Interview with Hannah Berry

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Ann Miller

In this interview, the Brighton-based comics artist Hannah Berry discuses her current role as Comics Laureate, which has included the commissioning of a survey into the conditions of work of comics artists in the United Kingdom and has demonstrated the financial hardship that most of them endure. She also talks about the importance of mentoring, organising work around childcare, and how she came to produce a weekly strip for the New Statesman. The interview then focuses on Berry’s three published graphic novels, touching on the influence of films, the tension between storytelling and play with the codes of the medium, the use of gutters and text as elements in a horror story, comics as a corrective to fake news, and the political research that underlies satire.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Ann Miller

In this interview, the Brighton-based comics artist Hannah Berry discuses her current role as Comics Laureate, which has included the commissioning of a survey into the conditions of work of comics artists in the United Kingdom and has demonstrated the financial hardship that most of them endure. She also talks about the importance of mentoring, organising work around childcare, and how she came to produce a weekly strip for the New Statesman. The interview then focuses on Berry’s three published graphic novels, touching on the influence of films, the tension between storytelling and play with the codes of the medium, the use of gutters and text as elements in a horror story, comics as a corrective to fake news, and the political research that underlies satire.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion

Public service media face an existential crisis. Many governments are cutting their budgets, while questioning the role and value of public service broadcasting because many citizens now have access to a wide range of media. This raises the question – do public service media supply a distinctive and informative news service compared to market-led media? Drawing on the concept of political information environment, this study makes an intervention into debates by carrying out a comparative content analysis of news produced by UK public service broadcasters and market-driven media across television, radio and online outlets (N = 1065) and interviewing senior editors about the routine selection of news. It found that almost all BBC news and commercial public service media platforms reported more news about politics, public affairs and international issues than entirely market-driven outlets. Online BBC news reported more informative topics than market-based media, which featured more entertainment and celebrity stories. The value of public service media was demonstrated on the United Kingdom’s nightly television news bulletins, which shone a light on the world not often reported, especially BBC News at Ten. Most market-driven media reported through a UK prism, excluding many countries and international issues. Overall, it is argued that the influence of public service media in the United Kingdom helps shape an information environment with informative news. The focus of the study is on UK media, but the conceptual application of intepreting a political information environment is designed to be relevant for scholars internationally. While communication studies have sought to advance more cross-national studies in recent years, this can limit how relevant studies are for debates in national political information environments. This study concludes by recommending more scholarly attention should be paid to theorising national policy dynamics that shape the political information environments of media systems within nations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110085
Author(s):  
Sofia Aboim ◽  
Pedro Vasconcelos

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Nazri Muslim ◽  
Osman Md Rasip ◽  
Khairul Hamimah Mohammad Jodi ◽  
Abdullah Ibrahim ◽  
Otong Rosadi

In Malaysia, there is no one institution that can outdo the supremacy of the Federal Constitution. Even the three government bodies that refer to the power separation doctrine which is the legislative, judiciary and executive bodies even the Yang di-Pertuan Agong are under this Federal Constitution. The constitution can be divided into two, written and non-written constitution. The written constitution is the form of constitution that is gathered and arranged in one document. The non-written counterpart encompasses all of the constitutional principles not compiled in one document such as the law endorsed by the Parliament and the verdicts of the court such as in the United Kingdom. Other than the constitution, there are certain practices that are thought to be part of the principles of the constitution. This is known as the Constitutional Convention or the customary practice of the Constitution. Constitutional convention is a non-legislative practice and it is similar to the political ethics and not enforced in court. Although it seems trivial, it is important for this practice to be complied with, otherwise it is difficult for the constitution to work successfully as the constitutional convention cannot be brought to court and forced to be obeyed. Thus, the discussion of this article rests on the constitutional convention in terms of the social contract, the appointment of the Prime Minister, the appointment of the country’s main positions and collective responsibility.


1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Dion

Secession, defined as ‘formal withdrawal from a central authority by a member unit’, has been particularly rare in democracies. In fact, there has never been a single case of secession in democracies if we consider only the well-established ones, that is, those with at least ten consecutive years of universal suffrage. The cases most often mentioned happened only a few years after the introduction or significant expansion of universal suffrage: Norway and Sweden in 1905, Iceland and Denmark in 1918, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 1922. What is more, one would hesitate before calling the first two cases real secessions, since the ties between the political entities involved were very loose at the outset. Secessionists never managed to split a well-established democracy through a referendum or an electoral victory. We must conclude that it is very hard for them to achieve and maintain the magic number of 50 per cent support. My aim is to explain why this is the case.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi

This book is about the stunning birth and growth of judicial review in the civil law world, since 1945. In Volume I of this two-volume series, I showed that judicial review was born and grew in common law G-20 constitutional democracies and in Israel primarily: (1) when there is a need for a federalism or a separation of powers umpire, (2) when there is a rights from wrongs dynamic, (3) when there is borrowing, and (4) when the political structure of a country’s institutions leaves space within which the judiciary can operate. The countries discussed in Volume I were the following: (1) the United States, (2) Canada, (3) Australia, (4) India, (5) Israel, (6) South Africa, and (7) the United Kingdom....


Author(s):  
Agnes Cornell ◽  
Jørgen Møller ◽  
Svend-Erik Skaaning

Denmark and the United Kingdom are analyzed in-depth as examples of clear positive cases, i.e. surviving democracies with substantial democratic legacies and vibrant associational landscapes. The two case studies show how Denmark and the UK had developed consolidated democracies on the eve of the interwar era. These democracies were bolstered by broad acceptance of democratic procedures among elites and masses as well as strong parties interlaced with lively civil societies. The result of this combination was political regimes, which were immune to the political radicalization of the day. Antidemocratic movements and parties found preciously little support, the established parties remained loyal to democracy, and they came together to strike political agreements in order to counter economic crisis and anti-democratic mobilization in the 1930s. The evidence offered by these case studies thus provide additional support for our theoretical mechanisms.


1960 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-68
Author(s):  
W. A. Honohan

1. In the year 1800, when the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were fused by the Act of Union establishing the United Kingdom, the population of Ireland was of the order of 5 millions. By 1821 the figure had risen to 6·8 millions and in 1841 it was 8·2 millions. During the following decade the population fell by 1-6 millions to 6·6 millions. By the year 1861 it was only 5·8 millions and thereafter it continued to decline steadily, though not with such rapidity, until in 1911 a figure of 4·4 millions was reached. Owing to the disturbed state of the country in 1921, the next census was not taken until 1926, after the political change in 1922 when twenty-six of the thirty-two counties into which the country was divided were established as a separate political entity, the Irish Free State (later to become a Republic), while the remaining six were constituted as Northern Ireland and continued to form part of the United Kingdom. The population of the whole island in 1926 and again in 1951 was 4·3 millions, that is to say, it differed only slightly in 1951 from what it was forty years earlier in 1911—see Table 1. The population of Ireland has, therefore, remained virtually stationary at about 4¼ millions for almost half a century. The trend of Irish population since 1841 is in striking contrast with the trend in England and Wales for, whereas in 1841 the population of Ireland was more than one-half of that in England and Wales, today it is less than one-tenth; the Irish population has almost halved while that of England and Wales has almost trebled.


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