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        Business, Economics & Law
        June 2021

        Rigged

        Understanding 'the economy' in Brexit Britain

        by Anna Killick

        In Brexit Britain, talk of 'the economy' dominates; however, we know surprisingly little about how people understand this term. In the aftermath of the 2008 crash and decades of neoliberalism, how are understandings of 'the economy' changing, and is it the case that Remain supporters care more about 'the economy' than Leave supporters? This timely and insightful book argues that people with similar experiences of the economy share an understanding of the term, regardless of whether they supported Leave or Remain. Through extensive ethnographic research in a city on the South coast of England, Anna Killick explores what people from a range of backgrounds understand about key aspects of 'the economy', including employment, austerity, trade and the economic effects of migration.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2023

        The break-up of Greater Britain

        by Stuart Ward, Christian Pedersen

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2020

        The subject of Britain, 1603–25

        by Christopher Ivic

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2024

        Anti-racism in Britain

        Traditions, histories and trajectories, 1880-present

        by Saffron East, Grace Redhead, Theo Williams

        Concepts of 'race' and racism are central to British history. They have shaped, and been shaped by, British identities, economies and societies for centuries, from colonialism and enslavement to the 'hostile environment' of the 2010s. Yet state and societal racism has always been met with resistance. This edited volume collects the latest research on anti-racist action in Britain, and makes the case for a multifaceted, historically contingent 'tradition' of British anti-racism shaped by local, national and transnational contexts, networks and movements. Ranging from Pan-Africanist activism in the 1890s to mutual aid women's groups in the 1970s, from anti-racist trade union marches in Scotland to West African student groups in North East England - this book explores the continuities and interruptions in British anti-racism from the nineteenth century to the present day.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2020

        (B)ordering Britain

        Law, race and empire

        by Nadine El-Enany

        (B)ordering Britain argues that Britain is the spoils of empire, its immigration law is colonial violence and irregular immigration is anti-colonial resistance. In announcing itself as postcolonial through immigration and nationality laws passed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Britain cut itself off symbolically and physically from its colonies and the Commonwealth, taking with it what it had plundered. This imperial vanishing act cast Britain's colonial history into the shadows. The British Empire, about which Britons know little, can be remembered fondly as a moment of past glory, as a gift once given to the world. Meanwhile immigration laws are justified on the basis that they keep the undeserving hordes out. In fact, immigration laws are acts of colonial seizure and violence. They obstruct the vast majority of racialised people from accessing colonial wealth amassed in the course of colonial conquest. Regardless of what the law, media and political discourse dictate, people with personal, ancestral or geographical links to colonialism, or those existing under the weight of its legacy of race and racism, have every right to come to Britain and take back what is theirs.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2020

        Writing the United Kingdom Constitution

        by Brice Dickson

        Our unwritten Constitution is past its sell-by date. If the Union is to be preserved we must recognise the UK as a federal country along the lines of Canada and Australia, and soon. Such is the argument made by Brice Dickson in this lucid and timely intervention to the debate on Britain's political future. A federal structure, he reasons, could maximise the benefits of cooperation between semi-autonomous regions while at the same time paying due respect to the nationalisms that exist within constituent parts of the country. The devolution of powers to the home nations, coupled with the trials and tribulations associated with Brexit and reform of the House of Lords, point to grave risks in the UK's current constitutional position. Dickson proposes a Constitutional Reform Act which would federalise the nation, provide a modern Bill of Rights, formalise allocation of public expenditure to devolved regions, and contain a clause setting out the 'purpose' of the UK. The UK has an enviable record in rising to a variety of challenges down the centuries, but the fallout from our recent history makes greater certainty and predictability imperative. This urgent analysis by one of our leading constitutional experts points to how that might best be achieved.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2006

        Devolution in Britain today

        Second edition

        by Russell Deacon, Bill Jones

        Devolution in Britain today provides a comprehensive analysis of both the historical development and the current state of devolved government. Devolution is now a key element in A-level syllabuses and on most undergraduate politics courses. This book is written in a clear and accessible style for students either encountering devolution for the first time or for those who need to explore the subject area in greater detail. All of the devolved bodies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are examined. This book is a thorough update of the first edition, written by Colin Pilkington and published by MUP in 2002. The book explains the concept and background of devolution, and indicates the constitutional implications of political devolution in the United Kingdom before providing a full and considered historical background to devolution, including an explanation of how the United Kingdom came to be united. It then examines the historical and political events that surrounded the preparation of devolution across Britain, before addressing each country in turn, assessing the relative success of devolution in that country. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 1999

        Britain in China

        by Robert Bickers, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie

        This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2013

        Britain and Africa Under Blair

        In pursuit of the good state

        by Julia Gallagher

        Africa was a key focus of Britain's foreign policy under Tony Blair. Military intervention in Sierra Leone, increases in aid and debt relief, and grand initiatives such as the Commission for Africa established the continent as a place in which Britain could 'do good'. Britain and Africa under Blair: in pursuit of the good state critically explores Britain's fascination with Africa. It argues that, under New Labour, Africa represented an area of policy that appeared to transcend politics. Gradually, it came to embody an ideal state activity around which politicians, officials and the wider public could coalesce, leaving behind more contentious domestic and international issues. Building on the story of Britain and Africa under Blair, the book, now available in paperback, draws wider conclusions about the role of 'good' and idealism in foreign policy. In particular, it discusses how international relationships provide opportunities to create and pursue ideals, and why they are essential for the well-being of political communities. It argues that state actors project the idea of 'good' onto idealised, distant objects, in order to restore a sense of the 'good state'. The book makes a distinctive and original contribution to debates about the role of ethics in international relations, and will be of particular interest to academics, policy-makers and students of international relations, Africa and British foreign policy, as well as anyone interested in ethics in international affairs. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2020

        Manliness in Britain, 1760–1900

        Bodies, emotion, and material culture

        by Joanne Begiato

        This book offers an innovative account of manliness in Britain between 1760 and 1900. Using diverse textual, visual and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men's bodies -often working-class ones - and the emotions and material culture associated with them. The book analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors and blacksmiths, brave firemen and noble industrial workers. It also investigates unmanly men, such as drunkards, wife-beaters and masturbators, who elicited disgust and aversion. Unusually, Manliness in Britain runs from the eras of feeling, revolution and reform to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy and mass media, periods often dealt with separately by historians of masculinities.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 1994

        Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain 1815–1945

        1815–1945

        by Panikos Panayi

        First documentary history of immigration into postwar Britain. Looks at all aspects of immigration into postwar Britain. Uses a wide range of official and unofficial sources. ;

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        The Arts
        April 2017

        The BBC and national identity in Britain, 1922–53

        by Jeffrey Richards, Thomas Hajkowski

        Examining the ways in which the BBC constructed and disseminated British national identity during the second quarter of the twentieth century, this book is the first study that focuses in a comprehensive way on how the BBC, through its radio programs, tried to represent what it meant to be British. The BBC and national identity in Britain offers a revision of histories of regional broadcasting in Britain that interpret it as a form of cultural imperialism. The regional organization of the BBC, and the news and creative programming designed specifically for regional listeners, reinforced the cultural and historical distinctiveness of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The BBC anticipated, and perhaps encouraged, the development of the hybrid "dual identities" characteristic of contemporary Britain.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2001

        Railways and culture in Britain

        The epitome of modernity

        by Ian Carter, Jeffrey Richards

        The nineteenth-century's steam railway epitomised modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. In Railways and culture in Britain Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how this was represented in British society. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? The book's first half tests that assertion by comparing fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. The second half proposes that if high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, then this does not mean that all British culture ignored this revolutionary artefact. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres. A final chapter contemplates cultural correlations of the steam railway's eclipse. If this was the epitome of modernity, then does the triumph of diesel and electric trains, of cars and planes, signal a decisive shift to postmodernity? ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2020

        Ideas of monarchical reform

        Fénelon, Jacobitism, and the political works of the Chevalier Ramsay

        by Joseph Bergin, Andrew Mansfield, Penny Roberts, William G. Naphy

        This book examines the political works of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1683-1743) within the context of early eighteenth-century British and French political thought. In the first monograph on Ramsay in English for over sixty years, the author uses Ramsay to engage in a broader evaluation of the political theory in the two countries and the exchange between them. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Britain and France were on divergent political paths. Yet in the first three decades of that century, the growing impetus of mixed government in Britain influenced the political theory of its long-standing enemy. Shaped by experiences and ideologies of the seventeenth century, thinkers in both states exhibited a desire to produce great change by integrating past wisdom with modern knowledge.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2016

        Chagos Islanders in Mauritius and the UK

        Forced displacement and onward migration

        by Laura Jeffery, Alexander Smith

        The Chagos islanders were forcibly uprooted from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean between 1965 and 1973. This is the first book to compare the experiences of displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius with the experiences of those Chagossians who have moved to the UK since 2002. It thus provides a unique ethnographic comparative study of forced displacement and onward migration within the living memory of one community. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Mauritius and Crawley (West Sussex), the six chapters explore Chagossians' challenging lives in Mauritius, the mobilisation of the community, reformulations of the homeland, the politics of culture in exile, onward migration to Crawley, and attempts to make a home in successive locations. Jeffery illuminates how displaced people romanticise their homeland through an exploration of changing representations of the Chagos Archipelago in song lyrics. Offering further ethnographic insights into the politics of culture, she shows how Chagossians in exile engage with contrasting conceptions of culture ranging from expectations of continuity and authenticity to enactments of change, loss and revival. The book will appeal particularly to social scientists specialising in the fields of migration studies, the anthropology of displacement, political and legal anthropology, African studies, Indian Ocean studies, and the anthropology of Britain, as well as to readers interested in the Chagossian case study. ;

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