In this innovative 2007 study, Sarah Tarlow shows how the archaeology of this period manifests a widespread and cross-cutting ethic of improvement. Theoretically informed and drawn from primary and ...secondary sources in a range of disciplines, the author considers agriculture and the rural environment, towns, and buildings such as working-class housing and institutions of reform. From bleach baths to window glass, rubbish pits to tea wares, the material culture of the period reflects a particular set of values and aspirations. Tarlow examines the philosophical and historical background to the notion of improvement and demonstrates how this concept is a useful lens through which to examine the material culture of later historical Britain.
Over the last 20 years, international attempts to raise educational standards and improve opportunities for all children have accelerated and proliferated. This has generated a state of constant ...change and an unrelenting flood of initiatives, changes and reforms that need to be "implemented" by schools. In response to this, a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating "how well" policies are realised in practice--implemented! Less attention has been paid to understanding how schools actually deal with these multiple, and sometimes contradictory, policy demands; creatively working to interpret policy texts and translate these into practices, in real material conditions and varying resources--how they are enacted! Based on a long-term qualitative study of four "ordinary" secondary schools, and working on the interface of theory with data, this book explores how schools enact, rather than implement, policy. It focuses on: (1) contexts of "policy work" in schools; (2) teachers as policy subjects; (3) teachers as policy actors; (4) policy texts, artefacts and events; and (5) standards, behaviour and learning policies. This book offers an original and very grounded analysis of how schools and teachers do policy. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of education, education policy and social policy, as well as school leaders, in the UK and beyond.
Spying on the World Aldrich, Richard J; Cormac, Rory; Goodman, Michael S
05/2014
eBook
A unique and fascinating insight into the content and quality of the assessments that the JIC fed into British policy-making since the start of the Second World War to the 2013 Syrian crisis.
This book critically examines the significance of gender, race and sexuality to wars waged by liberal states. Drawing on original field-research with British soldiers, it offers insights into how ...their everyday experiences are shaped by, and shape, a politics of gender, race and sexuality that not only underpins power relations in the military, but the geopolitics of wars waged by liberal states. Linking the politics of daily life to the international is an intervention into international relations (IR) and security studies because instead of overlooking the politics of the everyday, this book insists that it is vital to explore how geopolitical events and practices are co-constituted, reinforced and contested by it. By utilising insights from Michel Foucault, the book explores how shared and collectively mediated knowledge on gender, race and sexuality facilitates certain claims about the nature of governing in liberal states and about why and how such states wage war against 'illiberal' ones in pursuit of global peace and security. The book also develops post-structural work in international relations by urging scholars interested in the linguistic construction of geopolitics to consider the ways in which bodies, objects and architectures also reinforce particular ideas about war, identity and statehood.
Enoch Powell's explosive rhetoric against black immigration and anti-discrimination law transformed the terrain of British race politics and cast a long shadow over British society. Using extensive ...archival research, Camilla Schofield offers a radical reappraisal of Powell's political career and insists that his historical significance is inseparable from the political generation he sought to represent. Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain follows Powell's trajectory from an officer in the British Raj to the centre of British politics and, finally, to his turn to Ulster Unionism. She argues that Powell and the mass movement against 'New Commonwealth' immigration that he inspired shed light on Britain's war generation, popular understandings of the welfare state and the significance of memories of war and empire in the making of postcolonial Britain. Through Powell, Schofield illuminates the complex relationship between British social democracy, racism and the politics of imperial decline in Britain.
The republican writing of the English revolution has attracted a major scholarly literature. Yet there has been no single treatment of the subject as a whole, nor has it been adequately related to ...the larger upheaval from which it emerged, or to the larger body of radical thought of which it became the most influential component. Commonwealth Principles addresses these needs, and Jonathan Scott goes beyond existing accounts organized around a single key concept (whether constitutional, linguistic or moral) or author (usually James Harrington) to analyse this body of writing in full context. Linking various social, political and intellectual agendas Professor Scott explains why, when classical republicanism came to England, it did so in the moral service of an explicitly religious revolution. The resulting ideology hinged not upon political language, or constitutional form, but Christian humanist moral philosophy applied in the practical context of an attempted radical reformation of manners.
After Britain abolished slavery throughout most of its empire in 1834, Victorians adopted a creed of "anti-slavery" as a vital part of their national identity and sense of moral superiority to other ...civilizations. The British government used diplomacy, pressure, and violence to suppress the slave trade, while the Royal Navy enforced abolition worldwide and an anxious public debated the true responsibilities of an anti-slavery nation. This crusade was far from altruistic or compassionate, but Richard Huzzey argues that it forged national debates and political culture long after the famous abolitionist campaigns of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson had faded into memory. These anti-slavery passions shaped racist and imperialist prejudices, new forms of coerced labor, and the expansion of colonial possessions.
In a sweeping narrative that spans the globe,Freedom Burningexplores the intersection of philanthropic, imperial, and economic interests that underlay Britain's anti-slavery zeal- from London to Liberia, the Sudan to South Africa, Canada to the Caribbean, and the British East India Company to the Confederate States of America. Through careful attention to popular culture, official records, and private papers, Huzzey rewrites the history of the British Empire and a century-long effort to end the global trade in human lives.
On British Islamexamines the history and everyday workings of Islamic institutions in Britain, with a focus on shariʿa councils. These councils concern themselves with religious matters, especially ...divorce. They have a higher profile in Britain than in other Western nations. Why? Taking a historical and ethnographic look at British Islam, John Bowen examines how Muslims have created distinctive religious institutions in Britain and how shariʿa councils interpret and apply Islamic law in a secular British context.
Bowen focuses on three specific shariʿa councils: the oldest and most developed, in London; a Midlands community led by a Sufi saint and barrister; and a Birmingham-based council in which women play a leading role. Bowen shows that each of these councils represents a prolonged, unique experiment in meeting Muslims' needs in a Western country. He also discusses how the councils have become a flash point in British public debates even as they adapt to the English legal environment.
On British Islamhighlights British Muslims' efforts to create institutions that make sense in both Islamic and British terms. This balancing act is rarely acknowledged in Britain-or elsewhere-but it is urgent that we understand it if we are to build new ways of living together.
Between the 1830s and 1880s European problems had a profound impact on British politics. Jonathan Parry examines the effect on the British Liberal movement of the most significant of these, such as ...the 1848 Revolutions, the unification of Italy, the Franco-Prussian War and the Eastern Question, arguing that these European problems made patriotism a major political question: governments were judged by their success in promoting British interests abroad, but also by the purity, potency and 'Englishness' of the political values they represented. This volume makes a major contribution towards understanding three important aspects of nineteenth-century British history: British attitudes to Europe, contemporary notions of national identity, and the nature and dynamic of British Liberalism. Setting foreign and domestic policy discussions in a patriotic framework, Parry offers an analysis of the ideas that influenced the Liberal political coalition and the turning-points affecting its vigour and unity as a political movement.
