The London Broadcasting Company (LBC) and Independent Radio News (IRN) Archive

UK commercial radio was formally launched in October 1973 whenLBC went on air. Its sister station, IRN, began providing anews service at the same time for the growing number of ‘IndependentLocal Radio’ stations. During the period 1973–1996these two organisations assembled an archive of over 7,000 reel-to-reeltapes which now represent the largest commercial radio archivein Britain. For historians of the media, and of the twentiethcentury more generally, the collection is a rich and variedsource of social, cultural and political evidence. Media historians,including historians of journalism, can hear examples of a morepopulist and innovative style of reporting (or ‘reportage’)than was to be heard on the BBC. For the first time the phone-inwas an integral part of the schedule and a more opinionatedstyle of presentation was pioneered by Brian Hayes and others.The archive, soon to be digitised and made available online,contains a radio history of the period which started slightlybefore Margaret Thatcher's election as Leader of the ConservativeParty and finished a few years after the end of premiership.New clips, current affairs series like Decision Makers, parliamentarydebates (made by the LBC parliamentary unit) and phone-ins allcovered the major news stories of the time. There are, to takea notable example, 62 tapes on the Falklands War including 778individual news items. The archive is an important and hithertolargely neglected source for future historians of the period.     

The Howard Government's Foreign Policy: Really Realist?

Several scholars have suggested that the Howard government took a Realist approach to foreign policy, and others have claimed that it made important deviations from Realism. This article constructs a template of a Realist foreign policy and examines the Howard government's policies against it. It finds that the government scores highly on two of the indicators of Realism – emphasis on military power and lack of enthusiasm for multilateral institutions – and scores fairly well on the third, the subordination of values promotion to the advancement of interests. The Howard government, however, promoted democracy and human rights in situations in which no other Australian interest was involved, so its Realism was somewhat modified.     

A neglected chapter in Italy's transition from Fascism to the Republic: The Kingdom of the South (1943–1944)

Gallerano's paper examines the reasons why Italian historians have paid little attention to the political events that followed the liberation of the Italian Mezzogiorno and the brief life of the government established under the auspices of the monarchy during the period of what was termed the Kingdom of the South. He argues that this neglect derives in part from the brevity of the period of civil government in the south, but mainly from the fact that historians have been attracted above all by the history of the Resistance which has led them to consider events in the south to be of secondary importance. Gallerano argues that such a view is quite unjustified and shows how some historians ‐ from Chabod in the early 1950s ‐ have understood that events in the south bore very directly on the broader transition from Fascism to the Republic. Challenging Renzo De Felice's recent claims that Italy's defeat on 8 September 1943 marked the beginning of a crisis of national identity, Gallerano argues that the circumstances that obtained in the months that followed made the south an exceptionally rich terrain for exploring the very contradictory feelings and expectations that were aroused in Italy by the experience of military defeat and political reconstruction.     

清代史官议叙制度考略

史官议叙制度是清代文官奖励体系中的重要组成部分,用以激励参与纂修史书的史官。清承明制,将议叙范围扩大,运用于史馆修史,形成修史机构议叙管理机制。嘉庆朝编《大清会典》,又将史官议叙法规化。议叙内容根据史官出身和品阶不同相应有差,包括加级加纪录、加衔、提前开复、获得选官优先权等多种。终清一代,史官议叙制度吸引了大批士人主动投身到修史活动中,有效保障了清代大规模官方修史的顺利进行,并由此带来士人职业观念上的积极变化。     

Printing Oliver Cromwell's Speeches: The Making of a Split Personality

Oliver Cromwell's speeches are used frequently by historians of the interregnum, yet all current printed editions of the speeches have significant problems. They fail to consider the variations in different versions of each of the speeches and they consequently ignore the complexity of the sources. Each speech exists in more than one early version and each source has a provenance which is often difficult to determine. Additionally, no two versions of the same speech are identical, as each version has its own unique variations. These small variations in the wording have the potential to alter the meaning. This article looks in detail at these issues in relation to Cromwell's kingship speeches of 1657; some versions portray him as a conservative gentleman who ruled similarly to a king, while others present him as a religious fanatic who sympathised with the religious sects. Such differences can often be attributed to the personal beliefs of particular authors. As a result of the variations in the sources, the historian's interpretation of Cromwell is necessarily affected by which source he or she uses for Cromwell's speeches. Cromwell's speeches are an important source, but if historians hope to make use of them, they must acknowledge the complexities of the original sources.     

Now that's Controversial! Tracing the Influence of Policy Discourses on History Education Reform in the Balkans

In this article, I bring an ethnographic lens to untangling the influence of policy discourses on civil society-initiated projects of history education reform in the Balkans. Drawing on data from a multi-sited project conducted amongst historians, teachers, and NGO personnel, I ask: what are the dominant discourses that impact civil society-initiated efforts to promote history education reform, and how are these discourses made authoritative? How does policy act to organize the work of this cluster of actors, and what kinds of responses does it provoke? While educational policy discourses and their impacts are varied, I argue that such discourses can be profitably viewed as technologies of governance deployed in the service of post-national citizenship formation. In analysing behaviours of “complaisance”, how “competencies” emerge as a slippery signifier whose expansive meaning was exploited to multiple ends, and how the demands of post-national citizenship can, and sometimes do, detract from the goal of addressing controversial history, I map the field of possibilities in which my interlocutors found themselves, and highlight how they navigated their positions as mediators of particular, shifting, social worlds.     

Educating Citizens or Defying Federal Authority? A Comparative Study of In‐State Tuition for Undocumented Students

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of state government policies addressing immigration‐related issues. This article addresses an example of state policy regarding immigration: since 2001, 11 state legislatures have granted undocumented high school graduates in‐state tuition status should they wish to attend public post‐secondary schools, while 18 others have considered, and rejected, the same policy. We argue that these outcomes are largely explicable by the manner in which the policy is presented and debated within state legislatures, especially the terms in which policy targets are socially constructed and state jurisdictional authority is framed. We apply this framework to two states (Kansas and Arkansas) that, in spite of demographic institutional similarities, reached different outcomes on in‐state tuition bills. The different outcomes can be traced to the manner in which policy deliberations in Kansas focused on positive evaluations of undocumented high school students, portraying them as “proto‐citizens,” while in Arkansas debate became centered on the state's jurisdictional authority to enact such a policy, an issue frame that effectively killed the legislation. This article suggests the importance of both social constructions and issue framing when state legislatures become the lead actors in crafting immigration policies.     

Learning from Schools: School Choice,Political Learning,and Policy Feedback

This article investigates the policy feedback and political learning effects of school vouchers. Of particular interest is how market‐based policies affect the likelihood that program participants will connect their experiences with the policy to the government. I examine parent survey data from an evaluation of the Milwaukee school voucher program. I find that voucher parents are more likely than public school parents to perceive that the government has influenced their child's schooling and to believe that their experiences with their child's school have taught them about how government works. Further, voucher parents report that their experiences with the policy have made them more politically active. While majorities of voucher and public school parents support increased public school expenditures, there is some evidence that school vouchers may decrease support for public schools.     

Environmental History within a Revitalized Integrative Research Methodology for Today and Tomorrow

Abstract

In the past decades, historians and scientists worldwide have focused intensively on researching and recording the micro and macro trends of the environmental history of many places with reference to numerous aspects of nature that involve people. Yet no definite methodology, epistemology or even theory has resulted from these research contributions, which were and are being conducted within disciplinary and sometimes interdisciplinary frameworks. The transdisciplinary research approach, at least as practiced by historians, is a ‘newcomer’, although it features familiar criteria. For several reasons, some historians appear to be neither in favour of, nor familiar with, research co-operation with other disciplines, private practitioners or informed community members. There are obstacles to using a research methodology that complements the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach, especially the grey areas of research quality, source validity, methodology and publication value. However, if approached constructively and meaningfully, transdisciplinary research may result in what we could call higher-order research because it is all-inclusive and can provide diverse perspectives on any theme, for example, environmental history. This article discusses the possibility of progressing towards ‘transdisciplinary’ as part of an integrative multidisciplinary approach in research on environmental history. An integrative multidisciplinary (‘triangular’) research model is proposed, especially for use by historians and others who want to approach environmental research from disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. It is also hoped that this discussion will stimulate the debate by historians on research co-operation with the social sciences and humanities, as well as collaboration with non-related sciences in environmental history.     

Historiography and historians of neuroscience: towards diversity in the ISHN

This article introduces and critiques the historiographical tradition of the history of the neurosciences as it has been established in the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN). The founding members of the ISHN were practitioner-historians, practitioners of the neurosciences with an interest in the great moments, ideas and controversies in the history of their field. The historiographical precedent set by these clinician-historians emphasized those aspects of history most interesting to them. Academic historians bring a different approach to the history of neurosciences, particularly an interest in studying the intellectual and cultural contexts of both the inherited and the forgotten ideas about the nervous system. Their approach to history has not been well presented in the ISHN, in part because the current historiographical tradition does not address their interests. This article highlights the methodological and epistemological differences between academic and practitioner-historians and discusses the difficulties that other historical societies have faced in trying to bring them together. The article then suggests ideas for symposia that might facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue and a revised historiographical tradition that speaks to the needs of both academic and historians and practitioner historians.     

DIALOGUES IN HISTORIOGRAPHY Historiography and Historians of Neuroscience: Towards Diversity in the ISHN

This article introduces and critiques the historiographical tradition of the history of the neurosciences as it has been established in the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences (ISHN). The founding members of the ISHN were practitioner-historians, practitioners of the neurosciences with an interest in the great moments, ideas and controversies in the history of their field. The historiographical precedent set by these clinician-historians emphasized those aspects of history most interesting to them. Academic historians bring a different approach to the history of the neurosciences, particularly an interest in studying the intellectual and cultural contexts of both the inherited and the forgotten ideas about the nervous system. Their approach to history has not been well represented in the ISHN, in part because the current historiographical tradition does not address their interests. This article highlights the methodological and epistemological differences between academic and practitioner-historians and discusses the difficulties that other historical societies have faced in trying to bring them together. The article then suggests ideas for symposia that might facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue and a revised historiographical tradition that speaks to the needs of both academic historians and practitioner historians.     

THE INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING OF SOUTH WALES: THE CAREER OF A STATE MANAGED REGION

This paper examines the causes of the current economic crisis in the industrial region of South Wales. The authors maintain that past as well as current government policies have played a major role in bringing about the crisis by contributing to the vulnerability of communities in South Wales. The authors review the history of the policies which have contributed to the current steel and coal crises. They then provide a brief discussion of current legislative policies designed to combat the crises. Finally, they critique alternative strategies: continued monetarism; a return To Keynesian/‘corporatist’ policies; and the radical restructuring demanded by an ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’ (AES).     

MAKING HISTORY BY CONTEXTUALIZING ONESELF: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INTERVENTION

This essay argues that, in their reflection of theoretical positions, autobiographies by historians may become valid historical writings (that is, both true narratives and legitimate historical interpretations) and, as a consequence and simultaneously, privileged sources for historiographical inquiry and evidence of its evolution. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, following the model established by Carolyn Steedman, historians such as Geoff Eley, Natalie Z. Davis, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Dominick LaCapra, Gerda Lerner, William H. Sewell, Jr., Sheila Fitzpatrick, and John Elliott created a new form of academic life‐writing that has challenged established literary and historiographical conventions and resisted generic classification. This article aims to examine this new historical‐autobiographical genre—including the subgenre of the “autobiographical paper”—and highlights its ability to function as both history (as a retrospective account of the author's own past) and theory (as a speculative approach to historiographical questions). I propose to call these writings interventional in the sense that these historians use their autobiographies, with a more or less deliberate authorial intention, to participate, mediate, and intervene in theoretical debates by using the story of their own intellectual and academic trajectory as the source of historiography. Traditional historians’ autobiographies, including ego‐historical essays, have provided us with substantial information about the history of historiography; these new performative autobiographies help us to better understand historiography and the development of the historical discipline. Interventional historians seek not only to understand their lives but also to engage in a more complex theoretical project.     

Policy attributes shape climate policy support

Understanding how preferences for public policy instruments shape policy support helps policymakers to design policies that begin to tackle large-scale and complex problems, such as climate change. Climate change policies generate both local and global costs and benefits, which affect the public's policy preferences. In this article we investigate the role of perceived conditional cooperation and distributive concerns on climate policy attitude formation. We identify a range of climate policies and test public opinion for adoption of these policies at different scales of government. The important theoretical distinction is the scale-driven distributional nature of policy costs and benefits as well as concerns regarding the cooperation of other actors. We use data from Sweden and a conjoint experimental design where we vary level of government, type of policy, and the targeted group. We find evidence that people support policies when costs are shared broadly. We also find that support for climate policy is conditional on expected policy adoption by other units of government at various scales. This implies that unpopular climate policies might be more popular if the funding structure of the policy allows for binding policy and that the cost-sharing is taking place at higher levels of government.     

Historians Writing about Historians

This article takes three famous historians writing about historians and history-writing as its subject, considering Fan Ye’s work in light of Liu Zhiji’s understanding of history and Fan Ye’s writing on Ban Gu. It seeks to discover in Liu Zhiji’s work the principles for writing a guoshi 國史 (court history), reading Liu Zhiji’s principles in relation to Liu’s assessment of Fan Ye’s Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han) in general, and, it provides, more particularly as a case study, a study of Fan Ye’s treatment of the earlier historian Ban Gu, author of the Hanshu (History of Han). The article builds the cases that Liu Zhiji and Fan Ye are model historians, insofar as they were responsible for supplying plausible accounts of the past based on the evidence available to them. Liu Zhiji’s metahistorical rules and Fan Ye’s biography of Ban Gu serve in the article as examples in this regard. The article presumes that the historians’ experiences in their own lifetimes inevitably shaped both the style and content of their works, as no “objective” or “scientific” account of history is possible. The good historian instead holds himself accountable for the judgments rendered. So although modern historians of China today may well prefer the rhetorical style of one of the three early historians to that of the others, moderns would do well to ponder, and in some cases emulate features of the early histories under review here.     

新中国建立后十七年“中生代”史家群体与马克思主义史学

新中国建立后十七年,那些出生于1910年代前后、具备扎实的史料考证基础、已经有一定学术地位、正处于学术生命旺盛期的"中生代"史家群体,在马克思主义史学居主导地位以及学习马克思主义理论的形势下,经历了从史料考证研究为主到运用唯物史观、融实证研究与理论指导于一炉的研究路向的转化。他们参加重大历史理论问题的讨论和大规模史料整理工作,在各自的研究领域多有新的创获,成为中国马克思主义史学队伍中的一员。新中国建立后中国马克思主义史家群体得以充实和扩大。     

Electricity Transformed: Neoliberalism and Local Energy in the United States

Abstract: The concept of neoliberalism is explored with respect to the history of the electricity industry and policy in the USA. Rather than view “neoliberalism” as an all‐encompassing form of governmentality or a hegemonic regime, it is instead situated in a political field of competing ideologies, policies, practices, and agents that includes social liberalism, socialism, and cooperativism, with hegemonic and redistributive forms of both social liberalism and neoliberalism distinguished. The field approach enables a dynamic interpretation of the history of the electricity industry in the USA that tracks the relative role of government intervention in the economy, scale shifts in the level of government intervention, and the extent to which the policies favor elite accumulation or redistribution to less favored economic categories. The field approach also enables an analysis of local responses to market restructuring that suggest some examples of redistributive politics, even local socialism, that have emerged as a consequence of marketplace restructuring.     

The arts as an instrument? Notes on the controversy surrounding the value of art

In the last decade of the twentieth century a shift occurred in the way western governments defended their cultural policies. New, instrumental arguments were put forward. This collided with the way the arts had learned to see themselves in the twentieth century: autonomous, with a value of their own. This article elaborates this confrontation of the arts and policy in two ways. First, it is shown that the distinction between an instrumental and an intrinsic value of the arts originates in a misperception of recent history. It was the political constellation of the Cold War that made governments in the second half of the twentieth century support the arts to be free and independent. Next, an attempt is made to anchor the value of art in a unique kind of instrumentality. With the help of philosophers and historians of culture, it is argued that the arts should be considered instruments of experience.     

古典历史的基础:从国之大事到普通百姓的生活

由于古代史料的性质和近代早期历史写作目的的影响,从古代到近代早期的西方,古代史基本为政治和军事史以及大人物所统治,社会经济与普通人遭到忽视。21世纪的古代史写作,大多将政治史排挤到相对次要的地位,普通人及其日常生活成为主要内容,其笔下的古代世界,着重古希腊罗马公民的社会生活以及影响公民生活的诸种政治和经济因素。古代史主题变换与研究转型,既与学者们对史料的认识以及对社会科学方法的借鉴有内在联系,也与西方史学注重公民活动的传统相关。世界古代史研究仍需在掌握语言工具的基础上,更多地借鉴现代社会科学理论与方法,实现从理论、方法到内容的转型,深入古代社会的历史。     

Federal intellectual property policy and the history of technology: The case of NASA patents

This essay explores two closely entwined issues in recent history of federal R&D policy: (a) the disposition of the US government intellectual property (IP), and (b) how to best assess the effectiveness of federal patenting and licensing policies. It does so by examining two decades of patenting policy and practice at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The essay concludes with observations on the limits of our current approach to collecting data on the disposition of federal IP, and an alternative framework for examining the role of IP in the history of modern technology.