Epic Sea Battle at Night: a Revolutionary Play with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman

The play Epic Sea Battle at Night was originally staged in 1967, to commemorate two of China’s People’s Liberation Army’s military triumphs over the Taiwanese navy two years previously. Produced at the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the play is an example of the exploitation of the arts as an ideological instrument, celebrating military heroism and political conviction. Stills from the play were included in, China Pictorial 11, an English language propaganda pamphlet that was distributed to Western Imperialists in order to educate them in Maoist policy. Today, these images are clear representations of ideology. More than forty years after the Cultural Revolution, the ideology under which we live, neo-liberal late-capitalism, deliberately shirks from such blatant displays of propaganda. We have supposedly the freedom to believe whatever we like in a post-ideological age, and yet core beliefs about meritocracy, individualism and competitiveness frequently go unchallenged. By juxtaposing the visual language of ideology with the text of the capitalist manifesto, the re-enactment of a scene from Epic Sea Battle at Night harnesses the aesthetics of the past so as to allow us to reconsider the alleged neutrality of the present. The design of the stage, the positioning of the actors, costumes and props of the current production closely resembled those documented in China Pictorial 11, yet the actors’ monologues belong to a completely different context. No less heroic and utopian in tone than the speech given by the political instructor of gunboat 874 in the original play, the capitalist manifesto was an attempt to give a concrete language to the shapeless ideology of the present, and to force the invisible currents that govern life today, in China as in the West, to the surface. Neither a lecture on neo-liberal economics, nor a theatrical performance of a narrative, the piece appropriated the format of the propaganda play to re-evaluate the relationship between art and politics now.

Contested H2O: science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile

This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile’s ‘neoliberal’ political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science.

‘The Pages are Bugged': the politics of listening in the poetry of W.S. Graham

This paper probes the public dimensions of the work of the twentieth-century Scottish poet W. S. Graham. It draws upon the public contacts and contexts that Graham's lyrics structure and reconfigure, in texts that have appeared to critics to demonstrate the poet's textual aloneness, his intellectual and geographical banishment. Repeatedly addressing his St Ives community of artists and writers, lovers and companions, Graham's work sets up strategic routes through a succession of publicly-minded verbal engagements. Refusing to allow one passively to listen in to the poet's isolation, the lyrics invite, rebuff, tease, avoid, dally with, and proposition audiences and interlocutors. Graham's poetry speaks from within and without tradition, location and heritage, subtly attuning readers to the politics of its handling of national allegiance, identity, class and patronage.

Climate change: challenging business, transforming politics

Climate change challenges contemporary management practices and ways of organizing. While aspects of this challenge have been long recognized, many pertinent dimensions are less effectively articulated. Based on contemporary literature and insights from articles submitted to this special issue, the guest editors of this special issue highlight some of the challenges posed by climate change to government and business, and indicate the range of options and approaches being adopted to address these challenges.

Theorizing Literacy, Politics and Social Process: revisiting Maktab literacy in Rian in search of a paradigm

Literacy as a social practice is integrally linked with social, economic and political institutions and processes. As such, it has a material base which is fundamentally constituted in power relations. Literacy is therefore interwoven with the text and context of everyday living in which multi-levelled meanings are organically produced at both individual and societal level. This paper argues that if language thus mediates social reality, then it follows that literacy defined as a social practice cannot really be addressed as a reified, neutral activity but that it should take account of the social, cultural and political processes in which literacy practices are embedded. Drawing on the work of key writers within the field, the paper foregrounds the primary role of the state in defining the forms and levels of literacy required and made available at particular moments within society. In a case-study of the social construction of literacy meanings in pre-revolutionary Iran, it explores the view that the discourse about societal literacy levels has historically constituted a key terrain in which the struggle for control over meaning has taken place. This struggle, it is argued, sets the interests of the state to maintain ideological and political control over the production of knowledge within the culture and society over and against the needs identified by the individual for personal development, empowerment and liberation. In an overall sense, the paper examines existing theoretical perspectives on societal literacy programmes in terms of the scope that they provide for analyses that encompass the multi-levelled power relations that shape and influence dominant discourses on the relative value of literacy for both the individual and society

Shot by both sides: Punk, politics and the end of “Consensus”

This article examines the ways in which political organisations of the far left and far right responded to punk-informed youth culture in Britain during the late 1970s. It examines how both tried to understand punk within their own ideological framework, particularly in relation to the perceived socio-economic and political crises of the late 1970s, before then endeavouring to appropriate—or use—punk for their own ends. Ultimately, however, the article suggests that while punk may indeed be seen as a cultural response to the breakdown of what some have described as the post-war ‘consensus’ in the 1970s, the far left and far right's focus on cultural expression cut across the basic foundations on which they had been built. Consequently, neither left nor right proved able to provide an effective political conduit through which the disaffections expressed by punk could be channelled.

Charles Darwin's liberalism in 'Natural Selection as affecting civilised nations'

This article reassesses 'Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations': a thirteen-page section in the first volume of The Descent of Man (1871) often assumed to be problematic for those who wish to emphasize Darwin's liberal credentials. For hismost virulent critics the section connects Darwin to eugenics and the Nazi Holocaust. Even his admirers tend to view it as symptomatic of Darwin succumbing to a more conservative politics. This article demonstrates, through a delineation of the intellectual context and a close reading of key passages, that in fact 'Natural Selection as affecting Civilised Nations' confirmed, rather than abandoned, Darwin's liberalism.

Happiness, well-being and housing policy

The literature on the meaning of home emphasises the security, positive meaning and self-esteem that home generates. However, housing policy has traditionally viewed houses as units of accommodation rather than homes. This article tackles the question of whether it is possible to devise a housing policy that aims at improving the self-esteem and positive identity of residents. The article reviews the growing literature stressing the importance of seeking to promote happiness or well-being as the primary objective of government policy and concludes with an evaluation of the potential for the application of these ideas to housing policy.

Climate change: challenging business,transforming politics

Climate change challenges contemporary management practices and ways of organizing. While aspects of this challenge have been long recognized, many pertinent dimensions are less effectively articulated. Based on contemporary literature and insights from articles submitted to this special issue, the guest editors of this special issue highlight some of the challenges posed by climate change to government and business, and indicate the range of options and approaches being adopted to address these challenges.

An introduction to the ‘new’ politics of agriculture and food

The agricultural policy agenda has been broadened with farm policy issues now interlinking with other policy domains (food safety, energy supplies, environmental protection, development aid, etc.). New actors promoting values which sometimes conflict, or which are not always easily reconcilable, with those previously guiding agricultural policy have entered the broader agricultural and food policy domain. The studies of various new policy issues inter-linking with the agricultural policy domain included in this special issue show that value conflicts are addressed in different ways and thus result in inter-institutional coordination and conflict unfolding differently. Studies of inter-institutional policy making in the agricultural policy sector have the potential to contribute to theoretical developments in public policy analysis in much the same way as agricultural policy studies did in the past.

The detection of atmospheric rivers in atmospheric reanalyses and their links to British winter floods and the large-scale climatic circulation

Atmospheric Rivers (ARs), narrow plumes of enhanced moisture transport in the lower troposphere, are a key synoptic feature behind winter flooding in midlatitude regions. This article develops an algorithm which uses the spatial and temporal extent of the vertically integrated horizontal water vapor transport for the detection of persistent ARs (lasting 18 h or longer) in five atmospheric reanalysis products. Applying the algorithm to the different reanalyses in the vicinity of Great Britain during the winter half-years of 1980–2010 (31 years) demonstrates generally good agreement of AR occurrence between the products. The relationship between persistent AR occurrences and winter floods is demonstrated using winter peaks-over-threshold (POT) floods (with on average one flood peak per winter). In the nine study basins, the number of winter POT-1 floods associated with persistent ARs ranged from approximately 40 to 80%. A Poisson regression model was used to describe the relationship between the number of ARs in the winter half-years and the large-scale climate variability. A significant negative dependence was found between AR totals and the Scandinavian Pattern (SCP), with a greater frequency of ARs associated with lower SCP values.