Negotiating Particularity in Neoliberalism Studies: Tracing Development Strategies Across Neoliberal Urban Governance Projects

A reading of critical perspectives on neoliberalism would suggest that it is dead but dominant, a revanchist zombie that appears paradoxically ubiquitous despite its inherent idiosyncrasy. We argue that neoliberalism's paradoxical death, dominance, and retrenchment can be interpreted by analyzing the dialectic of universalizing processes and particular forms within capitalism. Neoliberal projects draw political import from systemic, universalizing tendencies in capitalism, particularly those ideological processes by which contradictions and crises come to be discursively, institutionally, and politically conceptualized within the same paradigm from which they emerged. Building on well developed research frameworks in neoliberalism studies, we propose a set of analytical tools to interpret links between particular projects and homogenizing practices. We illustrate this with a case study of urban “megaevents” (eg Olympic Games or football World Cup), demonstrating how ideological commitments to event‐based development strategies allow both the homogenizing imposition of entrepreneurial urban policy, and localized innovations in urban governance.     

Class in a Glass: Capital,Neoliberalism and Social Space in the Global Wine Industry

Abstract: This paper explores the evolving relationship between class and capital in the neoliberalised global wine industry. Wine is a unique sector that is possessed of intricate and underexplored aspects of class formation. Having investigated the recent restructuring of the industry under neoliberalism the paper goes on to analyse class formations in the production and consumption spheres. In this discussion we note not only the concrete economic and social dynamics of change, in terms of the differing fortunes of consumers, investors, landowners and workers, but also the physical and symbolic expressions of class in and through the countryside, as manifested in changing landscapes, discourses and idylls. In conclusion we analyse relationship between capital, class formation and accumulation across and within different scales in the context of a rapidly globalising sector that is so rooted in place.     

Monthly London Meeting

When the Catholic Mass was outlawed by Edward VI, ‘The sacrifice of Masses, in which it was commonly said that the Priests did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits’—the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 1553, Article Thirty-one (Bickwell 1955, 410), not only were priests loyal to Rome forced underground, but altars, vestments and chalices used in the Mass were destroyed. Clandestine priests had to either rescue and hide such items or purchase new ones.

Few chalices survived this iconoclasm and most Catholic priests must have had to purchase new plate, and there is evidence that some such plate was made in base-metals, an area which has so far been little researched.     

Howden Church

Shrewsbury's late sixteenth-century Old Market Hall—recently restored and returned to public use—is among the most prominent buildings in the town centre and, or so it would seem, a reminder of the town's pre-eminence as a marketing centre in the central Marches in the early modern period. Combining documentary evidence, archaeology, and the evidence of the building itself, this inter-disciplinary study sets out to examine the real reasons for the Hall's construction, how it was built, and the way in which it functioned. The paper also looks backwards to the growth of marketing in this part of Shrewsbury in the thirteenth century, and its promotion by considerable civic investment in the 1260s when a new market square was created from what was previously a wet wasteland. Looking forward, it tells the story of the Hall's use in the post- medieval period, and of past attempts to deal with inherent structural defects in the original design.     

Traces of History and Ethnology in the Local Names of Gloucestershire

Aspects of burial custom in Roman Britain which seem to be influenced by Roman ideas include burials found accompanied by coins, eggs, charcoal, phials, which once contained perfume, and ritual objects, such as jugs and pateras. The implications of these customs are considered together with the significance of symbolism displayed on tombstones. Discussion of funerary ritual, as it might have been practised in Roman Britain, includes the portrayal of the funerary banquets on tombstones. It is concluded, on the evidence available, that burial custom, like religious thought, was a matter of personal choice, partly because the Romans did not attempt to prescribe funerary practice, except in the law relating to the positioning of cemeteries, and partly because of the strong influence of Celtic religious belief surviving in Roman Britain.     

Traces of History and Ethnology in the Local Names in Gloucestershire

In the summer of 1996, excavations outside the Chapter House at Worcester Cathedral revealed a chamber filled with animal bones and a considerable quantity of artefacts. Analysis of this material suggests that this deposit constituted the remains of one or more high status meals, probably a feast, which were disposed of in the seventeenth century. These archaeological findings are supported and amplified by the extensive documentary evidence, which not only includes historical anecdotes but also primary source material. In combination, the historical and zooarchaeological evidence sheds light not only upon the feasting practice of the ecclesiastics at Worcester, but also on the condition of the Cathedral at the end of the seventeenth century in the aftermath of the Civil War.