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This book considers the politics of patronage appointments at the universities in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St Andrews. The book explores the ways in which 388 men secured posts in three Scottish universities between 1690 and 1806; from the purge following the Revolution of 1688 to the end of Henry Dundas's political career. Most professors were political appointees vetted and supported by political factions and their leaders. This study explores the improving agenda of political patrons and of those they served and relates this to the Scottish Enlightenment. The book argues that what was happening in Scotland was also occurring in other parts of Europe where, in relatively autonomous localities, elite patrons also shaped things as they wished them to be. The role of patronage in the Enlightenment is essential to any understanding of its origins and course. This book is based on much archival study and adds substantially to what is known about the Scottish professorial during the period.

This book explores how the Internet presents radical ways of organising and producing media that offer political and cultural alternatives, both to ways of doing business and to how we understand the world and our place in it. It is characterised by in-depth case studies. Topics include the media of new social movements and other radical political organisations (including the far right); websites produced by fans of popular culture; and media dedicated to developing a critical, ‘public’ journalism. The book locates these studies in appropriate theoretical and historical contexts, while remaining accessible to a student audience. Major themes include: the use of the Internet by political groups such as the anti-capitalist and environmental movements, as well as the far right; radical forms of creativity and distribution — the anti-copyright and sampling/file-sharing movements, and their role as cultural critics in a corporate world; the development and maintenance of a global, ‘digital public sphere’ of protest through such practices as ‘hacktivism’; the use of new media technologies to transform existing media forms and practices, such as news media and Internet radio.

Hollywood has a growing fascination with America's past. This is evidenced in the release of a rash of films of this genre in the past twenty-five years. This book offers an analysis of how and why contemporary Hollywood films have sought to mediate American history. It explores, comprehensively, the post-Cold War period of filmmaking, and considers whether or how far contemporary films have begun to unravel the unifying myths of earlier films and periods. The book also considers why such films are becoming increasingly integral to the ambitions of a globally focused American film industry. The relationship between film and history — the way in which film mediates history and vice versa — is a complex one. This book works from two main assumptions. First, that films revise events to challenge or, perhaps more typically, to reaffirm traditional historical interpretations. Second, that this process can only be understood in the context of contemporary debates about identity politics, America's role in world affairs, and the globalisation of the American film business.

This volume considers the changing patterns of American thought and culture in its transition into the early twenty-first century. One of the questions this book tackles is whether the twenty-first century will prove to be ‘the next American century’, or one in which challenges to the structure of nation-states will radically transform the status, prestige and global role of the United States. The study is stimulated by two perceived turning points in American life: the political swing back towards the right represented by the election of George W. Bush in November 2000 and the attacks of 11 September 2001. The 18 chapters address domestic American issues, but also the place of the United States within a broader global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, international diplomacy, ideological conflict, terrorism and war. The contributors to this volume take both long and short historical views of shifting intellectual trends and cultural patterns: comparing contemporary issues with the climate of the 1990s, but also looking back to earlier twentieth-century moments and concerns. In addition to assessing specific challenges arising in recent years, contributors address emerging issues and points of intensification that are likely to take effect in future years. The book has a thematic structure and is divided into three sections, dealing in turn with Politics, Society and Culture, and covering a wide span of topics that address issues of nationhood, globalization, ideology and cultural representation.

The Fatimids’ apocalyptic vision of their central place in an imminent utopia played a critical role in transfiguring the intellectual and political terrains of North Africa in the early tenth century. Yet the realities that they faced on the ground often challenged their status as the custodians of a pristine Islam at the end of time. Through an examination of a variety of sources including works of taʾwīl or symbolic interpretation, this book illustrates some of the specific structures and functions of Fatimid apocalypticism. It then examines how various components of the apocalyptic myth—especially the utopia that it promised—evolved in response to shifting historical circumstances. The book also focuses on how the evolution of apocalyptic symbolism was related to the Fatimids’ consolidation of authority. The book ends with an extensive analysis of both the ritual and textual dimensions of another apocalyptic event linked to a Fatimid lineage: the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the end of time on August 8, 1164.

This book explores the roles of contemporary urban shrines and their visual traditions in Benin City. It focuses on the charismatic priests and priestesses who are possessed by a pantheon of deities, the communities of devotees, and the artists who make artifacts for their shrines. The visual arts are part of a wider configuration of practices that include song, dance, possession, and healing. These practices provide the means for exploring the relationships of the visual to both the verbal and performance arts that feature at these shrines. The analysis in this book raises fundamental questions about how the art of Benin, and non-Western art histories more generally, are understood. The book throws critical light on the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin current interpretations and presents an original and revisionist account of Benin art history.

This book argues that scholars too often assume that the state is the most important force behind change in local political communities in Africa. Studies look to the state, and to the impact of government reforms, as ways of understanding processes of development and change. Using the example of Uganda, regarded as one of Africa's few ‘success stories’, the book chronicles the insignificance of the state and the marginal impact of Western development agencies. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork in a Ugandan village reveals that it is churches, the village court and organizations based on family and kinship obligations which represent the most significant sites of innovation and social transformation. The book offers a new anthropological perspective on how to think about processes of social and political change in poorer parts of the world, and should appeal to anyone interested in African development.

This is the first modern book-length study of the case of Thomas Aikenhead, the sometime University of Edinburgh student who in 1697 earned the unfortunate distinction of being the last person executed for blasphemy in Britain. Taking a micro-historical approach, the book uses the Aikenhead case to open a window into the world of Edinburgh, Scotland and Britain in its transition from the confessional era of the Reformation and the covenants, which placed high emphasis on the defence of orthodox belief, to the polite, literary world of the Enlightenment, of which Edinburgh would become a major centre. The book traces the roots of the Aikenhead case in seventeenth-century Scotland and the law of blasphemy which was evolving in response to the new intellectual currents of biblical criticism and deism. The author analyzes Aikenhead's trial and the Scottish government's decision to uphold the sentence of hanging. Finally, he details the debate engendered by the execution, carried out in a public sphere of print media encompassing both Scotland and England. Aikenhead's case became a media event which highlighted the intellectual and cultural divisions within Britain at the end of the seventeenth century.

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was reported by some of the most eminent journalists of the twentieth century and was the subject of reportage that still endures in public memory. However, this represents just a small fraction of the total news coverage of the war, raising the possibility that it provides a partial, even atypical, view of the international media's engagement with, and performance in, the conflict. This book provides the most extensive and detailed analysis of the reporting of the conflict ever undertaken, examining the personalities, routines, pressures, and structures that shaped news coverage of the war in Britain as it unfolded. The book combines a comprehensive overview of the existing literature on the role of the news media in the conflict, with a vast amount of new evidence, gleaned from the author's detailed investigations in a range of official and media archives.

This is a study of the British state's generation, suppression and manipulation of news to further foreign policy goals during the early Cold War. Bribing editors, blackballing ‘unreliable’ journalists, creating instant media experts through provision of carefully edited ‘inside information’ and exploiting the global media system to plant propaganda – disguised as news – around the world: these were all methods used by the British to try to convince the international public of Soviet deceit and criminality and thus gain support for anti-Soviet policies at home and abroad. Britain's shaky international position heightened the importance of propaganda. The Soviets and Americans were investing heavily in propaganda to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the world and substitute for increasingly unthinkable nuclear war. The British exploited and enhanced their media power and propaganda expertise to keep up with the superpowers, and to preserve their own global influence at a time when British economic, political and military power was sharply declining. This activity directly influenced domestic media relations, as officials used British media to launder foreign-bound propaganda and to create the desired images of British ‘public opinion’ for foreign audiences. By the early 1950s, censorship had waned, but covert propaganda had become addictive. The endless tension of the Cold War normalised what had previously been abnormal state involvement in the media, and led it to use similar tools against Egyptian nationalists, Irish republicans and British leftists. Much more recently, official manipulation of news about Iraq indicates that a behind-the-scenes examination of state propaganda's earlier days is highly relevant. The author draws heavily on recently declassified archival material for this book, especially files of the Foreign Office's anti-Communist Information Research Department propaganda agency and the papers of key media organisations, journalists, politicians and officials. Readers will therefore gain a greater understanding of the depth of the state's power with the media at a time when concerns about propaganda and media manipulation are once again at the fore.