The politics of the chancel screen: Samuel Moore,Slaidburn, and the parochial dynamics of Laudianism

The 1630s was a decade of dramatic and often controversial change within the Church of England, as innovatory standards of ceremonial conformity and for the maintenance and appearance of church buildings were imposed upon the Church. This article will examine the imposition of so-called Laudian policies in the Yorkshire parish of Slaidburn. Despite a growing interest in Laudianism amongst historians in recent decades, little work has attempted to explore the dynamics of Laudianism in one parish. The unusual variety of sources which survive relating to Slaidburn during this period provides a rare opportunity to explore the circumstances in which Laudian enforcement was enacted. Central to these responses was the rector, Samuel Moore, a somewhat isolated figure within the parish. This article will suggest that beyond the high polemics which buttressed Laudianism, practical considerations may have prompted a willing clerical constituency for Laudian ideas of ministry and of proper worship.     

Potential Focusing Projects and Policy Change

Why do policies change dramatically? Most prominent theories and many empirical studies of policy change address that question with attention to external shocks to policy systems or focusing events. These shocks or events are usually described as unplanned, unpredicted jolts such as global crises or natural disasters. I assert a role for focusing projects. These planned activities continue traditional priorities in an issue but do so to a degree perceived as excessive by enough people to shatter seemingly stable policy systems. I then propose a theoretical framework to explain the varying impacts from such projects. The framework uses two dimensions: one that accounts for the mobilization of pro‐change forces and one that assesses policy learning by members of pro‐status quo coalitions. I examine this framework in the context of changes to dam‐building policies in four diverse political settings: United States, Australia, Canada, and China. I find intriguing similarities between the focusing projects in these different contexts but also considerable variation in the extent to which they produce policy change.     

The Materiality of Social Power: The Artifact-Acquisition Perspective

This paper explores the materiality of social power relationally through study of social interactions with artifacts. Specifically, it is argued that acquisition of an artifact instantiates social power by imposing interactions on groups taking part in that artifact's life-history activities. We introduce the “performance-preference matrix,” an analytic tool for systematically studying the effects of such acquisition events on activity groups. The use of the performance-preference matrix is illustrated through an example: the acquisition of electric-arc lights for lighthouses in the 19th century. Suggestions are offered for analyzing culture-contact situations and for handling singularized artifacts such as heirlooms and monuments.

The rise of specialty crops in Saskatchewan, 1981–2001

Specialty crops have risen from being of little to great importance in Saskatchewan agriculture over the past 20 years. Many interrelated factors have contributed to this change. These factors are analysed using a food supply system model that involves inputs, on-farm production variables, research and linkages to farmers, contracting, transportation and processing and market development for specialty crops. Specialty crops, especially the dominant trio of pulse crops, dry field pea, lentil and chickpea, reduce input costs, have proved to be agronomically suitable to fill much of the land made available through the decline of spring wheat and summerfallow in Saskatchewan, have benefited from research and its transfer to farmers and farmers' producer groups, are transported to local or regional processors and have benefited from the development of domestic and foreign markets. Specialty crops as a group tended to be relatively more important in 2001 in the Brown and Dark Brown than the Black and Grey soil zones, although each main specialty crop displayed a distinct geographical pattern.     

The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States

The phenomenon of failed states might be expected to lead to the development of mass–based social movements to address the typically ensuing social problems. This article explores the general failure of reformist insurgencies to develop in failed states, using analyses of Nigeria’s Bakassi Boys and Oodua People’s Congress, and references to other armed groups. The cause of this failure is found in the legacy of patronage politics, especially the strategies of rulers who monopolized economic opportunities as a way of controlling people. As centralized patronage networks fragment, popular movements develop to challenge this control. Local political entrepreneurs, however, continue to dominate local markets, including clandestine ones, and use this social domination to buy off members of mass movements. As their new patrons give them access to weapons and protection against rivals, the organizational position of members who pursue individual economic interests is enhanced, while the people with more overt ideological agendas are marginalized.     

On the Rank-Size Distribution for Human Settlements

An explanation for the rank-size distribution for human settlements based on simple stochastic models of settlement formation and growth is presented. Not only does the analysis of the model explain the rank-size phenomenon in the upper tail, it also predicts a reverse rank-size phenomenon in the lower tail. Furthermore it yields a parametric form (the double Pareto-lognormal distribution) for the complete distribution of settlement sizes. Settlement-size data for four regions (two in Spain and two in the U.S.) are used as examples. For these regions the lower tail rank-size property is seen to hold and the double Pareto-lognormal distribution shown to provide an excellent fit, lending support to the model and to the explanation for the rank-size law.