Your Search Results

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        Worlds of the ring

        Nation and empire in the British and German circus

        by Sabine Hanke

        Worlds of the Ring is a groundbreaking exploration of the interwar European circus scene, focusing on the German Sarrasani and British Bertram W. Mills' circuses. This study illuminates the correlation between the circus's evolution and imperialism/nationalism, revealing how these enterprises shaped national identities for popular audiences. Examining the years 1918-45, the book takes a transnational perspective, uncovering the interplay of international and national forces that influenced the modern circus. Through case studies, it delves into the lives of individuals in the industry, using diverse sources like newspapers, legal documents, and performer archives. The book introduces the concept of Orientalism to analyse how circuses depicted foreign worlds, and provides a fresh perspective on interwar popular culture, globalising forces, and the circus's ties to European imperialism in the early 20th century.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2024

        The renewal of post-war Manchester

        Planning, architecture and the state

        by Richard Brook

        A compelling account of the project to transform post-war Manchester, revealing the clash between utopian vision and compromised reality. Urban renewal in Britain was thrilling in its vision, yet partial and incomplete in its implementation. For the first time, this deep study of a renewal city reveals the complex networks of actors behind physical change and stagnation in post-war Britain. Using the nested scales of region, city and case-study sites, the book explores the relationships between Whitehall legislation, its interpretation by local government planning officers and the on-the-ground impact through urban architectural projects. Each chapter highlights the connections between policy goals, global narratives and the design and construction of cities. The Cold War, decolonialisation, rising consumerism and the oil crisis all feature in a richly illustrated account of architecture and planning in post-war Manchester.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        England’s military heartland

        Preparing for war on Salisbury Plain

        by Vron Ware, Antonia Lucia Dawes, Mitra Pariyar, Alice Cree

        What is it like to live next door to a British Army base? England's military heartland provides an eye-opening account of the sprawling military presence on Salisbury Plain, drawing on a wide range of voices from both sides of the divide. Targeted for expansion under government plans to reorganise the UK's global defence estate, the Salisbury 'super garrison' offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of the military footprint in a particular place. But this is no ordinary environment: as well as being the world-famous site of Stonehenge, the grasslands of Salisbury Plain are home to rare plants and wildlife. How does the army take responsibility for conserving this unique landscape as it trains young men and women to use lethal weapons? Are its claims that its presence is a positive for the environment anything more than propaganda? This book investigates these questions against the backdrop of a historic landscape inscribed with the legacy of perpetual war.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        England’s military heartland

        Preparing for war on Salisbury Plain

        by Vron Ware, Antonia Dawes, Mitra Pariyar, Alice Cree

        A considered investigation of a long-standing army base's impact on the British countryside. What is it like to live next door to a British Army base? Beyond the barracks provides an eye-opening account of the sprawling military presence on Salisbury Plain, drawing on a wide range of voices from both sides of the divide. Targeted for expansion under government plans to reorganise the UK's global defence estate, the Salisbury 'super garrison' offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of the military footprint in a particular place. But this is no ordinary environment: as well as being the world-famous site of Stonehenge, the grasslands of Salisbury Plain are home to rare plants and wildlife. How does the army take responsibility for conserving this unique landscape as it trains young men and women to use lethal weapons? Are its claims that its presence is a positive for the environment anything more than propaganda? Beyond the barracks investigates these questions against the backdrop of a historic landscape inscribed with the legacy of perpetual war.

      • Trusted Partner
        Political ideologies
        May 2017

        Neoliberal power and public management reforms

        by Professor Peter Triantafillou. Series edited by Mark Haugaard

        This book examines the links between major contemporary public sector reforms and neoliberal thinking. The key contribution of the book is to enhance our understanding of contemporary neoliberalism as it plays out in the public administration and to provide a critical analysis of generally overlooked aspects of administrative power. The book examines the quest for accountability, credibility and evidence in the public sector. It asks whether this quest may be understood in terms of neoliberal thinking and, if so, how? The book makes the argument that while current administrative reforms are informed by several distinct political rationalities, they evolve above all around a particular form of neoliberalism: constructivist neoliberalism. The book analyses the dangers of the kinds of administrative power seeking to invoke the self-steering capacities of society and administration itself.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2025

        Growing up and going out

        Youth culture, commerce, and leisure space in post-war Britain

        by Sarah Kenny

        In the decades following the Second World War, youthful sociability was remade as young people across Britain flocked to newly-opened coffee bars, beat clubs, and discos. These spaces, increasingly unknown and unfamiliar to the adults who passed by them, played a remarkable role in reshaping town and city centres after dark as sites of leisure and recreation. Telling the history of youth in post-war Britain from the ground up, through the towns and cities that young people moved through, this book traces how the new spaces of post-war youth leisure transformed both young people's relationship with their local environment and adults' perceptions of the possibilities and dangers of modern leisure. Growing up and going out offers a timely study of youth, commerce, and leisure that explores the reimagination, remaking, and regulation of the post-war city after dark.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2020

        The British political elite and Europe, 1959-1984

        A higher loyalty

        by Bob Nicholls

        This book offers an original interpretation of Britain's relationship with Europe over a 25 year period: 1959-84 and advances the argument that the current problems over EU membership resulted from much earlier political machinations. This evidence based account of the seminal period analyses the applications for EEC membership, the 1975 referendum, and the role of the press. Was the British public misled over the true aims of the European project? How significant was the role of the press in changing public opinion from anti, to pro Common Market membership? Why, after over 40 years since Britain became a member of the European community, does the issue continue to deeply divide not only the political elite, but also the British public? These, and other pertinent questions are answered in this timely book on a subject that remains topical and highly controversial.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2024

        Land and labour

        The Potters’ Emigration Society, 1844-51

        by Martin Crawford

        Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters' Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired in frontier Wisconsin. The book is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, and genealogical sources. After tracing the scheme's industrial origins and founding in the Potteries, it examines the migration and settlement process, expansion to other trades and areas, and finally the circumstances that led to its demise in 1851. Despite the Society's failure, the history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and into the complex and contingent character of nineteenth-century emigration.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2020

        Science in performance

        Theatre and the politics of engagement

        by Simon Parry

        This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from Broadway musicals to educational theatre, from Somali drama to grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. Science in performance is essential reading for researchers, students and practitioners working between science and the arts within fields such as theatre and performance studies, science communication, interdisciplinary arts and health humanities.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2002

        The rise of the Nazis

        by Conan Fischer, Mark Greengrass

        How and why did the Nazis seize power in Germany? Nearly seventy years on, the question remains heated and important discoveries continue to challenge long standing assumptions. Beginmning with an overview of the historical context within which Nazism grew, looking at the foreign relations, politics and society of Weimar and in particular at the role of the elites in the rise of Nazism. The book questions the anatomy of Nazism itself: What lent Nazi ideology its coherence and credibility? What distinguished the Nazi's programme from their competitors' and how did they project it so effectively? How was Hitler able to put together and fund an organisation so quickly and effectively that it could launch a sustained assault on Weimar? Who supported the Nazis and what were their motives? Where, precisely, does Nazism belong in the history of Europe?. Since the publication of the first edition, important new works have appeared and this new scholarship has been incorporated into the text. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        Politics, performance and popular culture

        Theatre and society in nineteenth-century Britain

        by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey, Jeffrey Richards

        This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is political. The book is organised into three parts in dialogue regarding specific approaches to popular performance and politics. Part I offers a series of conceptual studies using popular culture as an analytical category for social and political history. Part II explores the ways that performance represents and constructs contemporary ideologies of race, nation and empire. Part III investigates the performance techniques of specific politicians - including Robert Peel, Keir Hardie and Henry Hyndman - and analyses the performative elements of collective movements.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2009

        Fighting like the Devil for the sake of God

        by Mark Doyle

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        October 2004

        Qualities of food

        by Mark Harvey, Andrew McMeekin, Alan Warde

        In this book, the complexity and the significance of the foods we eat are analysed from a variety of perspectives, by sociologists, economists, geographers and anthropologists. Chapters address a number of intriguing questions: how do people make judgments about taste? How do such judgments come to be shared by groups of people?; what social and organisational processes result in foods being certified as of decent or proper quality? How has dissatisfaction with the food system been expressed? What alternatives are thought to be possible? The multi-disciplinary analysis of this book explores many different answers to such questions. The first part of the book focuses on theoretical and conceptual issues, the second part considers processes of formal and informal regulation, while the third part examines social and political responses to industrialised food production and mass consumption. Qualities of food will be of interest to researchers and students in all the social science disciplines that are concerned with food, whether marketing, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, human nutrition or economics.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2011

        The limits of performance in the French Romantic theatre

        by Susan McCready, Mike Thompson

        This volume analyses major French plays of the 1830s, focusing on their theatricality, and on the ways in which they expose the workings of the theatre rather than conceal them. Through an examination of performance within these plays, the study posits that the stage is a privileged site of demonstration, a literal 'proving ground' that lends a physical reality to abstract values announced in the text and shared or questioned by the audience. Negotiating between the literary study of drama and performance theory, this work breaks new ground in nineteenth-century theatre scholarship while proposing a fresh direction in the study of text and performance. The limits of performance 'challenges conventional wisdom', offering 'a novel take on the mal du siècle, that thematic hardy perennial of French Romanticism and the nineteenth century in general', combined with 'eminently readable and, therefore, compelling' analysis of plays - 'a thought-provoking addition to work in the field' (Glyn Hambrook, Modern and Contemporary France, November 2008). ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        The four dimensions of power

        Understanding domination, empowerment and democracy

        by Mark Haugaard

        In this accessible and sophisticated exploration of the nature and workings of social and political power, Haugaard examines the interrelation between domination and empowerment. Building upon the perspectives of Steven Lukes, Michel Foucault, Amy Allen, Hannah Arendt, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu and others, he offers a clear theoretical framework, delineating power in four interrelated dimensions. The first and second dimensions of power entail two different types of social conflict. The third dimension concerns tacit knowledge, uses of truth and reification. Drawing upon genealogical theory and accounts of slavery as social death, the fourth dimension of power concerns the power to create social subjects. The book concludes with an original normative pragmatist power-based account of democracy. Offering lucid and entertaining illustrations of complex theoretical perspectives, this book is essential reading for scholars and activists.

      Subscribe to our

      newsletter