Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non-Movement”, and the Making of Centres

This paper revisits the histories of Unemployed Workers’ Centres to consider the politicisation of unemployment in the UK. Drawing upon archive material and over 50 oral histories, it considers the emergence of centres as a response to a crisis of increasing unemployment and retrenchment of the welfare state. The paper indicates how Asef Bayat’s concept of “non-movement” proves useful for capturing a wider sphere of labour organising, moving beyond more conventional spaces and actions. This approach critically revisits the role of centres in conversation with emerging work in labour geography and social movements studies around the fostering of solidarities. It reveals tensions around their making, whilst also stressing the potential of seemingly small acts when held alongside campaigns. Revisiting this repertoire of activity reveals the persistence of trade union engagements with communities beyond the workplace, as well as a critical insight into the politics of space in forging such alternatives.     

The Forgotten Semantics of Regression Modeling in Geography

This article is concerned with the semantics associated with the statistical analysis of spatial data. It takes the simplest case of the prediction of variable y as a function of covariate(s) x, in which predicted y is always an approximation of y and only ever a function of x, thus, inheriting many of the spatial characteristics of x, and illustrates several core issues using “synthetic” remote sensing and “real” soils case studies. The outputs of regression models and, therefore, the meaning of predicted y, are shown to vary due to (1) choices about data: the specification of x (which covariates to include), the support of x (measurement scales and granularity), the measurement of x and the error of x, and (2) choices about the model including its functional form and the method of model identification. Some of these issues are more widely recognized than others. Thus, the study provides definition to the multiple ways in which regression prediction and inference are affected by data and model choices. The article invites researchers to pause and consider the semantic meaning of predicted y, which is often nothing more than a scaled version of covariate(s) x, and argues that it is naïve to ignore this.     

Traceable Tasks and Complex Policies: When Politics Matter for Policy Implementation

Implementation represents a key venue for the expression of political conflict. The challenge of illusory implementation, implementing the law's letter but not its spirit, has long vexed scholars and architects of public policy. We develop a political model of policy implementation to predict the kinds of politics—electoral, group, administrative—that different parts of complicated laws activate during implementation. Using original state‐level data on landmark education policy, we assess whether and how these politics render illusory implementation more or less likely for specific policy tasks embedded in complex laws. Consistent with our model, we find electoral politics render illusory implementation less likely for a narrow set of tasks. Group‐based politics and administrative politics bear on illusory implementation for a broader set of tasks in diverse ways. Overall, how policy activates politics during implementation depends on the features of the policy lever, where it is put into practice, and how traceable it is to the bureaucrats who do the implementing. Further, the results underscore how nuanced insights about implementation emerge when one considers individual components of complex laws, rather than treating the laws themselves whole cloth.     

“Where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty”: Offshore Humanism and Marine Xenology,or, Racism and the Problem of Critique at Sea Level

The 2015 Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture was delivered by Prof. Paul Gilroy on 2 September at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference. Prof. Gilroy's lecture interrogates the contemporary attractions of post‐humanism and asks questions about what a “reparative humanism” might alternatively entail. He uses a brief engagement with the conference theme—“geographies of the Anthropocene”—to frame his remarks and try to explain why antiracist politics and ethics not only require consideration of nature and time but also promote a timely obligation to roam into humanism's forbidden zones.     

In search of Derek Freeman

Truth’s Fool is a sympathetic biography of Derek Freeman, the anthropologist best known for his scathing critique of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. Hempenstall, a historian, chronicles Freeman’s life and work, including an appraisal of the Mead–Freeman controversy. Hempenstall is interested in Freeman’s ideas, motives, and intentions as well as his personal struggles. He argues that Freeman has been misunderstood, maligned, and vilified in an uncivil “war” among cultural anthropologists. This review examines Hempenstall’s interpretation of Freeman’s personal struggles and his perspective on Freeman’s two books on Mead and Samoa.     

Durham Anthropology: A provincial history of a provisional discipline

A history of anthropology in the Northumbrian region of England from the early Christian era, through the age of exploration and subsequent period of industrialization, to the twentieth century. Focussing on the various anthropological strands in the region’s long tradition of scholarship, the paper traces the discipline’s shifting provisional identity from a provincial perspective and eventual representation at Durham University in a Department of Anthropology.