Despite Edward Snowden’s revelations, we are nowhere near Orwell’s vision of totalitarian dystopia envisioned in ‘1984’

This year has seen the staggering revelations of spying by the National Security Agency on targets both domestic and international. But do these programs now mean that we live in a surveillance society akin to that prophesized by George Orwell in his novel ‘1984’? Robert Colls looks at the protagonists of both narratives – the NSA’s Edward Snowden, and the novel’s Winston Smith. He argues that both are similar in their ordinariness, but Snowden, unlike Smith, is now not alone in his efforts to uncover and overturn state snooping

Value in Context: Material Culture and Treblinka

The complexity of the history of the Treblinka II Nazi German death camp (located in Poland) provides a unique opportunity to conduct a fine-grained examination of the concept of the value of material assemblages and how this can vary depending on temporal, historical, and societal context. Following its closure, the site transitioned from a razed camp, to a crime scene, to a potential treasure repository, to a memorial, and finally to an archaeological site. In this paper, we present the various ways in which the value attributed to objects present within the camp landscape evolved and how the terrible judicial and cultural tragedy that was the Holocaust means that many of these values were aggregated over time. By providing a contextualized discussion of value, we present trends that will be relevant to scholars engaged in the study of material culture from a wide range of epochs whilst also identifying those that are unique to assemblages pertaining to conflict and genocide

Sacred turf: the Wimbledon tennis championships and the changing politics of Englishness

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. This article is about ‘Wimbledon’, widely celebrated – not least in its own publicity material – as the world’s premier tennis tournament. It examines ‘Wimbledon’ essentially as a text (hence the inverted commas), viewed politically and historically. In this context, ‘Wimbledon’ is seen as a signifier of a certain kind of Englishness, carefully adapted to meet changing social and economic circumstance. Loose parallels are drawn between the cultural trajectory of ‘Wimbledon’ and that of the British royal family. The transmutations of ‘Wimbledon’ as a tennis championship are also seen as reflecting Britain’s decline as a world power during the twentieth century

From mood to movement: English nationalism, the European Union and taking back control

This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties regarding England’s location within the devolved UK state. The comments and work of Enoch Powell and George Orwell are used to help explore the link between nostalgia and anxiety in accounts of English nationalism. Despite their opposing political orientations, when considered together, it is argued that both men provide a unique cross-political perspective on Englishness, empire and nostalgia. By way of exploring these themes in relation to the EU referendum, Aughey’s assertion that English nationalism can be perceived as both a ‘mood’ and ‘movement’ is used to highlight how a sense of English anxiety regarding its lack of national sovereignty (mood), as well as a desire to reclaim this sovereignty by renegotiating trade relations with the ‘Anglo-sphere’ (movement), were conjoined in the popular referendum slogan, ‘take back control’. In conclusion, it is argued that the contextualization of the referendum can be predicated upon an orientation to empire that steers away from glorifying pro-imperial images of England/Britain, towards a more positive and progressive appropriation of the EU referendum as a statement of national change and belonging

The United Kingdom and British Empire: A Figurational Approach

Drawing upon the work of Norbert Elias and the process [figurational] sociology perspective, this article examines how state formation processes are related to, and, affected by, expanding and declining chains of international interdependence. In contrast to civic and ethnic conceptions, this approach focuses on the emergence of the nation/nation-state as grounded in broader processes of historical and social development. In doing so, state formation processes within the United Kingdom are related to the expansion and decline of the British Empire. That is, by focusing on the functional dynamics that are embedded in collective groups, one is able to consider how the UK’s ‘state’ and ‘imperial’ figurations were interdependently related to changes in both the UK and the former British Empire. Consequently, by locating contemporary UK relations in the historical context of former imperial relationships, nationalism studies can go ‘beyond’ the nation/nation-state in order to include broader processes of imperial expansion and decline. Here, the relationship between empire and nationalism can offer a valuable insight into contemporary political movements, especially within former imperial groups

Post-modern Pat: The Work of Patrick Joyce

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.A theoretical consideration of the work of the English historian Patrick Joyce