435 research outputs found
Reply to James M. Bullock and Kathy H. Hodder
No full textBullock and Hodder underline two llmitatlons affecting the involvement of scientists wrth reintroduction programmes: (I) iimlted fundmg for basic research. and (2) the misuse of eeneral concepts in reintrodtdction planning
Reply to James M. Bullock and Kathy H. Hodder
No full textBullock and Hodder underline two llmitatlons affecting the involvement of scientists wrth reintroduction programmes: (I) iimlted fundmg for basic research. and (2) the misuse of eeneral concepts in reintrodtdction planning
The sacred choral music of Francis Poulenc: a contextual and analytical study
No full textPoulenc is perhaps best known for his instrumental works, for his adherence to the aesthetics of Neo-classicism, and his place among the Parisian intellectual circles in tJie 1920s and 1930s in which his friend, Jean Cocteau, played a central role. This essentially secular side of Poulenc's creativity was, after the composer's return to Roman Catholicism in 1936, challenged by a need to express a newly-found religious conviction in sacred music. Consequently Poulenc, who had been accustomed to the secular aesthetics of Neo-classicism of Parisian artistic life and the French capital's concert halls, found it necessary to 'rediscover' and assimilate the language of French church music and its history (notably through the filter of the Cecilian Movement, Niedermeyer and the pkinchant of Solesmes) in order to create for himself an appropriate 'sacred style’ that could also incorporate those essential elements of his characteristically playful and sensual, 'secular' language. This study aims to explore this confrontation of styles and how Poulenc successfully forged a cohesive and congruent language for his sacred works. The opening chapters have several distinct perspectives: chapter one outlines the tortuous history of the Church's relationship with the State in France dating back to the pivotal effects of the 1789 Revolution, in an attempt to provide a necessary context for the importance that Poulenc and his predecessors and contemporaries (most significantly Debussy) attached to the past; chapter two, by contrast, discusses some of the principal issues at the heart of Parisian artistic society in the early decades of the twentieth century and focuses on the lively artistic community which existed in Paris with the influx of large numbers of foreign musicians (particularly Americans and Russians) and artists, the emergence of 'Les Six' (of which Poulenc was a member) and the artistic leadership and inspiration given by figures such as Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky. Cocteau and Stravinsky, indeed, had a huge impact on the young Poulenc. The second part of the thesis is an analytical study of Poulenc's sacred works (putting aside the Gloria, Stabat Mater and Sept Repais de Tetibres which are unmistakably concert works) and connects these analyses with the issues presented in the earlier chapters, beginning with the emotionally powerful Litanies a la vierge noire for women’s voices, composed soon after his Catholic faith returned in 1936, and ending with the decidedly hard-edged, Stravinskian Neo-classicism, yet relative placidity, of the Laudes de Saint Antoine de Padoue for men's voices, completed in Cannes in 1959. Central to the analytical discussion are the well known eclectic Mass in G (1937), the dramatic Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence (1939) and the stylistically distilled Quatre petite prieres de Saint Francois d'Assise which display the greatest variety of style and form and which combine to present significant examples of Poulenc's skilful unification of sacred and secular, ancient and modem sound worlds
When do special interests run rampant ? disentangling the role in banking crises of elections, incomplete information, and checks and balances
No full textThe author investigates the political determinants of government decisions that benefit special interest groups - especially government decisions to deal with banking crises. He finds that the better informed the voters, the more proximate elections, and the larger the number of political veto players ( conditional on the costs to voters of relevant policy decision), the smaller the government's fiscal transfer are to the financial sector and the less likely the government is to exercise forbearance in dealing with insolvent financial institutions. The results suggest that policies thatmight be appropriate for mitigating banking crises in the United States might be less effective in settings where voters are less informed, where elections are less competitive, and where there are fewer veto players, because in these settings checks and balances are missing. These policies include: a) Disseminating information about the costs of inefficient government decisions. b) Improving the structure of legislative regulatory oversight. c) Intervening early in insolvent banks. The author concludes that the more veto players there are, the less likely policies are to favor special interest groups (contrary to previous views). Moreover, the closer the elections, the less likely policies are to favor special interest groups.
The modernist angel: Art at the Limits of the Human in D. H. Lawrence, H. D. and Mina Loy
No full textPhDThe subject of this thesis is a figure that might provisionally be called the *modemist
angel'. Focusing on modernist literature, and more particularly on the work of D. H.
Lawrence, H. D. and Mina Loy, it aims to isolate from the many angels found in all periods
and all types of art a historically specific and intellectually coherent paradigm: an angel of
and for its modernist times. A figure of precisely this type could be said to exist in the
form of Walter Benjamin's 'angel of history'. Critics who address the question of the
modern angel in texts by Franz Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke often do so in conjunction
with the problem posed by the angel of history. Beginning with a chapter on Benjamin,
this thesis nevertheless follows a different trajectory. Over five chapters, it explores a
modernist landscape formed not only by Lawrence, H. D. and Loy, but also by European
and American writers such as A. R. Orage, Allen Upward, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens,
Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Although the
angel that emerges from this investigation might, in some respects, be said to anticipate
Benjamin's later version, this figure is also very different, standing for a project that is
distinctively, and recognisably, modernist in nature. He/she (the sex of the modernist
angel is often open to question) represents an attempt to reconcile the divine
responsibilities of the artist with the material and gendered conditions of being,
specifically of being human, in the modem world. This thesis looks again at the clash of
intellectual paradigms in the early-twentieth century - notably, the confrontation of the
Romantic view of art as a superhuman or sacred undertaking with the psychoanalytical or
evolutionary idea that all human endeavour is underpinned by sub-human motives - and
suggests the angel as a new and instructive figure through which to think the perilous
limits between the human and the divine in modernist literature
Troubled Closeness or Satisfied Distance? Researching Media Consumption and Public Connection
No full textThere is a key ambiguity in media phenomenology which Raymond Williams expressed better than anyone when he wrote about media as:
… a form of unevenly shared consciousness of persistently external events. [Media] is what appears to happen, in these powerfully transmitted and mediated ways, in a world within which we have no other perceptible connections but we feel is at once central and marginal to our lives. (Williams, 1973: 295–6, added emphasis)
We cannot grasp this paradox unless we accept that media, particularly broadcast media, are important in the phenomenology of everyday experience, something Paddy Scannell’s work has done so much to establish as a dimension of media research. We need, however, a more differentiated view of the varieties and tensions at work within this phenomenology, which we will try to develop by drawing on our recent empirical research1 which asked what everyday media consumption contributes to people’s orientation towards, or away from, a world of public issues beyond the purely private. Through written or spoken diaries produced over an extended period of three months, and interviews/focus groups with participating diarists during a fieldwork relationship lasting up to one year, we tried to understand from multiple perspectives how individual citizens fit media use into their wider practice and how this contributes, or not, to their sense of orientation to a public world. Our research complicates Scannell’s account of how media expand the horizons of everyday life, at least in relation to the public and potentially political dimensions of media consumption
Techniques for Evaluating the Spatial Behaviour of River-Fish
No full textRadio-tagging is widely used for studies of movements, resource use and demography of land vertebrates, with potential to combine such data for predictive modelling of populations from individuals. Such modelling requires standard measures of individual space use, for combination with data on resources, survival, dispersal and breeding. This paper describes how protocols for efficient collection of space-use data can be developed during a pilot study, and reviews the ways in which such data can be used for space-use indices that help answer biological questions, with examples from a study of riverine pike (Esox lucius). Analyses of diurnal activity and spatio-temporal correlation were used to assess when to record locations, and analyses of home range increments were used to define the number of location records necessary to assess seasonal ranges. We stress the importance of developing protocols that use minimal numbers of locations from each individual, so that analyses can be based on samples of many individuals. The efficacy of link-distance (e.g. cluster analysis) and location density (e.g. contouring) techniques for spatial analysis for river fish were compared, and the utility of clipping off areas to river banks was assessed. In addition, a new automated analysis was used to estimate distances along river mid-lines. These techniques made it possible to quantify interactions between individuals and their habitat: including a significant increase in core range size during floods, significant preference for deep pools, and a lack of exclusive territories
S. H. Leeder
No full textCaption: "Photo of the author in Egyptian clothes."A photo of the book author. . Black- and- white photograph
The rise and fall of the Labour league of youth
No full textThis thesis charts the rise and fall of the Labour Party’s first and most enduring youth organisation, the Labour League of Youth. The history of the League, from its birth in the early nineteen twenties to its demise in the late nineteen fifties, is placed in the context of the Labour Party’s subsequent fruitless attempts to establish and maintain a vibrant and functional youth organisation. A narrative is incorporated that illuminates the culture, organisation and political activism of the League and establishes it as a predominantly working class radical organisation. The reluctance on the part of the Labour Party to grant autonomy to its youth sections resulted in the history of the League of Youth being one of control, suppression and tension. This state of affairs ensured that subsequent youth groups, the Young Socialists and Young Labour, would be established in an atmosphere of reservation and scepticism.
The thesis places the prime responsibility for the failure of the party’s youth organisations with the party leadership but also considers the contributory factors of changing social and political circumstances. A number of themes are explored which include the impact of structure and agency factors, the power of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the political socialisation of leading figures within the party, the social context in which each of the groups emerged and the extent to which the youth groups were prey to intra-party factionalism.
The thesis redresses the balance of research where most accounts have focussed on the Young Socialists and traces the common characteristics that are prevalent in the way the party leadership has approached its relationship with its youth organisations. Use has been made of previously unpublished primary source material, the major source being the League of Youth members themselves whose recollections have helped to demonstrate the arguments put forward in this thesis
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