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User participation has become one of the most important concepts in the social care sector in many European countries, but the literature has mostly paid attention to disabled people or those with mental health problems. This article compares the user participation policies directed at social care for older people in Norway and England. Using a discourse analytical approach, a selection primarily of White papers from the 1960s until today are analysed. The analysis draws on the literature's discourse discussion, including a democratic/rights based discourse (full citizenship), a consumer discourse (consumers' rights to choose welfare services), a co-production discourse (users and state/local authorities partnerships), and nuances of these discourses. The analysis shows that, while both countries start with variations of a democratic discourse, Norway develops a temporary and weak consumer discourse in a middle phase, then moves to co-production in current times. England, on the other hand, develops a comprehensive consumer discourse but also a surprisingly strong co-production discourse – the idea of a 'Big Society' – in early and current times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper (a companion to an article published this Journal lxvii [2016]) considers a twelve-year campaign by some Church of England clergy to discredit Nonconformists as irrational enthusiasts. It began in 1668–9, to discourage concessions to Nonconformists through ‘comprehension’ and to prove the loyalty of men suspected of lukewarm attachment to the Church. Congregationalists responded by accusing the conformists of Socinianism. But Presbyterians were less willing to differ from churchmen, and claimed that orthodox Protestants did not disagree about reason. Any differences were exaggerated for polemical advantage, and the controversy drove conformists and Nonconformists further apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the paper `Prices and Famine in Early Modern England: An Analysis of Tudor-Stuart Public Policy,' by Randall Nielsen, during the fifty-fifth annual meeting of the Economic History Association.

This paper assesses the relationship between state and society in interwar rural England, focusing on the hitherto neglected role of the Rural Community Councils. The rise of statutory social provision in the early twentieth century created new challenges and opportunities for voluntarism, and the rural community movement was in part a response to this. The paper examines the early development of the movement, arguing that a crucial role was played by a close-knit group of academics and local government officials. While largely eschewing party politics, they shared a commitment to citizenship, democracy and the promotion of rural culture. Many of them had been close associates of Sir Horace Plunkett. The Rural Community Councils engaged in a wide range of activities, including advisory work, adult education, local history, village hall provision, support for rural industries and an ambivalent engagement with parish councils. The paper concludes with an assessment of the achievements of the rural community movement, arguing that it was constrained by its financial dependence on voluntary contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper charts the history of Global Satellite Navigation Systems (GNSS) from the earliest days of the ‘Space Race’ in the 1960s and 1970s to the latest plans for modernisation of existing systems and the development of new systems yet to be deployed or become operational. The paper is based on lectures and presentations given by the author to postgraduate students at The University of Nottingham, students on the RAF General Duties Aero-Systems Course at the Air Warfare Centre, RAF Cranwell and to a number of RIN, RAeS and IEE Branches and to local aviation groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of elite women in estate management, enclosure and landscape improvement in eighteenth-century England, a topic which has to date received little in the way of sustained academic consideration. The paper focuses on four women who took control of sizeable Northamptonshire estates in the 1760s and early 1770s, and demonstrates that these women were active as both managers and innovators. In examining the women's involvement in estate management, the paper explores a series of important questions about women's place in the history of parliamentary enclosure and landscape improvement, as well as women's role in eighteenth-century society more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent of local government support for the elderly, in the form of poor relief, in Victorian England. It presents newly constructed estimates of old age pauperism rates for each of England's ten registration divisions from 1861 to 1908, the year the Old Age Pension Act was adopted. My estimates show that the share of persons aged 65 and older receiving government assistance in the nineteenth century was far larger than most contemporaries, and many historians, believe. The share receiving poor relief declined after 1871, largely as a result of changes in relief administration, but on the eve of the adoption of the Old Age Pension Act more than one in five persons over 65 was in receipt of public assistance. In sum, government support for the elderly is not a post-welfare state phenomenon. Old age pauperism rates differed substantially across registration divisions and in general were higher in southern than in northern England. I present evidence that much of the north-south differential was due to differences in wage rates and employment opportunities and differences in the administration of poor relief, although differences in welfare customs might have played a role. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

London today hosts more than 200,000 Italian people. A traditional point of arrival for Italian migrants since the nineteenth century, London is a setting characterised by the presence of the ‘old’ classic economic migration – of those who left Italy mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, and the ‘new’ migration, made up mainly of highly-educated people in the professional, academic and arts sectors. These two groups differ as regards their time of arrival, socio-economic characteristics and educational background, and they rarely have the chance or find the need to interact. This paper is based on interviews with representatives of Italian institutions and associations, and with ‘old’ and ‘new’ Italian migrants; participant observation of Italian events happening in London; and some elements of discourse analysis. By means of this empirical material, I aim to show that, besides their well-known differences, the ‘old’ and ‘new’ communities present striking similarities in their migration narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The daily lives of many rural workers were intertwined with animals: those they kept, those in the wild, and those they were employed to work with and care for. And yet despite the importance of this connection, work in rural history has tended, with some notable exceptions, to conceive of animals as fleshy capital, game, or pest. In part this is because the archive does not tend to describe the relationships between workers and animals. This paper contends, however, that the archive of animal maiming offers important detail for beginning to understand the connection. While animal maiming was necessarily rooted in violence, with its various forms essentially involving the mutilation and violation of animals, nonetheless episodes of animal maiming can tell us much about the politics of giving care to animals. Examining episodes of animal maiming also allows us to understand how the non-human helped to constitute the relationships between humans, especially the uneven bond between employer and worker, as well as the complex, and often contradictory, attitudes of rural workers to animals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents some new observations concerning the construction of the Sutton Hoo helmet, as a point of entry to a wider discussion of pre-Christian religious and ideological links across Scandinavia. It will be argued that in certain circumstances and locations, such as the firelit interior of the hall, the wearer of the helmet was seen as both war leader and war god, a literal personification of Odin. This interpretation is supported and extended with a variety of Scandinavian finds from the sixth to tenth centuries, and arguably represents an unusually physical manifestation of the ritual border-crossing between human and divine elites. In the socio-political context of early medieval kingdoms, the dramatic imagery of the helmets and related military equipment had a critical role to play in the communication of power, the origin of military prowess, and the religious allegiance of a warlord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the evidence of manorial court records, this paper examines in detail the developments in the relationship between the Bishop of Ely and his peasants at the manor of Brandon leading up to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Increasing levels of discontent among the peasantry can be observed across the period. This is expressed in rising reported numbers of various cases in the court rolls, such as non-compliance with the court, labour refusals, trespasses and cases of foot-dragging. This rising level of conflict, some open, some more hidden, can be seen as evidence both for increasing seigniorial concern to assert various jurisdictional rights, and the peasants’ increasing willingness to test the boundaries of seigniorial dominion, leading eventually to their participation in the Rising in East Anglia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the relief of travellers in Warwickshire, England. By using an unusually rich set of Constables’ Accounts for the parish of Grandborough, it interrogates the relationship between charity, local justice, and both official and popular perceptions of migration. It argues that the large number of migrants who passed through rural parishes were categorised by the local constable according to cultural and discretionary criteria. This ‘typology’ of travellers determined the nature and extent of the relief they might receive and the actions that might be taken against them. Socially threatening migrants, such as poor pregnant women, the sick, and vagrants, also found themselves affected by this same ‘proscriptive calculation’, often to their detriment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Demonstrates how handkerchiefs in the book 'The Fair Maid of the Exchange' map out the cultural anxieties about courtship and marriage practices that were mobilized by women's participation in early modern England's market economy. Participation of theater in negotiating and managing ideological change; Embodiment of social contradictions embedded within early modern marriage practices.