A Unique Project of Mission: Forty Years on,a Personal Memoire

Fifty years ago, Call to the North was conceived against the background of sectarian terrorism. This was a unique occasion when all the traditional Christian churches of the North of England were engaged in unitedly presenting the Christian faith to the general population. The exercise was led by the Anglican Archbishop of York together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and Dr John Marsh representing the Free Churches.

The objectives of the exercise, the methods employed, the problems encountered and its eventual outcome in 1973 are outlined, together with an account of the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s strategy of seeking Pope Paul VI’s support to help his traditional dioceses come to terms with the new Vatican thinking of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

The account concludes with a reflection on the historic outcome of this unique exercise.     

The Calderstones,Near Liverpool

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the revisionist literature on the monastic orders in late medieval England and their art and architecture. It discusses the visual and material cultures of the Cistercians in northern England in the period immediately before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, demonstrating the enduring popularity of the Order in the late Middle Ages and that patronage of art and architecture continued until the very moment of the Suppression. Evidence is also discussed showing that monks and nuns salvaged property from their houses in the hope that their monasteries would be restored.     

Inferring attitudes from behavior

Abstract

The Middle East has long been a conflict zone; the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been a persistent factor for decades, and there have been wars over natural resources, ideological causes, and national or religious cleavages as well. How does a historian begin to compile a documentary record of such a struggle? At the beginning of my research stay in the Middle East in 2007, I decided to keep a diary about my experiences and assessments in the field. In this article, I recount and reflect about those experiences in order to propose potential solutions to the problem of on-site research in unstable areas. While field research generally requires a particular kind of preparation, and always faces obstacles and challenges, the success of fieldwork under difficult and hostile research settings is dependent on the skills of the researcher, and his or her ability and preparedness for the problems the nature of the research inevitably will bring forward.     

Qualitative Methods for the Study of Policy Diffusion: Challenges and Available Solutions

This article deals with the question whether and how processes of policy diffusion can be examined with qualitative methods. More specifically, how can qualitative methods address the “twin challenge of interdependence,” namely the challenge to identify diffusion, on the one hand, and the challenge to discriminate between mechanisms of diffusion, on the other? I argue, first, that there are three distinct qualitative techniques that can be used, namely cross‐case analysis (often based on systematic case selection), within‐case process tracing, and counterfactual reasoning. I demonstrate how these techniques can be adapted to the study of policy diffusion. Second, a combination of these methods is the best practice, since they are largely complementary in terms of the twin challenge of diffusion. The discussion draws on numerous illustrations from recent qualitative policy diffusion studies. The article closes with some suggestions for further methodological development in the study of policy diffusion, including the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.     

The man within the breast,the supreme impartial spectator,and other impartial spectators in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith infused the expression ‘impartial spectator’ with a plexus of related meanings, one of which is a super-being, which bears parallels to monotheistic ideas of God. As for any genuine, identified, human spectator, he can be deemed impartial only presumptively. Such presumptive impartiality as regards the incident does not of itself carry extensive implications about his intelligence, nor about his being aligned with benevolence towards any larger whole. We may posit, however, a being who is impartial and who holds higher levels of intelligence and of benevolence, and then converse over what her sentiments would be about the matter under discussion. It is natural to conceive of a being who is unsurpassable in such qualities, who is morally supreme, and who naturally takes the definite article the without having been definitized by the writer (because unnecessary, just as we speak of ‘the world’). Signal passages, new to edition 6, suggest that Smith formulates the man within the breast as a representative of the always present and everywhere morally supreme impartial spectator. When Smith speaks of the man within the breast as ‘the supposed impartial spectator’ (all new to edition 6), we interpret ‘supposed’ as sup-pos-ed (purported), not sup-pos’d (posited).     

The Value of Culture: Congolese Art and the Promotion of Belgian Colonialism (1945–1959)

Based on the scholarship of Frans M. Olbrechts and the changes implemented in the Museum of the Belgian Congo during his directorship (from 1947 until 1958), this article argues that the institutionalization of African artefacts as art served the late Belgian colonial regime in promoting its renewed postwar commitment to the Congolese colony. In their reinvention as art and subsequent re-installation in modernist displays, the objects acquired not only a cultural, but also an economic and political value as resources, which led to their co-option in the mise-en-valeur, or valorization, of the colony and fuelled a colonial rhetoric that replaced an earlier emphasis on the civilizing mission with a construction of cultural guardianship based on the universal value of the objects as art.     

When Natural met Social: A Review of Collaboration between the Natural and Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper investigates the opportunities for further collaboration between the natural and social sciences. From 81 systematically identified and reviewed papers published in scientific journals, it became clear that complex situations that depend on human behaviour as well as natural processes require natural–social science collaboration. The creation of a community of collaborative natural–social science research, that learns from and can contribute to best practice across the sciences, is advocated to support natural– social science collaboration. Across disciplines, it became clear that such a community should deal with (1) difference between paradigms in the current sciences; (2) creation of skills and competences of the involved scientists; (3) scarcity of institutions sympathetic to collaborative research; and (4) the internal organization of collaborative projects.