We are not ‘all in this together’: British democracy is suffering from the disconnect between politicians and the wider public

Recent failures of British democracy lead voters to feel that being ignored by Government is the most likely consequence of casting a vote and participating in democracy, writes Mary Evans

Revisiting a Historic Manuscript: Vere Huddleston’s Report on East Place (3CL21) Excavations

Vere L. Huddleston was one of several amateur archaeologists who excavated Caddo sites in Clark County, Arkansas, during the 1930s and 1940s. Huddleston took better notes about the sites and contexts of his finds than many of his contemporaries. His large collection of artifacts is now part of the Joint Educational Consortium’s Hodges Collection in Arkadelphia. A manuscript on his excavations at the East Place – the largest Caddo mound group in Clark County – is presented here with new vessel documentation and grave lot information. Since many of these artifacts have appeared in previous publications with little description, this work provides context for interpreting the site and its placement in the Caddo Indian history of this region

Whilst the debates in Scotland were a very welcome sign of political engagement, we should be cautious about the nature and the extent of that engagement

Reflecting on the Scottish independence referendum, Mary Evans asks whether the politics of localism are sufficient to challenge neoliberal policies. She writes that what is clear is that a lot of people care a great deal about the neoliberal assault on the public sector, but we do not all have that sense of shared political identity which allows us to create a viable and effective sense of political solidarity

The doctrine of ‘hard working’ is the worst kind of religion

Mary Evans explores the outbreak of rhetoric about ‘hard work’ and argues that it has two functions: it serves to somehow make the performer of that task a better person, whilst at the same time legitimating vicious policies towards those who are not ‘hard working’; and second, in framing that latter category as the thieves of the rewards of the worthy it encourages us to avoid remembering that the rewards for the ‘hard-working’ are getting fewer and fewer: disposable income is decreasing as are all forms of public support

Trump’s election represents the popular rejection of an unreachable American Dream

Last night Donald Trump won the US presidential election in a shock upset, defying both the political establishment and the pollsters. Here, Mary Evans of the LSE Gender Institute looks at how Trump voters feel excluded from joining the middle class and disillusioned with the American Dream

A message to Jon Cruddas and Labour: challenge, construct and connect

The Labour Party needs to do a better job in future of challenging their opponents’ narrative rather than working from within its frame, says Mary Evans. From there, it would be possible and beneficial to set out new ways of thinking about politics and the political without resorting to the binaries of ‘left’ and ‘right’. And finally, the party must connect, not just with focus groups or the powerful, but with campaigners and those with real professional experience outside the Westminster bubble

Women and the politics of austerity: new forms of respectability

The relationship of women to conditions of material austerity is often characterised as having two main themes: women as recipients of charity and the question of which women are entitled to various forms of charitable and state assistance. This paper discusses the ways in which discourses about women and charity are highly moralised, assuming both that women are unlikely to ‘ask for more’ and that women have to be ‘good’ and ‘respectable’ in order to deserve public assistance. In the concluding section, the paper considers the ways in which women’s ‘respectability’ has become associated with participation in the labour market, and the various ways in which this constitutes a new form of the ‘deserving’ female poor

Afterword

The distinctions between the public and the private have long been a way of organising the material world, and those distinctions are shifting. This article traces a brief history of the increasingly insecure privacy – both deliberate and not – that is a defining characteristic of our age.

Assessing the State of Tennessee’s Environment

This 2007 volume of An Economic Report to the Governor of the State of Tennessee is the thirty-first in a series of annual reports compiled in response to requests by state government officials for assistance in achieving greater interdepartmental consistency in planning and budgeting efforts sensitive to the overall economic environment. Both short-term, or business cycle-sensitive forecasts, and longer-term, or trend forecasts, are provided in this report