A plea for promiscuous creativity

To Brunswick and Beyond: A Geography of Creative and Social Participation for Marginalised Youth

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as a corporate leader of a multi-academy trust (MAT) is an emerging new construct of headteacher in England. Core to this position and practice is the construction and membership of specific networks that I conceptualise as realist. Such networks provide access to privileged policy influencers and corporate actors resulting in an important exchange relationship and reciprocity of resources. I examine these realist networks as a particular mode of governance, that is dialogic. The article reports on research from the larger Leadership of the Lawrence Trust Project, undertaken over a year using an ethnographic approach focusing on the case of KT Edwards, CEO of the Lawrence Trust. The article investigates Edwards’ networks relationally; in so doing it examines the power exchanges that occur. The article uses empirical data to conclude that realist networks for Edwards are complex, dynamic sites of exchange, contingent upon trust, strength of ties and provide significant opportunities for entrepreneurial practices and dialogic governance.

Technologies of Reading and Writing: Transformation and Subjectivation in Digital Times

This paper considers the interruption of Amaravati, a project for a new state capital in southern India. I argue that the terms and conditions of Amaravati’s financing had specific spatial consequences at multiple scales. The discussion traces the deterritorialization of an agrarian landscape into speculative real estate through so-called “land pooling.” It considers the new technologies and modes of governance that facilitated this speculation and catalyzed an “all-over, all-at-once” infrastructural strategy that organized construction work synchronously on scattered sites spread across 217 square kilometers of land. The expedited construction of government housing blocks—using monolithic in situ casting techniques—further supported the financialized terms of development, emphasizing the imminence and inevitability of the future capital as a means of securing private investment from around the world. As Amaravati’s ultimate demise suggests, the abstractions of contemporary global finance can be grasped through a close reading of their architectural manifestations.

Purpose This paper aims to engage with the concept of resilience as theorized by David Chandler in his book Resilience: The Governance of Complexity by drawing from the theory of governmentality presented by Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph. Design/methodology/approach Evolving from classical liberalism to neoliberalism and from natural sciences to social sciences, the term “resilience” raises many questions about its sustainability in terms of its meaning and complexity. While most scholars tend to underscore the significance and practicality of the term, a few scholars argue that it is a failed dogma with neoliberal characteristics. As this is a theory-based study, its methodology involves close readings of academic texts produced mainly by David Chandler, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Joseph. Findings The central argument in this paper is though Chandler convincingly explains the paradigm shift of the term resilience from classical to neoliberal, his theorizing lacks the understanding that the type of power and governmentality involved in individual freedom, autonomy and complexity are actually parts of the neoliberal state. Hence, the buzzword resilience today is actually an extension of the same neoliberal thought. Originality/value First, the author attempts to critically engage with the term resilience from a sociological point of view using purposively selected academic literature. Second, the paper attempts to bring Chandler’s conceptualization on resilience into the disaster context and evaluates its practicality within the tenets of neoliberalism by drawing on Joseph’s and Foucault’s theorizations.

This chapter considers reservists as transmigrants moving between civilian employment and their military roles, focusing on skills transfers to military contexts. The chapter examines the continued validity of the idea that this transfer occurs and has utility for armed forces, using the example of the UK Reserves and the reforms initiated under the Future Reserves 2020 (FR20) program. The chapter considers how skills transfer was envisaged under FR20 and the Whole Force Approach and then considers empirical evidence for skills transfer into the armed forces by reservists in terms of specialist, accredited, and transferable or ‘soft’ skills, drawing insights from reservists themselves and from a close reading of defense policy documentation and discourse. The chapter then considers how civilian-to-military skills transfers are framed and limited by employment practices, labor market transformations and wider public sector expenditure restrictions, which in turn have been shaped by modes of neoliberal economic governance.

Many provincial, state, and local governments in developing countries are looking to emulate apparently successful regional information and communications technology (ICT) and Information Society models; from the high-tech production focus of Silicon Valley in California to the user-oriented, social shaping approach in Finland’s North Karelia province. However, it is now well recognised in the ICT governance literature that the simple transfer of policies and governance arrangements from one context to another results in unexpected and undesirable outcomes due to a mismatch between best practice recommendations and the local institutional environment. Scholars working in the field of ICTs and development emphasise that there is in fact a deeper conflict in beliefs, meanings, or rationalities around the goals of ICT-related development and the means by which development is achieved, which undermines the sustainability and impact of ICT implementations. Very little is known about the rationalities underpinning attempts at regional ICT governance in developing contexts, especially in more rural areas of developing countries. This research aims to support a conscious awareness of the distinctive mix of rationalities in these environments. In so doing, it seeks to uncover alternative, often suppressed ideas about ICT governance and encourage a more creative, inclusive, and contextually-anchored approach to ICT governance. An interpretive case study was conducted in a focal rural province of South Africa, and the findings compared to an urban case to highlight distinctive characteristics. A number of similarities and differences emerged along three main dimensions. First, on the relationship between ICTs and development, there is a similar dominant rationality of technological determinism, which aims to link marginalised citizens to opportunities and knowledge in the global market-place. The rural case is characterised by a less prominent but significant ‘social shaping’ orientation which encourages user-led development of the technology. Second, on the mode of ICT governance, government leadership is viewed as critical due to the underdeveloped nature of the province, but is open to partnerships with a diverse mix of actors to access resources and expertise. In line with the social shaping orientation, some governance actors argue that non-‘IT people’ should lead ICT governance. The final dimension concerns the space and scale of ICT-related development and governance influence, and the rural case is dominated by a ‘glocal’ perspective in seeking to connect people in rural areas with global opportunities, whilst the provincial government seeks to assert a provincial scale of influence. The urban case reflects a more diverse mix of spaces and scales. This identification and comparison of rationalities was made possible by the development of a classification framework which emerged from a grounded process of literature review, data collection, and analysis. Through the systematic grouping of rationalities, the dominance and suppression of specific ideas and the relationship between rationalities from different fields becomes apparent. A close reading of the framework and case studies in this thesis can provide insights into the diversity of and relationships between ICT governance rationalities in other regions.

104BOOK REVIEWS For those interested in CarmeUte history the reward to be gained from reading this book is a sensible conclusion to a long debate about the early days of the reformed order in France. The debate has centered around the extent to which French Carmelite nuns have honored the legacy of St. Teresa of Avila as expressed in her constitution of the reformed CarmeUtes. For the larger audience of historians interested in the CathoUc Reformation the reward is fourfold. The first reward is a series ofmulti-dimensional portraits, the smaUer ofwhich are presented without much editorial comment, which reveal both the halos and the warts of many French and Spanish participants in the CathoUc Reformation during the period 1583-1629. These portraits occupy a significant portion of the book. EspeciaUy important among the portraits are those of Pierre de Bérulle, the titular head of the group that brought the Discalced CarmeUte nuns to France, the first two superiors of the Paris convent, Mères Anne de Jésus and Anne de Saint Barthélémy, and Père Denys de la Mère de Dieu, the fiercest CarmeUte opponent of BéruUe's methods ofgoverning the French CarmeUte nuns independently of the order. Woven around the portraits is a finely nuanced account of the intricacies of Franco-Spanish-Papal relations, especiaUy for the period 1590-1610. A third part of the reward is a set of concrete examples of the ways in which the decrees ofthe CouncU ofTrent concerning the reform of convents and monasteries by bishops chaUenged previously accepted modes of reUgious governance and the methods used to resolve the resulting conflicts—usuaUy either trial and error or compromise. FinaUy, and perhaps unintentionaUy, Morgain's account makes it painfully clear how rigidly early modern clerics regulated the Uves of women reUgious and tried to control their thoughts. The clerics did not question their own motives or actions, or realize how unsuccessful their efforts of thought control often were. One wonders ifthe clerics reaUzed how strongly their thoughts and actions were influenced by other women, many of whom were not reUgious. Particularly striking is the influence of the christology of the CarmeUte nun Anne de Saint-Barthélémy on the spirituaUty of Pierre de BéruUe. J. Michael Hayden University ofSaskatchewan Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640. By Anthony MUton. [Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995. Pp. xvi, 599. $79.95.) Some thirty volumes have appeared as part of this series to 1995. About onefourth concern topics on Tudor England. This chronological imbalance may reflect the influence of John Morrill, one of three series' editors and a Stuart BOOK REVIEWS105 speciaUst, who has been instrumental in identifying outstanding dissertations and overseeing them into print. Anthony MUton, since 1995 lecturer in history in the University of Sheffield, completed his dissertation under MorriU's supervision m 1989 and reformulated it for this book. MUton is a gifted young historian with other -works to his credit and a work in progress about the British delegation at the Synod of Dort (1619), which wUl be pubUshed under the auspices of the Church of England Record Society, founded in 1991· MUton's is on aU accounts a triumphal achievement. He has written a convincing study characterized by clarity of thought, Uterary grace, exhaustive archival research, and a close reading of contemporary printed sources. He describes and assesses how divines strove to identify the nature of the EngUsh Church in relation to alternative churches existing abroad. He examines the divisions within the Church of England, whose doctrinal and ideological identity was StUl far from certain even by 1640. Different groups within the church debated just how the English Church should be understood as being both "CathoUc and Reformed." In their quest for answers, they considered what the church's precise relationship was with the Reformed Churches on the continent , and to what degree the church had truly separated hersetf from the Roman CathoUc Church. MUton's method is to analyze the ways in which the Roman CathoUc and the Reformed Churches were understood by EngUsh Protestant divines m...

#FreeBritney and the Pleasures of Conspiracy

Our Own Image: Three New Approaches to Canonical American Literature Betina Entzminger Jordan-Lake, Joy. 2005. Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, xxvi + 204 pp. $27.95Barrish, Philip. 2005. White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, ix + 168pp. $21.95Winchell, Mark Royden. 2006. Reinventing the South: Versions of a Literary Region. Columbia, Missouri. University of Missouri Press, xiv + 253 pp. $39.95Three recent studies, Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: Nineteenth-century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe by Joy JordanLake, White Liberal Identity, Literary Pedagogy, and Classic American Realism by Phillip Barrish, and Reinventing the South: Versions of a Literary Region by Mark Royden Winchell, offer new ways of understanding canonical works of American literature and the literary and social contexts in which they developed. Each offers some fresh, relevant, and insightful readings of American literature and culture of the nineteenth and/or twentieth centuries. These three authors approach their primary texts from varying political stances, and as with any interpretation, the authors' political and social views affect their readings of the texts they discuss. Though such influence is inevitable, it is a lack of awareness of it, a lack of openness about it, or an unwillingness to interrogate its effect that mars two of these new works.Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: Nineteenth-century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe by Joy Jordan-Lake is a complex and thorough examination of the novels written by women in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and a less developed exploration of the society that produced the women novelists. her introduction, the author points out that the slavery debate was not neatly divided into proslavery South and anti-slavery North, and throughout the study she acknowledges the complexity of antebellum racism, which was tied to understandings of not only race, but of class and gender as well. The majority of the novels discussed imitated the characters, themes, and plot elements of Stowe's novel in order to refute her abolitionist agenda, and some of them directly reference Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin. However, Jordan-Lake contends that contrary to their intent . .. the proslavery texts, with their evasions, displacements, and contradictions, disrupt the surface narratives, ultimately exposing a profit-driven chattel slavery as savage as that on Simon Legree's plantation (2005, 25).To support her thesis, the author relies on close readings of the primary texts, feminist theory, and historical analysis. Drawing on her background in theology, Jordan-Lake coins the term 'theology of whiteness,' a framework that manipulates religious language and ideology to support the economic interests of a white patriarchal culture, including the creation of a deity in its own image (2005, xvi). From this combination of close reading, feminism, historicism, and theology arises one of the study's major flaws, though it is not a fatal one. her analyses, Jordan-Lake is sometimes guilty of what Phillip Barrish, author of one of the other studies discussed herein, calls presentism, in which an author projects contemporary political or social concerns onto a literature of an earlier period. For example, Jordan-Lake discusses Mary Eastman's Aunt Phillis' Cabin, in which Phillis, a slave mammy, In games of make-believe, consigned her own children to the roles of waiter and coachmen and instructed them to behave like white 'quality' (67). The majority of Eastman's white readers, however, would not have seen this action as evidence of slavery's evils, but would view it as evidence of sincere emotional attachment and a positive reinforcement of the social hierarchy. Her readings do offer today's readers valuable insight into this literature and the minds that produced it, but, unfortunately, Jordan-Lake does not acknowledge or interrogate the anachronism of many of her interpretations. …

Prophetenwort und Geschichte: Die Jesajauberlieferung in Jes 68 und 28-31, by Jorg Barthel. FAT 19. Tibingen: Mohr-Siebeck. Pp. xiv + 522. DM 189.00. This is a historical-critical study of Isaiah 6-8 and 28-31, originally completed as a doctoral dissertation under Hans-Jurgen Hermisson. It defends the basic Isaianic composition of these chapters, distinguishes later supplementations, and attempts to reconcile diachronic and synchronic readings. It is a very traditional work of German scholarship, which, however, is very well-informed about currents in contemporary research and sets itself constantly in sometimes uneasy dialogue with them. It represents, moreover, the very best in traditional German historical-critical scholarship: warm, humane, careful, and sensitive in its reading of the text, and formidably erudite. It has occasional lapses into moralism, and betrays a certain Protestant sensibility; nonetheless, it is always acute in its discussion of poetry and in its reconstruction of the twists and turns of the prophetic message. As a very sympathetic representative of the historical-critical school, it is enlightening to those who belong to other camps and provides an opportunity for critical reflection. Most of the book consists of close readings of the relevant texts, excluding those parts the author regards as secondary (e.g., 7:18-25; 8:19-23). Each chapter is divided into text-critical, analytic, and interpretative sections; the analysis focuses on literary structure, demarcation, and stratification, while the interpretation concerns the polemical thrust and argumentation of the passages that have been thus delineated. Inevitably, there is both a certain circularity and repetitiveness in this arrangement, since the literary structure is determined in part by interpretative considerations and is the basis for them. Analytic and interpretative sections hence are closely integrated. Moreover, as the author forewarns us in his preface, the same exegeses recur throughout, ensuring a certain predictability. The book is a very clear example of how methodological presuppositions guide interpretation, as well as vice versa. Once we learn the formula, it can be applied to the most disparate material. The reading kept me interested, however, in part because of Barthel's sensitivity to detail, and in part because of his common sense and the care with which he constructs his argument. The critical pleasure is convoked perhaps by the ingenuity with which the formula appears to arise naturally from the most recalcitrant text. This is a consolatory process of rationalization and domestication; if the text of Isaiah can be rendered coherent, even at the price of splitting among different literary strata, it can serve to satisfy our own desire for reason and canonical continuity. It may, however, lose its strangeness and its irreducibility. The close readings are preceded by chapters that examine the structure of the sequences as a whole and their place within the wider literary contexts of the book of Isaiah. As Barthel suggests, these chapters may be of most interest to synchronic critics and are excellent in their treatment of the intricate macrostructures of the book. Barthel anticipates Erhard Blum in arguing that the so-called Denkschrift (Isaiah 6-8) forms the original nucleus of, rather than an insertion into, the concentric structure of Isaiah 1-12; likewise, he concurs with Marvin Sweeney that Isaiah 32 concludes the first part of the book, but proposes different, shifting endings, corresponding to different stages in composition (31:4, 32, 33, 34, 35). He has an exceedingly rich introduction on the current crisis in Isaiah research, and a no less thorough summation. There are five main conclusions: 1. The oral stage of composition is detectable, but irrecoverable, in the written text. …

Even in the digital age, learning mathematics at an academic level still requires much reading of mathematical text. Research has shown that reading mathematical text requires readers to engage with all the structures of the book and with its pedagogical voice, making connections, and plausible reasoning. Specific practices and strategies that support the close reading of mathematical text have been suggested; however, descriptions and empirical evaluations of materials designed to support these activities are rare. We present the design and first evaluation cycle of materials developed in a design research project that aims to scaffold close reading of mathematical text. The materials were designed and evaluated in a German university course on elementary geometry for first-year teacher education students who study mathematics to become primary teachers. The reading strategies were explained and modeled for students in reading-strategy videos. Additionally, close reading of mathematical text was scaffolded by close-reading tasks and homework tasks and problems that build on the reading strategies and were specifically designed to foster understanding of the mathematical text. Survey data were collected from 296 students to evaluate their use of and attitude toward the different materials. The quantitative results indicate that students used the materials and were generally able to learn the course content by themselves. From all provided materials, they found the close-reading tasks most helpful. A qualitative analysis of answers to open questions revealed issues with different materials, particularly with the script, and requests for additional materials. The issues with the script were categorized inductively. The categories are presented as a qualitative result of the study and discussed.

If is one thing contemporary observers of American literary studies agree upon, it is New must finally be transcended. William Cain, for example, protests New Critics' identification of with close reading of classic literary texts. It is not 'close reading' is itself misconceived, he argues, rather case for it has always been made at expense of other important things. Because New Critics won their case so convincingly, these other things have long been excluded from literary establishment. A list of costs resulting from institutionalization of New in 1950s, according to Cain, would include the rejection of other methods and other kinds of texts; misguided attempt to define (and thus defend) teaching of literature as, above all, 'close reading'; skepticism shown towards literary theory; and refusal to see other disciplines as having relevance for 'literary' criticism (New Criticism 1111-12). Criticism, in short, has become formalistic, to use an old critical buzz-word. Even deconstruction, as Cain correctly observes, is more an intensified continuation of tradition of formalistic close reading than a new, expansive kind of Fortunately, says Cain, there have been signs in recent years New Critical reign is at last coming to an end. The most important of these signs is the revival of 'history' as an instrument for criticism. This revival is result of work of certain critics and theorists-Cain mentions Foucault, Said, and Jameson-who have shown that 'history' does not have to imply-as it did for scholars New Critics attacked in 1930s-a narrow and naive review of sources, backgrounds, and influences. Rather, history now means the formation of an archive, building up of a rich, detailed, and complex discursive field. The ground for criticism, from this point of view, is not classic literary text, but inter-textual configurations and arrangements; 'criticism' thus entails study of power, political uses of language, and orders of discourse (New Criticism 1116-17). This reconstitution of ground for will produce, presumably, an analogous transformation of practice of close reading and expand domain of to include methods, texts, and disciplines suppressed by New Criticism. These developments, needless to say, win Cain's seal of approval.

The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary CriticismRace and the Literary Encounter: Black Literature from James Weldon Johnson to Percival Everett

Recent scholarship in nineteenth-century literary studies consistently recognizes the profound importance of religion, even as it marginalizes the topic. There are few, if any, challenging yet manageable introductions to religion and literature in the long-nineteenth century, a factor that serves to fuel scholars' neglect of theological issues. This book aims to show how religion, specifically Christianity, is integral to the literature and culture of this period. It provides close readings of popular texts and integrates these with accessible explanations of complex religious ideas. Written by two scholars who have published widely on religion and literature, the book offers a detailed grounding in the main religious movements of the period 1750-1914. The dominant traditions of High Anglicanism, Tractarianism, Evangelicalism, and Roman Catholicism are contextualized by preceding chapters addressing dissenting culture (primarily Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism and Quakerism), and the question of secularization is considered in the light of the diversity and capacity for renewal within the Christian faith. Throughout the book the authors untangle theological and church debates in a manner that highlights the privileged relationship between religion and literature in the period. The book also gives readers a language to approach and articulate their own "religious" readings of texts, texts that are often concerned with slippery subjects, such as the divine, the non-material and the nature of religious experience. Refusing to shut down religious debate by offering only narrow or fixed definitions of Christian traditions, the book also questions the demarcation of sacred material from secular, as well as connecting the vitality of religion in the period to a broader literary culture.