Marriage as a Marker of Secular Inclusion? Oral History and Lesbian and Gay Narratives on Marriage in Contemporary Australia

Same‐sex marriage has been one of the most widely discussed social issues in contemporary Australia for some time. In late 2017, after holding a contentious national postal survey that year, the Australia government introduced legislation allowing same‐sex couples to marry. This article draws on a major national lesbian and gay oral history project conducted in partnership with the National Library of Australia between 2012 and 2015, when discussions of same‐sex marriage were becoming increasingly widespread. It investigates the way interview subjects incorporated marriage into their narratives. In doing so, it highlights how understandings of marriage — both amongst lesbian and gay people and heterosexual people — have shifted and evolved over time. While some subjects saw marriage as a somewhat outdated, religious, and patriarchal concept, many others invested personal significance in the institution, arguing that allowing gay men and lesbians access to marriage would be a strong symbol of social progress and equality in a secular society. We conclude with one young interviewee who had managed to reconcile his faith with his sexuality and desire for marriage equality.     

The political will and the administrative won't? Mathieu Thomassin and his dauphins (Charles III and Louis II)

The delphinal counsellor Mathieu Thomassin composed a Breviere des anciens droys … du Dauphiné de Viennoys (c.1453) after a career of 30 years in the service of Charles III (the French king Charles VII) and Louis II (the future Louis XI). This was his first major historical text in French, but has been overshadowed by his better-known Registre delphinal, commissioned by Louis II in 1456. This article analyses the historical culture and the conception of history revealed in the Breviere. It notes how Thomassin's careful definitions of frontiers in the past and present reflect his experience of territorial disputes. History and geography are imbued with polemic, however, allowing Thomassin to override competing claims to territory or autonomy by delphinal opponents within and outside the Dauphiné. The principles set out in the Breviere were refined and extended in the Registre. However, it is unlikely that either work was ever intended for wide circulation; rather, they were written to provide ‘authentic’ texts which could be consulted primarily by other delphinal officers. As such, they reflect on occasion the divergence of views between a proto-professional administrator, with a concern for the long-term, and his preoccupied (if not dilettante) prince, much more subject to the requirements of realpolitik.     

Disparity Despite Diversity: Social Injustice in New York City's Urban Agriculture System

Many studies have documented the benefits of urban agriculture, including increased food access, job creation, educational opportunities, and green space. A focus on its social benefits has fed an association of urban agriculture with social justice, yet there is a distinction between alleviating symptoms of injustice (such as disparate access to food or environmental amenities) and disrupting structures that underlie them. Despite its positive impacts, urban agriculture systems may reinforce inequities that practitioners and supporters aim to address. This paper reports findings from a 2‐year study of urban agriculture in New York City, which found race‐ and class‐based disparities among practitioners citywide. Using the lens of critical race theory, it argues that a failure to examine urban agriculture's role in either supporting or dismantling unjust structures may perpetuate an inequitable system. The paper concludes with recommendations for urban agriculture supporters and scholars to help advance social justice at structural levels.     

Vegetal politics: belonging,practices and places

Cultural geography has a long and proud tradition of research into human–plant relations. However, until recently, that tradition has been somewhat disconnected from conceptual advances in the social sciences, even those to which cultural geographers have made significant contributions. With a number of important exceptions, plant studies have been less explicitly part of more-than-human geographies than have animal studies. This special issue aims to redress this gap, recognising plants and their multiple engagements with and beyond humans. Plants are not only fundamental to human survival, they play a key role in many of the most important environmental political issues of the century, including biofuels, carbon economies and food security. In this introduction, we explore themes of belonging, practices and places, as discussed in the contributing papers. Together, the papers suggest new kinds of ‘vegetal politics’, documenting both collaborative and conflictual relations between humans, plants and others. They open up new spaces of political action and subjectivity, challenging political frames that are confined to humans. The papers also raise methodological questions and challenges for future research. This special issue grew out of sessions we organised at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New York in 2012.     

Teachers' Attitudes and the Success of School Choice

The 1990s witnessed growing attention to the adoption of choice-based school reforms, particularly charter schooling and school vouchers. Although researchers have approached the school choice debate from theoretical, normative, and empirical directions, little attention has been paid to examining how teachers view school choice or what factors shape their attitudes. This oversight is significant because teachers can impact the success of school choice experiments in many ways, such as through their willingness to launch and staff schools of choice, adopt new practices developed in schools of choice, and support choice-based reform efforts in their unions and communities. Using a survey of Arizona and Nevada teachers, we find that White, experienced, unionized, Democratic educators and those working in a "positive" school environment are less supportive of school choice. Arizona teachers, who live in close approximation of a free market for education, are particularly hostile to choice, but teachers who have had personal contact with a charter school are more supportive. The results indicate that the success of school choice will likely be influenced by the characteristics of the teacher workforce and teachers' familiarity with competition.     

Changing emphases in English vernacular homiletic literature, 960–1225

In spite of the highly traditional nature of English vernacular homiletic literature, the content of the homilies can be shown to change when the period 960–1100 is compared with the period 1100 1225. This is especially true of the homilists' attitudes toward history, and of the subjects they address when they admonish their audiences with regard to correct behavior.By identifying direct admonitions to behave or obstain from behaving in a particular way, it has been possible to establish certain important categories of behavior advocated or prohibited. Admonitions relating to these thirty-seven categories of behavior have then been recorded and quantified. The results of this analysis show significant changes in the attention of the homilists to such categories of behavior as murder, lying, sorcery, theft, disloyalty, kinship duties, and confession, as well as to various states of mind such as chastity, contrition, etc. These changes reveal an early thirteenth-century homiletic literature in which questions of basic social order are no longer considered pressing matters for the pulpit, and in which sincere compliance with Christian moral precepts is a primary concern.Seen in this light, the homilies give us valuable insight into the world view characteristics of the parish pulpit during a period when there are very few other records of parish life.