A news flow analysis of the sale of a public asset

As the marketplace approach to economic regulation swept through New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s many new business opportunities were created. The deregulation of the electricity industry resulted in Utilicorp, a United States‐based utility holding company, entering into a joint venture with Waikato Electric Corporation in Hamilton, New Zealand. The public felt betrayed by the sale of a former public asset and a media crisis event was born. This study examines the crisis event from its historical origins and conducts a content analysis of the media coverage of the crisis. Waikato Electric and Utilicorp both underestimated the potential for public backlash to what appears on its face to be an excellent business opportunity. The Waikato Times assumed an adversarial role in this public controversy and sustained the coverage of this community crisis to effect change in the proposed merger.     

A capabilities approach to higher education: geocapabilities and implications for geography curricula

A geographical education offers more than skills, subject knowledge and generic attributes. It also develops a set of discipline-specific capabilities that contribute to a graduate’s future learning and experience, granting them special ways of thinking for lifelong development and for contributing to the welfare of themselves, their community and their world. This paper considers the broader purposes and values of disciplinary teaching in contributing to individual human development. Set in the context of recent debates concerning the role of the university and the neo-liberalisation of higher education this paper explores approaches to developing the geography curriculum in ways that re-assert the educational value of geographical thinking for students. Using international examples of teaching and learning practice in geography, we recognise five geocapabilities: use of the geographical imagination; ethical subject-hood with respect to the impacts of geographical processes; integrative thinking about society–environment relationships; spatial thinking; and the structured exploration of places. A capabilities approach offers a productive and resilient response to the threats of pedagogic frailty and increasingly generic learning in higher education. Finally, a framework to stimulate dialogue about curriculum development and the role of geocapabilities in the higher education curriculum is suggested.     

English Peasant Buildings in the Later Middle Ages (1200–1500)

FROM A SYNTHESIS OF evidence for late medieval peasant buildings this article argues that their size, quality and complexity have frequently been underestimated. Documentary evidence from the West Midlands is used to define the main features of peasant buildings—agricultural buildings as well as houses—in the period 1350–1500. Similar characteristics are found in the same period in other regions, in the context of their own building traditions. The origins of durable vernacular houses must be sought in the 13th century with the move away from earth fast construction. A series of changes began long before the ‘Great Rebuilding’ of the 16th and 17th centuries, and connected with that process in an evolutionary pattern.     

Revisiting Dred Scott: Prudence,Providence, and the Limits of Constitutional Statesmanship

Abstract

After the Dred Scott decision in 1857, Abraham Lincoln embarked on a public campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery in the federal territories. Lincoln's opposition to Dred Scott was, however, bound up with a certain theoretical orientation that is often rejected in the general milieu of modern constitutional theory. Within the context of two recent revisionist accounts of slavery and American constitutionalism, I argue that our retrospective evaluations of the sixteenth president's statesmanship must enter into a deeper engagement with Lincoln's attachment to natural law and his theological interpretation of the Civil War.     

The Hemerdon China Clay Works,Devon: A History and Description of the Site and Working Methods

This article presents an overview of the Hemerdon China Clay Works, 6 miles north-east of Plymouth (Devon), active from c.1860 to 1942. Based on research commissioned in advance of an extension to Headon West Quarry, it describes the development of the clay works and the methods of clay extraction and processing. Archaeological survey recorded a broad range of structures, features, earthworks and artefacts. They included the remains of an engine house of c.1907, two large masonry bases (probably associated with the flat rod system that transferred power from the engine) and a rocker beam. The article also describes a group of mica drags and settling tanks built c.1907. Combining this evidence with that gleaned from documentary sources, notably the large-scale Ordnance Survey mapping, an exceptionally detailed narrative has been constructed of the work's development through time. It has a relevance beyond the particular, and will help the future interpretation and management of the china clay extraction sites that are so characteristic of the region.