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This paper draws on qualitative survey and interview data with 72 participants focusing on feminine body and beauty work practices in the UK's first Covid-19 'lockdown' in 2020. The data suggest that the affective dimensions of beauty were intensified, accelerated, and expanded during this period. Feminine beauty and body work was deployed to produce desired affects: namely positivity, productivity, and the elimination of stress and anxiety. I argue, therefore, that beauty practices became oriented less around aesthetic labour - the work of improving and maintaining appearance - and more explicitly and substantially a project of affective labour - the deep feeling work of generating and maintaining a disposition that aligns with the needs of capital. Using the lens of affective labour provides insight into the way that the affective harms of the pandemic crisis were individualised and managed by feminine selves through practices of beauty and body work. Participants' affective labour projects produced two interrelated sets of immaterial outcomes. First, they helped maintain a 'market ready' set of positive and productive dispositions that were particularly crucial for those subjects in heightened conditions of precarity, insecurity or isolation. Second, affective labour was key to the deeply gendered, racialised and classed moral formulation of the 'good' pandemic citizen who would, and could, follow the directive to 'stay at home' in order not only to care for themselves and others, but to use the 'opportunity' of lockdown to transform and improve the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between performance and diplomacy during the 1990 Cambodian National Dance Company Tour to the UK. The tour stemmed from Oxfam UK's Kampuchea Campaign, which attempted to restore bilateral aid to the State of Cambodia by pushing for international recognition and a brokered peace settlement. Contributing to geographical work on diplomacy, the paper examines the different agents involved in the tour and their response to the dancers as diplomatic actors, examining the different types of performance in operation and their relationship to diplomacy. Dance was often oriented towards geopolitical ends, but there were also moments when dancers used their artistic performances to open up new modes of subjectivity and identity. The paper attends to these experiences and to how the dancers' actions extend existing conceptions of diplomatic subjectivity by considering vulnerability. In examining these dynamics, the paper also contributes to existing work on art and geopolitics, both through its diplomatic focus and its analysis of how diplomatic and creative practices were intertwined through an aesthetic of quietness. It thus attends to how geopolitical aesthetics matter, and how, in this instance, quiet aesthetics were a mark of international disempowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the deposition of ceramics in funerary contexts of Iron Age Britain. The study focuses on the Yorkshire region during the 4th-2nd centuries BC, drawing on data obtained from a total of one hundred and twenty-three burials. The paper begins with a discussion of the contexts of the ceramic finds, including an exploration of the artefacts' previous uses in relation to commensality rites. It next addresses the use of mnemonic strategies during burials, with a particular focus on the intentional breaking of vases. Thirdly, the discussion delves into the profiles of the people buried with ceramics, with particular regard to sex and age. In this vein, it seeks to indicate the existence of certain patterns of distribution -- particularly among adult females -- which vary significantly according to the age of death among both sexes. The paper ultimately concludes that the deposition of ceramics in burials indicates a reality of relative fluidity among genders in the funerary sphere. Alongside the central analysis, the discussion also provides a critical assessment of the historiographical debate on the aesthetics of British Iron Age pottery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to younger age groups, older people spend more time in their locality and rely more heavily on its pedestrian and public transport infrastructure. Qualitative studies provide unique insight into people's experiences. We conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis of United Kingdom-based studies of older people's experiences of travelling in the urban environment. We searched health, social science, age-related and transport-related databases from 1998 to 2017. Fourteen papers (from 12 studies) were included in a thematic synthesis, a three-staged process that moves iteratively between codes, descriptive themes and cross-cutting analytical themes. Emerging themes were discussed with policy advisers. Four overarching themes were identified. The first and second theme pointed to the importance of 'getting out' and of being independent travellers. The third and fourth themes highlighted how local environments and travel systems enabled (or prevented) older people from realising these valued dimensions of travel. The loss of local amenities and micro-environmental features, such as pavement quality, personal safety and aesthetic appearance, were recurrent concerns. Free modes of travel like walking and bus travel were highly valued, including the social engagement they facilitated. Our review suggests that, while its extrinsic value (reaching destinations) matters, the intrinsic value of travel matters too. The process of travel is experienced and enjoyed for its own sake, with older people describing its contribution to their wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a social semiotic approach to vernacular sign-making in place, by examining the visual landscape of Leeds Kirkgate Market, as an example of a semiotically-unregulated place. Traders have ample freedom of self-expression and agency in shaping their stalls through all visual-material resources (beyond mere signage, as analysed in linguistic landscape research). There derives a composite non-cohesive aesthetic of the market's visual landscape, driven by the situated needs and tastes of the socio-culturally diverse population inhabiting the place. The resulting semiotic diversity is remarkable when compared to its neighbouring areas, as well as to recently renovated UK city markets. Against an increased institutional regulation of urban landscapes, semiotically-unregulated places enable vernacular practices from below that defy current aesthetic tenets in professional design and help revealing and questioning the power dynamics underlying a social construction of taste. Research into vernacular semiotics shows the enhanced cultural richness resulting from people's agency in shaping the public spaces in which they live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do European state topographic maps exhibit unique styles of cartography? This paper describes an investigation to classify and analyse stylistic diversity in the official 1 : 50 000 topographical mapping of 20 European countries. The method involves the construction of a typology of cartographic style, based upon the classification of distinct graphical legend symbols into mutually exclusive thematic categories. In order to identify stylistic similarities between national symbologies, hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to compare the relative proportions of symbols within each category. This was complemented by a qualitative analysis of various aspects of cartographic design: colour, 'white' space, visual hierarchy, and lettering. The results indicate a high degree of stylistic diversity throughout Europe, with the symbologies of Great Britain and Ireland demonstrating the strongest example of a supranational style. The typology of cartographic symbologies is shown to be an effective method for determining stylistic association among maps of differing geographical (and potentially historical) origins and it is suggested that the cartographic language paradigm should be revisited as a means for understanding why national differences persist in state cartography. A version of this paper was presented at the Twenty-third International Cartographic Conference in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a keen interest in hospital design in the UK fuelled by the largest hospital building programme ever undertaken within the NHS. Architects and NHS planners are gaining advice and inspiration from the growing evidence-based design movement. Part of this movement is interested in the role of artworks in creating soothing, therapeutic environments. This paper draws on the experience of a research project on the role of art in a new hospital in the North East of England to suggest that there might be an additional cultural role for art in hospitals, and for hospital buildings. The paper examines the wider evidence for this and the history behind it, and places the idea within an aesthetic framework with reference to research results from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade or so geographers have been arguing for more performative, practice-oriented and non-representational accounts of the ways in which people encounter, move through and inhabit landscapes, spaces and places. In this paper I argue that these theoretical concerns should also prompt geographers to explore the fairly long history of critical commentaries and aesthetic interventions by writers, artists, film-makers and landscape practitioners who have shown a sensibility to movement and embodied practices in the landscape. The paper then examines how landscape architects focused their attention on the movements, speed and visual perspective of vehicle drivers in their arguments for the landscaping and design of motorways in early postwar Britain. During the 1940s the Institute of Landscape Architects pushed for the involvement of their members in the landscaping and planting of all future roads, and prominent landscape architects criticized the tendency of local authorities and organizations such as the Roads Beautifying Association to plant ornamental trees and shrubs which would interrupt the flow of the landscape and distract drivers travelling at speed. Landscape architects such as Brenda Colvin, Sylvia Crowe and Geoffrey Jellicoe argued for a focus on simplicity, flow and the visual perspective of drivers, and the government's Advisory Committee on the Landscape Treatment of Trunk Roads applied similar criticisms to the work of Sir Owen Williams and Partners in designing and landscaping the earliest sections of Britain's first major motorway, the London to Yorkshire Motorway or M1. The paper examines how landscape architects pushed for a functional modernism to be constructed around the movements and speed of motorists, and it concludes by discussing how an admiration for foreign motorways was tempered by calls for a British motorway modernism reworked in regional and local settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the breadth of emerging issues and concerns from an ongoing qualitative research study into dance education. The initial focus of the study has been to review the nature of aesthetic experiences in dance education, aiming to promote a coherent view of dance education as a distinct and humanising pedagogy. Central to this approach is the development of the individual through increased aesthetic awareness, whereby opportunities are offered for the enhancement of reasoning processes with increasing perceptual and conceptual range in an atmosphere of exploration. In support of this, the concept of the aesthetic and its relevance to dance as part of an arts or humanities education profile is examined. The discussion proceeds with an exploration of the teaching and learning involved in aesthetically significant dance education, reviewing ways forward for research in dance education, by means of dance creation, performance and appreciation. The paper concludes by urging the adoption of a broad approach to qualitative research methodology, to investigate the issues revealed by the ongoing research study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geologically interested savants of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries described three-dimensional spatial relationships through the visual language of maps and sections of the Earth. At this time, there was a debate whether colour or line should feature in mapping our strata. Colour was an identifying characteristic of Wernerian mineralogy, but the exact manner in which colour should be employed in representing a mineralogical landscape remained controversial. According to the engineer and geologist William Smith (1769–1839), words or symbols, engraved on a map, marred a visual simplicity that accommodated an immediate understanding of the area represented. Colour enabled a quick and rational study of the countryside so that the savant instantly visualized the logic of the landscape. André- Jean-Marie Brochant de Villiers (1792–1857), professor of geology and mineralogy at École des Mines, argued differently. In a letter to Thomas Webster (1773–1844), he remarked on the difficulty of correlating colours in the key with those of strata when studying Greenough’s Map of England and Wales (1819). By examining techniques of representation and the use of colour, this paper discusses the importance of aesthetics in the depiction of geological landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the formal acknowledgement of the privileged position from which decorative media in Iron Age Britain have traditionally been studied. Tension remains, however, between the study of the decorated metals that formed the basis for models of Celtic expansion, and decorated non-metals. Despite the general paucity of decoration in Iron Age Britain, decorated non-metals are still not viewed in the same light of social significance as metals. This paper will examine weaving combs from Glastonbury Lake Village, highly decorated objects of antler and bone. By concentrating on the fabrication and display of weaving combs, I aim to highlight the potential significance of the aesthetic effects of these objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historic built environment in the UK is expected to contribute to the national commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The related major changes in policies and regulations inevitably are leading to unintended consequences which need to be accounted for. This paper reviews the unintended consequences of decarbonisation policies for the historic built environment in the UK, as reported in the literature. The review highlights some unintended consequences that certain carbon-reduction-driven building interventions could have for the fabric of historic buildings. The review also reports on concerns that other building interventions - for example, the installation of renewable micro-generation energy sources - can negatively and significantly impact the aesthetics and significance of historic buildings. Finally, the review also shows that there is little anticipation of the consequences of decarbonisation policies for the conservation of collections, occupants' health, comfort, and behaviour, and wider society in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1906 to 1980, the Indigenous population of the Southwest Pacific island nation of Vanuatu (New Hebrides) was stateless. They had no citizenship. This contravened the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserting that “everyone has the right to a nationality”. After 1948, the New Hebrides joined a number of European colonies that received United Nations scrutiny for racial discrimination, economic negligence and human rights violations. In the archives of the British colonial administration of the New Hebrides are a series of documents outlining how officials negotiated and contested UN conventions, declarations and resolutions. This article argues that these “meta-documents” comprise “aesthetics of the subtle”; reports on reports, handwritten annotations on diplomatic cables and exclamation marks on the margins of government paper. These interpretations, negations and commentaries on official documents disrupt binary accounts of colonialism in an era when the telos of decolonization informs the narrative of imperial to post-colonial political change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent scholars have examined the important role of English Deism in the formation of a modern naturalistic approach to the study of human religiosity. Despite the volume of important studies of various aspects of his thought, the role of Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) in this development has been overlooked. The aim of this paper is to show how Hutcheson develops his own account of the origins of religion, consonant with his more well-known theories in aesthetics and moral philosophy, that diverges sharply from the then-prevailing Deist views. Hutcheson pioneers a psychological account of religion that anticipates the work of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars in important ways. At the same time, Hutcheson incorporates his account of the origins of religion into an overall vision of human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Neolithic flint mines of Britain have been identified as sites of intense flint extraction. They occur chronologically in two phases: the earlier Neolithic examples in Sussex and Wessex (including the sites of Cissbury, Harrow Hill, Blackpatch, Church Hill, Easton Down, Martin's Clump, Long Down and Stoke Down) and the later Neolithic flint mine at Grimes Graves in Norfolk (Barber et al. 1999). Interpretations of prehistoric flint mines have commonly focused on the functional aspects of flint extraction: the method of extraction and quantity of flint that resulted (e.g. Mercer 1981a, 1981b; Sieveking 1979; Sieveking et al. 1973). Only recently has it been argued that prehistoric flint mines were monumental spaces and hence should be considered as monuments in their own right (Russell 2000, 2001). This paper further challenges the functional interpretation of flint mines as simple abstraction sites by discussing hidden in situ chalk art found within them. This art has wider parallels in markings discovered at other Neolithic sites and the examination of these mine and non-mine chalk examples suggests that collectively they indicate an early Neolithic art tradition that has hitherto been ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do 'folk musicians' (whatever they are) think about what they are trying to do when they perform in ways different to those of 'pop musicians', 'rock musicians' or 'classical musicians'? In other words, is there such a thing as a 'folk aesthetic', and can it be identified through the musical performances they give? (Such an implicit identification is always more satisfactory than any explicit one since it is harder to falsify.) After contextualizing the relationship between English folk and popular musics over the past few decades, this paper will argue that such an aesthetic can be identified, through a judicious combination of the analysis of recordings and written accounts, and it will proceed to do so. It will also argue, and demonstrate, that such an aesthetic has begun to mutate over the most recent decade, and suggest a possible consequence of such a mutation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the visual discourse of archaeological illustration tends to present a specific perspective of the relationship between aesthetics and memory and that this determines how we conceptualize these issues in relation to archaeological artefacts. I examine the historical background of this discourse and offer an alternative conceptualization of the relationship between aesthetics and memory by drawing on the twin concepts of citation and oeuvre. As a means of examining the relationship between contemporary practices and those of the past I discuss the similarities and differences between the production of archaeological illustrations and their dissemination in the archaeological corpus and the production and deposition of a series of artefacts from Earlier Bronze Age Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]