Barry Smith an sich

Festschrift in Honor of Barry Smith on the occasion of his 65th Birthday. Published as issue 4:4 of the journal Cosmos + Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. Includes contributions by Wolfgang Grassl, Nicola Guarino, John T. Kearns, Rudolf Lüthe, Luc Schneider, Peter Simons, Wojciech Żełaniec, and Jan Woleński

‘Opting out’? nation, region and locality

This thesis considers the extent to which the BBC, arguably the nation’s most important cultural institution, attempted to meet its commitment to regional and local broadcasting in one English region, Yorkshire, between 1945 and 1990. The study focuses specifically on the extent to which a distinctive regional culture can be identified within the BBC in Yorkshire and how this changed over time while also considering how BBC programme makers both engaged with and represented the audience and the extent to which they attempted to foster place-related identity. The years 1945 to 1990 included the relaunching of English regional broadcasting at the end of World War Two, the arrival of television in the North and a redefinition of the BBC’s non-metropolitan broadcasting at the end of the 1960s with the creation of a new BBC television region based at Leeds and the launch of BBC local radio. Prior to, and then alongside, the establishment of these new services, Leeds-based producers working for the BBC North Region were bringing new voices in drama and entertainment to the attention of the nation. But by 1990 this period of relative regional autonomy and expansion had come to an end and producers of regional programmes had been told they were to focus on news and current affairs. An oral history approach has been employed alongside an analysis of programme material that concentrates on day-to-day local and regional broadcasting - programmes made in the region for the regional audience - going beyond the ‘texts’ to ask why these programmes were made and how they were made. Different aspects of programming are considered (regional television news and features, the early years of local radio) together with BBC cultures and practices

Segurança e privacidade em terminologia de rede

Security and Privacy are now at the forefront of modern concerns, and drive a significant part of the debate on digital society. One particular aspect that holds significant bearing in these two topics is the naming of resources in the network, because it directly impacts how networks work, but also affects how security mechanisms are implemented and what are the privacy implications of metadata disclosure. This issue is further exacerbated by interoperability mechanisms that imply this information is increasingly available regardless of the intended scope. This work focuses on the implications of naming with regards to security and privacy in namespaces used in network protocols. In particular on the imple- mentation of solutions that provide additional security through naming policies or increase privacy. To achieve this, different techniques are used to either embed security information in existing namespaces or to minimise privacy ex- posure. The former allows bootstraping secure transport protocols on top of insecure discovery protocols, while the later introduces privacy policies as part of name assignment and resolution. The main vehicle for implementation of these solutions are general purpose protocols and services, however there is a strong parallel with ongoing re- search topics that leverage name resolution systems for interoperability such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Information Centric Networks (ICN), where these approaches are also applicable.Segurança e Privacidade são dois topicos que marcam a agenda na discus- são sobre a sociedade digital. Um aspecto particularmente subtil nesta dis- cussão é a forma como atribuímos nomes a recursos na rede, uma escolha com consequências práticas no funcionamento dos diferentes protocols de rede, na forma como se implementam diferentes mecanismos de segurança e na privacidade das várias partes envolvidas. Este problema torna-se ainda mais significativo quando se considera que, para promover a interoperabili- dade entre diferentes redes, mecanismos autónomos tornam esta informação acessível em contextos que vão para lá do que era pretendido. Esta tese foca-se nas consequências de diferentes políticas de atribuição de nomes no contexto de diferentes protocols de rede, para efeitos de segurança e privacidade. Com base no estudo deste problema, são propostas soluções que, através de diferentes políticas de atribuição de nomes, permitem introdu- zir mecanismos de segurança adicionais ou mitigar problemas de privacidade em diferentes protocolos. Isto resulta na implementação de mecanismos de segurança sobre protocolos de descoberta inseguros, assim como na intro- dução de mecanismos de atribuiçao e resolução de nomes que se focam na protecçao da privacidade. O principal veículo para a implementação destas soluções é através de ser- viços e protocolos de rede de uso geral. No entanto, a aplicabilidade destas soluções extende-se também a outros tópicos de investigação que recorrem a mecanismos de resolução de nomes para implementar soluções de intero- perabilidade, nomedamente a Internet das Coisas (IoT) e redes centradas na informação (ICN).Programa Doutoral em Informátic

Comic Cultures: Commerce, Aesthetics and the Politics of Stand-Up Performance in the UK 1979 to 1992

This thesis represents the first Cultural Studies analysis of the 1980s entertainment form commonly known as ‘alternative comedy’, which emerged against the backdrop of social, industrial and political unrest. However, the use of the term ‘alternative comedy’ has obscured a diverse movement that contained many different strands and tendencies, which included punk poets, street performers, chansonniers and improvising double acts. This thesis goes some way to addressing the complex nature of this entertainment space by recognising the subtle but important differences between New Variety and alternative cabaret. Alternative cabaret was both a movement and an entertainment genre, while New Variety grew out of CAST’s theatre work and was constructed in opposition to Tony Allen’s and Alexei Sayle’s Alternative Cabaret performance collective. Taken together, alternative cabaret and New Variety comprise one part of the alternative space that also includes post-punk music, and were the cultural expressions of the 1980s countercultural milieu. Alternative cabaret and New Variety were the products of cultural change. Each genre has its roots in the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s and it was the knowledge that agents had acquired through participation in these movements that helped to shape their political-aesthetic dispositions or their weltanschauunng. As well as political activism, rock music influenced performers and promoters and contributed much to their art. In this sense, this was as much a post-punk avant-garde movement as it was a cultural intervention. This study charts the development of alternative entertainment in 1980s Britain and its transformation into the multi-million pound comedy industry that it is today (S Friedman, 2009). This study also analyses how the alternative space was constructed and how it was eventually destroyed by the internal and external pressures that acted upon it. I have used the written and oral testimonies of those who were involved in the space and used my own recollections from 14 years of performing comedy and promoting cabaret clubs

Music From Out There, In Here:25 Years of the London Jazz Festival

Webster and McKay have pieced together a fascinating jigsaw puzzle of archival material, interviews, and stories from musicians, festival staff and fans alike. Including many evocative images, the book weaves together the story of the festival wit the history of its home city, London, touching on broader social topics such as gender, race, politics, and the search for the meaning of jazz. They also trace the forgotten history of London as a vibrant city of jazz festivals going as far back as the 1940s

Experiences of Illegitimacy in England, 1660-1834

This thesis examines attitudes towards individuals who were born illegitimate in England between the Restoration in 1660 and the New Poor Law of 1834. It explores the impact of illegitimacy on individuals' experiences of family and social life, marriage and occupational opportunities, and sense of identity. This thesis demonstrates that illegitimacy did have a negative impact, but that this was not absolute. The stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's gender and, most importantly, the family's socio-economic status. Socio-economic status became more significant as an arbiter of attitudes towards the end of the period. This project uses a range of qualitative evidence - correspondence, life-writing, poor law records, novels, legal and religious tracts, and newspapers - to examine the impact of illegitimacy across the entire life-cycle, moving away from previous historiographical emphasis on unmarried parenthood, birth and infancy. This approach adds nuance to a field dominated by poor law and Foundling Hospital evidence, and prioritises material written by illegitimate individuals themselves. This thesis also has resonance for historical understanding of wider aspects of long-eighteenth-century society, such as the nature of parenthood, family, gender, or emotion, and the operation of systems of classification and 'othering'. This thesis demonstrates that definitions of parenthood and family were flexible enough to include illegitimate relationships. The effect of illegitimacy on marital and occupational opportunities indicates how systems of patronage and familial alliance operated in this period, as well as the importance of inheritance, birth or familial connection as measures of social status. Finally, it questions the assumption that condemnation of illicit sex led to community exclusion of the illegitimate child, and calls for more nuanced understandings of how historians measure and define shame and stigma

Independent Local Radio Drama: A Cultural, Historical And Regulatory Examination Of British Commercial Radio Drama.

BBC radio’s post-war years constitute a golden age of successful populist drama and situation-comedy, which was gradually usurped by television. Dramatists like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter reasserted radio drama with ground-breaking, innovative and avant-garde plays, but by the 1970’s radio drama occupied a precarious position, not abandoned, but living on borrowed time. Its continued existence on Radio Four was deemed perfunctory or symbolic of the BBC’s public service obligations. What happened next was unusual by today's standards for commercial radio. Stations within the newly formed Independent Local Radio (ILR) sector began to produce their own dramatic content: original drama, adaptations, monologues, poetry, situation and sketch comedy. What follows is an investigation into this overlooked canon of work. The choice to include drama across various ILR stations was a response to cautious regulatory oversight that refashioned expectations for commercial radio into its initial independent form. ILR was local by design and case studies from ILR’s dramatic canon are shown to have relied on and reinforced vernacular culture in contrast to the perception of BBC radio drama and light entertainment. The ‘Manchester School’ ethos in broadcasting was evidently resurgent among its dramatists, highlighting the dichotomy between oral and literary cultures and their spatial or temporal modes. New creative voices, often without a theatrical background and unbeholden to established forms utilised their authentic naturalistic idiolects, in some instances taking atypical approaches to radio fiction, constituting a cultural shift in style and tone for radio drama. Original plays and comedies embraced their regionality, complementary to radio’s secondary position. This thesis comprises case study analyses, archival research, recollections of former practitioners and theoretical perspectives on radio drama. It addresses the following considerations: an examination of ILR dramatists and their production experiences; an application of key theoretical concepts to a selection of ILR fictional programmes; the BBC’s reaction to the competition posed by the commercial radio sector, and the extent to which ILR drama played a role in the wider impetus towards reform at the BBC

Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia

Item embargoed for five year

Connectivity: Cockney-styled artistes of late 19th and early 20th century music hall and Britain’s inner urban audiences

By the last decade of the nineteenth century and continuing into the first of the twentieth, music hall in Britain had become a commodified, national entertainment medium. Whilst still an eclectic mix of entertainment offering, one genre of stage performance, which included the leading national artistes of the day, were those defined in this study as cockney-styled entertainers. Although unique performers in their own way, each had an on-stage act that was focussed upon their particular presentation through song, common individual characters, and depictions of the everyday experiences of the population that lived and worked in Cockney London. Their performance style and the lyrics contained in their most successful songs were strongly London-centric, referenced and delivered in a cockney vernacular. Superficially, this would seem to be counter-intuitive and paradoxical. How could inner urban audiences beyond the metropolis positively relate to the cockney-styled entertainers’ London-referenced stage presentation and cockney vernacular delivery when they would likely have little or no direct experience or familiarity with the capital? This study directly addresses this apparent paradox, by positing a new theory in respect of the performer/audience relationship that these entertainers shared with inner urban audiences nationally, but especially those within the inner urban communities of Britain’s largest cities. This relationship, defined as ‘connectivity’, meant that the leading cockney-styled artistes were able to embark on successful regular regional tours of music halls utilising their existing style of London-centric performance content delivered in a cockney vernacular without the need for any local modification. However, this special performer/audience connectivity was only made possible by the contingent synergy of four key enabling factors that were present around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century which are identified and analysed in this thesis. Through the promotion of this theory of connectivity and the analysis of its enabling factors, this study presents a unique addition to the historiography of late Victorian and early Edwardian music hall