The Return of Character: Parallels Between Late-Victorian and Twenty-First Century Discourses

There has been an increasingly common trend in the UK to identify character skills and traits as the basis for various individual successes and achievements. In education policy and employment services, character has been linked to the making of successful, morally aware, employable and socially mobile citizens. This article explores the late-nineteenth century use of character discourses, focusing on the economist Alfred Marshall. During this period character was associated with future-oriented subjects – those displaying provident and thrifty habits and dispositions – and held particular class, race and gender prejudices. The article draws parallels between this late-Victorian approach to character and the ‘return’ of character in twenty-first century education and welfare-to-work policy, in particular where cultivating character is linked to improving employability and social mobility. We can make productive comparisons between character’s Victorian legacy and its reemergence more recently amid increasingly moralized discourses around poverty, inequality and unemployment. In doing so, we might better understand the historical antecedents to stigmatizing character discourses today, insofar as they leave the burden of responsibility for particular social outcomes in life and the labour market with individuals and their ability to cultivate their own human capital

The role of the gut in type 2 immunity.

Allergic and autoimmune disorders have been on the raise in the last decades in westernized countries while infectious diseases could be dramatically reduced due to efficient vaccination campaigns, improvement of personal hygiene and use of medication. Alteration of immunological tolerance may be implicated in both autoimmune and allergic inflammation yet underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Microbes colonizing all barrier sites are now known to have strong impact on our general immune status. The intestinal tract harbors the densest community of microbes and in combination with a huge surface area, the microenvironment in the gut implies strong tolerogenic properties. While a healthy symbiosis between intestinal microbes and the immune system is beneficial for the host, dysbiosis of microbial communities can heavily impact on immune responses and immunological tolerance. A systemic effect on the general susceptibility to allergic and autoimmune disorders is difficult to study and remains controversial. As an alternative explanation, allergic sensibilisation via the skin or lung is thought to be an important pathway but lacks the capability to explain the increase of allergic disorders on an epidemiological level. In this chapter, I will highlight a possible impact of a beneficial host-microbiota relationship in both the intestinal tract and other mucosal surfaces