women to the UK’s “popular anthropology” project, the Mass Observation Project (M-O), participation in two women’s groups, and in-depth interviews with 13 women readers in Edinburgh, Scotland.KeywordsReadingFictionReflexivitySelfEthicsEmotions
This study focuses on the reader and the book market in Sweden during the dynamic era of the Modern Breakthrough, with emphasis on c. 1879–90. It is a comparative study of three principally different kinds of literary institutions, which together constitute something of the backbone of the contemporary Swedish book market: Gumpert’s bookshop in Gothenburg, the parish library in Munka-Ljungby, and Sjöblom’s commercial lending library in Lund. From these three institutions, which served readers from all sections of society, extensive sales’ and borrowers’ records have been preserved. On the basis of these sources, using a theoretical and methodological framework from the fields of book history and sociology of literature, the study contributes to knowledge about the readers of the time, their access to literature and their preferences, as well as of their relation to the Modern Breakthrough literature. The study finds that the reading public of the period was highly segmented, and that access to literature was dependent on a number of factors. At the same time, the three institutions and their activities were, in different ways, part of, and contributing to, an on-going democratisation process of society as a whole, and increasingly, people from all layers of society could access their literature of choice – although, for a long time, economy, education and geography would be decisive factors for who would read what.
Joseph Whitaker is best remembered today as the originator of Whitaker’s Almanack but he should also be recognised as one of the most important publishers of the mid- and late- Victorian period and the creator of an information system that transformed the book trade into a modern industry. As editor of a trade journal and catalogue aimed at supporting the bookselling trade, respectively The Bookseller and The Reference Catalogue of Current Literature, he had a panoramic view of trade activities and of the commercial and structural forces that governed them. By gathering, organising and disseminating information he considered most valuable for these traders and encouraging them to participate in discussions and debates about the issues that affected their livelihoods, Whitaker helped booksellers grasp the opportunities of the growing demand for books and mitigate the risks to their businesses. A close and systematic examination of The Bookseller and The Reference Catalogue offers new perspectives on the operations of the Victorian book trade and insights into the practices and experiences of ordinary booksellers whose voices are usually silent in the historical record. Using historical analysis and conceptualising the book trade as a supply chain of competing traders rather than a coherent community, the thesis argues that Whitaker’s publications were more than just sources of information. They were the key elements in an information service devised initially to support booksellers but that became the foundations of a communication system for the whole book trade that remain at the heart of the contemporary publishing industry to this day.
Mathematische Ordnung ist schön, Schönheit lässt sich mathematisch beschreiben. So eine These, die schon in der Antike entfaltet wurde: Der Mathematik lässt sich eine ästhetische Dimension beimessen. Die Pythagoräer beschrieben die kosmologische Ordnung als eine numerisch bestimmbare, proportionale und daher schöne Ordnung. Lange war mathematische Schönheit gleichbedeutend mit geometrischer Perfektion. Mit der Algebraisierung der Geometrie durch Descartes, Newton und Leibniz, Euler und Lagrange änderte sich das. Jetzt sollten sich Abstraktion und Ablösung von der Dingwelt, Aspekte des Unbestimmbaren und Unabschließbaren als anschlussfähig füpr die ästhetische Begriffsbildung erweisen. Was bedeutete dies für Konzeptionen des kreativen Prozesses in Kunst und Literatur? Wie wirkte sich der Paradigmenwechsel auf Konzeptionen der formalen Ästhetik aus? Und wie machten sich umgekehrt Mathematiker ästhetische Argumente zu Nutze? Die Beiträge dieses Heftes diskutieren diese Fragen aus den Perspektiven der Mathematik-, Literatur-, Philosophie-, Kunst-, Architektur- und Designgeschichte.
‘The first comprehensive survey of trampdom over the last 600 years. Uniquely informative and readable.’
—John Sutherland, Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of English, University College London
‘Davies’ remarkable monograph is the most comprehensive text available on tramp fiction, biography and autobiography.’
—Ian Cutler, author of The Lives And Extraordinary Adventures Of Fifteen Tramp Writers
‘Essential reading for anyone interested in the wider currents of working-class life writing and fiction.’
—Nick Hubble, Professor of English, Brunel University London
‘With its abundance of arresting examples and careful theoretical analyses, this book will interest all who ponder proletarian literature’s radical political possibilities.’
—Florence Boos, Professor of English, University of Iowa
‘An absorbing study, meticulously detailed and contextualised, on an important topic.’
—John Goodridge, Emeritus Professor of English, Nottingham Trent University
‘A remarkable service for scholars and students alike, raising pressing, timely questions about the ideology of productiveness.’
—Matthew Beaumont, Professor of English, University College London
The Tramp in British Literature, 1850–1950 offers an account of the emergence of a new conception of homelessness in the mid-nineteenth century, which it argues reflects the evolution of capitalism and disciplinary society in this period. In the process it uncovers a neglected body of literature on the subject of the tramp written by thirty-three memoir writers and eighteen fiction writers, most of whom were themselves homeless. In analysing these works, The Tramp in British Literature presents select texts as a unique and ignored contribution to a wider radical discourse defined by its opposition to a societal fixation upon the need to be productive.
Luke Lewin Davies teaches at the University of Tübingen, Germany.
This article explores recent scholarship on the history of education in the British Empire, with a particular focus on the imperial origins of mass education. Though universal and compulsory education only became a global phenomenon after World War II, the beginnings of mass education can be found in the colonial era. The article examines the rise of a missionary and humanitarian discourse in the early 19th century that powerfully advocated for expanded educational opportunities for working-class Britons and colonized subjects alike, the rise of mass education in Britain and the settlement colonies in the late 19th century that often-excluded nonwhite subjects, and the successive policies of adapted education and schemes for educational development that arose in the interwar period. The article stresses that indigenous peoples throughout the British Empire were active agents in this process, and calls for additional research to better understand the widespread acceptance of mass education across the British Empire.
This article highlights and underpins the diametrical relationship between humour and culture. It illustrates how inseparable and closely intertwined they are. Culture is always incorporated into humour, and the latter is constantly influenced by the former. Humour may not be appreciated without understanding its surrounding culture, and we cannot grasp all the existing elements of culture without being aware of its humorous side. And since humour is cultural, foreign language students need to know their own culture and its values in order to avoid projecting it on other ones, and so that they have the ability to identify and spot the differences between their culture and foreign ones, such as that of English. In this context, the article lays out details of various old and modern aspects of humour that are characteristic of English and Moroccan cultures. It is not about a comparison between or an examination of any of the two cultures. It is an illustration and a call to understand the traits and attributes of Moroccan and English cultures in terms of their contact with and handling of humour in the past and in modern times.
Keywords— Humour, culture, Moroccan culture, English culture.
Spatial variance in union membership has been attributed to the favourable attitudes that persist in areas with an historical legacy of trade unionism. Within the United Kingdom, villages and towns located in areas once dominated by coalmining remain among the strongest and most durable bases for the trade union movement. This article empirically examines the effect of living within or near these areas upon union membership. Those residing in ex-mining areas retain an increased propensity for union membership. However, this effect diminishes sharply with distance. The analysis reveals that particular places can serve as conduits of trade unionism, long after employment within traditional industries has vanished.
Scientific societies played a crucial role in the emergence of a professional culture of science in Britain in the mid- to late-19th Century. At first sight, James Croll's membership of a limited number of scientific associations may be assumed to be the result of his lack of social credit and scientific connections. In this article, by examining Croll's correspondence, I demonstrate that Croll's select participation in scientific clubs and associations reflected his strategic pursuit of a vision of science set apart from party or societal affiliation. I focus on the contrasting histories of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Geological Survey, as well as the institutional history of the Philosophical Magazine . Situating the institutions in their respective social and cultural contexts, I argue that the more meritocratic, inclusive social structure of the Survey and Magazine helps explain Croll's choice to avoid affiliation with the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Residential migration is one of the most problematic demographic variables. In Britain there are no sources that routinely record all moves, and the motives behind relocation are rarely recorded. In this paper I argue that the use of life histories can add important depth and clarity to the study of residential moves. The paper focuses on two themes: the ways in which internal and international migration may be linked together over the life course, and the complex mix of reasons why a move may take place. Used sensitively, life histories and life writing can enhance the study of migration history.
This article explores pleasure in terms of the values of independent judgement, writerly authority, originality and singularity associated with doctoral study. It also considers how pleasure can be understood as a mode of experience that acts as a force for change. Here, the article takes a broad Deleuzian approach that is concerned with our capacities to affect and be affected. The data presented illustrates the complexity of pleasure in academic work as it is experienced, as giving rise to guilt, anxiety and a felt lack of deservingness. It also illustrates moments of intellectual jouissance and the importance of imagined pleasures as a very necessary force of change. In the conclusion, I return to the conceptualization of pleasure at the heart of this article to provide a critical account of the potential of understanding pleasure in terms of change and values.
Between 1880 and 1940 paternalist, philanthropic initiatives promoted the arts as an instrument to improve the condition of working people, and offer leisure opportunities to the aspiring classes of East London away from the West End. The foundation of the People’s Palace in 1887 created opportunities for operatic performances which brought together philanthropist volunteers and local people, and attracted audiences from across the new suburbs stretching beyond the Mile End Road. These included from as early as 1893 ‘costume recitals’ of ‘scenes from popular Italian operas’, and later regular seasons by the main touring Italian opera companies. This article uses archive sources from a range of institutions alongside literary and musical periodicals and local press to suggest ways in which Italian opera was viewed in relation to native and other foreign repertoires, and what this operatic ‘slice of life’ reveals about popular ideas of italianità in East London across this period.
Spatial variance in union membership has been attributed to the favourable attitudes that persist in areas with an historical legacy of trade unionism. Within the United Kingdom, villages and towns located in areas once dominated by coalmining remain among the strongest and most durable bases for the trade union movement. This article empirically examines the effect of living within or near these areas upon union membership. Those residing in ex‐mining areas retain an increased propensity for union membership. However, this effect diminishes sharply with distance. The analysis reveals that particular places can serve as conduits of trade unionism, long after employment within traditional industries has vanished.
This essay analyses three concerns that arise at the intersection of ethics and politics through situating the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly his conception of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism, in the context of debates in the British New Left and drawing parallels and connections between these debates and the work of C. L. R. James and Black Marxism. The first concern is the modern suspension of ethics in the name of politics. The second is the relationship between structural and personal transformation. The third is how forms of social life exceed, but are always under pressure from, existing forms of political economy and how this concern shapes articulations of political agency outside of statist and property-based understandings of citizenship. I contend that addressing these concerns is a background condition for the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness.
This chapter is concerned with how the production of educational knowledge based on competing epistemologies has been channeled through such institutional apparatuses as universities and, since around 1950, also through nonuniversity organizations, "think tanks," and interest groups, as well as how it has been administered by professional associations and pertinent publication organs, especially reports and journals. lt begins by reconstructing two intertwined motives-denomination and nation-and the processes triggered by them, resulting in the establishment of education as a university discipline. lt focuses then on epistemologies underlying academic knowledge production. Further, it is shown how, in the context of the Cold War, a denominational epistemology oriented toward medical research became globally dominant with the help of international organizations. Finally, how a cultural history of education could address new epistemological ideas that have changed educational research and traditional publishing and communication practices is considered.
Rad tematizira štrajkaško nasljeđe rudara kroz 20. stoljeće na Labinštini u Istri počevši od radničkog nezadovoljstva pod austrougarskom upravom, koje se nastavlja tijekom Labinske republike 1921. kao otpor fašizmu te proteže do druge Labinske republike 1987. godine u kontekstu samoupravnog socijalizma. Upravo će potonji, u skladu s ondašnjom praksom, biti imenovan protestnom obustavom rada, dok će ga štrajkom mahom nazivati prisutni novinari i istraživači. Takvu terminološku razliku prate i različiti mediji koji prenose događaje iz rudarskih postrojenja: radioemisije bilježe žestinu događaja i govore jezikom štrajka dočim crno-bijele fotografije cjelokupnu situaciju ublažuju i govore u prilog obustave rada. U radu se stoga analiziraju različite implikacije dvaju medija uz komparativan pristup štrajkaškim događajima koji su im prethodili kroz 20. stoljeće.
This article explores the role of the book inscription as an important rite of property in Edwardian Britain (1901–1914). In particular, it uses a multimodal ethnohistorical approach to examine the use of ownership marks as threats, warnings, and curses, and to explore how they were employed by their owners to deter potential malefactors. It reveals that these inscriptions were discursive acts that operated on a cline of politeness that stretched from mitigated to stronger ownership claims. However, while in the Medieval period book curses carried a serious threat of punishment, by the Edwardian era, most were written out of adherence to social tradition, thus their force lay in performing rather than describing a future act. This suggests that in the early twentieth century, book inscriptions were strongly linked to their owners’ social class and functioned symbolically to index ownership, property rights and power.
This study examines historically the provision of literature to Britain's blind community. It addresses issues relevant to present debates on the blind person's right to equality of access to information, and the state's responsibility to ensure this. Changing perceptions of blindness and blind people's needs are traced through hitherto neglected primary sources, including institutional records, government reports, conference proceedings and journals. The legacies of individuals who invented reading systems and of institutions and associations that shaped attitudes and practice are evaluated. There follows a critical account of the prolonged 'Battle of the Types', when contending systems were promoted as the universal method of instruction, creating duplication and waste. The achievements and shortcomings of charitable institutions and associations are discussed and comparisons are made with nations where the State played an earlier, more substantial role. Recent findings in the history of education, debates on the history of the book and alternative interpretations of charity are incorporated to introduce new perspectives on early blind education and publishing. The thesis examines 'improving' initiatives, such as the foundation of Worcester College, which sent blind youths to university, and the British and Foreign Blind Association, conceived and run by blind men, which revolutionized publication. The success of certain school boards in integrating blind children, and the Royal Normal College's effective training of teachers and musicians promised a new dawn. Utilitarian influences proved stronger, however, and the 1889 Royal Commission report's recommended continued voluntary control of institutional education and publishing. In new suburban institutions built for the twentieth century, the culture of the workshop largely prevailed over that of the word. Launched in 1898, the Blind Advocate nonetheless exemplified the liberating power of literacy and auto-didacticism by giving a voice to radical blind workers, inspiring a questioning spirit and foreshadowing later examples of protest literature.
This article examines the life and works of Robert Blakey, author of the first English-language history of political thought. Studies of Blakey have typically concentrated on one aspect of his life, whether as an authority on field sports or as an historian of philosophy. However, some of Blakey’s lesser-known ventures, particularly his early Radical politics, his hagiographies, and his attempts to write a biography of Charlemagne, heavily influenced his more famous works. Similarly, Blakey’s upbringing in a Calvinist tradition, rooted in the Scottish School of Common Sense philosophy helps makes sense of his philosophical and theological commitments, yet has been largely ignored. This article provides a sketch of Blakey’s life, tying these disparate strands together, and explaining their influence upon, and relevance to, the first history of political philosophy.
The Quais du polar book festival in Lyon is more than a site of commerce. Instead, the category of the polar, which brings together the mystery and roman noir, reveals the potential to destabilize literary hierarchies, foreground translation, and transform the role of place in a globalized genre. Using the insights of Lawrence Venuti, Benoît Tadié and Luc Boltanski, this essay examines how, within the polar category and in the context of the festival, foreignizing translations may upend linguistic and cultural hierarchies and transform genre categories. The communal and local experience of festivals events, its rewriting of southern American authors, and its reframing of the role of readers and translators all reveal the transformative potential of the polar and its cultural reception.
A key text of the pre-First World War invasion fiction genre, William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910 (1906) is often assumed to have sold in vast quantities and provoked major controversy. This article investigates the circulation and social impact of this divisive, polemical work before and during the war to provide a more accurate account of its reception. Using Marie Corelli’s proven bestseller The Sorrows of Satan (1895) as a comparator, the article shows sales of The Invasion of 1910 were similar to other bestselling novels, though not comparable to Corelli’s phenomenal sales. Le Queux’s text, however, punched above the weight of the typical bestseller in terms of its social influence, receiving parliamentary censure, extensive newspaper coverage, wide satire and polarised reader responses. Overall, this analysis provides insight into the workings of the popular fiction industry and the nature and extent of invasion fears in the early twentieth century.
A critical inquiry into the politics, practices, and infrastructures of open access and the reconfiguration of scholarly communication in digital societies.
The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work—to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological or policy vacuum; there are complex social, political, cultural, philosophical, and economic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access from the perspectives of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities. he contributors consider such topics as the perpetuation of colonial-era inequalities in research production and promulgation; the historical evolution of peer review; the problematic histories and discriminatory politics that shape our choices of what materials to preserve; the idea of scholarship as data; and resistance to the commercialization of platforms. Case studies report on such initiatives as the Making and Knowing Project, which created an openly accessible critical digital edition of a sixteenth-century French manuscript, the role of formats in Bruno Latour's An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), a network of more than 1,200 journals from sixteen countries. Taken together, the contributions represent a substantive critical engagement with the politics, practices, infrastructures, and imaginaries of open access, suggesting alternative trajectories, values, and possible futures.
This chapter will investigate the social and historical context of nineteenth-century crime and execution broadsides which represent a unique era in the history of this form of street literature. The main aim will be to challenge the assumption that these broadsides are evidence of state-authorised social control by investigating who actually wrote, produced and distributed them. This chapter will therefore look in detail at the nineteenth-century broadside trade, which was overwhelmingly working class, and in particular focus on the printers, authors and sellers of crime broadsides. It will also examine the readership of broadsides and chart the immense popularity and impact broadsides had in the early part of the century. Issues such as working-class literacy, competition between broadsides and newspapers, and middle-class attitudes to broadsides will be discussed and challenged. The central argument will be that broadsides can be viewed as authentically working class and, therefore, representative of their values and beliefs.
I look at how the British left came to appropriate an English radical tradition within the formative years of the British labour movement.
And how this colourful democratic history came to shape the core identity and political values of the new labour movement.
Attending to the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel and its connections with missionary culture, Michelle Elleray investigates how empire was conveyed to Victorian children in popular forms, with a focus on the South Pacific as a key location of adventure tales and missionary efforts. The volume draws on an evangelical narrative about the formation of coral islands to demonstrate that missionaryinvestments in the socially marginal (the young, the working class, the racial other) generated new forms of agency that are legible in the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel, even as that agency was subordinated to Christian values identified with the British middle class. Situating novels by Frederick Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne and W. H. G. Kingston in the periodical culture of the missionary enterprise, this volume newly historicizes British children’s textual interactions with the South Pacific and its peoples. Although the mid-Victorian authors examined here portray British presence in imperial spaces as a moral imperative, our understanding of the “adventurer” is transformed from the plucky explorer to the cynical mercenary through Robert Louis Stevenson, who provides a late-nineteenth-century critique of the imperial and missionary assumptions that subtended the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel of his youth.
This study looks at the first part of what for want of a better term could be described as the ‘pre-history’ of German syndicalism, that is, at its earliest roots among building worker supporters of the ‘localist’ conception of trade union organization before 1893. Its aim is not to ‘uncover’ the localist movement’s history for the benefit of English-speaking readers unfamiliar with it but, rather, to seek to find in the earlier history of this movement an explanation as to why a branch of trade unionism which initially defined itself as a tactical response to restrictive state legislation (above all, the Prussian Law of Association of 11th March 1850) continued to exist after the ban which most local laws of association placed on political association was over-written by national legislation which guaranteed the right to such (for men) in December 1899. How did a ‘tactical response’ come to assume a longevity none of its earlier advocates had foreseen? This begs a second question: how significant, then, was the legal framework? It is my belief that the answers to these questions can already be found in the localist building worker movement’s earlier history. Two dates framework this thesis. In September 1868, the Berlin Workers Congress was followed by the growth of trade union movements, social democratic and liberal, which contrasted with the isolated establishment of individual trade unions beforehand. In 1893, pottery workers (who included among their number stove fitters) became the last of the four largest groupings of building workers – after the carpenters, building labourers, and bricklayers – to establish a national trade union on a centralist model. After this date, localist building workers dominated a second, formally separate, social democratic trade union movement.
Historical records of the book trade sometimes take the form of lists of quantities of the numbers of copies made, distributed, and sold. This is usually patchy, but the data can provide insight into the production and consumption of the book since earliest times. This chapter considers the uses of quantification in history of the book (bibliometrics) starting with the sources of historical data and statistical methods commonly used in its analysis. It examines the detection of historical trends and significant variables in patterns of trade, authorship, and reading. Finally it weighs the potential of geographical mapping for the history of the book and capability for big data analysis of the digitized text to propose computational models for literary networks, cultural migration, and the form of the codex. The chapter argues that used wisely, quantitative analysis gives us access to parts of book history that would otherwise be wholly inaccessible.
The impact of the agricultural, demographic, transport, and industrial revolutions that occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed book production and consumption. In 1800 many books and periodicals were expensive and produced in relatively small quantities; the exception to this rule were traditional chapbooks selling at 1d and cheap out‐of‐copyright reprints. By the 1890s most books cost less the 3s 6d, and many, including the first paperback novels, were selling at 6d or less. Cheap machine‐made paper, fast rotary printing machines meant that popular newspapers and magazines were selling in their millions at 1d or 2d. Railways and the penny post had speeded up and cheapened communications and created new markets for print, while the value of some authors’ work was increased by copyright legislation, both national and international. Improvements in average wages, and expanding access to education, had resulted in literacy rates that were well over 90%; this further increased the demand for reading matter.