‘Unfit for reform or punishment’: mental disorder and discipline in Liverpool Borough Prison in the late nineteenth century

This article examines how Liverpool Borough Prison, opened in 1855 as one of the largest local prisons in England to adopt the separate system, categorized and dealt with mental distress and disorder amongst its prison population in the late nineteenth century. High prison committal rates in Liverpool, alongside high levels of recidivism, especially among female prisoners, led to severe overcrowding and encouraged a harsh disciplinary regime. Exacerbated by the poor physical and mental condition of the prisoners, this produced a challenging environment for maintaining the separate system of confinement and prisoners’ mental well-being. While official figures for the rates of mental disorder in local prisons are not readily available, Liverpool Prison’s diverse and under-exploited archives and official reports indicate that insanity caused prison officials and visiting justices great concern, and many prisoners were declared unfit for the rigours of prison discipline. Our article explores the implications of the ever more punitive, deterrent and physically taxing penal policy implemented in the late nineteenth century on the minds of prisoners. Despite the heavy toll on prisoners’ mental well-being, such cases were often retained by prison medical officers reluctant to acknowledge the failure of the prison to deter, reform and redeem.     

Legal families and environmental protection: Is there a causal relationship?

In this paper we build on the analysis of La Porta et al. [La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., & Vishny, R. W. (1998). Law and finance. Journal of Political Economy, 106(6), 1113–1155], to investigate the importance of legal families in explaining the dissimilar levels of environmental quality indicators among countries with different legal systems. The main intuition behind our analysis is that the nations in which the rights of shareholders are more protected promote real and financial investment; this increases the speed at which the per capita income corresponding to the declining branch of the Environmental Kutznets Curve (EKC) is achieved. In econometrics different regressions analyses were performed, using as dependent variables three different kinds of pollutants (CO₂, fine suspended particulates and waste), and including as an explanation some financial variables never before considered in this kind of study.     

Current reproductive technologies: increased access and choice?

This article discusses key issues related to current reproductive technologies including contextual and personal barriers to use, complexity of decision making, limited access to technologies for poor women and women of color, and the politics and social controversy surrounding this area. New reproductive technologies have to be put to the same test as any other product--can and will women use them correctly? We need to not only know about the technology itself; we also need to know about the individuals who intend to use the technology and about contextual factors that influence use. Accordingly, the articles in this issue focus on the multiple determinants that influence acceptability of reproductive technologies and the policy, political, and legal implications associated with their use.     

Risk of a ‘revolution of rising expectations’ in China?

This article analyses developments in Chinese living standards with special focus on urban-rural inequalities. The analysis and discussion target the rapid economic lift, accompanied by inequalities and the risk of revolution of rising expectations in the last three decades. Although this economic lift brings China from one of the poorest countries in the world to the second largest economy globally, many are also concerned about social instability as a result of increasing inequalities and social gaps. We have examined existing data, including international statistics and Chinese national sources. It shows that average Chinese citizens, in general, have enjoyed improvements in their living standard, but an increasing gap in per capita disposable income between urban and rural residents is observable. The discussion section connects to results from secondary surveys. The conclusion is that conditions for feelings of relative deprivation are diminutive and so is the risk of a forthcoming revolution of rising expectations in China.     

Who were his peers? The social and professional milieu of the provincial surgeon-apothecary in the late-eighteenth century

The social standing of the surgeon-apothecary cannot be determined by reference to professional life alone, yet few such men left social documents. The lower middling sort was typically reticent about evaluations of their own social position in any source genre. This article uses a unique archive, and the concept of community connectedness, to investigate the status of Thomas Higgins, surgeon-apothecary and man-midwife of north Shropshire. Higgins embodied the traditional practitioner who relied on local knowledge and his 'friends' for advancement, in contrast to alternative modes of rising professionalism. He was demonstrably a trusted man at the heart of his home town, but his reliance on the 'partiality' of his neighbors brought him into conflict with his colleagues.     

Portuguese healthcare reforms in the context of crisis: External pressure or domestic choice?

As a result of the recent economic crisis, in 2011, Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (the “Troika”). In exchange for Troika's financial assistance, the Memorandum required the implementation of a specific set of reforms targeted at the healthcare sector. The literature on policy reforms in the context of crisis and conditionality argues that governments have restricted room to manoeuver in responding to external pressure. We challenge this view, finding that even in cases of conditionality and strong external pressures, crisis can be used as a window of opportunity for reforms substantially shaped by domestic policy choices. In the case of Portuguese health reforms, these choices were based on pre‐existing reform plans aimed on resolving country‐specific deficiencies of the healthcare system and were enabled by the two main political parties' strategies of tacit cooperation and blame avoidance. The article emphasizes the need for more fine‐grained analysis of welfare reforms in the crisis that pays equal attention to the institutional characteristics and the political context of the affected countries.     

The origins of the ‘creative class’: provincial urban society,scientific culture and socio-political marginality in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1

Recent historiography has revealed the importance of scientific culture in British society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with scientific knowledge shown to have been central in a wide range of sites and contexts, from botanical gardens to mechanics’ institutes. The article draws upon the insights of historians of science, urban historians and others to argue that the concept of the English ‘urban renaissance’, the Habermasean model of the public sphere, various aspects of post-structural, post-modern and feminist theory, and attention to ‘the space’ and geography can all be used to enhance the understanding of this culture. Given that scientific culture has often been associated with social groups that have sometimes been described as ‘marginal’, the article explores the historiography of various aspects of what it defines as the ‘marginal model’ of cultural expression. Aspects of its various manifestations are explored with special reference to groups often perceived as ‘alternative’ or ‘peripheral’ to ‘dominant’ or majority culture, such as women, dissenters, gays or immigrants, including recent work in the United States concerning the activities of the ‘creative class’. It is contended that this can illuminate our understanding of British scientific culture, for instance through its emphasis on urban and regional differentiation and on the irrational aspects of intellectual endeavour. The study assesses how successfully models of social marginality account for the varied character and geography of this culture, using case-studies of scientific societies in different types of English town and a review of Scottish Enlightenment science.     

Disability policy in Australia: a triumph of the scriptio inferior on impotence and neediness?

From the time that development of a National Disability Insurance Scheme arrived on the agenda of the Australian Labor Government's 2008 Ideas Summit, the lives of disabled Australian citizens have been widely discussed, consulted on, planned for and acted on. This discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003; 2010) critiques the ways in which disabled lives have been framed in these high profile policy debates, with detailed focus on two key policy documents. The Shut Out Report: the Experiences of People with Disabilities in Australia (2009) (2009) and Disability Care and Support (Productivity Commission 2011) are both grounded in extensive national consultations and provide significant evidence about the ways that disabled Australians talk about the problems they face and the solutions they advocate. The paper employs the well‐known recognition‐redistribution debate of Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) to interpret the findings that narratives of suffering, burden and marginalisation predominate in current policy conversations. This tends to push out discussions concerning the non‐redistributive aspects of disability reform, potentially contributing to non‐integrationist discourse entrenched over 150 years of policies of segregation. Minority voices advocating social integration are present but muted. At this stage, their influence is undetermined.     

Populism versus neo-liberalism: is there a way forward?

ABSTRACT

Populism is a contested concept. In this conclusion we do not want to rehearse these contestations. Rather, we re-emphasize: the extent of the threat that populism poses for liberal democracy; the failure of most mainstream Economists and Political Science to understand the nature of the threat; and the putative ways of renewing democracy.     

New challenges for the welfare state: The emergence of youth unemployment regimes in Europe?

In this article we discuss the emergence of ‘youth unemployment regimes’ in Europe, that is, a set of coherent measures and policies aimed at providing state responses to the problem of unemployment and, more specifically, youth unemployment. We classify these measures and policies along two main dimensions: unemployment regulations and labour market regulations. Using original data, we show how seven European countries locate on these two dimensions as well as within the conceptual space resulting from the combination of the two dimensions. Our findings show cross‐national variations that do not fit the traditional typologies of comparative welfare studies. At the same time, however, the findings allow for reflecting upon possible patterns of convergence across European countries. In particular, we show some important similarities in terms of flexible labour market regulations. In this regard, the recent years have witnessed a trend towards a flexibilisation of the labour market, regardless of the prevailing welfare regime.