This chapter examines the development of the music industries (including broadcasting) and the MU in the ten years post 1945. A 1946 survey of musicians is reported. The working practices of bandleaders, composers and semi-professional musicians is examined. The 1948 election of Hardie Ratcliffe as General Secretary of the MU is reported and the role of the Communist Part of Great Britain within the Union discussed. A 1946 agreement between PPL and the MU is shown to be of particular importance. The end of the “ban” on alien musicians entering the UK to work is reported.

This chapter moves away from Manhattan to explore the competing memorial projects at sites connected to Anders Breivik’s attacks of 22 July 2011 in Norway. It compares and contrasts the aesthetic approaches to memorialisation used by the Norwegian state and civil society actors, while arguing that memorialisation is a security practice in both contexts. Heideggerian and phenomenological geography is used to explore the reclaiming of post-terrorist space and place by civil society actors at Utøya island.

Far from a simple backdrop, the lived environment was for Jean-Luc Godard capable of eliciting specific modes of cinematographic thought; choice of locations could impact the shape and feel of a film more than its screenplay. Prevalent in his works of the 1960s are suburban landscapes and locales, from the villas, cafés and roadways frequented by the characters of Bande à part (1964) to the high-rises of La Courneuve shown in the essay in phenomenology 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967). Without positing an equivalence between suburban heterogeneity and Godard’s jarring late-modern aesthetic, the author argues for the generative, transgressive capacity of a capitalist space in the throes of transformation and shot through with fragments of history. Shooting near Joinville-le-Pont and Vincennes in Bande à part, Godard pays homage to those pioneers who came before him, like Mack Sennett or Louis Feuillade. In other contexts, like the science-fiction sendup Alphaville (1965), he finds signs of the future in the present, showing Lemmy Caution moving through sleek, well-lit neighbourhoods of high-rises. The spatio-temporal rupture characteristic of Godard’s approach to suburban space resurfaces to surprising effect in Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012).

This chapter considers the narrativisation of seventeen asylum cases in British newspapers between 2003 and 2014 in around 150 press articles, a BBC Two documentary, documentation produced by NGOs and some international legal documents. The chapter unpacks three aspects that are crucial for the problematisation of asylum: firstly, the way narratives produce a specific temporality allowing for the exposition of happier futures in the UK, and the expression of colonial imaginaries. Secondly, the importance of LGBT human rights in the way the social problem is perceived, and consequently, can be solved. Finally, the way LGBT asylum cases serve to powerfully stage the position of the British state and its liberal subjects in an LGBT-positive state: they are a site for the negotiation of what it means to uphold sexual rights.

This chapter explores the moral traditions that have shaped the university with its idealised vision of rational debate by offering a detailed account of the sources, dynamics and consequences of a public debate about the academic boycott of Israel. Showing how this university sought to materialise a liberal model of communication governed by rules of neutral, rational debate and secular norms, I highlight the paradox inherent in this attempt to dramatically perform communicative rationality. The discussion then situates this need to display an idealised image of the university committed to free speech within the context of wider pressures associated with neo-liberalism and securitisation. The final section of the chapter then explores the consequences of the academic boycott event, which fixed participants in rigid, partisan positions. I argue that, in the process of affirming this rationalist self-image, the university disavowed its own historical involvements in colonial oppression and ongoing inequalities, so concealing relationships of power. Bringing my analysis of the dramaturgy of this event together with interview material, I show how this polarised debate repressed and shamed aspects of students’ political commitments which could not be voiced in these terms.

The siting of early movie studios outside the gates of Paris had direct consequences for the promotion of the suburban landscape as an object of visual interest rich with narrative potential. Addressing the dynamics of ‘creative interaction’ between filmmaker and location, the author examines common industry practices from the turn of the century to 1920 based on an extensive filmography of Pathé and Gaumont shorts and features. Generic street views shot in such suburbs as Vincennes served to depict places that the fiction tagged as Parisian; editing-room sleight-of-hand could make two topographically distant locales appear as contiguous. Viewers were indifferent, however, to precise localisations of the streets, buildings and topographical features projected on screen; what mattered was the development of a rapport between narrative form and mood, character and place, as the comic films of Max Linder and the crime serials of Louis Feuillade make clear.

The chapter spans the period between the Copyright Act of 1956 and the 1970 general election. It discusses the impact of skiffle and beat groups and the development of the recording industry. The position of the UK’s orchestras is outlined. Internal machinations within the Union are reported, including the election of a new General Secretary, John Morton, in 1970. The development of the Keep Music Live campaign is highlighted. The development of ITV, relationships with the BBC and advent of pirate radio are reported. The reciprocal exchange of musicians across the Atlantic is explained.

Modern French town planning discourse was predicated on the idea that better architecture made for better, happier citizens, with rational architectural principles as the means to a fully realised modernity. After 1968, French filmmakers looked to the suburban new towns to voice the ambiguities and contradictions of rapid urbanisation. In Le Chat (Granier-Deferre, 1972), an ageing couple enter a downward social and psychological spiral as new high-rise construction menaces their decrepit suburban villa. The rough-and-ready La Ville bidon (Jacques Baratier, 1976) shows the struggle of junkmen and their marginalised families to resist expropriation at the hands of a town council that aims to develop a new town on a massive dumpsite. A spoof of streamlined post-modern living, Le Couple témoin (William Klein, 1978) parodies new town rhetoric under the guise of social experiment. The chapter concludes with a double reading of Eric Rohmer’s Les Nuits de la pleine lune (1984) and L’Ami de mon amie (1987) which by turns laud the new towns for their blend of leisure and work and deride their programmed aspect. Dysphoric and euphoric elements of suburban living are related to class-based investments and to the elusive prospect of happiness.

A theoretical introduction to the book, which outlines the problems with existing treatments of death in International Relations. The chapter uses continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and Bauman) and literature from the sociology of death to articulate a new theory of security – one where security is the ontological counterpoint to death anxiety. Security responds to, and functions to displace, the anxiety of mortality - which would otherwise disrupt the performance of sovereignty.

Chapter 6 examines the relationship between the programming state and social research. Initial crisis conditions had enabled increased social spending to be left off the government programmers’ agenda. The changed politics of increasing prosperity, as well as their own expanding ambitions, meant that this could no longer be sustained during the 1960s. Ireland’s social security provision became an object of both political debate and social scientific analysis in this period. The official response to this ferment was a Social Development Programme to which the ESRI was initially seen as a vital provider of inputs. During the 1960s a Save the West movement challenged both programmers and governing politicians. The official response to this challenge involved new structures for rural development with which the social sciences interacted as well as expanded social welfare provision to a class of smallholders whose resilience would later become an object of significant sociological study. As the 1960s proceeded, however, Irish state plans and programmes had to contend with an increasingly difficult external environment with which they ultimately failed to cope.

This chapter covers the modern era of the MU. It begins by noting internal reorganisation with the Union before examining its role in campaigning for reform of the licensing of live music and copyright. The Union’s attitude toward equalities issues is discussed before th chapter concludes by outlining its current role.

The book begins with reflections on the Musicians’ Union 2015 conference and the some of the perennial themes which such events have addressed. It then outlines the sources used for the book including previous literature, archives and interviews. The book’s theoretical paradigm – that musicians are best thought of as particular sorts of workers is then outlined. We then address a number of key themes which recur in the book including technology, the music industries, musical tastes, competition and gender.

This chapter examines the legislative process in Parliament. A wide but fragile alliance sought to strengthen the bill but was caught between the desire to move the policy in a more radical direction and the fear that the government would drop the bill that, after all, attracted little electoral support.The FOI bill reached Parliament following two highly regarded committee investigations in House of Commons and Lords. The government faced an increasingly assertive and expert alliance of Parliamentarians in both houses seeking a ‘stronger’ law, supported by campaigns by the national media. The government foresaw a difficult passage (Straw 2012). The government veto power was weakened and clauses made for better balancing tests when decisions to release were even.An ‘ultimate’ confrontation was foreseen for the final House of Lords stage when a cross-party grouping of Peers appeared set to hold out for a much stronger piece of legislation. However, amid rumours FOI would be dropped and behind-the-scenes deals, the alliance in the House of Lords was forced to choose between losing the bill and having a slightly improved Act on the statute books. The FOI bill was then finally subject to an abrupt, curtailed final debate in the Commons.