Power and control: managing agents for international student recruitment in higher education

This multiple case-based study investigates the relationship between recruiting agents and the UK universities who act as their principals. The current extensive use of agents in UK higher education may be seen as an indicator of the financial impact made by international students. The study analyses the practice of agent management and explores the manner in which power and control interact. The study employed semi-structured interviews and group discussions involving up to 6 respondents from each of the 20 UK case institutions. The qualitative data reveal a considerable variation in the manner in which the universities manage their agency relationships. Through the joint consideration of control measures and use of power, five distinctive approaches have been identified. The study also reveals that over-dependence on agents reduces the power of the principal, and consequently, the principal’s ability to exercise control, particularly in highly competitive global and national markets.

Arthur’s refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.