Search

Since the 1960s, when historians first dethroned the dominant view of Benjamin Disraeli as a Tory democrat and social reformer, his association with an interventionist, socially inclusive Conservatism has largely been considered an exercise in political myth-making. This focus on the Disraeli 'myth' has tended to obscure the myriad and substantive ways in which Disraeli's life and works were interpreted and put to work in Conservative ideological debates and political practice in the twentieth century, reducing them to social policy and state intervention in the economy and overlooking the lineages of his political career in Conservative political economy debates, conceptions of the nation and the constitution, and imperial and foreign policy thinking. This article examines interpretations of Disraeli, and how his legacy was constructed, by conservative biographers, historians and public intellectuals from the decades after his death until the historiography of the 1960s. It traces how Disraeli was memorialised and celebrated in the Conservative movement and popular culture; how his life and works were interpreted for popular audiences by an important group of conservative historians in the inter-war period; and how Disraeli was mobilised in Conservative and Unionist Party debates on tariff reform, social reform, the nation and empire, concluding in the aftermath of the Second World War, when his legacy and statecraft were consistently evoked in Conservative debates on post-war Britain. It demonstrates that Disraeli was interpreted in much more diverse ways, and with more diverse political objectives, than the standard readings of the Disraelian tradition have hitherto appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine the recent progress made by Government to improve public health and address health inequality. Elected in July 2024, the Labour government has promised to deliver a transition from reactive to preventative health policy and tackle social and geographic disparities in public health. However, this government pledge is not new and recent progress has been limited. This article examines progress in an area of policy that is increasingly recognised as a critical wider determinant of health, notably the link between the urban environment and health outcomes. Our analysis is based on extensive co-production with government. Drawing on co-production logs and the fieldnotes of an embedded researcher, this article reflects on the progress made under the Conservative's levelling up agenda and considers the potential of Labour's health mission. Our findings reveal that, while the figures on health inequality signal failure, there are glimmers of hope in creating new 'opportunity spaces' for doing things differently. We conclude that the critical intersection between new social science evidence and the entrepreneurial agency of public officials will be pivotal in making any headway against this target. Moreover, this must sit alongside more government investment to improve public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details a case study of using Pinterest as an educational resource in an introductory anthropology course. Its use was evaluated through the data provided by the platform itself and focus groups. This evaluation found that Pinterest was a popular and useful tool for developing curated multimedia resources to support students' learning. The focus group findings suggested that online resources were shared by students across a variety of social networks, including but not limited to Pinterest. These resources were shared and used beyond the classroom, both physically in locations outside, but also with friends and family that were not part of the classroom. The opportunities for developing critical thinking through the use of tools such as Pinterest are explored.

A rhyolite boulder collected by R. S. Newall in 1924 from an excavation at Stonehenge has been pivotal to arguments concerning glacial versus human transport of the bluestones to Stonehenge. Initial studies suggested that the boulder came from north Wales, and hence was a probable glacial erratic. New petrographic and geochemical analyses however support it being from Craig Rhos‐y‐Felin in west Wales, the source of much debitage recovered from Stonehenge. Examination of the form and surface features of the boulder provides no evidence for it being erratic. Instead, it is considered to be one more piece of debitage probably derived from a broken‐up monolith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"When Nothing Works: From Cost of Living to Foundational Liveability" by Luca Calafati, Julie Froud, Colin Haslam, Sukhdev Johal, and Karel Williams explores the concept of the 'foundational economy' and its influence on public policy strategies. The authors argue that the UK's current policy challenges cannot be solved through traditional economic growth strategies and instead propose a politics of 'adaptive reuse' that focuses on incremental reforms. They prioritize the household as a unit of analysis and emphasize the importance of social relationships and infrastructure in achieving a decent standard of living. While the book offers valuable insights, it may overlook the potential for policy intervention and the need for long-term reform in areas such as productivity, inequality, and regional policy. Nonetheless, it contributes to ongoing debates on economic and social security and provides useful perspectives for social reformers. [Extracted from the article]

The idea of a transoceanic 'Indo-Pacific' region has a long historical lineage in British political thought and practice, one whose roots lie in processes of imperial colonisation, conquest and trade in Asia and Australasia. Recent discourses of a return 'East of Suez' and the UK's 'Indo-Pacific Tilt' cannot be understood as mere imperial nostalgia or post-imperial over-reach, however. Instead, there are historical political imaginaries of Britain's global role which are being put to work in the contemporary politics of shaping an Indo-Pacific strategy for the UK. British policy in the Indo-Pacific has been marked by a consistent awareness of multi-polarity and strategic vulnerability, hierarchies of alliances that give a privileged place to the US and the countries of the 'Anglosphere', and the recurrence of maritime, 'blue water' conceptions of British identity and interests. These are now being tested by the war in Ukraine and other developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent excavations at the early Middle Pleistocene site of Mata Menge in the So'a Basin of central Flores, Indonesia, have yielded hominin fossils (1) attributed to a population ancestral to Late Pleistocene Homo floresiensis (2). Here we describe the age and context of the Mata Menge hominin specimens and associated archaeological findings. The fluvial sandstone layer from which the in situ fossils were excavated in 2014 was deposited in a small valley stream around 700 thousand years ago, as indicated by [sup.40]Ar/[sup.39]Ar and fission track dates on stratigraphically bracketing volcanic ash and pyroclastic density current deposits, in combination with coupled uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating of fossil teeth. Palaeoenvironmental data indicate a relatively dry climate in the So'a Basin during the early Middle Pleistocene, while various lines of evidence suggest the hominins inhabited a savannah-like open grassland habitat with a wetland component. The hominin fossils occur alongside the remains of an insular fauna and a simple stone technology that is markedly similar to that associated with Late Pleistocene H. floresiensis., Mata Menge is located near the northwestern margin of the So'a Basin, a ~400[km.sup.2] geological depression in central Flores (Fig. 1). The basement substrate consists of the Ola Kile Formation [...]

A future Labour government will face difficult circumstances - a stagnant economy, household hardship, political volatility and a weakened state. It will need to carefully plan a programme of economic reform while fleshing out its intellectual foundations - and maintaining a broad coalition of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to examine what needs to happen in central, sub-regional and local government to 'level up' public health in the United Kingdom (UK). The Government's recent Levelling Up White Paper outlined ambitious targets for reducing regional disparities, including a 'mission' to tackle inequalities in healthy life expectancy and reduce inequalities in the social determinants of health outcomes. However, the approach has been criticised for failing to integrate population health policy objectives, programmes and interventions into the implementation of the levelling up agenda and its associated 'missions'. Drawing on a case study of promoting healthy urban development in the UK, we examine how the wider determinants of health might be incorporated into the Government's levelling up strategy. Based on in-depth interviews with 132 urban development actors, our findings reveal that long-term investment in healthy urban development could play a key role in levelling up public health but is not currently part of the Government's plans. We make a timely contribution to the levelling up debate by placing public health centre stage in social science debates. We conclude by offering a series of recommendations for transformative policy change to level up health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City regions and Mayoral Combined Authorities are at the heart of the devolution policy agenda in England. This article assesses and compares the policy and research capabilities of Combined Authorities in England, drawing on elite interviews with officials in four diverse Combined Authorities and their wider sub-regional policy and research communities. There are significant inequalities between the policy and research capabilities of the Combined Authorities reflecting institutional histories, as well as differences in size and functional responsibilities. Those with already greater capabilities and infrastructure appear likely to continue to benefit from greater opportunities in the future, widening existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eightieth anniversary of the Beveridge inquiry is a timely moment to consider how the landmark report is used within contemporary UK politics. Calls for a 'new Beveridge' reflect a desire for a rupture with the past and the creation of a radical new welfare consensus. But this reflects a misunderstanding: Beveridge's approach was organic in nature, building on decades of experimentation, politically contested rather than consensual, and intellectually pluralist rather than moored to a single ideological worldview. The real insight Beveridge offers us today flows not from his substantive agenda—which was rooted in a particular set of historic circumstances—but as an approach to securing social reform. Successful welfare advances over the last generation have drawn on these 'Beveridgean instincts'. Rather than calling for a new twenty‐first century blueprint to be handed down from above, reformers should build on experimentation and successful incremental change, from within the UK and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How were comprehensive pension reforms in the UK successfully developed, enacted and implemented from 2002 to 2015, despite changes in government composition and the financial crisis? Why were they not subject to policy conflict, electoral competition and policy reversal? Drawing on actor-centred historical institutionalism and thirty interviews with key actors, we demonstrate the critical role played by a limited number of politicians and policy entrepreneurs and their ideas and agency. Institutional continuity with the Beveridgean policy legacies of the pension system and the United Kingdom's 'growth regime' enabled a coalition space to open up for policy agreement. between the government and Opposition parties, and for partisan electoral competition over the reforms to be 'bracketed'. The incremental and interlocking nature of the reform package reduced interest group opposition and enabled a centralisation of decision-making power. A long-term timeframe for reform cemented the formation of an elite coalition and buttressed political control. Cross-party support for the reform package, coupled with judicious phasing of the implementation of auto-enrolment and fiscal reforms, enabled it to withstand the impact of the financial crisis and the austerity that followed it, and to minimise opposition among the critical electoral constituency of older voters. The dominance of the reform process by political actors and policy entrepreneurs in the UK nonetheless came at a price, as institutional continuity and incrementalism foreclosed alternative reforms. We demonstrate the importance of political statecraft and policy entrepreneurship in the UK pensions' reform process, but within boundaries set by its institutional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-field compositional analysis of large prehistoric relics, such as the Altar Stone at Stonehenge (England), is limited due to the size of the relics and difficulty in obtaining samples that can be analyzed in a laboratory. In this study, a portable Raman spectroscopy system was used to analyze the Altar Stone to help determine its origin and classification, which appears to differ from other bluestones at Stonehenge. While the study is ongoing and the definitive origin of the Altar Stone is not yet known, this study demonstrates the applicability of a portable Raman spectroscopy system in the compositional analysis of large samples in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Altar Stone at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK, is enigmatic in that it differs markedly from the other bluestones. It is a grey–green, micaceous sandstone and has been considered to be derived from the Old Red Sandstone sequences of South Wales. Previous studies, however, have been based on presumed derived fragments (debitage) that have been identified visually as coming from the Altar Stone. Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses were conducted on these fragments (ex situ) as well as on the Altar Stone (in situ). Light elements (Z<37) in the Altar Stone analyses, performed after a night of heavy rain, were affected by surface and pore water that attenuate low energy X-rays, however the dry analyses of debitage fragments produced data for a full suite of elements. High Z elements, including Zr, Nb, Sr, Pb, Th and U, all occupy the same compositional space in the Altar Stone and debitage fragments, and are statistically indistinguishable, indicating the fragments are derived from the Altar Stone. Barium compares very closely between the debitage and Altar Stone, with differences being related to variable baryte distribution in the Altar Stone, limited accessibility of its surface for analysis, and probably to surface weathering. A notable feature of the Altar Stone sandstone is the presence of baryte (up to 0.8 modal%), manifest as relatively high Ba in both the debitage and the Altar Stone. These high Ba contents are in marked contrast with those in a small set of Old Red Sandstone field samples, analysed alongside the Altar Stone and debitage fragments, raising the possibility that the Altar Stone may not have been sourced from the Old Red Sandstone sequences of Wales. This high Ba 'fingerprint', related to the presence of baryte, may provide a rapid test using pXRF in the search for the source of the Stonehenge Altar Stone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A familiar image in eighteenth-century Chinese carving in jade is that of the recluse--usually a Daoist immortal or Buddhist monk--situated within a cave or rocky outcrop (Fig. 1). Such items [...]

Virginia Scharff, Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement and the West. 249 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 0-5202-3777-3, $19.95/12.95 £ (paperback). In this book Scharff takes her reader [...]

David Blamey (ed.), Here, There, Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location and Mobility. 272 pp. London: Open Editions, 2002. ISBN 0-949-00413-8, 14.99 £ 22.50 € (paper). This book is an excellent example [...]

The 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech brought back into public debate one of the most controversial figures in modern British political history. Powell remains indelibly linked to the stances he took on race and immigration in the 1960s and 1970s, but in recent years there has been a widening of the lens through which his politics and public arguments are viewed. This article contributes to this reappraisal, arguing that central aspects of his thinking were shaped by his highly distinctive reflections on sovereignty, representation, and the nation state in the early 1950s. It demonstrates that Powell's positions on both the internal configuration of the nation state and its external relations were intertwined, and were applied by him on a fairly consistent basis throughout his career, informing the stances he took on the contentious issues of Europe and Ulster in the 1970s, as well as immigration. Our account of his thinking challenges both the tendency of his interpreters to treat his views on international relations and the internal politics of the United Kingdom as thematically distinct, and the accusation of political opportunism that has been a central motif in commentary on his political career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the way in which the visibility of collectors of Asian art impacted upon popular culture of the inter-war period, particularly the novel, initiating a sort of symbiotic enhancement of the collector and their activities. Referencing actual collectors against their fictional counterparts offers an intriguing insight into character, motivation and the market for Chinese works of art at the time. The actual and fictional come together in an attempt to point up the visibility of artefacts from China that during the period from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century became somewhat familiar in the public mind. This period which lasted into the late 1930s was both one of a growth in knowledge and of opportunity with the familiar blue-and-white porcelain of the nineteenth century giving way to the unfamiliar: objects in a huge range of forms and materials and dating from as far back as China's earliest civilisation. The two went hand in hand. Knowledge of what was collected by individuals and museums grew out of the increased availability of material that was flooding out of China and on to the international art market. Its visibility was the result of major exhibitions and the prominence of collectors whose flamboyance and eccentricity also gave rise to characters in fiction from whom their habits, personalities and situations were drawn. What they all have in common is what Arthur Conan Doyle lets Sherlock Holmes refer to as "collection mania in its most acute form". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss the various topics tackled in the issue like the translocation of artefacts from China, the Western art collecting practices in China, and the looting of Yuanmingyuan art in the 1860s.

A commemorative medal in the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, marks Danish journalist and adventurer, Frits Holm's (1881-1930) attempt to remove in 1908 a monument recording the first arrival of Nestorian Christianity in China (AD.635). Unsuccessful in his attempt at its removal, Holm commissioned a replica of the stele in local stone, carved directly from the original and shipped it to New York, where, for ten years, it was displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even at the time it was questioned whether a copy had any artistic merit, but such was the Nestorian stele's fame as a Christian document that it ended up in the Vatican Museum and was itself a source from which cast copies were made and distributed around the world. The paper discusses Frits Holm's 'adventure', which provided him with the perfect opportunity for self-promotion, and addresses the position of the copy to collecting practices, especially by Westerners in China during the first decades of the twentieth century. Despite his efforts, Holm could never escape his failure to acquire the original object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of age on voting behaviour and political outcomes has become an issue of increasing interest, particularly in the UK. Age divides in voter turnout and political preferences have led to claims that age is the 'new class'. In this article, we contrast existing 'cultural backlash' and political economy explanations of the age divide in politics, and challenge the view that older people are predominantly 'left behind', culturally or economically. We show that older people have distinct material interests, related to housing wealth and pensions' income, that are visible in their political preferences. We argue for the development of a new political economy of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the uncertainties about the nature of the Britain's politics after Brexit. Topics discussed include British model of economic development that has had finance and financial agglomeration; range of political and economic shocks to the transformation of the structure of the political economy; and ways in which parliamentary impasse over Brexit could have profound consequences for the party system.

Of all the European welfare states, the UK most clearly represents the liberal regime type – notwithstanding a shift towards 'social investment' under New Labour – as defined by its residual, targeted benefit structure and increasingly punitive activation regime. The idiosyncratic institutional characteristics of the UK welfare state give rise to challenges and opportunities with respect to prospects for the introduction of (some form of) basic income. Despite a large and growing population of 'disaffected' precarious and low-paid workers and widespread dissatisfaction with the increasingly punitive sanctions regime, significant barriers to the emergence of a sufficiently large and coherent constituency of support for basic income remain. Thus, while institutional inertia and political considerations may preclude anything more than marginal changes to the existing system, a number of policy options falling short of a 'full' basic income – but retaining some of its core features – appear relatively feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with Nick Pearce’s exploration of how the senses are engaged as tools in the production and connoisseurship of the high arts in China, starting with calligraphy and moving on to a consideration of painting, bronze vessels and funerary objects. The sensuous dimensions of these diverse media are evoked and also, at a more abstract level, the peculiarly Chinese “sense of temporality” that imbues them with meaning and value. The imperial (or “premodern”) Chinese sense of temporality is interrogated by Beverley Best in her response. The latter brings a historical materialist perspective to bear on Pearce’s account of timelessness in the appreciation of Chinese art (until it got museumized). This is referred to as “the past in the present [as tradition - Best adds].” Best juxtaposes this imperial, “premodern” ideological formation with the modern sense of “past-present-future as progress” and the aesthetics of singularity or novelty (after Jameson). This approach is in turn challenged by Mingyuan Hu in the rejoinder, where questions about the sense of temporality and about time itself, and about theory and historical enquiry, are posed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour has to live up to the milestones set by Thatcher. They will have to develop a localized agenda, the reforms should be consistent with social justice as the focus.

ABSTRACT We describe the stratigraphy, age and correlation of a prominent tephra marker, named Lepué Tephra, extensively distributed in north-western Patagonia. Lepué Tephra is well dated at c. 11 000 cal a BP from numerous lake and soil cover-bed sequences and its recognition is useful for assessing the rate and timing of deglaciation as well as associated environmental changes in this region during the last glacial termination and early Holocene. Lepué Tephra has attributes typical of a complex and compositionally zoned phreatomagmatic eruptive. While the initial rhyolitic phase can be readily distinguished from multiple eruptive products sourced from the adjacent Volcán Chaitén, the main erupted end member is of basaltic-andesitic bulk composition − similar to younger tephras sourced from Holocene monogenetic cones adjacent to the Volcán Michimahuida massif (tMim). Lepué Tephra can be correlated to an equivalent-aged pyroclastic flow deposit (Amarillo Ignimbrite) prominently distributed in the south-eastern sector of tMim. The source vent for these co-eruptive events is obscured by an extensive ice field and is currently unknown. The widespread radially symmetrical distribution of Lepué Tephra centred on tMim cannot be attributed solely to volcanological considerations. Reduced Southern Hemisphere westerly wind influence interpreted from climate proxies at the time of eruption are also implicated. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mature students have been a significant feature of UK higher education for at least 40 years. Categorising all undergraduates who started their degrees over the age of 21, as mature masks significant diversity. Older mature students have been shown to get better degree outcomes than younger mature students and young students. This study explores the learning experience of six older mature students, who started their studies over the age of 40, in order to better understand this under-studied group. The findings suggest that confidence is of critical importance in underpinning the experience of this group, and that increased confidence leads to better time management and more integration into the wider student body. This has implications for lifelong learning, where developing strategies to improve the confidence of these learners can help accelerate their integration into the student body, and may have a positive impact on their retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]