A Political History of Council Estates: Council Estates as State-Building Projects

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-57
Author(s):  
Insa Lee Koch
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
State Building ◽  
State Control ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Central Pillar

Chapter 1 provides a political history of council estates. Built in the inter- and post-war decades as homes for the working classes, council estates have often been seen as a central pillar of the British welfare state. This chapter argues that far from being only about the provision of bricks and mortar, council estates were always projects of state-building that were tied to class segregation and class control. In the post-war decades, paternalistic policies ensured that working-class tenants were living up to state-sponsored standards of respectability. This legacy of classed state control became more pronounced under neoliberal governance in the 1980s, and from the mid-1990s onwards, under the ‘law and order’ state, and most recently, with the shift to ‘austerity politics’. A political history of council estates challenges the dichotomy of a ‘golden era’ of post-war social democracy and the subsequent punitive turn by foregrounding a legacy of classed control both across historical periods and across areas of policy making that are not often considered together.

Personalizing the State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Insa Lee Koch
Keyword(s):  
State Control ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Means Testing ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Eu

Liberal democracy appears in crisis. From the rise of ‘law and order’ and ever tougher forms of means-testing under ‘austerity politics’ to the outcome of Britain’s referendum on leaving the EU, commentators have argued over why democracy has taken an illiberal turn. This book shifts the focus from the ‘why’ to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’: to how citizens experience government in the first place and what democracy means to them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it takes these questions to Britain's socially abandoned council estates, once built by local authorities to house the working classes. From the perspective of these citizens, punitive shifts in welfare, housing, and policing are part of a much longer history of classed state control that has acted on their homes and neighbourhoods. But this is only half of the story. Citizens also pursue their own understandings of grassroots politics and care that at times align with, but at others diverge from, official policies. An anthropology of state-citizen relations challenges narratives of exceptionalism that have portrayed the people as a threat to the democratic order. It also reveals the murky, sometimes contradictory desires for a personalised state that cannot easily be collapsed with popular support for authoritarian interventions. Above all, this book exposes the liberal state’s disavowal of its political and moral responsibilities at a time when mechanisms for voicing working class citizens’ demands have been silenced.

COUNTRY HOUSE LIFE Creating paradise: the building of the English country house, 1660–1880. By Richard Wilson and Alan Mackley. London: Hambledon, 2000. Pp. xx+428. ISBN 1-85285-252-6. £25. The polite tourist: four centuries of country house visiting. By Adrian Tinniswood. London: The National Trust, 1998. Pp. 224. ISBN 0 7078 0224 5. £24.99. Country house pastimes. By Oliver Garnett. London: The National Trust, 1998. Pp. 48. ISBN 0-7078-0284-9. £4.99. The British country house in the eighteenth century. By Christopher Christie. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi+333. ISBN 0-7190-4724-2 (hb); 0-7190-4725-0 (pb). £49 and £17.99. The fate of the English country house. By David Littlejohn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xviii+344. ISBN 0-19-508876-X. £20. The dukes: the origins, ennoblement and history of twenty-six families. By Brian Masters. London: Pimlico, 2001. Pp. x+390. ISBN 0-7126-6724-5. £12.50.

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-244
Author(s):  
J. V. BECKETT
Keyword(s):  
Credit Cards ◽  
Country House ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Great House ◽  
Country Houses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Private Car ◽  
Post War

It is nearly a quarter of a century since the publication in 1978 of Mark Girouard's magnificent study, Life in the English country house. The book appeared at what we can now recognize to have been an important moment for the stately homes of England. After the years of post-war austerity, the growth in private car ownership had begun to make the countryside increasingly accessible. Many of the weekend journeys spawned by this new affluence were to country houses, a trend speeded up by the exposure several high profile houses enjoyed as period settings for television dramas. Brideshead revisited in 1981 was the pioneer, set as it was in the grounds of Castle Howard. In many respects it has never been bettered, but it has certainly been followed, to the extent that hardly a great house has failed to attract a film crew and some have been visited repeatedly. Nor has this new exposure been confined to the cinema and television. The private mansions from which the working classes were traditionally excluded have opened their doors to paying customers, and their shops to anyone with cash and credit cards.

Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Comparison

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Nader Sohrabi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

The Legacy of Thatcherism

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Life ◽  
New Right ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Welfare Families

Three decades after the election of Mrs Thatcher, it is perhaps time to take stock of the concept of ‘Thatcherism’ and the prominent role it has played in the history of post-war Britain. Of course, there is much debate about what ‘Thatcherism’ was, with some arguing that Thatcherism was more noteworthy for its rhetoric than for its achievements. Indeed, when it came to the welfare state little had changed after 13 years of Thatcherism. Some historians have additionally suggested that other social forces that had existed prior to Thatcher will outlast her. Yet, whichever way one looks at it, the Thatcherite project of the 1980s brought about a fundamental reorganization of much of the UK’s social and economic life. Did Thatcherite policies dramatically alter the trajectory of the country’s development? Can even long-term and seemingly enduring path dependencies be altered as dramatically as claimed? Ought Thatcher’s period in office be seen as a ‘critical juncture’ for the UK? This book brings together a range of experts in housing, economics, law and order, education, welfare, families, geography, and politics to discuss the enduring legacy of those social and economic policies initiated by the first of the UK’s New Right governments (1979–90).

A Political History of Post-War Italy

1967 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 574-575
Author(s):  
Muriel Grindrod
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

scholarly journals Modern Political History of Bosnia and Herzegovina

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-39
Author(s):  
Ešref Kenan Rašidagić
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Political History ◽  
International Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Economic

Since Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence in 1995, its path has been a rocky one. Unwillingness by the international community to stand by the central government and stand in the way of the neighboring states of Serbia and Croatia’s territorial pretensions, produced a succession of ceasefire agreements, culminating in the final, Dayton Peace Agreement. Each of these agreements espoused the ethnic principle as the guiding philosophy for the organization of the state. The post-war period demonstrates that despite the passage of time, the principle of organization of multi-ethnic state along ethnic lines presents a stumbling block to the functioning of the political, economic and social life in the country. The political history of post-independence Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) therefore reads as a history of protracted political paralysis, with no hope of rectifying the problems without another forceful intervention of the international community.

THE HISTORY OF STATE BUILDING IN THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN

2021 ◽  
pp. 104-113
Author(s):  
Mikhail Mints ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political History ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
State Building ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of

This review article deals with a collection of essays published in «Europe-Asia Studies», vol. 71, N 6 (2019), the authors of which are analyzing Stalinism as a specific exemplar of state-building. Their research is based on various concepts of modern social sciences, especially on the theory of the developmental state. The authors show the new opportunities provided by such an approach and suggest the main directions of further study of the political history of the USSR from this point of view.

The Jewish Community of the Second Republic in Polish Historiography of the 1980s

2004 ◽  
pp. 288-299
Author(s):  
Andrzej Chojnowski
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Political History ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Republic ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Zionist Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This chapter addresses the Jewish community of the Second Republic in Polish historiography of the 1980s. The problem of the ethnic minorities in the Second Republic – their socio-economic situation, their role in the political and cultural life of the country, their relations with the state – is one of the most neglected fields of post-war Polish historiography. The situation improved only slightly in the 1970s, minimally as regards the Jewish question; in Poland, this still remains the domain of highly specialized publications which do not reach the general reader. To be sure, the authors of synthetic or monographic studies concerning the history of the Second Republic have been unable totally to ignore the problem of the nationalities, although their approaches often give rise to reservations. For instance, when Andrzej Ajnenkiel published in 1980 the second volume of his political history of Poland, national minorities were treated sparingly. In describing the results of the 1931 census, the author briefly discusses the size and socio-professional structure of the Jewish population and the rising influence of the Zionist movement in the second half of the 1930s. Elsewhere, the Jewish population appears almost exclusively as the object of anti-semitic propaganda and pogroms organized by nationalists of both Polish and, more rarely, Ukrainian camps.

scholarly journals Building a Local Administration Abroad

Administory ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-87
Author(s):  
Mathieu Jestin
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
State Building ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
Local Approach ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Local Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Space ◽  
Spatial Entity ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract Consulates, both in the 19th century and today, exist in a sort of hybrid space: Established by one sovereign entity in the territory of another, on the basis of exterritorial concessions, they depend on not one but two sets of legislation without being wholly defined by either one. This paper takes a local approach to a global phenomenon by considering the French consulate in Salonica (Thessaloniki) from the late 18th to the early 20th century from the perspective of a ›history of administrative reality‹. It shows how this consulate was located at the intersection of two state-building projects: those of France and the Ottoman Empire, both vying for control of the local space in which the consulate was active. While the French state strove to integrate its consulates into the internal logic of its expanding bureaucracy, and thus to extend its legal space beyond the borders of its own territory, the modernizing efforts of the Empire tended to reduce the immunities of exterritorial institutions with a view toward homogenizing and effectively controlling imperial space. The gaps and conflicts between the rival state-building agendas, as well as local factors beyond the control of either, created a local reality in which the consular personnel had the challenge and the opportunity to shape their own space of action. In this way, the consular district appears as a spatial entity somewhat resembling a state in miniature.

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