’ on the side. To accomplish this, local staff draw from their diverse experience and backgrounds. Some have friends and family in political networks or have political histories themselves – experience in the political wings of armed groups or local government. Others have military pasts: thousands of Congolese youth have been going in and out of armed groups for several decades. NGOs and armed groups are key employers in the region: some humanitarians have histories in rebel groups, some rebels have histories as humanitarians. In addition, it is striking how many
well as questions of power and priorities in local as well as international health governance. We conclude that bioethics cannot be disentangled from political histories and contemporary contests and consider the implications for how to think about clinical trial ethics. Setting the Scene: The Politics of Ebola in Eastern DRC Between August 2018 and June 2020, the world’s second largest recorded Ebola epidemic
source that needs to be interpreted, rather than a narrative history. So, when one attempts to write the history of a project one should take a particular perspective on it. Whether one writes a medical history, a financial and logistical history, a human resource history, a political history, a bureaucratic history or whatever, one has to choose what story to tell. Bertrand: What I drew from reading this case study, was a cultural history. What your account really cast a light on, for me, was how a
Rohinton Mistry is the only author whose every novel has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995) and Family Matters (2002) are all set in India's Parsee community. Recognised as one of the most important contemporary writers of postcolonial literature, Mistry's subtle yet powerful narratives engross general readers, excite critical acclaim and form staple elements of literature courses across the world. This study provides an insight into the key features of Mistry's work. It suggests how the author's writing can be read in terms of recent Indian political history, his native Zoroastrian culture and ethos, and the experience of migration, which now sees him living in Canada. The texts are viewed through the lens of diaspora and minority discourse theories to show how Mistry's writing is illustrative of marginal positions in relation to sanctioned national identities. In addition, Mistry utilises and blends the conventions of oral storytelling common to the Persian and South Asian traditions, with nods in the direction of the canonical figures of modern European literature, sometimes reworking and reinflecting their registers and preoccupations to create a distinctive voice redolent of the hybrid inheritance of Parsee culture and of the postcolonial predicament more generally.
This book is an attempt to take stock of how some of the British Labour Party's leading interpreters have analysed their subject, deriving as they do from contrasting political, theoretical, disciplinary and methodological backgrounds. It explores their often-hidden assumptions and subjects them to critical evaluation. The book outlines five strategies such as materialist; ideational; electoral; institutional; and synthetic strategies. Materialist, ideational and electoral explanatory strategies account for Labour's ideological trajectory in factors exogenous to the party. The 'new political history' is useful in understanding Labour within a less reductive framework than either the 'high' or 'from below' approaches and in more novel terms than the Left-Right positions adopted within Labour. The book assesses the contribution made to analysis of the Labour Party and labour history by thinkers of the British New Left. New Left critiques of labourism in fact represented and continued a strand of Marxist thinking on the party that can be traced back to its inception. If Ralph Miliband's role in relation to 'Bennism' is considered in comparison to his earlier attitudes, some striking points emerge about the interaction between the analytical and subjective aspects in his interpretive framework. Miliband tried to suggest that the downfall of communism was advantageous for the Left, given the extent to which the Soviet regimes had long embarrassed Western socialists such as himself. The Nairn-Anderson theses represented an ambitious attempt to pioneer a distinctive analysis of British capitalist development, its state, society and class structure.
A perfect companion to European politics today, written by the same authors, this book presents past events, prominent personalities, important dates, organisations and electoral information in an accessible, easy-to-read format. The book is split into five sections for ease of use: a dictionary of significant political events, a chronology of major events in Europe since 1945, a biographical dictionary, a dictionary of political organisations and electoral data. In addition to being a comprehensive reference tool, this book is intended to provide a sound historical background to the development of Western European politics.
ITLP_C02.QXD 18/8/03 9:55 am Page 23 2 ‘What kind of people are you?’ Labour, the people and the ‘new political history’ Lawrence Black Like their subject, historians of Labour have tended to be attached to tradition and sceptical of novelty – in short, rather conservative. Newer tendencies are nonetheless evident. These result, in part, from changes in Labour. New Labour’s constitutional reforms, its engagement with issues of national identity and communication skills have been concurrent with recent work on the party’s past in such areas (Chadwick 1999
ideological change in the Labour Party and identifies five principal explanatory strategies: materialist; ideational; electoral; institutional; and those which synthesise some or all of these. Limitations in many widely ITLP_A02.QXD 18/8/03 4 9:53 am Page 4 Introduction read texts are discussed and, echoing the final chapter, by Colin Hay, Randall concludes by calling for a multidimensional approach that would reject, among other things, what he considers the artificial opposition of structure to agency. Lawrence Black (chapter 2) considers the ‘new political history
Gordon Brown’s party conference speech in 2007 represents something of a landmark in British political history in the extent to which it placed the idea of encouraging people’s talents and ambitions at the centre of his political vision. It also points to some ways in which an emphasis on encouraging the development of people’s potential, talents and ambitions has been, and can continue to be, of substantial benefit to socialists, in terms both of helping them to win elections and achieving some of their deepest objectives of equality and empowerment. Two brief points
preposterous – unless the individuals concerned were Shadow Cabinet members who had spoken to a ‘ballistic’ Thatcher at the party. But Hague apparently contemplated resignation in the aftermath of Lilley’s speech; the policy supremo himself rapidly returned to the backbenches.10 In Thatcher’s shadow Hague had good reason to be petrified of Thatcher, who during the leadership campaign had saddled him with what was perhaps the least welcome endorsement in British political history. Although an intervention from her was certain to remind the wider public of the Conservative