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On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas. The ensuing unprecedented flooding throughout the Texas coastal region affected millions of individuals.1 The statewide response in Texas included the sheltering of thousands of individuals at considerable distances from their homes. The Dallas area established large-scale general population sheltering as the number of evacuees to the area began to amass. Historically, the Dallas area is one familiar with “mega-sheltering,” beginning with the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.2 Through continued efforts and development, the Dallas area had been readying a plan for the largest general population shelter in Texas. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:33–37)

This article observes high levels of anxiety about war in the present era, although wars are in decline. It addresses this paradox by distinguishing ideal-typical features of Industrial and Information War. Industrial War is fought predominantly between states over territory, harnesses industry and the military, and requires mass mobilisation of people as well as resources. Information War is the prerogative of a few advanced societies and has emerged in a context that has enabled the extension of market practices on a global scale (with America as a unipolar power). Information War transcends frontiers, is asymmetrical, and its hard side is manifest in digitalised technologies and small professional forces. However, its soft side evokes the expanded and fast-changing information environment of globalised media, trans-national networks and the Internet. Through these, media wars can be experienced intensely by civilians who are otherwise untouched: at once close up and far away. This contributes to heightened consciousness of war, although such spectators are removed from danger. Although interests try to control information flows from and about war, the information environment is huge, shifting and unpredictable. As such, it is impossible to control fully, thereby presenting opportunities for vigorous symbolic struggles involving anti-war campaigners and others.

Using the concept of Information War we explore the conditions and mediation of contemporary war. Examples from British anti-war and peace movements are then employed to better understand the importance of ‘symbolic struggles’, focusing on the importance of the internet in recent opposition to wars. These examples signify a shift away from the era where the mediation of war could be closely controlled towards one where the influences of journalists and public opinion are more ambiguous and uncertain. While there is little doubt that those who wage war remain powerful and superior, their need to seek legitimacy amongst their publics, together with the use of new media, provide an environment through which voices of dissent can more easily be amplified.

This article traces the development in Britain of research on information and communications in relation to trends in Sociology and this discipline's relations with Cultural Studies. It observes at the outset the seminal contribution of Daniel Bell's conception of Post-Industrial Society, characterizing it as blending theory with empirical observation while providing an account of the most consequential features of change. Sociology in the UK during the 1980s largely ignored macro-level analysis and focused on work and employment, took its starting point as opposition to the technological determinism associated with this first wave enthusiasm for the ‘microelectronics revolution’, and produced localized and textured studies. Manuel Castells' conception of the Network Society, while distinctive, signalled a return to the scale and scope offered by Bell, notably in being a macro analysis that combined theory and empirical evidence. Castells' contribution coincided with a second wave of technological enthusi...

This article analyses and comments on the sudden closure of the Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology (CSS) at the University of Birmingham in July 2002. The origins of cultural studies are delineated and its reception within and outside Birmingham University is tracked. The relation to sociology and its own ‘cultural turn’ is observed. Explanations for the closure of CSS — amidst the enormous popularity and influence of cultural studies – are sought in the ongoing stresses and strains influencing universities in the current era.

In this article, Frank Webster sets out to "swim against the current" of some recent thinking on cities. In particular, he takes to task what he calls the "new urbanism" in which cities are seen as the new drivers and switching centres of an emerging economy which is largely deindustrialized, global and places a high premium on knowledge and information professionals. Webster goes on to test these ideas against Birmingham, the UK's second largest city, which has been keen to reap the assumed benefits of this new urban paradigm. Attempts to reinvent Birmingham are discussed such as the revamped historical canal system, the corporate leisure hub of Brindley place and through the city's internal cultural and ethnic diversity. However, Webster is less sanguine about attempts to transform Birmingham into a knowledge city because large swathes of the city's population play little or no role in the emerging new economy. He ends by questioning why there is such an air of inevitability about the new urbanism and w...

Internationally there is concern about assessment standards and the qualities of graduating students. In the UK this is resulting in the introduction of benchmarking by disciplinary communities, including that of geography. In that context the authors report on a project across social science disciplines, including geography, in one UK university, to examine and improve the assessment of undergraduate dissertations. The project examined what assessment criteria are currently published to students and identified some sources of inconsistency in applying them. It identified some potential core criteria and recommended ways of increasing transparency in applying them, so as to reduce inconsistencies and potential unfairness in marking. Implications for geography departments and the international disciplinary community are suggested and for the benchmarking exercise in British geography.

This paper reports on a study of assessment of undergraduate dissertations in the seven departments which constitute the School of Social Sciences and Law at Oxford Brookes University. Information was gathered from documented material and interviews regarding criteria used in assessment of dissertations. This was analysed to identify the range of criteria across disciplines. Criteria were also examined by administration of a questionnaire asking staff to define commonly listed criteria. Finally, a content analysis of completed assessment forms was undertaken to gauge the extent to which identified criteria were actually applied and to gain insight into those that were implicit. The study revealed considerable ambiguity as regards use, meaning and application of criteria. The paper concludes by outlining the policies and practices that are now being developed in the School in the light of these findings, and situates the study in the UK national context of concern to establish graduate threshold standards.

Critically examines claims for the use of information and communication technologies for the easy availability of information and so for the improvement of citizen participation in democratic processes. Examines the quality as opposed to the quantity of information available and discusses the nature of the information infrastructure as envisioned in the New Library: The People’s Network report against the historical reality of the failure of established systems to fulfill their potential and the characteristics of the present information environment. Considers attacks on the established public library system and discusses the nature of official information as embodied in official statistics. Examines the commercialisation of broadcasting, the decline of public service broadcasting and the failure of radio and television to develop in private hands into vehicles for mass education, concluding that where quality of content is paramount for information purposes over techniques of presentation, the claims for technological solutions for the information age are overstated.

What is the nature and role of information in our epoch? Who are the main agents for change? Manuel Castells’ trilogy, The Information Age, is central to the attempt to answer these questions. Frank Webster, whilst acknowledging this, sets out a critique of some key elements of Castells’ analysis.