Search

Despite the limited exception introduced by statute in 1974, the principle that truth is and ought to be a complete defence to all actions in defamation is typically regarded as self-evident in modern English law. The fact that England stands here against not only the whole of the civilian tradition but also a number of common-law jurisdictions suggests, however, that it is not. This paper, after surveying the history of the principle in English law and the debates that it has spurred in the past, argues that English law is right on this question, but needs to understand more cogently why. This, in turn, requires an examination of the interests protected by the cause of action. It is only if we accept that it is, and is solely, reputation founded in character that the defence of veritas will be secured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper emerges from an ethnography of the economic and cultural life of Rye Lane, an intensely multi-ethnic street in Peckham, South London. The effects of accelerated migration into London are explored through the reshaping and diversification of its interior, street and city spaces. A ‘trans-ethnography’ is pursued across the compendium of micro-, meso- and macro-urban spaces, without reifying one above the other. The ethnographic stretch across intimate, collective and symbolic city spaces serves to connect how the restrictions and circuits of urban migration have different impacts and expressions in these distinctive but interrelated urban localities. The paper argues for a trans-ethnography that engages within and across a compendium of urban localities, to understand how accelerated migration and urban ‘super-diversity’ transform the contemporary global city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores collective memory in Newham, East London. It addresses how remembering East London as the home of whiteness and traditional forms of community entails powerful forms of forgetting. Newham's formation through migration – its ‘great time’ – has ensured that myths of indigeneity and whiteness have never stood still. Through engaging with young people's and youth workers' memory practices, the paper explores how phantasms of whiteness and class loss are traced over, and how this tracing reveals ambivalence and porosity, at the same time as it highlights the continued allure of race. It explores how whiteness and class loss are appropriated across ethnic boundaries and how they are mobilized to produce new forms of racial hierarchy in a ‘super-diverse’ place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the social ties forged by Romanians in London with migrants of different origins in work and non-work contexts to offer a more nuanced view of ‘bridging’ social ties and related discussions of ‘everyday’ cosmopolitanism. Contrary to the overemphasis on ethnic ties seen as a form of bonding in migration research, the paper shows how Romanians bridge informally with many other migrants based on shared ‘non-native’ status. Alongside non-ethnically marked commonalities, ethnicity emerges as an important ingredient of cosmopolitan socialization, yet without necessarily signalling coexisting ethnic identities, as commonly assumed. Romanians' experiences further show that despite providing significant social and cultural capital, bridging ties with migrants, rather than natives, rarely accrue effective resources for social mobility. The findings suggest the need to disaggregate and qualify current understandings of ‘bridging’ social ties usually depicted in positive terms and uniformly as cross-ethnic relationships, or only linked with the ‘mainstream’ population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is concerned with the ways in which women are sold cosmetic surgery, and how they 'make sense of' their own participation in this market. It draws on ongoing ethnographic research to explore how a group of young women who have paid for breast augmentation surgery narrate their decision to undergo surgery, the choices they make as consumers of cosmetic surgery, and their experience of having surgery. These narratives are compared with the ways in which breast augmentation surgery is sold to them by the companies and medical professionals involved in the rapidly expanding market for breast augmentation surgery. The paper shows how this particular group of young white working-class women shift between imagining the breast augmentation operation as a simple beauty treatment and recognizing it as medical surgery, and explores how this shapes their perceptions of the risks and benefits of buying new breasts. It also shows how those who market such procedures manage and manipulate perceptions of the process of breast augmentation surgery and the risks that attend on it in an effort to encourage this form of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birmingham's St Patrick's Day parade claims to be the largest of such events in the UK and the third best attended in the world. Despite resorting to universal advertising proclamations that for one day ‘everyone is a little bit Irish’, this annual march continues to foster the unique musical character of the local diaspora; a metanarrative for the wider, fractious journey of the Irish community into the West Midlands over the past sixty years. This paper examines the primary event in Birmingham's calendar by way of the sounds of the spectacle, considering the musical display that is presented in the processional mode to a static audience sharing city-centre streets one Sunday morning every March. By engaging with the theories on performance of Domenico Pietropaolo, Mikhail Bakhtin and Stephen Greenblatt, this paper argues that it is in the audible space of the parade that Birmingham creates Breda Gray's Ireland ‘of global flows’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two key forces are likely to impact on the retail profile of London's high streets. First is the increasing expansion of London's retail sector across both affiliated and independent sectors, paralleled with economic volatility associated in part with the global crisis in 2008. The second is the political shift, at both national and city scales, towards the recognition of small independent shops and local high streets, as signalled in The Mayor's Draft Replacement London Plan, 2010. This brings us to a third consideration: the growth of ethnic retail, evidenced particularly in London where national levels of immigration and ethnic diversity are at their highest. The 2010 High Street London report commissioned by the Mayor's Office emphasises 'the local' role of London's high streets for a 'local' populous, reflecting a larger national policy emphasis on Localism as outlined in The Localism Bill in 2010. This paper explores what forms of planning are best suited to recognise a rapidly evolving retail landscape together with the crucial differentiations inherent in the local landscape. The focus is explicitly contextual: it is London centric in its scope, and relies on detailed survey and ethnographic data of a south London high street located within an area with high Indices of Deprivation. The context sits in contrast to the notions of the village high street and the upmarket high street, which encapsulate cultural notations of vitality and viability which frame much of the literature and policy around the value of high streets. By analysing the adaptive practices of the ethnically diverse, independent retailers on the Walworth Road, socioeconomic measures of high street values are explored. Further, the paper conceptualises adaptation as the strategic adjustments made by independent proprietors in recognition of large-scale economic forces, national regulatory frameworks, and local cultural nuances. The paper reframes 'the local' as 'the particular' and emphasises the need for disaggregated, fine-grained research on retail practices in high streets which reflect crucial contextual differentiations. Finally it explores what a planning framework and stewardship mechanism for high streets in London's urban margins might comprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early and mid-Victorian period public pronouncements by evangelicals were often described as the antithesis of rational speech. The voice of science, by contrast, was routinely equated with the voice of reason. This disparity was particularly clear in satirical and critical commentary about the platform rhetoric associated with London's Exeter Hall, a key meeting place for evangelicals and a metonym for evangelical expressions of Christian belief. It was against this backdrop that the fledgling Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) inaugurated a popular series of lectures in 1845. Held in Exeter Hall from 1848, the series ran until 1865 and proved to be immensely popular. By investigating the ways in which the promotion of science was combined with religious exhortation in the YMCA lectures, this paper examines how evangelicals positioned themselves with respect to the growing cultural authority of science. The paper also argues that these efforts were indelibly marked by the Hall and the communicative medium in which they were made. As such, the paper sheds light on the significance of platform culture within and beyond evangelicalism and on the importance of venue and audience in understanding science and religion relations in an age of lecturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on England in the period between c. 1600 and 1750, this paper examines from a historical perspective the emergence of several influential ideas about gaming. First, it analyses the development of systematic legislation; this, it is shown, combined elements of player protection and prohibition and was influenced by concerns about large losses, crime and gaming among the poor. The second half of the paper explores what might now be called the 'social consequences' of gaming. Many ideas about the ways in which carding and dicing could be harmful to a player and his or her family developed in a seventeenth-century context; these included the perceived (and real) effects of losing time, money and, especially in the case of women, reputation. By the eighteenth century the prevalence of gaming was encouraging commentators to think in new ways about its wider effects on society; England, they feared, was becoming a nation of gamblers. Thus, while historically distant, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century responses to gaming help us to understand the development of modern ideas about gambling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on evaluative research in an inner-London borough on a programme designed to raise self esteem and deter minority ethnic young people from involvement in crime and participation in gangs. The aim of the programme was to work with young people 'at risk' or involved with gangs, violent crime and who may use weapons and to divert them from this behaviour. Essentially, the paper explores the way in which minority ethnic young people can be equipped to develop social capital. The paper firstly applies a brief contextual understanding of urban minority ethnic young people's experiences of school and 'street life'; secondly, it will describe the background and aims of the programme; and thirdly it will discuss whether and how the programme contributed to developing trust; to notions of awareness and empowerment; self-esteem and identity; and how it impacted on their social and family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises key findings resulting from the appending of the neighbourhood classification system Mosaic to the records of the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) within the National Pupil Database (NPD) of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The most significant of these findings is that, other than the performance of the pupil at an earlier Key Stage test, the type of neighbourhood in which a pupil lives is a more reliable predictor of a pupil's GCSE performance than any other information held about that pupil on the PLASC database. Analysis then shows the extent to which the performance of pupils from any particular type of neighbourhood is also incrementally affected by the neighbourhoods from which the other pupils in the school they attend are drawn. It finds that whilst a pupil's exam performance is affected primarily by the social background of people he or she may encounter at home, the social background of fellow school pupils is of only marginally lower significance. These findings suggest that so long as pupils' GCSE performances are so strongly affected by the type of neighbourhood in which they live, a school's league position bears only indirect relationship to the quality of school management and teaching. A better measurement of the latter would be a league table system which took into account the geodemographic profile of each school's pupil intake. The paper concludes with discussion of the relevance of these findings to the sociology of education, to the debate on consumer choice in public services, to the general appropriateness of adjusting public-sector performance metrics to take into account the social mix of service users and to parental strategies in the educational sector in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports some of the findings of research which has investigated the inclusion of disabled children in six primary school playgrounds in Yorkshire, in England. Initially the paper sets the policy context before moving on to discuss the importance of play for children, especially in a primary school setting and particularly for disabled children in such a setting. The inclusion of disabled children is discussed with respect to a series of social and organisational issues and the good practice identified relating to these issues. The social issues include the relationships the disabled children have with their peers and with the staff. The organisational issues relate to the individual routines, moving to a new school, the benefit of staff experience and training, encouraging activity in physical education lessons which can be translated in to the playground and the benefits of extra time outside for some disabled children. All these aspects can influence whether all the children can go outside together—an important underlying factor for the inclusion of disabled children in primary school playgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health interventions commonly have adverse effects. Addressing these could significantly improve health outcomes. This paper addresses an adverse effect common in the promotion of health behaviours: exacerbation of health inequalities between low- and high-socioeconomic groups. Health behaviours - particularly, physical activity - are positioned within the context of social inequality and the inequitable spatial distribution of resources. Area-based health policy that targets deprived areas is assessed for its capacity to promote health behaviours without exacerbating inequality. Data are derived from a 16-month ethnography in a deprived English neighbourhood that was the target of area-based intervention that prioritised the promotion of physical activity. Findings provide evidence of adverse intervention effects that further disadvantaged the low-socioeconomic population. Analysis demonstrates how this was ultimately the outcome of localised policy drifting away from initial commitments to equitable service access. These findings increase understanding of the processes through which adverse intervention effects arise and how they can be mitigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to define atmospheric pathways related with the occurrence of daily winter low temperature episodes (LTE) in England, for the 26-yr period 1974-99, and to reveal possible associations with increased mortality rates. For this purpose, backward airmass trajectories, corresponding to LTE in five regions of England, were deployed. A statistically significant increase in mortality levels, at the 0.05 level, was found for LTE, compared to non-LTE days across all five regions. Seven categories of atmospheric trajectory patterns associated with LTE were identified: east, local, west, North Atlantic, Arctic, southwest, and Scandinavian. Consideration of the link between airmass trajectory patterns and mortality levels by region revealed a possible west-to-east split in the nature of air masses connected with elevated mortality. Specifically, for the West Midlands and northwest regions, relatively warm winter weather conditions from the west, most likely associated with the eastward progression of low pressure systems, are allied with the highest daily average mortality counts, whereas, for the northeast, Humberside/York, and southeast regions, cold continental air advection from northern or eastern Europe, which lasts for several days and is linked with either a blocking pattern over the western margins of Europe or an intense high pressure anomaly over eastern or northern Europe, appears important in mortality terms. This finding confirms that winter weather health associations are complex, such that climate setting and airmass climatology need to be taken into account when considering climate and health relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the evidence of manorial court records, this paper examines in detail the developments in the relationship between the Bishop of Ely and his peasants at the manor of Brandon leading up to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Increasing levels of discontent among the peasantry can be observed across the period. This is expressed in rising reported numbers of various cases in the court rolls, such as non-compliance with the court, labour refusals, trespasses and cases of foot-dragging. This rising level of conflict, some open, some more hidden, can be seen as evidence both for increasing seigniorial concern to assert various jurisdictional rights, and the peasants’ increasing willingness to test the boundaries of seigniorial dominion, leading eventually to their participation in the Rising in East Anglia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the variety of foods sought by the well-to-do increasing significantly in early modern England, there was a reappraisal of the status of animal by-products. This paper investigates the development of offal from a food that was traditionally associated with the poor loan esteemed fashion-food that adorned the dining tables of the English gentry during the early modern period. It does this by analyzing changes in purchasing patterns at the homes of the social elite, and comparing the foods that they bought with the ingredients specified in fashionable cookbooks. With reference to these and other historical sources it will be seen that offal, after it had been suitably prepared, enabled the well-to-do to broaden the range of culinary tastes available to them, and add this food to their expanding range of cultural identity markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to test whether doorstep canvassing can raise participation in kerbside recycling. Existing research shows that canvassing can confront negative attitudes, increase understanding and resolve structural obstacles, but there is less known about the longitudinal effects of such interventions, which may fall away over time. 194 streets in Trafford, in the North West of England, UK were randomly assigned into a treatment and a control group. All households in the treatment group were visited by canvassers who were trained to promote and encourage recycling. Recycling participation rates for all households were measured by observing bin set out rates over a three-week period. Measurement was done before and after the canvassing campaign and then again three months later to see if the intervention had been effective in raising participation rates. Random-effects multilevel regression models, controlling for baseline recycling, street size, deprivation and size of ethnic minority population, show that the canvassing raised recycling participation rates for the treatment group compared to the control group, but there was a decline in the impact of the intervention over time. The intervention was more effective on streets with low levels of recycling at baseline. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the ancient names which have been associated with Lundy Island. They all describe traditions which belong to the magical realm of the "Otherworld." The objective has been to bring together for the first time the many disparate and, at times, perhaps tenuous links with Lundy in literature. Consideration is also given to aspects of the island's past which may have contributed toward this mythological status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Smoking prevalence in England continues to reduce but further reduction is increasingly difficult. Cessation policy has successfully targeted those who want to quit but further reduction will need to shift attention to more difficult ‘core smoker’ populations. Following the established ‘stages of change’ perspective, this paper considers the characteristics of people who do not intend to quit smoking, anticipate difficulties in quitting and have not received advice about quitting. We deploy multilevel models of data drawn from the Health Survey for England years 2002–2004, and the NHS Primary Care Trust Patient Surveys for 2004 and 2005. It was found that variations in intentionality and anticipated ease of quitting are associated with individual factors such as smoking intensity, parental smoking, age/length of time as a smoker and the nature of the advice-giving consultation. Household composition and household income are also implicated in the intention to quit and anticipated difficulties in quitting. Once individual and household factors are taken into account the only identifiable area-level variation is reduced intentionality towards quitting in rural areas. We conclude by arguing that further gains in smoking cessation must focus on understanding the characteristics of ‘hard-to-engage’ populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper assesses the impact of a decade of New Labour reforms on English local government. It focuses on assessing the outcomes of three key areas of reform: policies intended to improve the performance of local government services; measures aimed at reviving local democracy; and significant 'non-decisions' made in relation to crucial aspects of central-local relations, particularly local government finance. It is argued that New Labour's modernization agenda, inspired by notions of 'the Third Way', has had greatest impact where it has gone with the grain of New Right reforms. As a result, the most distinctive impact of New Labour policy on English local government has been that it has succeeded where Conservative administrations had failed in implementing a distinctively New Right agenda for English local government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-report research suggests that much violence is triggered by perceived insults and disrespect. This may be particularly true in the context of a prison or another environment of acute deprivation, whereby individuals have little other recourse to means of reputation enhancement. This paper presents the findings of two studies conducted with prisoner volunteers inside a Category C (minimum security) prison in England. In the first study, the authors randomly assigned a sample of 89 prisoners to one of two conditions: the experimental group were asked to discuss times they have been disrespected by authority figures inside and outside the prison; the control group were asked more neutral questions. Both groups then completed several measures of cognitive beliefs, distortions, and hostile attribution biases. None of the measures differed across the two groups except the measure of excuse and justification acceptance. Controlling for other factors, the experimental group endorsed these rationalisations at a significantly higher rate than the control group. This finding suggests that raising the salience of disrespect - reminding prisoners of times they have been made to feel unworthy of consideration - may raise the risk that prisoners will engage in violence by providing prisoners with justifications or excuses for actions they might not otherwise endorse. These findings received some additional validation in the second study, a qualitative analysis of offender accounts of violence and aggression within the prison. Implications for reducing violence within prisons are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the spectacle and publicity that surrounded the exhibition and auction of the Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, which was home to writer and traveler William Beckford. When Beckford decided to sell the Fonthill Abbey and its contents due to low finances, an open house of the property thrust it to the national spotlight, and led magazines and papers to write about the Fonthill's opulence. Publicity led to the two portrayals of the Fonthill Abbey, which included one on its iconic grandeur and monetary value, and another on its proprietary and comfortable character. It is said that because the house, as well as its extension of private collections, was opened to the public for financial gain, the architectural vision was undermined by the publicity that surrounded the sale.

The concern within this paper is to examine how, notwithstanding the growing global power of the USA and the declining power of Britain over a period of fifty years from 1874 to 1924, a series of attempts made by American entrepreneurs to establish the game of baseball in England were, to all intents and purposes, rebuffed. On four separate occasions during this period various American baseball entrepreneurs put on exhibition matches of baseball. On each occasion, baseball was given short shrift within the English press. We provide an empirical account before engaging in some theoretical reflections utilising a figurational sociological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the experience of researching British South Asian women's lives in London as a female British Asian researcher to explore how cultural commonality and difference is shaped by agency and interaction in the research process. It examines these issues through a discussion of how the shared cultural identity of the researcher and the interviewees emerged as both a point of commonality and difference in the research process; with the researcher being `positioned' in terms of both as a result of the interviewees' agency in interpreting their cultural commonality. In particular, issues of ‘Indianness’ and religion emerged as points on which interviewees exercised agency and interpreted the researcher's cultural identity. This was the basis on which they claimed commonality or difference and this assessment consequently impacted on their interaction with the researcher. The article suggests that more attention needs to be given to how assumptions made by interviewees regarding the cultural identity of the researcher through their agency and interaction in the research process shapes interview dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the levels and forms of participation in extracurricular physical education (PE) of a cohort of 1010 15-16 year olds attending seven state schools in north-west England and north-east Wales. The data reveal that extracurricular PE provision in all schools retained a particular focus on competitive team sports alongside a number of recreational partner sports and individualized activities. At the same time, the study confirmed previous findings that young people's reported levels and forms of participation in different sports and physical activities in extracurricular PE varied significantly and differentially according to gender and, to some extent, social class. To this configuration, however, needs to be added the particularity of the schools young people attend. Schools evidently influenced patterns of participation, particularly among 15-16-year-old girls. It seems likely that the medium through which higher rates of female participation are realized — particularly in lower working class areas — is the particular blend of sports and physical activities available in extracurricular provision. In other words, the kind of sports and physical activities a school provides appears to be a critical factor in understanding school-level differences in participation. In this regard, it seems that becoming a Specialist Sports College is prominent among a number of developments which may result in a diversification of extracurricular PE opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses itself to literature on ‘aesthetic labour’ in order to extend understanding of embodied labour practices. Through a case study of fashion modelling in New York and London we argue for an extension of the concept to address what we see as problematic absences and limitations. Thus, we seek to extend its range, both in terms of occupations it can be applied to, not just interactive service work and organizational workers, and its conceptual scope, beyond the current concern with superficial appearances at work and within organizations. First, we attend to the ways in which these freelancers have to adapt to fluctuating aesthetic trends and different clients and commodify themselves in the absence of a corporate aesthetic. The successful models are usually the ones who take on the responsibility of managing their bodies, becoming ‘enterprising’ with respect to all aspects of their embodied self. Secondly, unlike Dean (2005 ) who similarly extends aesthetic labour to female actors, we see conceptual problems with the term that need addressing. We argue that the main proponents of aesthetic labour have a poorly conceived notion of embodiment and that current conceptualizations produce a reductive account of the aesthetic labourer as a ‘cardboard cut-out’, and aesthetic labour as superficial work on the body's surface. In contrast, drawing on phenomenology, we examine how aesthetic labour involves the entire embodied self, or ‘body/self’, and analyse how the effort to keep up appearances, while physical, has an emotional content to it. Besides the physical and emotional effort of body maintenance, the imperative to project ‘personality’ requires many of the skills in emotional labour described by Hochschild (1983 ). Thirdly, aesthetic labour entails on-going production of the body/self, not merely a superficial performance at work. The enduring nature of this labour is evidenced by the degree of body maintenance required to conform to the fashion model aesthetic (dieting, for example) and is heightened by the emphasis placed on social networking in freelancing labour, which demands workers who are ‘always on’. In this way, unlike corporate workers, we suggest that the freelance aesthetic labourer cannot walk away from their product, which is their entire embodied self. Thus, in these ways we see aesthetic labour adding to, or extending, rather than supplanting emotional labour, as Witz et al. (2003 ) would have it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]