The Queen as ‘social mannequin’. Consumerism and expenditure at the Court of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1393–1422

Unjustifiably, but often, dismissed as the driest of sources, medieval accounts can be a mine of historical and social information, and those of Isabeau of Bavaria, queen of Charles VI of France, are particularly fascinating. One of the many consequences of the king's lifelong mental instability was the development of an entirely separate financial administration for his wife and children, and this combination of radical innovation and unprecedented levels of expenditure has meant that scrutiny of Isabeau's accounts — the best preserved and most extensive of any medieval queen of France — has been considered fundamental in almost all biographical works. Although this paper looks at what could be regarded as a frivolous topic in Isabeau's wardrobe, the social concept of the royal lady as decorative fashion-plate has been particularly pertinent in recent years, but also has a long-standing pedigree. The necessity and public display of wealth were always an intrinsic element of medieval queenship, and a number of these wider themes will be explored alongside detailed analysis of two example accounts.     

Stigmatized Spaces: Gender and Mobility under crisis in South Sulawesi,Indonesia

The economic downturn in Indonesia (1997‐99) has changed the context of gendered spatial mobility in South Sulawesi. For low-income migrants in the region, the monetary crisis has not only reorganized the labor market, but it has also brought about an intensification of the stigma placed on young women's independent residence in an export processing zone. Household surveys and in-depth interviews with migrants and members of their origin and destination site neighborhoods, both before and during the economic retrenchment, illustrate that ideas about women's sexual morality are a key part of the context within which migration decisions are gendered. The article situates survey and interview findings within an overview of Indonesia's recent development history, economic crisis, and official state gender ideology. The article argues that migrants and their communities have identified the ‘prostitute’ as a female-gendered metaphor for the crisis, and finds that post-1997 narratives of women's mobility increasingly revolve around normative judgements regarding young women's independent mobility and sexual behavior.     

International History and International Relations Theory: A Dialogue Beyond the Cold War

Until recently, there has been little 'real' dialogue in Cold War studies between International Relations theorists and international historians. In many ways this is not surprising. For the most part, International Relations theorists took the Cold War as an immutable feature of the international system. Historians did indeed seek to explain the outbreak of the Cold War and the historic features that had given rise to American hegemony and Soviet opposition, but they did so primarily by concentrating largely on archival and related research with only limited attention given to the bigger issues of the Cold War world. However, as the article demonstrates, a dialogue between historians and theorists over some key aspects of the Cold War, such as the role of ideology, is now timely. The evolution of both a broader conception of International History, as well as the partial opening of communist archives and a range of new developments in International Relations, means that it is now possible to 'rethink' the Cold War using both history and International Relations theory.     

Qualified Toleration: Bermuda and the English Revolution

Central to both the causes and development of the English revolution was the demand for reformation of the Church of England. The question of what shape this reform should take, however, divided English men and women. Debates over the further reformation of the Church of England were also complicated by the emergence of increasingly vocal and powerfully‐placed calls for freedom of religion, ranging from a limited toleration for a certain few to a broader liberty of conscience for all. This article looks at the debate surrounding liberty of conscience during the English revolution in 1644–5, but from a fresh angle: examining the context and rationale for the parliamentary ordered religious settlement of the English Atlantic colony of Bermuda in October of 1645. Integrating the fortunes of this Atlantic colony into the history of the English revolution reconfigures our understanding and analysis of revolutionary religion and politics.     

Seismologies of emotion: fear and activism during domestic violence

This paper explores the relation of fear to activism in private and constrained circumstances of chronic risk and anxiety. Asking how people contest domestic violence, given the intensity of the fear that it generates, the paper reframes their responses as practices of activism. It draws on qualitative research that charts the nature, experience and effects of fear over time. Using seismology as a metaphor for this process, the analysis describes complex and often hidden shifts in emotions over periods of years, as interviewees describe being simultaneously constrained by fear and actively using fear to manage and contest violence. Their practices of resistance are small scale, largely invisible to others, and have a messy and non-linear relationship with the process of leaving that some eventually undertake. Such action is only necessary in a social and political climate which continues to place more emphasis on individual than social responsibility for domestic violence. I examine what this resistance adds to recent accounts of activism, concluding that isolated actions constitute activism when they anticipate or engender collective social and political change at other scales.