Modernization, welfare and 'third way' politics: limits to theorizing in 'thirds'?

The current period of welfare reform in British politics is taking place within a discourse of modernization described in terms of a 'third way'. The ideas which constitute this discourse resonate with recent developments within human geography, namely a movement to theorizing 'in-between' spaces, a turn to culture and to issues of globalization. This paper suggests that welfare reform is a restructuring project which allows the nature of thinking and acting 'in thirds' to be questioned. It problematizes the 'third way' approach to cultural modernization and economic globalization as a de-politicized discourse, and argues for the cultural politics and political economics which underpin welfare reform to be foregrounded. As a form of political discourse analysis, it points to the developing need for a welfare geography that is attuned to the languages and practices through which dominant systems of social and economic distribution are constituted.     

Tourism consumption and the imagination of money

This paper supplements exisiting research on tourism consumption through a focus on money. It draws upon recent work in the geography of money and economic sociology, arguing that the understandings of money used by consumers are of importance to the social formation of tourism. Using a theoretical framework that links consumption studies and reconceptualizations of money, the paper develops a qualitative case study of British long-haul travellers. It concludes that consumers' understandings of money are integral to the ways in which tourists seek to engage with destinations, and points out some implications for the politics of tourism.     

论20世纪初英国现代社会保障制度的初步确立

20世纪初英国逐步建立了现代社会保障制度.贫困和失业等社会问题的严重化和济贫法制度的失效是这一制度建立的根本原因;来自工人阶级的政治压力是其建立的一个重要原因;费边社会主义、集体主义和新自由主义为这一制度的建立提供了理论基础;德国保险型社会保障制度的建立起了先导作用.英国政府通过一系列的社会立法逐步形成了涉及到养老、失业、医疗、儿童等方面比较完善的福利体系,标志着英国现代社会保障制度的初步确立.它是英国社会保障制度史上一次根本性的转折.     

‘The land and its people’: reflections on artistic identification in an age of nations and nationalism

From the late eighteenth century onwards, increasing numbers of visual artists came to identify with their nations and with the homeland and its people. This development was strongly influenced by growing national cultural support and regulation of the arts by academies, art schools, museums and art markets in Western Europe. On a subjective level, the Rousseauan movement of a ‘return to Nature’, Herder's espousal of vernacular cultural self‐expression and, above all, the widespread Romantic cult of authenticity, were potent influences on the inner self‐identification of visual artists after 1800, and were manifested in the novel importance accorded to landscape and rural genre painting in Western Europe. Here I consider the role of national sentiment, the ‘return to Nature’ and the cult of authenticity, first in landscape paintings by Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable in early nineteenth‐century Britain, and then in the rural genre paintings of Jean‐Francois Millet and Jules Breton in nineteenth‐century France and Josef Israels, Anton Mauve and Vincent Van Gogh in the later nineteenth‐century Netherlands. Their work reveals how nineteenth‐century visual artists became inwardly identified with the ‘land and its people’, and how they in turn contributed, especially through prints and engravings, to the dissemination of national imagery and a cultural nationalism.     

论近代英国内阁制的形成

英国是西方世界首创内阁制的国家。早在斯图亚特王朝后期,在种种主客观因素的推动下,此前处于萌芽状态的内阁逐渐走向公开化、独立化、制度化,由此标志着内阁制在英国的形成。不过,与18世纪中后叶的责任制内阁相比,此间的内阁依然残留着君主政治的痕迹。对于王权的依附以及与议会之间缺乏必然的关联,使得责任制在内阁中还未建立起来。只有到汉诺威王朝时期,当王权急剧衰落、议会主权地位确立后,早期的内阁制才完成了向责任内阁制的转变。     

Political language in Italy and Great Britain

Abstract

Patrick McCarthy underlined the role of political language in the crisis of the Italian Republic. It was both a reflection of the crisis and an active agent of political change. A study of Berlusconi's political language reveals the importance of his new, simplified style of political communication in the creation of his party Forza Italia and of his own personal charisma. He has been able to adapt his rhetoric to changing political circumstances and to different publics. Romano Prodi was successful in 1996 in constructing his image as the ‘anti-Berlusconi’, and Walter Veltroni also broke with the old style of hermetic political discourse acknowledging the inspiration both of Robert Kennedy and Tony Blair, but the language of the centre-left in recent years has generally failed to convey a clear message and has perpetuated obscurity in order to conceal its internal divisions. A comparison with the political language of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair reveals interesting similarities and differences. Thatcher, like Berlusconi, appealed to the need for national revival in the face of the threat from the left, but her language, unlike his, was rooted in the tradition of Protestant individualism and invigorated rather than challenging the existing party system. Blair managed to make skilful use of a new rhetoric of emotion and to incorporate elements of Thatcher's appeal in his ‘new Labour’ synthesis. In conclusion: McCarthy was deeply preoccupied with the possibility of an alternative and more honest style of political communication.