In the early 1980s, several large British cities became centres of resistance against the rise of Thatcherite neoliberalism. The British government soon saw ‘municipal socialism’ as another ‘enemy within’, comparable in both disruptive potential and ideological orientation to the protests of the miners in 1984-85. The Labour-led councils tried to defend their populations against job losses, the starving out of public services, and the demolition of local democracy. They adopted themes and issues raised by the new social movements of the 1970s and early 1980s, experimented with innovative forms of grassroots democracy, and were successful enough to provoke a notorious ideological backlash. In the 2010s, community wealth building (CWB) became a strategy for defending cities against the worst consequences of post-2008 austerity policies. Preston in Lancashire rose to exemplary status and its ‘model’ was tried, and later built on, in other municipalities. Again, CWB aims at dealing with the consequences of central government cuts. It focuses on ‘predistribution’, on creating a local economy beneficial to local populations and includes elements of deliberative democracy. The article compares these two initiatives for local democracy and socialism, explains differences in rhetoric and in reactions to these experiments, situating them in the political contexts of the 1980s and 2010s, and finally discusses whether left-wing municipalism is a transformative set of policies and politics with a potential to move beyond capitalism.
« Here are some fruit, some flowers, some leaves and some branches », French poet Paul Verlaine wrote in 1874. Discursively and concretely, plants have pride of place in everyday practices of gift-giving. At the political level, many examples show that botanical objects were frequently used as gifts. During the long 19th century, living plants, seeds and specimens are widely circulated within and between European empires. These transactions are often performed without using money, objects being offered, exchanged or bartered. Produced in botanical gardens, which are then central to colonial economies, plants and objects derived from them are fragile artefacts. Their often uncertain value is both symbolic and economic, since these objects are taken into a set of complex relationships between the scientific, mercantile, and political spheres. They testify to the ambiguity of inter-imperial scientific relations, marked by a constant tension between cooperation and rivalry. The case of the gifts offered in the 1820s by botanist Nathaniel Wallich (1785-1854) from the collections of the botanic garden in Calcutta illustrates the tensions and difficulties related to the use of objects derived from plants as a sort of currency contributing to the creation of a symbolic capital. This study explores the notion of « fragile diplomacy », the non-monetary circulation of desired objects the value of which is subject to unpredictable variations.
his article considers a development and peculiar properties of relations of the Republic of Croatia with European Union countries from the moment of this state’s international recognition on 15 January 1992 to the first Croatian president Franjo Tudjman’s death on 10 December 1999. The main attention is paid to those Western European countries, that played the most significant role in dealing with the crisis on the territory of former Yugoslavia and that had the most crucial place in Zagreb’s foreign policy during the first decade of Croatian independence: Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden and Vatican (however, the two last are not EU members). The attitude of these countries towards Croatia’s diplomatic goals during 1990ies and the dynamics of their relations with Croatian government, that weren’t constant, are analyzed in this article. The special attention is focused on the reasons of firm German and Austrian support for Croatia at the very beginning of its independence and their significant humanitarian aid for Croats during the war. From the other hand, there are explained reasons of skeptical and cold French and British position on Croatian question and the role of the history in Italian-Croatian relations after 1990. And, of course, Croatian problems and real obstacles in relations with Western European countries and with prospective of European integration during the presidency of Franjo Tudjman (that were really pessimistic) are also considered in this article. The newest researches of Croatian and other foreign authors on Croatian foreign policy in 1990ies were used for preparing this small research, as well as materials of foreign media, mostly Western and Croatian.
This paper examines Arab British novelist Leila Aboulela’s representation of the precarious position British Muslims occupy as a result of the introduction of Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST). In The Kindness of Enemies (2015), Aboulela valorizes the horrendous experiences that members of a British Muslim family with roots in the Caucasus undergo as a result of an unsubstantiated terrorist-linked investigation. When the police arrest Oz, his mother, Malak, launches a campaign to secure the freedom of her son. During these hard times, she draws on the legacy of her great grandfather, Imam Shamil who spearheaded a Sufi Jihadist movement in the Caucasus against the Russians in the 19th century, for inspiration and solace. By drawing on history, Aboulela exposes the falsity of contemporary radical Islamist groups and presents Imam Shamil’s movement as a bright example of a Jihadist movement that was never involved in terrorist acts. In addition, by depicting how Malak embraces her great grandfather’s Sufi principles of self-control and endurance, the novel highlights the role Sufism could play in curbing radicalization among young Muslims in a hostile and McCarthyist post-9/11 and 7/7 era..
The interest of economists in fossil fuel exhaustion dates back to the mid-19th century, when, in Great Britain, W. Stanley Jevons published his 1865 essay on coal. In the subsequent decades, fossil fuels were considered with ambivalence: sometimes as a new theoretical and practical priority, sometimes as a secondary issue to be studied in standard frameworks. This paper explores, through the example of the mining rent, how fossil fuels were (partially) incorporated into economic theory at the time. It also explains why the original British view was finally relegated to the background in the early 20th century, when American economists took part in the discussions.
Pygmalion, one of the best known of George Bernard Shaw’s plays in Spain, was translated and performed in 1919 and published in 1920. Up to 2016, it has been rendered into Spanish five times. The main character in Pygmalion is Eliza, a Cockney woman who feels the need to change her life to accede to the middle class. Shaw characterized Eliza in two ways, her clothes and her speech, as she speaks the dialect of her socio-geographical background, Cockney. Translators tend to fail to do justice to Eliza’s characterization for two reasons. The first is the lexical and grammatical choices, which do not always convey the same ideas as those implied in the original text. The second is the sociolinguistic disparity between the original English dialects and the Spanish dialects chosen in the translations. We should also consider that attitudes to the social place of women have evolved in the century since Pygmalion was first published. In this paper I show the different “Elizas” which are presented in the different Spanish editions of Pygmalion.
In January 2011, the projected privatisation of the lands managed by the Forestry Commission in England led to several weeks of protests, as a result of which the coalition government backed down. This episode points to the ambivalent perceptions of the function of forests in 21st century England: adjustment tools for the Government, but also irreplaceable places fulfilling social needs. Within these, the cultural services occupy a growing place and the arts constitute essential components of multipurpose forestry, more often than not in relation to public policies concerning health, education, environment, etc. It is this unsung aspect of today’s forestry that this article will explore, so as to understand how and why the arts are summoned in wooded spaces, the cultural dimensions of forests and what English people would lose out to a privatisation that they made clear they were hostile to anyway.
The Brexit victory caused a major political earthquake, not only in the UK but also in the rest of the European Union (EU). This historic vote marked the achievement of the original ambition of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and of its leader Nigel Farage. This unexpected success raises the question of the role of UKIP in the Brexit victory: can the party be regarded as the main architect of Brexit ? This paper aims to address this question by structuring the analysis in three parts, corresponding to three different phases of the referendum. The first part will be devoted to the period prior to the referendum campaign, and will examine the strengths and weaknesses of UKIP: although the spectacular rise of the party since 2010 played a decisive part in David Cameron's pledge to hold a referendum on the EU, it also revealed the flaws and limits of the UKIP brand. The second part will focus on the referendum campaign proper, analysing UKIP's campaign but also its influence, direct and indirect, on the whole Brexit campaign. Finally, we will try to assess the impact of UKIP on the referendum results, exploring the potential links between the Brexit vote and the UKIP vote. This paper will argue that although the UKIP vote cannot explain the entire Brexit vote, it still sheds some light on why a majority of British people voted to get out of the EU.
Roddy Doyle is one of the most prominent Irish literary figures of our time. The vicissitudes of Irish middle class families, domestic violence, prominent events in Irish history and Ireland’s new multiculturalism are some of the leading themes that he employs in his works. His short story collection Bullfighting (2011) is unique in dealing with a subject matter unfamiliar in his other works: the midlife crises of working-class men. Specifically, the short stories “Recuperation”, “Teaching”, and “Bullfighting” revolve around middle aged men who have no expectations in life and are entrapped in vicious familial, matrimonial or socio-cultural circles. In a similar way to the aforementioned short stories, Doyle’s novel Two Pints (2012) recounts the pub meetings of two Irish men in late middle age. A reflection of each other, these men chat about various subjects such as politics, economy, and dead celebrities, forging bonds as they drink pints together. It could be possible to claim that these two men offer a counterpoint to the male characters found in Bullfighting. They have given up questioning their lives, accepting the facts of life as they are. Bearing all this in mind, this paper aims to analyse the following points: 1) if we compare Bullfighting and his most recent work, Doyle’s characters seem to have become older and less pessimistic; 2) the motifs of the pint and the pub meeting function as therapy for his male characters; 3) the tones of both works differ: the bleak tone of the short stories has given way to a humorous tone in the novel. In short, with its aged male characters, Two Pints represents a more light-hearted, humorous version of certain stories in Bullfighting.
This article focuses on the dream of transparency which pervaded the nineteenth-century literary cityscape, and which, I argue, is embodied in the figure of the flâneur, the ubiquitous observer of urban life. To shed light on the function and makeup of this enigmatic figure, I analyze the flâneur through the lens of transparency and through the prism of three objects which use transparency as their core functioning principle. I start by considering the idea that the flâneur is akin to a transparent glass pane. However, a closer look at the flâneur reveals him to be far from simply transparent. Beholding him through the lens of a stereoscope brings his multi-layered nature into relief. This paper concludes by examining the flâneur’s vision, which could be said to function like a spyglass. For the flâneur, being ‘transparent’ in the city is ultimately translating modernity through his gaze, footsteps, and words. To see and to give solidity to the dream of transparency, transparency cannot be absolute, but must be mediated and filtered through the opacity of writing.