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Comparative studies of the uses and changes of free time have been relatively rare in social history, especially in the 20th century. By reflecting on some of the ideas and findings generated by a new study that John Walton and Gary Cross conducted concerning the changes in the meanings and behaviors of playful crowds in the U.S. and Britain across the 20th century at Coney Island, Blackpool, Disneyland, and the Beamish Museum, this paper raises some of the possibilities and difficulties of doing a comparative social history of 20th century pleasure crowds. National and other differences will be considered in explaining why the Blackpool resort area survived much social change in the 20th century and Coney Island did not, as well as how Disneyland and the heritage site of Beamish reflected differing adaptations to middle class crowd and aesthetic sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Part I of this paper (Loader and Mulcahy 2001) we set out to trace the coming to prominence since 1945 of an elite police voice with a significant symbolic power to represent and name social problems. In so doing, we charted the transition of chief officers from powerful but essentially local figures (1945-1972), through the rise of maverick, culturally salient ‘police heroes’ (1973-1986), to the establishment (from 1987 onwards) of a more corporate and generally liberal police outlook. Here in Part II we develop a sociological interpretation of these documented shifts, by seeking to grasp: (i) contemporary transformations in the professional ideology of police elites; (ii) the relation of those elites to the architecture and programmes of government, and (iii) the changing social and cultural conditions within which the police voice with all its authoritative ‘social magic’ has during the post-war period been called forth, transmitted and received.[/p] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]