Resistance through realism : Youth subculture films in 1970s (and 1980s) Britain

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Nathaniel Weiner, ‘Resistance through realism: Youth subculture films in 1970s (and 1980s) Britain’. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in European Journal of Cultural Studies, November 2015, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549415603376. Published by SAGE Publishing.Film scholars have argued that the British social realist films of the late 1950s and early 1960s reflect the concerns articulated by British cultural studies during the same period. This article looks at how the social realist films of the 1970s and early 1980s similarly reflect the concerns of British cultural studies scholarship produced by the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies during the 1970s. It argues that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ approach to stylised working-class youth subcultures is echoed in the portrayal of youth subcultures in the social realist films Pressure (1976), Bloody Kids (1979), Babylon (1980) and Made in Britain (1982). This article explores the ways in which these films show us both the strengths and weaknesses of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies’ work on subcultures.Peer reviewe

Redesigning democracy: The making of the Welsh Assembly

Redesigning Democracy weaves together two important political stories. The first charts the long and often divisive campaign for a Welsh Assembly. The second tells the previously untold story of the devolution battle inside the Labour Party, from the ignominy of the 1979 referendum to the forced resignation of Alun Michael. Far more complex than a collision between Old and New Labour, this battle signalled the coming of age of Welsh Labour. Redesigning Democracy is also a book about twenty-first century British politics, as seen through the prism of Wales, showing the value of viewing the whole through the part, the centre from the periphery. In the new era of democratic devolution we need more diverse perspectives on the evolving UK if we are to transcend the metropolitan parochialism which infects the Westminster view of the world. In telling these stories the authors have carried out extensive interviews with key figures in Welsh political life, as well as drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished materials on the making of the Welsh Assembly

Bioanalysis for Biocatalysis: Multiplexed Capillary Electrophoresis–Mass Spectrometry Assay for Aminotransferase Substrate Discovery and Specificity Profiling

In this work, we introduce an entirely automated enzyme assay based on capillary electrophoresis coupled to electrospray ionization mass spectrometry termed MINISEP-MS for multiple interfluent nanoinjections–incubation–separation–enzyme profiling using mass spectrometry. MINISEP-MS requires only nanoliters of reagent solutions and uses the separation capillary as a microreactor, allowing multiple substrates to be assayed simultaneously. The method can be used to rapidly profile the substrate specificity of any enzyme and to measure steady-state kinetics in an automated fashion. We used the MINISEP-MS assay to profile the substrate specificity of three aminotransferases (<i>E. coli</i> aspartate aminotransferase, <i>E. coli</i> branched-chain amino acid aminotransferase, and <i>Bacillus sp.</i> YM-1 d-amino acid aminotransferase) for 33 potential amino acid substrates and to measure steady-state kinetics. Using MINISEP-MS, we were able to recapitulate the known substrate specificities and to discover new amino acid substrates for these industrially relevant enzymes. Additionally, we were able to measure the apparent <i>K</i>_M and <i>k</i>_cat parameters for amino acid donor substrates of these aminotransferases. Because of its many advantages, the MINISEP-MS assay has the potential of becoming a useful tool for researchers aiming to identify or create novel enzymes for specific biocatalytic applications

'Non-servile virtuosi' in insubordinate spaces: school disaffection, refusal and resistance in a former English coalfield

This article reviews excerpts from a body of ethnographic data examining some young people’s disaffection from, and refusal of, the education project as a whole in a UK coalfield area. Key examples are used to illustrate intergenerational continuities and disjunctions in attitudes to formal education in these exceptional and sometimes ‘insubordinate’ localities. It is argued that reviewing such data in the light of concepts emerging from the literature on Italian autonomist politics of the 1970s – particularly Paulo Virno’s work – is potentially fruitful in reclaiming a politics of educational refusal from the dual grip of a middle-class imaginary that abhors it as pathological and dangerous and a body of scholarship that seems incapable of moving beyond either lionising it as heroic or loathing it as nihilistic