bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Laboratory Life
Authors: Summers William C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter takes a look at the shared social commitments: beliefs and value that affected laboratory life, community norms, behaviors, and ethics. These social guidelines were rarely explicit, usually established by example, and more subject to individual interpretation than the intellectual standards of the American Phage Group. But like its intellectual commitments, American Phage Group's shared social commitments reinforced group cohesiveness and fostered community building. The chapter takes on the challenge of illuminating some of these social and cultural commitments, the “framework of shared social commitments,” of the American Phage Group. General community norms, attitudes, and actions are the most important and relevant aspects of such an analysis.
Maturation and Assimilation
Authors: Summers William C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter traces the progression from phage biology to molecular biology. During the 1960s, new-generation phage researchers were facing adjustments and revisions in their methods, goals, and basic commitments. Target theory was all but forgotten. Postwar biochemistry brought new tools for looking inside the cell, so the black-box mentality was hard to retain. The genetics of the bacterial host was now on firm ground. Structural biology was finally coming of age. Electron microscopy was becoming available to everyone. Most importantly, theory was out and laboratory experiments were in. Although molecular biology claims phage biology as one of its successful ancestors, as this chapter shows, the eclipse of the American Phage Group did not undermine its future.
Stonehenge
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores theories and speculations surrounding Stonehenge, in Rosemary Hill's book, Stonehenge (2008). From the twelfth century on, theories and explanations about the monument began to proliferate. The chapter takes a look at the ways in which Hill debunks commonly held misconceptions about Stonehenge, including various legends regarding its origin and the presence of druids at the monument, the latter of which the book argues is a historical inaccuracy. In addition to addressing these historical inaccuracies, the chapter remarks on how Stonehenge carefully unpicks them. It shows what made them attractive in their cultures, and how scholarly their adherents often were, apart from their brief descent into ‘Stonehenge madness’.
Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter covers the lives of women survived by casualties of World War I. In Virginia Nicholson's Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War (2007), the chapter reveals a generation of young women without their normal chance of marriage and motherhood. The women of this generation coped with this dearth of husbands and lovers in various ways, but this book centres on women who refused to be overwhelmed by grief and struck out in new directions. These ‘superfluous women’ whose stories Nicholson tells achieved eminence as explorers, entomologists, marine engineers, doctors, mountaineers, and fashion models. Some devoted themselves to slum improvement or famine relief, or broke into what had been male preserves — as the first woman solicitor, the first woman director of a firm of stockbrokers, the first woman privy councillor and cabinet member, the first women vets, civil servants, and architects. Meanwhile, women novelists shattered the old spinster stereotypes.
In the Fifties
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the Fifties through the eyes of author Peter Vansittart in In the Fifties (1995). The text is an amalgamation of autobiography and social survey as it captures a time of surprisingly widespread idealism and cultural promise — at least, before the Sixties came around. There were plentiful jobs, equable labour relations, and so on. Adult education thrived; public libraries lent four hundred million books a year; seventeen new universities were planned. Few decades could muster so many books and plays that would come to be seen as literary landmarks. Thus Vansittart presents the decade with its many accomplishments and foibles, elucidating the period through wry accounts of famous figures as well as a number of interesting facts. As this chapter notes, however, while the book is not a comprehensive look into the decade, it is a rather amusing one.
The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009). Written by Richard Wilkinson, a professor of medical epidemiology at Nottingham University, and Kate Pickett, a lecturer in epidemiology at York University, The Spirit Level charts the level of health and social problems — as many as the authors could find reliable figures for — against the level of income inequality in twenty of the world's richest nations, and in each of the fifty United States. In doing so, the book reveals that, in states and countries where there is a big gap between the incomes of rich and poor, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy are more common, the homicide rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, and children's educational performance and literacy scores are worse. Wilkinson and Pickett further argue that, with the evidence they have supplied, politicians now have a chance to ‘do genuine good’. By reducing income inequality, they can improve the health and well-being of the whole population.
You’re Looking Very Well: The Surprising Nature of Getting Old
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter stresses that no normal genes promote ageing, and nobody dies just of old age. As the chapter highlights, we age because random molecular damage accumulates in our cells over our lifetime, and our cells' ability to repair the damage decreases as we grow older. It points out that this is in line with Darwinian natural selection. From an evolutionary point of view, once we are past the age of reproduction and caring for our young, we are useless, so our cells' repair mechanisms become unnecessary. The chapter then shifts to emphasize that in genetics, our ignorance vastly exceeds our knowledge, and investigating cell life is mind-crushingly complex. It investigates how to keep the worst effects of ageing at bay within the limits of current life expectancy. The chapter discusses supplements and anti-ageing tonics, and disposes of most of the touted remedies. It also delves into raising the retirement age as well as the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide for the terminally ill.
The Science of Love and Betrayal
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter tackles how science can explain why we fall in love. It disposes of the idea that romantic love is a modern Western invention. As the chapter emphasizes, there is strong evidence it is a human universal, crossing historical and cultural boundaries. The chapter also accounts for romantic love in terms of the body's chemistry. It notes that oxytocin does not seem helpful in explaining why we prefer a particular person to all others, which is the essence of romantic love. The chapter then drifts away from the currently unanswerable question of falling in love to the more general issue of why human beings became monogamous in the first place. It argues that when we fall in love, it is with a fiction we have ourselves invented. The chapter then considers social networking sites such as Facebook, and questions the author's most famous theory, which is that we are not capable of more than about 150 friendships — the average size of ancient hunter-gatherer communities.
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: The Hidden World of a Paris Atelier
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter follows the own musical history of American freelance writer Thad Carhart. It introduces younger Desforges partner, Luc, who took Carhart one day through the mysterious door at the back of the shop and into the glass-roofed atelier that lay beyond. It was enormous, flooded with sunlight, and stacked with pianos — upright, spinets, grands — in every state of disrepair. The chapter describes pianos as living things with distinct personalities. It argues that Carhart feels their sounding boards tremble like animals as the hammers dance over the strings. His interest divides between voluptuous reverie and hard fact. The chapter also recounts the piano's social history, from its invention around 1700 to its apogee just before the First World War when half a million pianos a year were being manufactured. It emphasizes that pianos live in symbiosis with humans and have adapted to their mechanical progress. The chapter tracks how Carhart's own musical history gradually emerged in the intervals of his talks with Luc.
Family Secrets
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter narrates how Douglas Malcolm, a brave, boneheaded artillery officer, came home on leave from the Western Front to find that his wife, Dorothy, was having an affair with a Russian immigrant called Anton Baumberg. It recounts how Malcolm tracked Baumberg down to a seedy lodging house in Paddington and shot him dead. The chapter then investigates how the trial aroused avid public interest. Sir John Simon, for Douglas, argued that his client had acted in self-defence, an explanation that raised some practical difficulties. The chapter presents the contrasting characters of the two men. Douglas was a gallant British officer, whereas Baumberg was foreign, half-Jewish and, it was alleged, a white-slave trafficker and a spy, although neither charge was supported by any evidence. The chapter then shifts to discuss the early life of young Derek Malcolm, born in 1932, who soon became aware of his parents' unhappiness. It follows his educational career which began when he was packed off to boarding school aged four. The chapter investigates how he progressed to a horrible prep school in Oxford, his entrance at Merton College, Oxford, and his own post-Oxford doings.
Untold Stories
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter gathers Alan Bennett's miscellaneous prose from the past ten years. As the chapter highlights, Bennett compares it to the Christmas annuals that used to absorb him as a boy. The chapter also describes, in its freewheeling way, an autobiography, and charts a feat of social mobility. It first demonstrates how the butcher's son who, via the eleven-plus and Leeds Modern School, won a scholarship to Oxford, got a first, and nearly became a medieval historian. The chapter then follows how Bennett became famous in Beyond the Fringe, and, when it transferred to Broadway, found himself at parties trying to make small talk with stars who, not so long ago, he had been queuing up to see at the Picturedrome on Wortley Road. The chapter inspects his past to discover how he came to be himself — fastidious, buttoned-up, an inveterate outsider. Finally, the chapter delves into how Bennett was made a trustee of the National Gallery in 1993, an honour he treasures because it allows him to view the pictures after hours, when the crowds have gone.
Alamein to Zem Zem
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter reflects on Alamein to Zemzem, which is the story of Keith Douglas. It starts with Douglas' enlistment when the war broke out and served as a tank commander throughout the whole Allied advance across North Africa. Contrary to the assaults during his first engagement in the war where he feverishly loaded rounds of bullets into turrets, Douglas gets through many books amidst the long period of inaction, which also resulted in a sense of detachment. The chapter mentions the luxury within the army that coincides with the unforgettable scenes of horror on the battlefield. It notes the sensitivity in Douglas' narratives of war.
Feast: Why Humans Share Food
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter reviews Martin Jones' Feast: Why Humans Share Food. Each section of Jones' book starts with a detailed reconstruction of an actual meal from the past before examining what made the meal possible, such as the collection of sediment, the investigation of ash and pollen, and the use of electron microscopy on food molecules. Additionally, Jones searches for clues of evolving eating habits among his selection of meals from the archaeological record. Jones believes the key to human survival was the enlargement of the feeding group, which increased people's ability to respond to changes in climate and environment. The chapter also mentions the distinction between rich and poor found in cereal monoculture.
Letters to Lily on How the World Works
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the letters Alan Macfarlane wrote for his granddaughter Lily. The letters aim to tell the granddaughter what human beings are like when she finally turns seventeen years old. The chapter assumes that Lily will be surprised by her grandfather's favourable estimate of witchcraft. Throughout the letters, Macfarlane grows indignant about thousands of innocent people who were hanged and burned as witches in sixteenth-century Europe and likens the event to America's witch hunt against the alleged axis of evil. The chapter paints a picture of Western culture that is not morally better than a nation where criminals run the justice system.
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter tackles how Robert Gottlieb produced a book on the life story of Sarah Bernhardt. Duc de Morny, the brother of the emperor Napoleon III, entered Bernhardt in Paris Conservatoire and Comédie-Française in an effort to develop her skills as an actress. However, she failed both jobs and lived as a prostitute for the next two years of her life. After giving birth, Bernhardt scored a job with Odéon theatre and thrived. The chapter cites how Bernhardt turned the Odéon into a military hospital where she tended the wounded and dying During the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870. It expounds on how Bernhardt kept flourishing under her own acting company touring across Europe and America.
Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter covers Leslie Mitchell's work that details the life and novels of Bulwer Lytton. Lytton married famous Irish beauty, Rosina Wheeler, but his devotion dwindled after the birth of their children. Poverty drove him to authorship, while Rosina refused to work on household affairs. After seven chaotic years, the couple separated and Rosina devoted her time to making Lytton's life a nightmare by raising absurd scandals about their previous home life. One of the scandals involved accusations of Lytton murdering their child after committing an incestuous relationship. The chapter notes that the biography opens perspectives on the whole Victorian era, especially its sexual freedoms, its superstitions and its love of scandal.
Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett; Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist; The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906–1946
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses the legacy of Samuel Beckett as presented in the works of James Knowlson, Anthony Cronin, and Lois Gordon. The Second World War changed Beckett, since he joined the Resistance after returning to Paris when the war broke out. Beckett's war service and voluntary work in the early months of peace in a Red Cross hospital in Normandy brought him closer to ordinary people. Beckett's job consisted of typing and translating for an intelligence-gathering cell belonging to the British Special Operations Executive. The chapter notes that Gordon depicted Beckett's interest as being focused more on politics than initially believed. Meanwhile, Cronin's work elaborated on Beckett's tangled sex life.
Eric Gill
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses Fiona MacCarthy's Life of Eric Gill, which revealed from Gill's diaries that he enjoyed incestuous relationships over a long period with two of his sisters and with his two eldest daughters. For a lay brother of the Order of St Dominic, who wore the girdle of chastity of the Confraternity of Angelic Warfare, this is obviously not a good record. Gill's treatment of women understandably riles MacCarthy. He did not think females worth educating, so his daughters never went to school. The chapter then considers Gill's theory that Christianity and sexual intercourse were essentially the same. It looks at his sculptures, including his masterpiece Mankind, as well as his wood engraving Nuptials of God. Where everyone agrees Gill was supreme was in the typefaces he designed for the Monotype Corporation.
The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter addresses Roland Chambers's biography of Arthur Ransome. It begins by mentioning Ransome's hatred for the Victorian middle class, which his father represented. In 1902, aged eighteen, he cut loose from the hated bourgeoisie, who had so clearly failed to appreciate his true value, and became a fulltime bohemian, devoting himself to literature. He worked hard, and published quantities of vapid Edwardian escapism. Ransome then covered events in Russia for the Daily News and later for the Manchester Guardian. The friends who had welcomed and looked after him in Russia were liberals, who wanted a constitutional monarchy. Ransome sided with them at first, but was increasingly attracted by the Bolsheviks. The feeling that events in Russia were righting his personal wrongs allowed him to downplay their more fearsome aspects.
Furious Interiors: Wales, R.S. Thomas and God
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter describes Justin Wintle's literary biography of the Welsh Nationalist priest and poet R.S. Thomas. When Thomas refused to meet with Wintle, Wintle read everything he could lay his hands on about Wales, Welsh Nationalism, and Anglo-Welsh poetry instead. He chatted with Thomas's ex-parishioners in a string of towns and villages across Wales. Moreover, he lingered in bars sounding out the Welsh about Wales's most famous living poet. The proceeds of all this research have been tipped into his book in a fantastic and often fascinating jumble. The portrait Wintle gradually assembles is of a man spurred to fury by self-contradiction. Thomas hates the English language, yet writes his poetry in it. He idolises Wales, yet despises the Welsh for their failure to shake off the English yoke, and their eagerness to sell their birthright for a mess of tourism.
Shakespeare’s Language
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter studies Sir Frank Kermode's book on William Shakespeare. Something extraordinary, he argues, happened to Shakespeare in mid-career. Around 1600, he abandoned the formal rhetoric of the early plays and discovered a way of representing emotionally agitated thought that was unlike anything in previous world literature. Violently elliptical, and wildly improbable in its conjunctions of images, this new Shakespearean language is often too difficult for modern editors to decipher. Modern critical emphasis on theatrical performance has, Kermode regrets, lost sight of the fact that Shakespeare was a thinker — not a thinker who dealt in fully formed ideas, like a philosopher, but one who portrayed thought happening.
Shakespeare’s Wife
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter reflects on Germaine Greer's book on William Shakespeare, which examines Shakespeare's opinion about marriage, specifically his own. When he married Ann Hathaway, a local farmer's daughter, in 1582, he was eighteen, she was twenty-six and three months pregnant. Some scholars have taken these facts to mean that Shakespeare was trapped into marriage by a designing older woman. Greer is convinced that, on the contrary, Shakespeare wooed Ann, not vice versa; that she proved a good, true wife, enjoying her husband's love and respect; and that she took a keen interest in his writing, and was quite possibly instrumental in getting the First Folio of his works printed after his death. She suggests that The Comedy of Errors, with its moving depiction of wifely loyalty, reveals Shakespeare's ‘attitude to marriage’, so he would be unlikely to have treated Ann in the way her denigrators allege.
The Letters of Charles Dickens, Volume Eight: 1856–1858
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter reviews the eighth volume of the Pilgrim Edition of the letters of Charles Dickens. The letters allow one to see the scandals concerning his wife Catherine and his relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan from Dickens's viewpoint. Catherine had been a bad mother, unloved by her children, he assured his friends, quite untruthfully. In a letter leaked to the world's press he alleged she suffered from ‘mental disorder’. Driven frantic by unacknowledged guilt, and the need to keep his relations with Ellen secret, he was horrified to think he might lose the public's sympathy, which was his dearest possession. This, as much as his new financial burdens, led to the other crucial decision of these years, which was to give public readings from his works for his personal benefit.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, 2 vols
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by Leslie S. Klinger. In this luxury edition of the short stories, Klinger lists 450 active Sherlockian societies who meet regularly to discuss the great detective, and add to the mountain of books and articles about him. The assumption behind their activities is that Holmes and Watson actually lived and that their adventures truly happened. It has always been apparent that Arthur Conan Doyle was an astonishingly careless writer. He cannot even remember from story to story what Watson's first name is, or whether his war wound was in his arm or his leg. What Holmes and his creator do share is an insatiable interest in people. The stories have one of the greatest casts of minor characters in literature.
Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940–1985; Robert Graves: Life on the Edge; Robert Graves: Collected Writings on Poetry
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter evaluates three publications regarding Robert Graves. For any biographer of Graves the problem is to reconcile two beings: the old-fashioned, chivalrous Englishman and the crazy magician. His nephew R.P. Graves has laboured for ten years to clarify this, drawing on a vast archive of family papers. Robert Graves and the White Goddess triumphantly concludes a trilogy that embeds Graves's life in a microcosm of English social history. Miranda Seymour's Robert Graves: Life on the Edge is slighter, but sharper in focus. No one, she claims, has examined Graves's relations with women in any detail. The chapter then looks at three things that shaped Graves: his mother, Amalia von Ranke; the Great War; and the young American poet Laura Riding. It also considers Robert Graves: Collected Writings on Poetry, edited by Paul O'Prey.
The Good Soldier Švejk
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about Jaroslav Hašek, who joined the Austrian army, got himself captured by the Russians, became an ardent tsarist, and mutated into a commissar with the Red Army and editor of Red Europe. It mentions the policy of non-resistance that is adopted by Hašek's hero, Švejk, in The Good Soldier Svejk. Švejk's appointment as batman to a drunken and blasphemous regimental chaplain gives Hašek scope to satirise the Catholic church, which he detested almost as much as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The chapter looks at gaps in the humour when Hašek shows true atrocities in his work, such his description of manacled peasants that march to parade grounds to be shot for mutiny during call-up. Though unfinished, Hašek's novel has been classed with the comic epics of Cervantes and Rabelais and is funnier and more fearful than either.
Owl Sense
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses Miriam Darlington's Owl Sense, which is a vivid, engaging, and adventurous book that focuses on a great deal about owls. Darlington's intrigue started with the ghoulish shrieks of tawny owls near her Devon home while patrolling the woods at dawn. It emphasizes Darlington's hatred of the idea of wild birds being used as pets or companions or human accessories, noting how the popularity of J.K. Rowling's books caused Harry Potter fans to hire owls to deliver wedding rings at their nuptials. The chapter mentions Darlington's time at the Barn Owl Trust and recounts how she had the opportunity to examine scrupulously a deceased owl, from its ferocious raptorial talons to its mask-like face. It reviews her discovery of another owl secret when she ran her fingers over the super-soft, comb-like edges of the dead owl's wing feathers.
The Spade as Mighty as the Sword: The Story of World War Two’s Dig for Victory Campaign
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter talks about Dig for Victory, which is a campaign launched by the Ministry of Agriculture after the outbreak of war in October 1939 to step up home-food production. It emphasizes the need for food production in Britain during the time as the country imported 75 percent of its food and that could not continue with German U-boats patrolling the shipping lanes. It considers Dig for Victory as a morale booster as civilians saw how they could help, digging up lawns, flowerbeds, playing fields, and parks to plant vegetables. The chapter focuses on Daniel Smith's The Spade as Mighty as the Sword, which traces the movement at every level, from government action to gardeners' diaries. By 1943, Smith estimated that Britain's gardens and allotments were producing more than 1 million tons of vegetables annually and it was a triumph for both publicity and horticulture.
A Short Treatise of the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday Life
Authors: Carey John
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses André Comte-Sponville's book that was published before the event of September 11, which prefigures dilemmas that the Twin Towers tragedy raised. It cites Comte-Sponville's section on courage, wherein he hypothesises about terrorists who blow up airliners. Because courage is a virtue, Comte-Spoonville suggests that a terrorist who plants a bomb and remains on the ground is despised more than one who boards the plane and dies with his victims. However, Comte-Sponville further argues that if the terrorist is a religious fanatic, he is no longer courageous, but simply sacrificing innocent lives for his own benefit. The chapter describes the elegance and trickiness of the dialectic that typify Comte-Sponville's approach as he stuck to the traditional moral message that self-love is the root of all evil but renovates it with unusual twists.
Tools for Analyzing Signature-Based Hardware Solutions for Cyber Security Systems
Authors: Hilgurt Serhii Ya. , Davydenko Anatolii M. , Matovka Tetyana V. , Prygara Mykhailo P.
Published: May 2023

When creating signature-based cybersecurity systems for network intrusion detection (NIDS), spam filtering, protection against viruses, worms, etc., developers have to use hardware devices such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), since software solutions can no longer support the necessary speeds. There are many different approaches to build hardware circuits for pattern matching (where patterns are the parts of signatures). Choosing the optimal technical solution for certain conditions is not a trivial task. Developers of such hardware tend to act intuitively, heuristically. In this article, we provide tools to help them intelligently build cybersecurity systems using FPGAs. For the qualitative analysis of FPGA-based matching schemes, the classification of efficiency criteria and related indicators is considered. This classification was compiled by studying a large number of practical developments of FPGA-based cybersecurity systems, primarily NIDS. A method of rapid calculating numerical characteristics of the FPGA-based signature system components is proposed as a quantitative assessment tool. This method based on the use of so-called estimation functions allows avoiding the time-consuming execution of the digital circuit synthesis procedure. A number of experiments were carried out with the most promising matching schemes, allowing evaluating the above-mentioned tools. The rapid quantification method allows developers of hardware-accelerated cybersecurity systems to even apply it at each iteration within the optimization procedure cycle.
ZKOUŠKY PEVNOSTI A ŽIVOTNOSTI KAROSERIE OSOBNÍHO AUTOMOBILU A JEJICH DOPAD NA PROVOZNÍ BEZPEČNOST
Authors: Zdražil Květoslav
Published: May 2023

Práce se zabývá zkouškami karoserie osobního automobilu, které se úzce vztahují k bezpečnosti posádky vozu, případně ostatních účastníků silničního provozu. Při těchto testech je kvazistaticky simulována situace při nárazech vozu. Dále je při životnostních zkouškách sledován stav dílů, kterým hrozí v provozních podmínkách poškození a následné uvolnění – tím je ohrožena bezpečnosti lidí, nacházejících se v bezprostředním okolí automobilu.
The contemporary threat to minority languages and cultures: civil society, young people and Celtic language use in Scotland and Wales
Authors: Jones Rhys , Royles Elin , O’Hanlon Fiona , Paterson Lindsay
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores civil society’s past and present role in addressing the existential threat facing two ‘minority’ languages, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. The new analysis in Chapter 5 highlights the key past role played by civil society organisations in staving off language death and reversing language decline in the two countries. This involved mobilisation, protest and civil disobedience and has resulted in new legal rights and a significant expansion of minority language education. The analysis also presents a series of new findings on the contemporary role of national festivals in seeking to promote minority language use in social contexts. This matters because while both languages have seen an increase in the number of speakers, much of the gain has been associated with formal state education. The wider literature warns us that a language which is confined to the educational sector is not a living language. Therefore, much depends on civil society organisations’ co-working with state agencies to promote language use in social settings. The case studies are the Eisteddfod Cenedlaethol (National Eisteddfod) in Wales and Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail (Mòd) in Scotland. The latter being an eight-day annual Gaelic language and culture festival.
The graduate labour market
Authors: Tholen Gerbrand
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines some of the evidence of the nature of modern graduate work. It will demonstrate that the role higher education (HE) plays in skill development has been overstated. The employer demand for graduates is much wider than merely their human capital developed at HE. Many graduates face difficulties in capitalising on their skills and knowledge. This is reflected in the research on overqualification and skill utilisation. Also, the employer demand for degrees may substantially lie in the value of qualifications as a sifting mechanism within the graduate labour market.
Specialist accommodation
Authors: Clark Sam
Published: May 2023

Chapter 2 explores the evolution of specialist accommodation for older people, reaching as far back as medieval monastic orders and an extra-claustral building called the ‘farmery’ that housed clergymen deemed no longer fit for work. The chapter traces the emergence of a class of non-working elders as a growing population segment – known as the ‘deserving poor’ – and explores common living arrangements for those unable to work in later life. It considers progressive social provisions made within 19th-century workhouses, public assistance institutions and infirmaries in Britain, as well as parliamentary discourse that considered the need for ‘cottage homes’ to accommodate former staff members of country estates. The chapter also explores how different sovereign nations sought to accommodate former soldiers within veteran hospitals, such as Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, and how these represent an extreme form of communal living and social investment in a particular group of older people. More generally, the chapter examines almshousing as a distinct and lasting building type that has continued to evolve; its characteristics have been translated into contemporary specialist housing, including early models of what we now recognise as ‘sheltered housing’.
Baby boomers
Authors: Clark Sam
Published: May 2023

Chapter 3 contains the first research story, which reflects on the situated experiences, attitudes and opinions of a ‘baby boomer’ couple, the ‘Cees’, who are recent retirees or ‘third agers’ that split their time between Northern Ireland and England. This is a narrative account inviting readers to observe family members or close relations as emerging experts in preparing for and practising ageing in place. It draws upon a deep and part situated relationship with the informants while focusing on two research-framed events: a semi-structured interview conducted inside the informants’ English home, and a guided tour/walking interview inside a retirement housing development close to their home. The story recounts two recent property purchases and reflects on the motives for moving and respective meanings of home, as well as the couple’s preparedness for retirement living over the longer term. The Cees do not envisage moving for at least another ten years, and the idea of moving into retirement housing has not featured in their thinking, yet. In these terms the chapter explores a specific retirement lifestyle that temporarily disregards the idea of the ‘last’ home while attending to practical thoughts around future-proofing.
Vulnerable friend
Authors: Clark Sam
Published: May 2023

Chapter 4 contains a research story that portrays the changing state of home for an older person. It presents a narrative account of the author’s experience befriending ‘Rose’ and witnessing her relationship with home in the fourth age of life. Rose is representative of the fastest growing section of the UK population – the so-called ‘old-old’ or those aged 85 years and older. Rose had limited financial means and was dependent upon care workers and family members for her everyday needs. Diminished mobility led her to experiencing degradations of dignity/privacy while at home, including losing control over who had access to (and what actions were performed within) her home. Her story offers insights into multivariate meanings of home – as an apparatus and companion, for instance – and everyday behavioural observations of ageing in place, drawing specific attention to material details within micro environments. Rose’s story presents some common challenges familiar to a lot of older people, including experiences of environmental press and feeling less at home, but also a keen resistance to moving into another place – especially a nursing home. This chapter expresses sympathy for a vulnerable friend, while developing design empathy for all those that find themselves disabled or disadvantaged by their home.
Resident owner
Authors: Clark Sam
Published: May 2023

Chapter 7 examines the lived experiences of retirement housing residents, specifically mid-market consumers – those that have moved from owning familial homes to a retirement apartment. It presents narrative accounts of three part-fictional characters – Patrick, Gladys and Paula – that both affirm and contest assumed consumer profiles, while casting doubt on aspects of a property developer’s image of its customer. The research story reflects the positions of homeowners met in the field through a series of research residencies, which involved the researcher staying overnight and engaging in social events within shared lounges at a sample of retirement villas developed by Pink & Knight. Thus groups of resident owners contributed to an understanding of home identities and motives for moving, as well as candid feedback on the retirement-living lifestyle and product in which they are invested. Contextual interviews – conducted with informants inside their homes, walking and talking through their interiors – revealed tacit knowledge, including an array of domestic ‘niggles’ and ‘snags’ associated with their new home. Here residents expressed a deep appreciation for the social architecture, over and above the physical environment.
Global outlook
Authors: Clark Sam
Published: May 2023

Chapter 15 acknowledges the step change that has occurred within UK housing provisions for older people and changed attitudes within architectural practice. It suggests a new normal for architects, evidencing global ‘starchitects’ engaged in projects delivering contemporary housing for older people in different parts of the world. This closing chapter provides a counterpoint to the British retirement housing experience foregrounded in this volume. It turns readers’ attention to the global challenge of accommodating older people, with reference to an international housing market, retirement tourism and options for seasonal migration or relocation. The chapter explores housing as a global commodity; one increasingly designed and marketed around lifestyle – the promise of a better life in the sun, for instance – and to varying degrees, perpetuating forms of ‘luxury’ living. In doing so the chapter introduces readers to international precedent and design inspirations, including new forms of collective living that are predicated on different models of property ownership or renting, without compromising on lifestyle. The chapter closes with some thoughts for the future, including consideration for the significant and growing challenge of housing inequality and need for urgent responses to overlapping crises of access to affordable housing and the effects of climate change.
Peacebuilding with youth: experience in Cúcuta, Colombia
Authors: Niño Vega Nohora Constanza
Published: May 2023

In Colombia, in the wake of a long-term armed conflict that resulted in multiple acts of violence with many victims, peacebuilding has become the daily work of various social and governmental actors.
In this violent context, talking about peacebuilding, particularly a peace built from below, means talking about day-by-day processes which have the potential to form different relationships and deliver on the actual protection of life rather than it being spoken about as meaningless rhetoric.
This chapter shares reflections on the peacebuilding actions carried out by a youth social organisation in the border town of Cúcuta. It demonstrates the ways in which peacebuilding processes in conflict areas such as Colombia have the greatest impact on community cohesion when they are defined and implemented from below. Everyday peace arises by and for local communities, who are the main promoters and connectors, not only of their lived reality but also of the possibilities of local transformation.
The Welfare of the Middle Class
Authors: Siza Remo
Published: May 2023

In the centre of social stratification, a multitude of people with unstable collective ties and fragile social identities are emerging. This multitude is particularly marked by constant mobility, vulnerability and an inclination to constantly change relationships and identities. It is a mobile aggregate of people with blurred class boundaries that drift within society, ‘liberated’ by processes of individualisation and fragmented in unstable belonging, with internal divisions and a frail collective identity. To various degrees, they do not believe in the established order’s legitimacy and feel they are in a shared situation of economic difficulty, lacking security, status and trust in the future. What is emerging is a multitude of people without stable belonging or stable life projects, a sort of ‘middle mass’ characterised by an unstable social identity and radical activism. Processes of individualisation freed a very large mass of individuals from collective belonging and stable values and created new social aggregations and associative forms that are much less stable, fragile, transient and under constant transformation. The different ‘worlds’ of European welfare states seem progressively less able to manage this new kind of middle-class activism. They encounter growing difficulties in finding forms of reintegration and supporting new collective belonging suitable for a highly individualised society. Anger and resentment against the institutions are deemed to be substantially restricted to certain social groups and can be addressed by increasing control and surveillance and by creating divisive systems of welfare. Welfare is recreating distinctions and those diverging identities between social groups that the labour market has blurred.
An individualised middle class
Authors: Siza Remo
Published: May 2023

A large and growing body of literature has investigated the radical activism of the middle class and its changing relation to the welfare state as a linear effect of relative deprivation or as a reaction to the profound cultural changes in Western social values.
The book’s overall aim is to propose an alternative perspective and a broader analytical structure, taking into account the specific social context in which the dynamics of deprivation and cultural changes happen. Over the past two decades, a long-lasting transition is simultaneously and radically changing all the contexts where people live as well as all the institutions and is destabilising all the certainties upon which modern societies are founded. Resentment against institutions and some target groups are forging the moral identities of a vast stratum of middle-class people. The radical activism of significant segments of the middle class is creating growing social and political instability and is increasing support for configurations of welfare that exploit and exacerbate existing economic and social divisions.
The rise of a new ‘middle mass’
Authors: Siza Remo
Published: May 2023

The intensification of individualisation is contributing to creating a new politically and socially unstable stratum at the centre of the social stratification in all European countries. This is a multitude of active and reflexive individuals, with weak collective ties that voice radical activism that institutions are progressively less able to manage. This extended social stratum, formed by the majority (a large part of the middle and working classes), feels, to various degrees, that they are in a shared condition of economic difficulty, lacking security, status and trust in the future. Their deprivations are experienced mostly individually and are perceived and dealt with by individuals with weaker social networks. Unlike the traditional middle mass, the new ‘middle mass’ is a sort of a multitude of individuals, a heterogeneous entity despite having shared values and concerns. A combination of socio-economic uncertainties, fragilities, vulnerabilities and the risk of atomisation affects the quality and the direction of their life relationships and collective activities and expectations.
The ‘disease of love’: trajectories of women ageing with HIV in Switzerland
Authors: Fargnoli Vanessa , Dryden OmiSoore H.
Published: May 2023

Women living with HIV who do not belong to epidemiological target groups (referred to as ‘key populations’) represent an invisible group of people who are often ignored in public and medical debates about HIV/AIDS. Additionally, sexuality related to ‘older’ people is often considered taboo, and sexual issues for ‘older’ women are mainly addressed from a clinical perspective. Considering that gender and sexual orientations have shaped the medical and social representations of the AIDS pandemic, the chapter discusses how ageing with HIV affects specifically women’s sexuality and love lives. This is based on the narratives and experiences of 30 women living and ageing with HIV in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Imagining the future under capitalism: young people involved in environmental activism in an economic crisis
Authors: Arya Dena
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores how young people’s responses to the current ecological crisis appear to be reigniting a culture of anti-capitalism and a desire for radical system change. The chapter shows that despite the nuanced political and socio-economic positions that young people arrive at their activism from, there are common threads that tie their social imaginaries together for a future founded on social justice and collective values. Thus, the chapter argues that young people involved in environmental activism present hope that there is an alternative to the structural economic inequality that is further perpetuating the crisis. Their calls for a future beyond capitalism warrant the serious consideration of all adults; politicians, researchers and practitioners alike. This chapter contributes with joy to that goal, aiming to be a conduit for such young people’s voices, and calls on readers to dare to imagine alongside them.
Daring, dissolving and dancing: making communities with water
Authors: O’Gorman Róisín
Published: May 2023

This chapter analyses a local iteration of an international event focused on dancing for safe water for everyone: Global Water Dances. This large-scale project provides a lens on the ways in which communities form and dissolve on local and global scales, shifting the traditional boundaries and linear narratives of success which have led to this extraordinary era of crises, including climate crises. Foregrounding how, in this context, community is understood as a fluid, with processes in need of ongoing regeneration and reinvention, the chapter attends to how we move together in time; how we dare a mingling of selves and others, local and global. Connecting these concerns, the chapter explores how Global Water Dances aims to think and move with water and each other, to contribute to a shifting sensibility about water as central to issues of social justice, as much as an issue of environmental concern.
Meaningful youth engagement in community programming in Kenya
Authors: Ochieng Yvonne Akinyi , Corcoran Su Lyn , Pahl Kate
Published: May 2023

Young people, under the age of 30, living in informal settlements in Kenya face complex and challenging socio-cultural and economic environments. These increasingly include forced displacement, migration, unstable families, violence and mental health problems. Inequities, including those linked to poverty and gender, shape all aspects of adolescent health and wellbeing and these have been exacerbated by responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Young people, as experts in their own lives, are uniquely positioned to provide solutions to their challenges; yet they often remain on the periphery of Kenya’s social, economic and political affairs. They are rarely included in community programming or their role is tokenised, which limits their potential. This chapter contends that a paradigm shift is required, to enable young people to design, implement and evaluate their own programmes. Using the example of a youth organisation in Kenya – Nzumari Africa – the chapter focuses on how youth leadership can create systemic shifts: mobilising young people to challenge the status quo as well as addressing the barriers to their wider participation.