Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England: A Turning Point in the 1960s?

Attitudes towards autonomy and personal freedom changed in the 1960s in England, but hardly touched the needs of dependent older people. In particular, deeply embedded public and professional attitudes and priorities linked to little change in ‘psychogeriatric’ treatment for those who were mentally unwell. Total beds in psychiatric hospitals decreased, but those remaining were increasingly and disproportionately occupied by older people receiving custodial care, often long term, despite evidence that appropriate treatment could prevent admission and facilitate discharge. Widely publicised scandals of inhumane care of older people in psychiatric hospitals prompted a more responsive government approach to improving services.     

Plastic fantastic? Problematising post-feminism in erotic retailing in England

Sex shops in England have traditionally been perceived as masculinised consumption spaces, located at the margins of both the city and the clock (in decaying urban zones, hidden from view and frequented under the cover of darkness). Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of fashion conscious and female-orientated ‘erotic boutiques’, keen to disassociate themselves away from negative stereotypical representations of sex shops, through marketing themselves as stylish, fun, acceptable and safe, and, above all, empowering spaces for women to explore their sexuality. This article considers how erotic boutiques offer a post-feminist sexual address to women through claims of female empowerment, an embrace of traditional femininity and an endorsement of the aestheticisation of the female body. More specifically, I explore the post-feminist tensions between female sexual subjectivity and objectivity, by unpacking, and reflecting on, the relations between erotic boutiques and the space of the body. This is achieved by an analysis of how the products and services (and how they are marketed and displayed) promote idealised representations of female bodily sexual pleasure, adornment and knowledge that can apparently be obtained by the consumption of specific products and commodified sexual knowledges. The article consequently considers and questions a seeming inextricable entwinement of post-feminist sexual empowerment with sexual consumerism.     

Arms control in Asia: yesterday's concept for today's region?

Even if the international mood in favour of steep US and Russian nuclear cuts was to last, it is unlikely to spread to Asia, where nuclear arsenals remain comparatively modest and where regional allies rely on Washington for extended deterrence. This does not render nuclear arms control irrelevant in Asia, where there is a modest but significant tradition based on informal and unilateral restraint rather than formal agreement. But as more of Asia's nuclear programs have come out of the closet and as great power relationships intensify, the region needs to look nuclear arms control more squarely in the eye. For arms control to have real purchase in tomorrow's Asia, China and the USA will need to look beyond their currently asymmetrical relationship and find an understanding based on increased nuclear transparency which also restrains their potentially escalatory competition in advanced conventional war-fighting abilities.     

‘The terrible twos’: Gaining control in the nursery?

‘The terrible twos’ are often described as a time of ‘gaining control’, usually thought of as adults asserting control over children, who learn to control themselves. However, toddlerhood is as much about children learning to take control for themselves. This paper is an attempt to detail something of the social geography in the toddler room of a Scottish nursery, considering both styles of adult control and the ways in which toddlers attempt to appropriate and reconfigure space and time for themselves. That is, the ways in which space and time are negotiated in the course of day-to-day nursery life.     

Women's Work in Urban Bangladesh: Is there an Economic Rationale?

The general phenomenon that women in Bangladesh engage less frequently in market work than men is commonly explained as the lack of response of female labour to economic imperatives due to the overarching influence of purdah. However, this emphasis on a cultural rationale for gender-differentiated work behaviour diverts attention away from the deep-rooted economic inequalities at the societal level. This article examines women's work in urban Bangladesh from a female labour supply and demand perspective that is rooted in the socio-economic institutional context. The study finds that, despite the strong gender segregation of economic roles, women's roles are more flexible and lend themselves to changing household strategies more easily compared to men's. The evidence indicates that female labour market participation is largely the outcome of the supply effect shaped by the pattern of gender roles and gender-specific access to human capital. Consequently, women are relegated to low-skill market activities and have lower earnings than men, even without any overt discrimination in labour demand. The covert discrimination that leads women to pursue a different pattern of labour use than men is the fundamental gender bias of socio-economic institutions that govern household allocational decisions and dictate gender-specific behaviour.     

The Waning of Noble Lordship in Late Fifteenth-Century England?

Locality and Polity. A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499. By Christine Carpenter.     

What was the Prevalence of Malignant Disease in the Past?

A method is described which can be used to calculate the number of tumours that might be expected to occur in a group of skeletons. The method of calculation is based on published data that relate to the frequency with which various primary tumours metastasize to bone and on the number of deaths from malignant disease at the turn of the century. The method has been applied to one archaeological site and the results indicate that the number of tumours found—although very small—is within the limits suggested by the model.     

Viking stranger‐kings: the foreign as a source of power in Viking Age Scandinavia,or, why there was a peacock in the Gokstad ship burial?

Drawing on both written and archaeological evidence, this paper investigates the significance of the foreign, and in particular the concept of the ‘stranger‐king’, in Viking Age Scandinavia. Focusing on the case of the Danish Jelling dynasty, the monumental complex at Jelling is reinterpreted as a materialization of a stranger‐king myth: the ship‐setting reproduces the narrative of the founding of the dynasty by an immigrant forefather, and the earthen burial mounds convey the idea of the foreign king taking possession of the locals' land. In a broader perspective, the stranger‐king concept and the special association of the king with the foreign is identified as an integral element of Old Norse myth and a Scandinavian archetype of rulership. The embracing of the foreign in many different forms is seen as a political strategy whose aim is to illustrate a king's special connection to the forces of the distant and unknown world beyond direct human control, and which clothes him with an aura of the strange and the exotic. In this way, and closely related to the concept of sacral rulership, the foreign emerges as a source of power and a presupposition for the formation of early states in Scandinavia.     

Who is in control of the international monetary system?

Although the financial and economic crisis did not directly hit the international monetary system, it has lead to the rethinking of the overall architecture that underpins the world economy. Can the current system of floating currency blocs with dollar‐based trade and reserves withstand the strains of the global adjustment ahead? It is time to consider alternatives. This article argues that the existing system needs to evolve into a multicurrency one in which a number of international currencies, ideally representing the main trading areas, have the function of storing value and providing the unit of measure. A multicurrency system would respond more flexibly to the demand for liquidity and would provide a way to diversify the accumulation of reserve assets. It is also more appropriate for the increasingly multipolar world economy. The article discusses how in today's larger and more integrated world economy the dependence on the dollar as the basis of both trade flows and financial reserves has become excessive, creating some fundamental imbalances. However, while the rationale for change is clear, the current system is locked in a form of stable disequilibrium where the status quo carries the lowest risk for most players in the short‐term. Any abrupt move away from the dollar could trigger trade flow disruption and exchange value losses. Policy cooperation should keep the imbalances under control and manage the transition to a more stable system. The system will evolve, albeit gradually. Looking at the steps taken by some countries, notably China, there is the gathering impression that this decade is one of transition, rather than a ‘Bretton Woods moment’. Any reshaping will have to bring in the views of the ‘rising powers’, China in particular, and their concerns about the limitations of the existing system and the increasingly asymmetric burden of adjustment that it imposes.     

Divided sisterhood? Nationalist feminism and feminist militancy in England and Ireland

ABSTRACT

The generally accepted story is that British militant suffragists performed an unexpected and abrupt move away from the feminist movement and towards a fiercely jingoistic nationalist campaign once the war began in 1914. Yet, given the nature of exchanges between Irish and British militant feminists, Irish feminists should not have been surprised by this turn from gender solidarity to English nationalism. In this article, I argue that Irish-British militant feminist entanglements worked to expose the powerful role that English nationalism played in suffrage politics at a time when nearly all the focus was on the disruptive influence of Irish nationalism.     

‘Culture in EU external relations’: an idea whose time has come?

This chapter analyses the emergent cultural diplomacy discourse and practice of the European Union (EU) institutions, which has differed from that of nation-states. In semantics to begin with, since a far broader notion of ‘culture in EU external relations’ is EU usage. Yet Bhabha’s theoretical distinction between the ‘pedagogical’ and the ‘performative’ functions of nation-state narrative strategies holds at the supra-national scale as well: the author will explore the ways in which these functions have been appropriated by non-state actors. In EU cultural diplomacy as a ‘cultural policy of display’ in Raymond Williams’ sense, the agenda setting process has thus been marked by a polyvocal process of appropriation by different stakeholders. They have recently taken the discourse ‘beyond cultural diplomacy’ and expedient ‘soft power’ considerations, in a spirit of global cultural citizenship that privileges intercultural dialogue, mutuality and reciprocity. How this vision will be applied, however, is yet to be seen.     

‘I don't think it was such an issue back then’: changing experiences of pregnancy across two generations of women in south-east England

Based upon in-depth interviews with recent mothers and their own mothers in London, England, this article uses a cross-generational perspective to examine the changing experiences/perceptions of pregnancy over the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Pregnancy is a biological process, but exists within social, economic, political and cultural realms and is both spatially and temporally located. In this article we argue that advances in gender equality, maternity benefits, technological innovation and mass media have meant that pregnancy is now increasingly experienced in the ‘public’ sphere, whereas, in earlier twentieth century Britain at least, it was often relegated to the realm of private or domestic life. However with these changes have come new types of surveillance in the form of scientific ‘advice’, medical technologies and media dissemination of cultural ‘norms’ regarding appropriate dress, lifestyle and behaviour during pregnancy. Based upon the findings of our research we examine these changes from two different perspectives: firstly a Foucauldian notion of surveillance in relation to ‘medical’ advice on diet/lifestyle during pregnancy, and secondly new expectations regarding body image and clothing in the context of the emergence of ‘pregnancy chic’ and the figure of the ‘celebrity mum’.