An Anatomy of the London Agent

This article considers the London agent through the careers of Gilbert Mabbott and, to a lesser extent, William Raylton. The London agent was a commonplace in early modern political culture, but the phenomenon is rarely addressed in the historiography. I argue for the importance of the agent to early modern English history in general, but I also consider Mabbott's situation in particular. Because of the civil wars, Mabbott was able to rise beyond his social station as a scrivener and freed himself from the bonds of the patron‐client relationship. This article seeks to define some of the roles played by agents in the early modern period by looking at Mabbott's and Raylton's work for their major employers: Thomas Wentworth, Hull, royalist delinquents and their children, various parliamentary armies, and Oliver Cromwell. It ends by looking at the wealth that Mabbott acquired through his work, both before and after the Restoration, as demonstrative of how an agent's power could yield impressive rewards when freed of social constraints.     

AGAINST POWER? DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN ACQUISITIVE RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION

Critiques of contemporary political‐economic formations, while grounded in an array of theoretical traditions, have often centered on strategies for relocating power (as embodied in accumulated wealth, control of labor and corporate entities, or the state) in institutions that are nominally more egalitarian or democratic. Such alternative institutions are intended to better represent those who have been historically harmed by the use of power. This article argues for an analytical distinction between such strategies of capturing power on behalf of those without it, and strategies for reducing power differentials directly or annihilating the capacity to accumulate power. We adopt the analytical term subversion to describe these latter efforts to reduce the intensity of, and undermine the capacity to reproduce or deepen, power relationships. Rather than focusing on redistribution or inversion of asymmetrical power relations to benefit the disempowered, subversive strategies work toward decreasing the possibility of accumulating power or, in the extreme case, completely evacuating existing unequal power relations. Thinking about political engagement in terms of limiting the possibility of asymmetrical power relationships (regardless of who holds that power) helps to illuminate a distinction between reactive politics against injustice and proactive politics that pursue alternative, increasingly just conceptual norms. We draw on threads in critical, political, and urban geographies to articulate a particularly geographic concept of “fleeing‐in‐place” as subversive resistance to hegemony, the undermining of the possibility of asymmetrical socio‐spatial power relations within existing contemporary political economies. We propose strategies for research that better highlight the differences between resistance and subversion.     

Cottages and the Country House: Power,Paternalism and Protest in Elsecar

In the period c.1790 to 1870, the small rural hamlet of Elsecar, near Barnsley, was transformed into an extensive industrial village, with a thriving economy based on iron and coal. Most of this development was instigated, controlled and financed by the local landowners, the 4th and 5th Earls Fitzwilliam. As well as being passionately interested in the practicalities and potential of industrial development, the Earls also looked to the welfare of their workers, providing a wealth of benefits including pensions, sick pay and purpose-built industrial housing. Using a historical approach based on a variety of source material, this paper explores the Earls’ provision of workers’ housing as a way in which to consider wider themes of power, control, inequality and resistance as they were expressed both in the physicality of the houses themselves, and in the cultural meanings which were attributed to them by contemporary observers. The paper argues that workers’ housing functioned as a visible embodiment of power relationships within Elsecar and, because of this, it continues to have a significant resonance in the modern world.     

St Stephen's in War and Peace: Civil Defence and the Location of Parliament, 1938–51

This essay takes a new look at the destruction and the rebuilding of the house of commons during the 1940s. It argues that behind the home front bravado of the Palace of Westminster steadfastly enduring the blitz lay secret plans for rehousing MPs away from aerial bombardment, contingency scenarios that were then updated after 1945 in the event of attack on London by atomic weapons. The essay also suggests that threats to the security of parliament, together with the necessity to rebuild the Commons, were turned by the coalition government into an opportunity to refashion parliamentary politics in such a way that the two‐party system was restored, along the traditional lines of government and opposition that had become blurred since 1931.     

Debating the geographies of contemporary higher education students: diversity,resilience, resistance?

ABSTRACT

Nearly 20 years have passed since the publication of Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures and the debates surrounding belonging, identity, resistance and marginalisation raised by Skelton and Valentine have become ever more vital. As a result, youth Geographers have been fundamental in pushing the boundaries of research in these areas. Through this paper, I argue for more critical reconsideration of how such debates can be enlivened further through investigation into the geographies of higher education students. In doing so, I elucidate upon how we might more effectively examine notions of post-adolescent mobilities and experiences.