William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources

In his great history of England, the Gesta regum Anglorum, completed in 1125, William of Malmesbury included digressions on continental affairs. One of these, on the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs, provides an interesting study of William's historical method. His Frankish sources are difficult to identify, but we are helped by the survival of the late twelfth-century English MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Lat. class d.39. This book contains, inter alia, a collection of chronicles and short pieces on Frankish history. We attempt to show that it was copied from a MS. made by or for William, and that his own notes were recopied into its margins. Moreover, it seems probable that he himself compiled the collection of chronicles in it. This discovery enables us to identify most of William's Frankish materials, to draw important conclusions about his manipulation of them, and so advance our knowledge of twelfth-century historiography generally.     

Testing for Regional Differences in Means: Distinguishing Inherent from Spurious Spatial Autocorrelation by Restricted Randomization

Tests for differences among regional means are typically carried out by analysis of variance (ANOVA). When such data are spatially autocorrelated (SA), the assumptions of ANOVA are not met, giving rise to excessive type I error rates. Two spatially adjusted ANOVA methods, Griffith's and COCOPAN, have been proposed to overcome this problem. In this study we show, by means of extensive simulations, the magnitude of the error rates introduced by SA induced in isolation-by-distance models typical of those used in population genetics. For data suspected of exhibiting such SA, we propose a strategy for distinguishing between inherent SA, generated within the data by a contagious process, and spurious SA, introduced by regional differences in means. The approach adopted is that of restricted randomization of distance matrices. We also furnish error rates and power estimates for both Griffith's method and COCOPAN. In addition to the simulated data, the methods are applied to an actual example from plant population biology.     

Are Methodologies for Children keeping them in their Place?

As participatory methodologies gain popularity and are increasingly adapted to carry out research with ‘children’, I return to the methodological question: is doing research with children different from doing research with adults? (Punch, 2000 Punch, S. 2000. Research with children the same or different from research with adults?. Childhood, 9(3): 321–341. [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). As a participatory researcher, I raise concerns around methods designed for ‘children’ that stamp a ‘how-to-research’ label upon a diverse group of individuals prior to entering the research space. Rather than continue the well-worn debate around the incompetent/competent/powerless child versus the competent all-powerful adult, I attempt a different approach that aims to dissolve this dichotomy. I draw on hybrid theories of identities (Benhabib, 1992 Benhabib, S. 1992. Situating the Self, New York: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]; Butler, 1990 Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]; Adams, 2006 Adams, M. 2006. Hybridising habitus and reflexivity: towards an understanding of contemporary identity?. Sociology, 40(3): 511–528. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]), that recognise identities as multiple and fluid, and present social identities as unhelpful guides in designing participatory methods, principally the mythical notion of the competent all-powerful adult (Lee, 2001 Lee, N. 2001. Childhood and Society: Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty, Milton Keynes: OUP.  [Google Scholar]). I present the case that pre-labelling participants contradicts the bottom-up approach of participatory methodologies, particularly when Participation is understood as spatial practice (Kesby, 1999 Kesby, M. 1999. Beyond the Representational Impasse? Retheorising Power, Empowerment and Spatiality, mimeo [Google Scholar]; Cornwall, 2000), and participants are invited into a research space, where identities are performed (Thrift, 2000) and are, therefore, something we ‘do’ not ‘have’ (Butler, 1990 Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]).     

Playful spaces? a social geography of children's play in Livingston,Scotland

It is often assumed that ‘play’ is an unproblematic category of children's activity, but consideration should be given to whether it is really an adult construction full of questionable assumptions about enjoyable activities free of stress for the children concerned. This paper offers some empirical materials to begin such a deconstruction of ‘play’ through an inquiry into the social geography of children's play in a Scottish new town. By retrieving what children think about their own play, what it entails and the spaces, places, social encounters and social variations central to it, it is possible to sketch out a social geography of children's play that, if not entirely unexpected, does suggest the ‘nature’ of play to be less certain than might commonly be supposed.     

French Eighteenth-Century Materialists and Natural Law

Summary

This article looks at the discussions of natural law by the eighteenth-century French materialists Julien Offray de La Mettre, Denis Diderot, Paul Thiry d'Holbach and Claude-Adrien Helvétius. It is particularly concerned with their discussion of moral values and their attempt to find a materialistic basis for them as part of their rejection of religion. The discussion brings out the différences between them and analyses their dialogues on this question, including the other materialists' rejection of La Mettrie's amoralism, which threatened to undermine their attempt to found a natural law taught by experience and based on human nature. Particular attention is paid to Diderot's many writings which grapple with the subject, beginning with his Encyclopédie article droit naturel, probably written in 1754. He discussed the question in many of his later writings, including in his annotations on the works of Helvétius, who based natural law on the general interest. These writings reveal a tension between Diderot's emphasis on the search for individual happiness and the interests of society as he, together with d'Holbach, attempted to provide a natural basis for morality and government from which to criticise existing institutions.