674 research outputs found
Making random assignment happen: evidence from the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration
'Another, More Sinister Reality': Class, Youth and Psychopathology from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to Endless Night
This article analyses how the protagonists of films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1959), The Collector (1965), Blow Up (1966), Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972) were understood in relation to debates over the supposed perils of the new affluence and the erosion of class distinctions that it was presumed to entail. In particular it examines the terms in which these issues were discussed within contemporaneous reviews of the films, terms that were insistently psychological. These protagonists, as well as, to a certain extent, the actors who played them, were seen as representing a nightmare image of a ânewâ working class that no longer âknew its placeâ, and as manifesting psychological problems that were associated with this intermediate status. Their psychologies were interpreted by many critics as being distinguished by a sense of isolation from external reality and by a hostile relationship to the world characterised by a psychopathic lack of empathy. Such concerns could be seen as establishing certain parallels between working-class realism and the contemporaneous horror film, and indeed the reviews cited in this article demonstrate that working-class realism and horror were seen as having shared points of interest in the 1960s, points that have often been repressed by the tendency to compartmentalise British cinema history into separate or even opposed âtraditionsâ
Sparrows can't sing : East End kith and kinship in the 1960s
Sparrows Canât Sing (1963) was the only feature film directed by
the late and much lamented Joan Littlewood. Set and filmed in
the East End, where she worked for many years, the film deserves
more attention than it has hitherto received. Littlewoodâs career
spanned documentary (radio recordings made with Ewan MacColl
in the North of England in the 1930s) to directing for the stage
and the running of the Theatre Royal in Londonâs Stratford East,
often selecting material which aroused memories in local audiences
(Leach 2006: 142). Many of the actors trained in her Theatre
Workshop subsequently became better known for their appearances
on film and television. Littlewood herself directed hardly any material
for the screen: Sparrows Canât Sing and a 1964 series of television
commercials for the British Egg Marketing Board, starring Theatre
Workshopâs Avis Bunnage, were rare excursions into an area of practice
which she found constraining and unamenable (Gable 1980: 32).
The hybridity and singularity of Littlewoodâs feature may answer,
in some degree, for its subsequent neglect. However, Sparrows Canât
Sing makes a significant contribution to a group of films made in
Britain in the 1960s which comment generally on changes in the
urban and social fabric. It is especially worthy of consideration,
I shall argue, for the use which Littlewood made of a particular
communityâs attitudes â sentimental and critical â to such changes and
for its amalgamation of an attachment to documentary techniques
(recording an aural landscape on location) with a preference for nonnaturalistic
delivery in performance
Implementation and first-year impacts of the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration
Back to the Future: The Uses of Television in the Digital Age
This article considers some of the present-day issues, challenges and possibilities facing television broadcasting via a critical examination of the recently published Goldsmiths report on the future of public service television in the twenty-first century. Focusing mainly on UK terrestrial broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5), the article summarises and expands on the report's key findings and recommendations, particularly in relation to questions concerning digitalisation, content, diversity, quality, marketisation, funding and national and regional heritage. The article argues that, despite the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of digital platforms, television viewing remains a common source of information and entertainment and is characterised by meaningful continuities. Additionally, the article outlines the vitally important role played by David Puttnam, chair of the Goldsmiths inquiry, in defending public service television through his active engagement with relevant parliamentary committees and as a widely respected media professional. Finally, the article reflects on the continuing relevance of the 1962 Pilkington Report on Broadcasting, which was similarly commissioned in order to evaluate the purposes of television. In so doing, the article suggests that Pilkington's criticisms of creeping commercialism and the ensuing regulatory proposals still represent a cogent engagement with the idea of public service broadcasting as a primary facilitator of deliberative democracy
Implementation and second-year impacts for New Deal 25 Plus customers in the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration
This report presents findings on the implementation and effectiveness of Britain's Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration programme for New Deal 25 Plus customers (ND25 Plus) two years after entering the programme. The effectiveness of this programme is being evaluated using a random assignment research design. Over 16,000 people were randomly assigned onto the programme, making this study one of the largest randomised social policy trials ever undertaken in Britain.
The analysis relies heavily on data from two waves of a longitudinal customer survey administered at 12 and 24 months respectively, following each individual's date of random assignment (when they entered the study). The survey respondents (around 6,000) are a representative sub-sample of the full sample of ND25 Plus customers enrolled in the study.
The analysis also used data on employment, earnings and benefits receipt from administrative records for the entire sample. To provide a richer understanding of the Jobcentre Plus offices' experience of implementing ERA and customers experiences of ERA, the analysis also uses qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with ERA staff and customers
Responsible participation and housing: restoring democratic theory to the scene
Tensions between individual liberty and collective social justice characterise many advanced liberal societies. These tensions are reflected in the challenges posed for representative democracy both by participatory democratic practices and by the current emphasis on (so-called) responsible participation. Based on the example of âcommunityâ housing associations in Scotland, this paper explores these tensions. It is argued that the critique of responsibility may have been over-stated â that, in particular, âcommunityâ housing associations offer the basis for relatively more inclusive and effective processes of decision-making than council housing, which relies on the traditional processes and institutions of representative local government for its legitimacy
Queering the grammar school boy: class, sexuality and authenticity in the works of Colin MacInnes and Ray Gosling
In 1959 Colin MacInnes published the fourth in his series of social issue novels, Absolute Beginners. In it the unnamed protagonist is constructed as the iconic teenager, slick, cool, creative, with his ex-lover CrĂŠpe Suzette as the object of his art and as his Achilles heel. The novel is framed over one summer, against a backdrop of racial tension, which ultimately led the Boy towards adulthood. MacInnesâs protagonist has been dismissed as an emblem rather than a character, and MacInnes himself derided by George Melly as a perpetual teenager. However in this chapter, we will suggest that taken as a whole MacInnesâ work constructs a complex understanding of The Boyâs political possibilities intersecting with sexuality, gender, race and class. By integrating his novelistic work with his journalistic and activist writing, we will demonstrate the complexity of MacInnesâ Boy as an autonomous, queer political agent, embodied in the ultimate Boy; Ray Gosling. Goslingâs own writing becomes a lens through which to root historical understanding of teenagers and teenage cultures as sexual and racial constructs
LASSO model selection with post-processing for a genome-wide association study data set
Model selection procedures for simultaneous analysis of all single-nucleotide polymorphisms in genome-wide association studies are most suitable for making full use of the data for a complex disease study. In this paper we consider a penalized regression using the LASSO procedure and show that post-processing of the penalized-regression results with subsequent stepwise selection may lead to improved identification of causal single-nucleotide polymorphisms
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