230 research outputs found
Article about Iris Murdoch
No full textArticle about 1969, 1970 and 1973 Booker shortlisted author Iris Murdoch's failure to win Booker Priz
Adapting authoritarianism: institutions and co-optation in Egypt and Syria
No full textThis PhD thesis compares Egypt and Syria’s authoritarian political systems. While the tendency in social science political research treats Egypt and Syria as similarly authoritarian, this research emphasizes differences between the two systems with special reference to institutions and co-optation. Rather than reducibly understanding Egypt and Syria as sharing similar histories, institutional arrangements, or ascribing to the oft-repeated convention that “Syria is Egypt but 10 years behind,” this thesis focuses on how events and individual histories shaped each states current institutional strengthens and weaknesses. Specifically, it explains the how varying institutional politicization or de-politicization affects each state’s capabilities for co-opting elite and non-elite individuals.
Beginning with a theoretical framework that considers the limited utility of democratization and transition theoretical approaches, the work underscores the persistence and durability of authoritarianism. Chapter two details the politicized institutional divergence between Egypt and Syria that began in the 1970s. Chapter three and four examines how institutional politicization or de-politicization affects elite and non-elite individual co-optation in Egypt and Syria. Chapter five discusses the study’s general conclusions and theoretical implications.
This thesis’s argument is that Egypt and Syria co-opt elites and non-elites differently because of the varying degrees of institutional politicization in each governance system. Rather than view one country as more politically developed than the other, this work argues that Syria’s political institutions are more politicized than their Egyptian counterparts. Syria’s political arena is, thus, described as politicized-patrimonialism. Syria’s politicized-patrimonial arena produces uneven co-optation of elites and non-elites as they are diffused through competing institutions. Conversely, the Egyptian political arena remains highly personalized as weak institutions and individuals are manipulated and molded according to the president’s ruling clique. This is referred to as personalized-patrimonialism. As a consequence, Egypt’s political establishment demonstrates more flexibility in ad hoc altering and adapting its arena depending on the emergence of crises.
This study’s theoretical implications suggest that, contrary to modernization and democratization theory’s adage that institutions lead to a political development, politicized institutions within a patrimonial order actually hinder regime adaptation because consensus is harder to achieve and maintain. It is within this context that Egypt’s de-politicized institutional framework advantages its top political elite. In this reading of Egyptian and Syrian politics, Egypt’s personalized political arena is more adaptable than Syria’s. These conclusions do not indicate that political reform is a process underway in either state
AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROFILES AND MOTIVATIONS OF HABITUAL COMMODITY SPECULATORS
No full textThe focus of this study is the habitual speculator in commodity futures markets. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles and motivations of habitual speculators is essential to both market theorist and policy makers. Responses to a 73 question survey were collected directly from retail commodity brokers with offices in Alabama. Each questionnaire recorded information on an individual commodity client who had traded for an extended period of time. The typical trader studied is a married, white male, age 52. He is affluent and well educated. He is a self-employed business owner who can recover from financial setbacks. He is a politically right wing conservative involved in the political process. He assumes a good deal of risk in most phases of his life. He is both an aggressive investor and an active gambler. This trader does not consider preservation of his commodity capital to be a very high trading priority. As a result, he rarely uses stop loss orders. He wins more frequently than he loses (over 51% of the time) but is an overall net loser in dollar terms. In spite of recurring trading losses, he has never made any substantial change in his basic trading style. To this trader, whether he won or lost on a particular trade is more important than the size of the win or loss. Thus he consistently cuts his profits short while letting his losses run. He also worries more about missing a move in the market by being on the sidelines than about losing by being on the wrong side of a market move; i.e., being in the action is more important than the financial consequences. Participating brokers confirmed that for the majority of the speculators studied, the primary motivation for continuous trading is the recreational utility derived largely from having a market position.Marketing,
The jingling Geordie: community arts and the regional culture of the North East of England
No full textIn the light of the massive economic and social changes which have affected the North East of England over the last 25 years, the author assesses the vitality of the indigenous culture and reflects upon current cultural trends and the North East’s future, particularly in relation to a regional Europe. He traces the folk-tradition of the region and looks at ways in which this can be drawn upon to develop a meaningful link between past and present. He looks closely at the changing nature of class-relationships in the North East and reflects upon how a valid local culture can survive in a multi-cultural society. He draws upon his own extensive experience in Community Arts, looking at definitions of the term in the new political climate and arguing for its positive contribution to the cultural debate. He dwells on the issue of regionalism and devolution in a new Europe, comparing the situation in the North East of England with political and cultural changes in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom
Newspaper Clipping - 'Kipling's Retreat'
No full textA newspaper clipping from Manchester Guardian Weekly, dated Thursday, April 1, 1965, and titled 'Kipling's Retreat'. The article gives information about an exhibition of Kipling artifacts at Bateman's, Kipling's old home in Sussex
"He hath Mingled with the Ungodly": The Life of Simeon Solomon After 1873, with a Survey of the Extant Works
No full textThis thesis focuses on the life and work of the marginalized British Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic homosexual Jewish painter Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) after 1873.This year was fundamental in the artist’s professional and personal life, because it is the year that he was arrested for attempted sodomy charges in London.
The popular view that has been disseminated by the early historiography of Solomon, since before and after his death in 1905, has been to claim that, after this date, the artist led a life that was worthless, both personally and artistically. It has also asserted that this situation was self-inflicted, and that, despite the consistent efforts of his family and friends to return him to the conventions of Victorian middle-class life, he resisted, and that, this resistant was evidence of his ‘deviancy’.
Indeed, for over sixty years, the overall effect of this early historiography has been to defame the character of Solomon and reduce his importance within the Aesthetic movement and the second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism. It has also had the effect of relegating the work that he produced after 1873 to either virtual obscurity or critical censure. In fact, it is only recently that a revival of interest in the artist has gained momentum, although the latter part of his life from 1873 has still remained under-researched and unrecorded.
Therefore, the function of this thesis is to re-evaluate Solomon’s life after his arrest in 1873 and reveal what actually happened to the artist during the final thirty-three years of his life. It does this primarily through a unique study and examination of newly identified archival documents and information. By examining, in particular, the original nineteenth-century records that relate to his arrest in London, and those that record a virtually unknown arrest in Paris in 1874, and putting this in the context of nineteenth-century sodomy law and male homosexual society, it is possible to re-consider Solomon’s previously misunderstood resistance to sexual and societal rehabilitation. It makes use of a new critical understanding, which now suggests the non-repentance of the previously seen tragic figure of the homosexual male in Victorian society, which was promoted in part by the Oscar Wilde trials of 1895. The study of the detail of Solomon’s later life within this thesis will support these new ideas by promoting the suggestion of the artist as self-consciously queer and unapologetic.
In addition, this thesis includes, for the first time, a survey of Solomon’s works produced after 1873, which help to provide an approximation of how active Solomon was artistically; suggest what kind of media he was using during certain periods; record who was continuing to buy Solomon’s work at this time, and to make the images of Solomon’s extant work available to future researchers. These extant images appear in Volume II of this thesis
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