Neoliberalising Education: New Geographies of Private Tuition,Class Privilege,and Minority Ethnic Advancement

Geographic research on neoliberalism has explored the restructuring of educational landscapes wrought through marketisation of preschool, school and higher-education provision and considered the responsibilisation of parents and children for educational outcomes. This study develops understanding of the contingent emergence of neoliberal educational reform, and its progressive and regressive impacts, through an examination of the burgeoning private tuition market in England and Wales. The paper outlines the contours of the previously hidden supplementary education industry, demonstrating that it reinforces regional and classed inequalities, while opening possibilities for ethnic minority advancement. Conceptually, the paper advances debate about socio-spatial specificity in neoliberal change, showing that the intersection of policy, free markets and consumer behaviour reshapes the educational landscape in ways that extend beyond state intention and control. Through these processes, contingent market forms are produced that offer social mobility for some, but ensure the social reproduction of enduring regimes of power.     

The Roman wreck of c. AD 200 at Plemmirio, near Siracusa (Sicily): Interim report

A Roman wreck, named Plemmirio B^[1]i, lies on the rocky talus below the southern cliffs of Capo Murro di Porco, near Costa Bianca del Plemmirio (Penisola della Maddalena), prov. Siracusa, Sicily. The cargo of amphoras and iron bars, relatively well-preserved, is situated between 22 m and 47 m depth. Following brief examinations in 1974–1982, a University of Bristol expedition spent four weeks surveying the site in July-August 1983^[2] This paper presents an interim summary of these campaigns; a comprehensive report will be published after completion of excavations at the site^[3]. The archaeological deposit at Plemmirio B is characterized by concentrations of fragmented amphoras. There is no direct evidence for the structure of the ship, much of which may have disintegrated during the initial wreck process, but study of the artefact distribution suggests a vessel of fairly large capacity. The amphora consignment (which may have numbered no more than 200) comprised cylindrical African containers, 80% of which were form Africana 2A and 20% Africana 1^[4] w. The Africana 2A amphoras had internal resinous linings, and so may have contained a fish product rather than olive oil. Other amphoras exposed on the site were at least one Mauretanian Dressel 30 (Keay type 1) and two possibly intrusive amphoras of unclassified types. Ferrous concretions contained voids (hollow casts) which may once have been about 39 wrought iron bars, of two distinctive shapes. These, and several other concretions of unidentified forms, may represent a consignment of iron originally weighing approximately one tonne. Other finds from the wreck are two cooking pots, a small bowl or cup, a sounding lead, three fragments of tegula rooftiles, and two small stone blocks. One of the cooking pots confirms a date for the wreck based on the amphora association of circa AD 180–250, most likely in the first decade of the 3rd century. The amphora assemblage belongs to an important phase of commerce from North Africa represented by at least 20 known wreck cargoes; however, few of these sites have been scientifically recorded or are as closely dated as Plemmirio B, and the diversity of container types and cargo consignments on this wreck is of particular interest.     

Female Personifications and Masculine Forms: Gender,Armour and Allegory in the Habsburg–Valois Conflicts of Sixteenth-Century Europe

This article examines the visual and material culture of sixteenth-century elite ceremonial armours and the paradoxes inherent in using images of women to decorate them between 1525 and 1550. It argues that foreign invading forces and their allies exploited or inverted traditional gender binaries associated with the classical and humanist iconography of the Italian Renaissance, particularly its female allegorical forms, to visually signify power relationships between combatants during the Italian Wars. Rather than simply embodying masculinity, elaborate ceremonial armours with images of women are revealing of both ideals of masculinity and femininity during times of war. These portrayals were part of wider conversations about gender and power, about the strength and weaknesses of women, and, ultimately, women's inferior status to men, which were utilised in allegorical forms to make claims to authority on these elite forms of male dress.     

Mining sick: Creatively unsettling normative narratives about industry,environment, extraction,and the health geographies of rural,remote, northern,and Indigenous communities in British Columbia

Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities on Turtle Island are routinely—as Cree Elder Willie Ermine says—pathologized. Social science and health scholarship, including scholarship by geographers, often constructs Indigenous human and physical geographies as unhealthy, diseased, vulnerable, and undergoing extraction. These constructions are not inaccurate: peoples and places beyond urban metropoles on Turtle Island live with higher burdens of poor health; Indigenous peoples face systemic violence and racism in colonial landscapes; rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are sites of industrial incursions; and many rural and remote geographies remain challenging for diverse Indigenous peoples. What, however, are the consequences of imagining and constructing people and places as “sick”? Constructions of “sick” geographies fulfill and extend settler (often European white) colonial narratives about othered geographies. Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are discursively “mined” for narratives of sickness. This mining upholds a sense of health and wellness in southern, urban, Euro‐white‐settler imaginations. Drawing from multi‐year, relationship‐based, cross‐disciplinary qualitative community‐informed experiences, and anchored in feminist, anti‐colonial, and anti‐racist methodologies that guided creative and humanities‐informed stories, this paper concludes with different stories. It unsettles settler‐colonial powers reliant on constructing narratives about sickness in others and consequently reframes conversations about Indigenous well‐being and the environment.     

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL POLICY: ROLES OF THE APPLIED RESEARCHER*

Research on policy impact has increasingly focused on the practical application of social science research. This paper outlines four roles—substantive expert, information processor, change agent, and scholar—which have helped to increase the potential usefulness of our research while maintaining linkages to the academic community. This paper suggests the general nature of these roles and suggests specific implementation strategies, which need to be pursued as an early and continuing aspect of the research enterprise. Balancing these multiple roles presents several analytical and ethical difficulties, but helps to establish credibility in both the scientific and policymaking communities.