What's the grand story? A macro-narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

This paper expands on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by adding a theoretical and empirical exploration into macrolevel narratives. Existing NPF research largely neglects macrolevel narratives, which prevents the NPF from developing its full power. The main contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) It provides a definition of macrolevel narratives by conceptualizing them as the “story form” of a policy paradigm. (2) It proposes a model and an empirical approach, which may lay the foundation for a standard macrolevel NPF approach. (3) It contributes to the NPF's aim of connecting the macro and meso level. The paper tests the model in a comparative multi-method design applied to the Swiss child and adult protection policy. The findings show that macrolevel NPF analysis helps understand where mesolevel policy debates come from, namely from an underlying paradigm and its effects on institutions and culture that enable and constrain macrolevel narratives.     

Early history of the state — West and east

Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp.549. UK £12.95 (paper).

John A. Hall, Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West, London, Penguin Books, 1986, pp.272. $14.95 (paper).     

War Trauma and Alcoholism in the Early Writings of Charlotte and Branwell Brontë

During and after the Napoleonic Wars, there was an outpouring of military-based biographical writing never before seen in British history. Over 200 military memoirs were published either as standalone entities or in periodicals such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and The United Service Journal. As a result, the experiences of ordinary soldiers were brought to the forefront of Britain’s public consciousness. Although many of these memoirs glorified war, a number revealed the psychological damage war inflicted on the British male population and explicitly exposed the horrors of combat to a domestic readership. Furthermore, this explosion of life writing also exposed a connection between suffering and alcoholism, consolidating trauma as a post-war, national problem. The Brontës, typically recognized as canonical, Victorian authors, first participated in this military-based literary movement. This article attempts to reposition and establish two of the siblings – Charlotte and Branwell – as significant post-war commentators. By focussing on their military reading, it will become clear how they vicariously processed and reimagined war trauma and addiction through their Glass Town and Angrian sagas. Not only will this article argue that the introduction of military biography into British society generated wide-scale recognition of war trauma, despite its absence within contemporary medical discourse, but it will also argue that the young Brontës’ literature is an important historical source for understanding and re-evaluating the public response to post-war military masculinity.     

Toward a Post-Socialist City? Economic Tertiarization and Urban Reformation in the Guangzhou Metropolis,China

This study examines economic tertiarization and urban reformation in Guangzhou, one of the most rapidly changing Chinese metropolises, as a path-dependent process blending the city's distinct mercantile tradition with the operation of new market forces and globalization. More specifically, it investigates how interaction of the socialist legacy of industrialization with the new forces of marketization and globalization has given rise to a peculiar pattern of simultaneous industrialization and tertiarization differing from the Western norm of linear progression. The author argues that the emergence of the tertiary sector as a main source of employment and a powerful engine for reorganizing urban land use and transforming the urban economic landscape raises new theoretical questions requiring a conceptual departure from the previous industrial-deterministic paradigm of socialist urbanization. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L80, O18, R11. 5 figures, 8 tables, 88 references.     

Reformation in the Far North: Cumbria and the Church, 1500–1571

Abstract

In the early industrial period, financial and professional services were mainly accommodated within residential premises. Centrally located houses became increasingly given over to office use. Eventually, converted parlours and bedrooms proved inadequate and enterprises started to commission specially designed premises: the era of purpose-built offices eventually arrived, brought about by a combination of growing commercial wealth, institutional reform, residential suburbanisation and acceptance of new fashions in the use of architecture. This study of the emergence of the office district of Leeds illustrates the transformation of urban space in the early industrial era. New light is cast on the relationship between the growth of office uses and the process of suburbanisation, and there is a detailed analysis and mapping of the transformation of particular streets and of the role played by individual professions. The paper covers the era up to 1861 when the purpose-built office era can be said to have become established in Leeds.     

Iran and the emergence of information and communications technology: the evolution of revolution?

This study examines the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) in facilitating political protest in the Middle East, with a focus on the Iranian experience. With the rise of ‘emancipating technology’ to mobilise popular support, many had hoped that the incumbent regime in Iran would be steered towards a more democratic and less authoritarian path. At the same time, the Iranian regime itself has shown an increasingly sophisticated technical nous, constructing a centralised censorship network and using available technology to proliferate propaganda and control and subdue cyber-protest. As such, ICT has acted as a complex dual-edged sword in both mutually supporting and suppressing political activism in modern-day Iran.     

Does the History of Medicine Begin where the History of Philosophy Ends? An Example of Interdisciplinarity in the Early Modern Era

Abstract

A popular saying attributed to Aristotle states that ‘medicine begins where philosophy ends’—but this principle does not seem entirely valid for the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when medicine and philosophy were considered to be integral parts of the same branch of knowledge. For this reason, although today medicine and philosophy are clearly distinct disciplines, historians of ideas cannot study them entirely separately. Indeed, since the early modern era was a period of profound revision of knowledge, probably only a truly interdisciplinary investigation can identify the conceptual shifts and transfers capable of reinstating medicine in its fundamental role in the development of civilisation and modern thought, in particular as a model of a rational knowledge aimed at improving the social good through a fitting interpretation of experience. This article intends to offer arguments in support of such a historiographical approach, and to illustrate certain interesting methodological ideas that emerge from a study in which the history of philosophy and history of medicine cross-pollinate.     

Meaningful Materials? Bone Artefacts and Symbolism in the Early Bronze Age Aegean

The symbolically laden use of materials is well documented ethnographically but hard to demonstrate archaeologically, especially for animal bones and teeth, use of which in post‐Neolithic contexts is commonly considered expedient. Early Bronze Age southern Aegean mortuary assemblages have yielded three distinctive classes of bone artefact. Comparison with contemporary unworked bone assemblages and contextually or formally related objects in other materials reveals complex cultural associations, the symbolic meaning of which is explored through heuristic use of ethnographic analogues. It is concluded that alternative value systems operated alongside those structured around exoticism and technological sophistication, usually deployed to understand EBA southern Aegean cultures.     

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.     

Was an Early Edition of the Book of Kings Composed during Hezekiah’s Reign?

In this article I critically examine the hypothesis that the early edition of the Book of Kings was written during the time of Hezekiah. I first analyze the histories of the kings of Judah from Ahaz to Josiah and the way their accounts helped to shape the histories of five earlier Judahite kings (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jehoash, Amaziah, and Uzziah). This analysis demonstrates that the same author wrote the histories of the pre-Hezekian and post-Hezekian Judahite king—an author who operated not earlier than the time of Josiah. Hence, the early edition of Kings was written in either the late monarchic or the early exilic period; thus, the hypothesis that an early edition of Kings was written during the time of Hezekiah can no longer be upheld.