Lived religion as an emerging field: an assessment of its contours and frontiers

Over the last three decades, lived religion has emerged as a distinct field of study, with an identifiable “canon” of originating sources. With this body of work reaching maturity, a critical assessment is in order. This study analyzes sixty-four journal articles published in English, since 1997, which have used either “lived religion” or “everyday religion” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. We find that the field has largely been defined by what it excludes. It includes attention to laity, not clergy or elites; to practices rather than beliefs; to practices outside religious institutions rather than inside; and to individual agency and autonomy rather than collectivities or traditions. Substantively, the focus on practice has encompassed dimensions of embodiment, discourse and materiality; and I argue here that these substantive foci can form the analytical structure for expanding the domain of lived religion to include the traditions and institutions that have so far largely been excluded from study. In doing so, lived religion’s attention to gender, power, and previously-excluded voices must be maintained. But that task cannot be accomplished without continuing to expand the field beyond the still-limited geographic and religious terrain it has so far covered

'Closing the Gaps': From postcolonialism to Kaupapa Māori and beyond.

The article discusses New Zealand history, particularly examining Māori theories and interpretations of history. It considers postcolonial theory and Kaupapa Māori theory. The author comments on the government policy of "closing the gaps," referring to efforts to improve the conditions of underachieving New Zealand groups. He also reflects on Mātauranga, a Māori concept concerning knowledge. The history and oral tradition of the people of the Māori iwi, or social unit, of Ngati Porou is also discussed

Economics and Heritage Conservation: A Meeting Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, December 1998

Investigates the contributions that economic discourse and analysis can make to the work of conservation of heritage objects, collections, buildings, and sites

Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: Blackness, whiteness, the north of England and rugby league

Rugby league is part of the white, working-class (male) culture of the north of England, and is a sport that is used by its supporters to (re)produce both an imagined community of nostalgic northernness and an imaginary community of locally situated hegemonically masculine belonging. The invented traditions of its origins link the game to a white, working-class twentieth-century culture of mills, pits, terraced houses and pubs; a culture increasingly marginalised, reshaped and challenged in this century. In this paper we use two medium-term, ethnographic research projects on rugby league (one from Spracklen; the other an on-going project by Timmins) to explore northernness, blackness, whiteness and our own roles in the ethnographies as 'black' and 'white' researchers researching 'race' and identity in a community that remains (but not exclusively) a place for a working-class whiteness to be articulated. We argue that our own histories and identities are pivotal in how we are accepted as legitimate ethnographers and insiders, but those histories and identities also posea critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

The Wretch of Today, may be Happy Tomorrow: poverty in England, c 1700-1840

This material was originally published in Suffering and happiness in England 1400-1850: Narratives and Representations, edited by Joanna Innes and Mike Braddick, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198748267.001.0001/oso-9780198748267-chapter-10 Under embargo until 10 August 2019.This chapter explores what we can know about the conceptualization and representation of by poorer Britons. It draws on ‘pauper letters’ to parish authorities, written tactically, and on autobiographies and letters composed by the relatively poor, noting echoes of the characterization of happiness by elite social commentators. It draws attention to a growing interest (linked to the development of the concept of nostalgia) in the emotional charge that could be derived from reflection on emotional experience as people contrasted past happiness with present misery, or vice versa. While reading such accounts may lead us to think that we are penetrating the interior lives of marginal people in the past, Lloyd suggests that our response is probably coloured by the fact that we are heirs to these ways of conceptualizing and representing experience. We need to work harder to glean insight from earlier ways of representing happiness and suffering.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

We are archivists, but are we OK?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that the digital environment of the early twenty-first century is forcing the information sciences to revisit practices and precepts built around paper and physical objects over centuries. The training of archivists, records managers, librarians and museum curators has had to accommodate this new reality. Often the response has been to superimpose a digital overlay on existing curricula. A few have taken a radical approach by scrutinising the fundamentals of the professions and the ontologies of the materials they handle. Design/methodology/approach – The article explores a wide range of the issues exposed by this critique through critical analysis of ideas and published literature. Findings – The authors challenge archive and records management educators to align their curricula with contemporary need and to recognise that partnership with other professionals, particularly in the area of technology, is essential. Practical implications – The present generation owe it to future generations of archivists and records managers to ensure that the education that they get to prepare them for professional life is forward-looking in the same way. Originality/value – This paper aims to raise awareness of the educational needs of twenty-first century archives and records professionals

Structuralist Legal Histories

This is a contribution to a symposium titled Theorizing Contemporary Legal Thought. The central theme of the piece is the relation between legal structuralism and legal historiography