The Peculiarities of the English State

Abstract This article explores the extent of distinctiveness and of similarity between the English and other comparable states, in an historical context. The author ranges widely in space and time. He finds likenesses as well as differences between England and such other polities both near and far as Scotland, Denmark, France and Japan. In accounting for English distinctiveness, more emphasis is put on geography, climate and ethos than on more conventional political and economic factors.     

Centralisation and Local Autonomy: The Experience of English Prisons 1820–1877

Abstract This article examines English prisons in the light of debates among historians about centralisation in the nineteenth century. The author argues that central state influence over prisons grew substantially from the 1830s onwards and that this was in line with the general view of administrative change advanced by such diverse writers as David Roberts and Philip Corrigan. However, the establishment of a central command structure under the 1877 Prisons Act was an extreme outcome which can only in part be explained by reference to general trends between 1820 and 1877. The takeover was also the result of manoeuvres by highly placed civil servants, intense pressure from particular interest groups, and guarantees given by the Conservative Party leadership to such groups.     

The Rise of the Information State: the Development of Central State Surveillance of the Citizen in England, 1500–2000

This essay examines existing sociological explanations of the development of the central surveillance of citizens in the light of the English experience, and finds them wanting. Sociologists see the state using surveillance for the benefit of capitalist elites, to reimpose social control over the society of strangers created by industrialisation. But surveillance pre-dated industrialisation, and the development of information gathering by state elites had more to do with their own need to preserve their position both within the English polity, and international geo-politics.     

State Form, Social Order and the Social Sciences: Urban Space and Politico-Economic Systems 1760–1850

Abstract In The Pristine Culture of Capitalism , Ellen Wood argues that the English urban landscape is characterised by lack of elegance, absence of charm and neglect of public services. She traces the origins of this impoverishment to the eradication of pre-industrial capitalist urban culture in the eighteenth century. The paper investigates the claim that English urban culture underwent a significant transformation in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A concern with the public magnificence of London as a means of representing the wealth and power of England is characteristic of eighteenth century treatise on urban improvement. The most influential of which, John Gwynn's London and Westminster Improved , published in 1766, draws upon the spatial linkage of economy, government and power typical of mercantilist thought. The paper argues that as the principles and practices of mercantilism were displaced by the spread of industrial capitalism and the liberal state, a concern with grandeur, elegance and embellishment in urban form was subordinated to the provision of the physical and social infrastructure necessary for the reproduction of labour.     

Assembling the Empire of Morality: State Building Strategies in Catholic Ecuador, 1861–1875

This article studies the efforts of the Ecuadorian government between 1861 and 1875 to construct a truly catholic nation. It examines the implementation and engagement of centralized initiatives of morality and religiosity, and reflects on its implications for the repositioning of state-society boundaries. Specifically, it considers the government's efforts after 1869 to centrally coordinate the institutions of municipal government and Church, and to redeploy them for national moralizing ends. It assesses the substantial achievements and limits of this model for strengthening state power and for disseminating national meanings of citizenship and progress.     

The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation, and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948–1953

The article argues that the Stalinist state in post-war Hungary aimed to use the wage relation as a central component of its policies to rationalise the organisation of production in industry. It attempted this by trying to discipline workers through the introduction of a form of payment by results which subordinated the workforce to the discipline of clock time. In complete contrast to state intentions, the planned economy developed its own rhythms and it was to these that the workforce came to respond. These responses led to a high degree of informal conflict on Hungarian shop floors, a process which re-shaped worker identity, making it more particular in its nature. The implication behind this argument is that the Stalinist state was less powerful than many have suggested, and that research should focus more on the economy if the roots of social change under state socialism are to be found.     

The Dual State: The Unruly "Subordinate", Caste, Community And Civil Service Recruitment In North India, 1930–1955

Abstract  This paper explores the nature of the everyday state in historical perspective in colonial and postcolonial Uttar Pradesh, north India, through the lens of civil service recruitment. It argues that social relationships between different cadres of the revenue and police services effectively created a bureaucratic space in which citizens' approaches to the state recreated forms of ambiguity in the reach and authority of state power. In this sense, it provides a deeper historical basis for anthropological and sociological work on the nature of the "fuzzy" everyday state in postcolonial India. But it develops this literature further, arguing that important structural changes over independence in 1947, also transformed the ways in which caste and community lobby groups represented their corporate interests through bureaucratic recruitment. These lobby groups, as a result of disjunctions in state power and discourses, between centre, province and locality, were often able to subvert systems of caste and community reservation. In the process, their actions emphasized the inability of the state at central and provincial levels to adjust to local political identities that depended on hybridity.