Search results
: 5–10). Changing understandings of museum work and its place in society fed further into such processes of rethinking. Long the embodiment of elite institutions, by the 1970s, US and European museums opened up to broader segments of society, stressed accessibility and the importance of social learning as new principles, professionalized their staff by hiring designers and PR experts, and started to see a record growth in visitor numbers that recast them as influential
This book surveys the elite state of play in Britain as it is now. It argues that the Establishment, as it has been conceived, is coming to an end. The book looks at how elites, by trying to get ahead, have destabilised the very institutions on which their power is based. It also looks at how leaders have adapted to get to the top. Those most suited to pleasing their assessors get there first. The book reveals some of the ways elites use to stay at the top once they get there. It looks at the secrets and lies that underpin elite power and control. Some are systematic and organised, and some are simply the lies leaders tell themselves. The book shows how leadership has been transformed into a numbers game because numbers can be tallied up in a way that ideas cannot. And because elites co-create the game, they can also change the rules as and when they need to. The book focuses on exit strategies and how canny elites survive when it all goes wrong. It briefly explores what solutions there might be to the current problems of leadership.
This chapter discusses the life and thought of R. Yaakov Meir Zalkind. His journey led through the elite institutions of Eastern European rabbinic learning, the Western European university, the ferment of London’s East End, and finally to British Mandate Palestine. In these wanderings, R. Zalkind accumulated the ideological material — Zionism, pacifism, communism, and anarchism — with which he progressively constructed his own unique worldview. Both the theoretical content of that view and also how he applied it in his career as an activist, journalist, translator, and communal rabbi are considered. It is argued that in spite of his apparent eclecticism, Zalkind’s fundamental commitments remained consistent and that he drew on various ideologies to defend them.
This chapter considers the life and work of R. Samuel Alexandrov. Raised in a Habad hasidic home and having attended elite institutions of rabbinic learning, this fascinating figure played a leading, and often notorious, role in the great debates of his day. Both maskil and mystic, he developed an idiosyncratic religious philosophy, combining hasidic thought, kabbalistic tradition, and cultural Zionism with German idealism, the Russian sophiology of Vladimir Solovyov, and Proudhon’s anarchism. The chapter begins with a discussion of Schellingian influences on Alexandrov’s thought and proceeds to an analysis of Alexandrov’s Spinoza/Schelling-inspired epistemology. It then proceeds to trace his ideas as to the fall and redemption of mankind and the way he synthesizes kabbalistic and Schellingian sources to articulate it. In essence, it involves the shattering and eventual restoration of the individual ego and the Absolute. His understanding of this process is then used to frame his notions of cosmopolitan nationalism, the mission of Israel, the abrogation of the law, pacifism, and diasporism. The chapter concludes by examining the way such ideas shaped Alexendrov’s Zionism.
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of a national network of asylums across Britain. Asylums were sites of both enormous hope and dashed expectations. This chapter explores why some people embraced institutionalization, and why others did not. It gives readers a brief overview of the structures of asylums, rules of admission for different classes, and types of conditions, and builds on the strong institutional histories of asylums. It provides information about the diversity of asylum experiences, from the elite institutions for the wealthy, to the mass pauper asylums, to the criminal asylum.
The Victorian asylum was born out of optimism, flourished in an era of no better alternatives, and quickly became a symbol of failed expectations. I focus on the male experience of incarceration, and how this experience was particularly destabilizing for those used to being in control of themselves and their families. Men also proved particularly difficult patients to control if they were prone to violence. This chapter introduces the typical experience of madness in the Victorian era that saw the asylum as at least a part of most men’s curative treatment.
In this broad sweep, Mayo explores dominant European discourses of higher education, in the contexts of different globalisations and neoliberalism, and examines its extension to a specific region. It explores alternatives in thinking and practice including those at the grassroots, also providing a situationally grounded project of university–community engagement. Signposts for further directions for higher education lifelong learning, with a social justice purpose, are provided.
may produce more appropriate leaders, certain principles might be adopted and initiatives taken: Transparency: Elites resist this whenever possible. But so much more can be done with the will to enforce public transparency, such as proper registering of lobbyists and party donations, publication of top organisational salaries and the ratio of highest to lowest paid staff, property ownership and financial accounts held abroad, and so on. Conflicts of interest: I am regularly amazed at how so many elite
US academy’s greatness and the US Department of Education’s ‘Race to the Top’ reform programme. He refers to privileged universities’ ‘catastrophic failure’ apropos the Great Crash (GFC), and the exposure of elite universities following the Wall Street implosion (THE, 24 March 2011, pp. 46–49). ‘Glocal’ is an optimistic neologism. Combining world stature with effective regional engagement is problematic. The Chief Executive of the UK Royal Society for the Arts argues that ‘elite institutions should help create a more equal society’, (Taylor 2010) with civic
9781526132741 PRINT.indd 63 23/04/2018 10:06 64 Crisis sanctum, as it were, while those in that hierarchical centre of power and authority retain their social, political, and cultural standing. To put it crudely, while England used to have two elite institutions and half a dozen or so ‘ordinary’ Universities, now it has twenty-four elite institutions (the ‘Russell Group’) and around 130 others. Expressed as a percentage, this appears to be a disturbing worsening of class distinctions. The obvious question arises once we see this: has the prevailing class condition of
understand society in the past and are relatively unused to considering artefacts that do not contain words. Moreover, historians have traditionally viewed history as a political process and focused their energies on the study of the elites who held the reins of power in society. Taken together, this over-reliance on the textual record and emphasis on the elite, institutional, legal and political were mutually reinforcing, as the most powerful actors in society were the most likely to leave a formal record of their lives, lives that enacted political power over others