Expressive Free Speech,the State and the Public Sphere: A Bakhtinian–Deleuzian Analysis of ‘Public Address’ at Hyde Park

In this paper I explore how struggles around free speech between social movements and the state are often underpinned by a deeper struggle around expressive images of what counts as either ‘decent’ or ‘indecent’ discussion. These points are developed by exploring what is arguably the most famous populist place for free speech in Britain, namely Hyde Park. In 1872 the state introduced the Parks Regulation Act in order to regulate, amongst other things, populist uses of free speech at Hyde Park. However, although the 1872 Act designated a site in Hyde Park for public meetings, it did not mention ‘free speech’. Rather, the 1872 Act legally enforced the liberty to make a ‘public address’ and this was implicitly contrasted by the state of an expressive image of ‘indecent’ speakers exercising their ‘right’ of free speech at Hyde Park. Once constructed, the humiliating image of ‘indecent’ free speech could then be used by the state to regulate actual utterances of public speakers at Hyde Park. But the paper shows how in the years immediately following 1872 a battle was fought out in Hyde Park over the expressive image of public address between the state and regulars using Hyde Park as a public sphere to exercise free speech. For its part the state had to engage in meaningful deliberative forms of discussion within its own regulatory framework and with the public sphere at Hyde Park in order to maintain the legal form, content and expression of the 1872 Act. To draw out the implications of these points I employ some of the theoretical ideas of the Bakhtin Circle and Gilles Deleuze. Each set of thinkers in their own way make valuable contributions for understanding the relationship between the state, public sphere and expressive images.     

How are George Orwell’s writings a precursor to studies of popular culture?

George Orwell is known as an acclaimed novelist, essayist, documentary writer, and journalist. But Orwell also wrote widely on a number of themes in and around popular culture. However, even though Orwell's writings might be considered as a precursor to some well-known themes in studies of popular culture his contribution to this area still remains relatively unacknowledged by others in the discipline. The aim of this article is simply, therefore, to provide a basis to begin to rethink Orwell’s contribution to contemporary studies of popular culture. It does so by demonstrating some comparable insights into culture and society between those made by Orwell and those found in the work of Bakhtin, Bourdieu, and Deleuze. These insights are also related to four main areas of discussion: debates in contemporary cultural studies about the contested pleasures of popular culture and experiences; the relationship between language and culture; how social class needs to be defined not just economically but also culturally; and how one might escape cultural relativism when writing about popular culture. The article concludes by suggesting that Orwell is a precursor to contemporary studies of popular culture insofar that some of the cultural themes he explores have become established parts of the discipline’s canon.     

Empathy and Observed Anger and Aggression in Five-Year-Olds

In Roberts and Strayer (1996 ), we reported that emotional expressiveness and anger were important predictors of empathy for school‐age children, and that empathy strongly predicted prosocial behaviors aggregated across methods and sources. In this paper, we report how empathy was associated with direct observations of anger and aggression in peer play groups. Twenty‐four initially unacquainted five‐year‐old children (50% girls) were randomly assigned to six same‐sex groups; each group met for three one‐hour play sessions. Physical and verbal aggression, object struggles and anger were coded from videotapes, as were prosocial and social behaviors. As expected, empathy (aggregated across methods and sources) was negatively associated with aggression and anger, and positively associated with prosocial behaviors. Although children who were more angry were also more aggressive, anger and aggression did not covary across play sessions as a simple causal model requires. These results suggest further directions for research in emotions and aggression.     

Estimating the prevalence of male clients of prostitute women in Vancouver with a simple capture–recapture method

Summary.  Capture–recapture techniques are widely used to estimate the size of difficult-to-count human populations. Applications often focus on the overlap between two or more samples, but another type of data that is encountered in human studies involves only the number of times that particular individuals were encountered in the study period. We present a method for estimating the population size in this situation. This method is simple and technically accessible and allows for entries and exits by individuals and for a difference between probabilities of initial and subsequent contacts. We apply the method to arrest data on male clients of prostitute women in Vancouver.     

Contents Volume 55

Theory and Decision -     

Conference Report Making Statistics More Effective in Schools of Business

We propose semiparametric procedures for estimation and testing of base-independent equivalence scales. The partial linear index specification permits simultaneous estimation across multiple household types and multiple goods and also the incorporation of continuous and discrete household attributes. Furthermore, asymptotic properties of estimated equivalence scales and tests of base independence are readily obtained. The efficiency gains from the proposed models and estimators are particularly helpful for developing country data where there is often much greater variation in household size and composition. We apply the techniques to South African data and find the results to be broadly consistent with base independence.