This chapter provides an overview of reactions to homosexuality across a broad spectrum of the Left from the late 1940s to just before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. During this time, we can see an increase in public discussion of homosexuality and we can also see that the social, cultural and economic changes in post-war Britain had marked implications for the Left. The working class seemed to be blurring with the middle class, and the age of affluence had unsteadied traditional alliances. The Labour Party and Communist Party both negotiated youth as a political category, but, were not able to countenance a left-wing politics of sexuality. World War II changed the ways in which many men experienced their homosexuality. This chapter also looks at the lives of two contrasting figures within the Labour Party, Tom Driberg and George Brinham. It then examines how the Trotskyite movement influenced the gay liberation movement, and later gay activism. Finally, it discusses entryism among the Left.

This chapter reviews the structures, both formal and informal, through which democratic control is exercised over the formulation and conduct of Irish foreign policy. It analyses in detail the parliamentary contribution to Irish foreign policy formulation and considers public engagement in the policy process. This chapter evaluates the strength of democratic currents and their potential to transform the formulation and conduct of foreign policy. It also considers the role of narratives in Irish foreign policy construction and the way in which different narratives may become evident in the assumptions of particular sets of foreign policy actors.

A Girl at a Celebration: Miss Violence

First you see a door opening, the door frame just fitting inside the camera frame. We enter the middle-class sitting room of an Athenian family. Confetti, dancing, the celebration of a birthday and of intergenerational kin cohabitation, as you often find it in Greece: a daughter confiding to her mother that she is pregnant; a father and/or grandfather dancing with his young grandchildren and/or children (exactly in this ‘and/or’, as the viewer will soon realise, lies not only the interpretative anxiety that the film provokes, but also the violence structuring the life arrangements of this family group). There is a close-up of the eleven-year-old girl whose birthday they are celebrating. She balances on the window to the soundtrack of Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to the End of Love. She falls.

The camera then follows her out of the window. We realise that the flat in the previous scenes has been on the fifth floor or so. As the camera pans to a vertical crane shot, the dead body of the young girl now lying on the ground seems like it is being inspected, surveyed – the square-tile pattern now looks more and more like a graph measuring her dead body, blood slowly pouring from it. In the first three minutes of Alexandros Avranas's Miss Violence (2013), we have gone from an opening that alerts to its allegorical potential, to a realist depiction of a family celebration and a suicide, to a body filmed lying still and framed as a sign of something larger. For the two hours that follow in this gripping, harrowing film, which is often extremely difficult to watch, we will be constantly moving between several levels. There is the story of abuse, exploitation, child sex-trafficking and incest during the Greek crisis; a pater familias inflicts all of the above on the members of his family, in order to ‘make ends meet during a difficult period’.

Identity Strategies within Traveller Storytelling

It has been recognised for some time that storytelling practices are intrinsically linked to the educational and cultural development of individuals within their communities. Niles observes that storytelling amounts to the maintenance of ‘social equilibrium by strengthening the bonds of affection between individuals while affirming the beliefs and values on which the continuing existence of a community depends’ (1999: 171–172). Before moving on to Part II of this book and looking at examples of Traveller storytelling in some detail, this chapter sheds light on debates around individual and group identity formation, and what this means in the context of the Travellers’ unique identities. Given the mostly twentieth-century-based perspectives of the opening chapters, this chapter goes on to furnish the reader with insights and perspectives from more contemporary members of Scotland's Traveller communities. We bring together the discussions from previous chapters to think about how Traveller storytelling traditions set themselves apart. Within a Traveller-centric, humanistic framework, it anticipates the detailed discussions of Part II by showing how the Travellers’ storytelling traditions represent a singularly Traveller cultural conceptualisation.

Lauri Honko has suggested that, within identity research, ‘the mainstream is towards analysing the identity of the individual, not necessarily in isolation from groups but as the final result of different group experiences, [and] shared values’ (1988: 14). This is an important insight from Honko which suggests that we can tap into the overarching values and beliefs of the group by looking closely at the identities of individuals from within the group. However, Honko perceives problems with this approach, in that the resulting analysis may reveal more about the individual than the ‘identity strategies of a collective body’ (ibid.).

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about the situation of India in the context of globalisation. This volume argues that India is much more than a state and explains that it has a long history that has had a tremendous impact on the society, culture, politics and economy of this vast country and our perceptions of it. It examines how globalisation has brought about change in India and suggests that it can be argued that globalization has promoted and not challenged modernity.

This chapter discusses different aspects of the Mafia in Italy, first by describing the organisation in itself, as an institution parallel to and independent of the state. The focus is on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, although some comparisons are made with other Italian Mafia groupings. The chapter argues that the relation between the Mafia and the state should be understood as an exchange relation, although some sectors are more penetrated by Mafia interests than others. The chapter then looks at the Mafia's territorial control and the weakness of the state and shows that the Mafia's power is closely related to its control over a specific territory, including control over the citizens who are living in that area. It also considers the Mafia's mental control and argues that the Mafia has actively used some Sicilian values as a means to render its activities more legitimate. The sway of the Mafia is not only a consequence of distrust: it is also a promoter of distrust. The chapter concludes by discussing the Mafia and its role in politics.

This chapter explores the responses of both the British Hospitals Contributory Schemes Association (BHCSA) and individual hospital contributory schemes to plans for the creation of a new health service. It describes BHCSA responses to the policy process during the periods between Ernest Brown’s parliamentary statement of October 1941 and the 1944 White Paper, and between the White Paper and the National Health Service (NHS) Bill of 1946. This chapter also analyses the failure of schemes to influence events related to the creation of the NHS in the context of the literature of pressure group politics.

This chapter sets the scene for the book. It establishes the state of relations between Britain and Germany as the Labour government took office, as a yardstick against which to determine whether continuity or change marked the following six years. It also explores the domestic pressures — economic, party political and public opinion — that motivated actions by Harold Wilson and his ministers, especially in the period immediately after October 1964. In this period, there were incidents that might have had a damaging and lasting effect upon the understanding between Britain and Germany, but both governments recognised that ultimately their interests were better served by a good relationship, and agreed to increase their bilateral contacts to ensure that the improvement in relations that had been fostered by the previous Conservative government was maintained.

With the spread of portrait photographs in the modernist period, face studies became more important than ever. Portrait photographs allowed for the reading of faces without the presence of the sitter, inviting close attention to sitters’ gazes, gestures, and ways of presenting themselves to the camera. The beholders could feel their enigmatic attraction: a human face taken out of its everyday context; a gaze that seemed to look through the viewer, infinitely out of reach. An almost ghostlike presence, transported by light. Every analog photograph has a history of pairs of eyes looking at it, investing it with emotion: sympathy, love, jealousy, dismay. Such photographs are touched, held, kissed, and tossed away; they are provided with frames or put into albums. They also have a history of fading and decay; over time, they become shaded, tainted, or folded, dissolving between someone's hands or slowly fading in a drawer.

During the decades before and after 1900, the portrait photograph started to appear as a literary motif. Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf stand out as particularly important in this respect. All of them had personal experiences with portrait photographs and were passionate about the medium. In their work, they reflected upon the phenomenon, depicting how their characters collect, behold, and cherish portrait photographs. Yet they also recognized the disturbing aspects of portrait photographs and paid attention to the difficulty of reading faces, the problem of the unreturned gaze, and the challenge of living with ghostlike doubles. Not least, they employed literature to reflect upon portrait photographs as a medium and the uncertain status of the human face.

In his fiction, Franz Kafka explores a set of inscrutable power relations and the precarious situations they create for his characters. Both metaphysical and profane forces seem to be at work, along with various technological entanglements. Portrait photography plays a role in this blend; in a variety of texts, Kafka displays a remarkable awareness of the powers of photographs. He depicts how they play a role in emotional life, creating attraction, longing, and sympathy as well as distrust and distress. He shows that they can be captivating in a limiting way, but also suggests that they can instigate processes of liberation. This engagement with portrait photographs reveals the fragile relation between human beings and technology and discloses how the premises for contact, communication, and identity formation were subject to change in Kafka's day.

Just like Proust, Kafka was passionate about portrait photographs in his personal life. The strongest evidence of this is his correspondence with Felice Bauer in the period 1912–17, which included an exchange of almost forty photographs. Kafka's letters testify to a deep emotional investment in Felice's photographs, and they reveal that he had a jealous eye and an obsessive interest in details. These letters show that photographs play a key role in creating intimacy and distant love. In Kafka's fiction as well, photographs proliferate, and especially family photographs play a key role. The characters’ relation to such photographs reveal their ties of loyalty, emotional attachments, and imaginary lives. Kafka shows how photographs have a sway over the characters and serve as the compensatory gazes of the family members. Upon closer inspection, however, the photographs are ambivalent; they depict silent gestures and suppressed emotions. Beholding such photographs, his characters undergo both emotional and intellectual processes, sometimes immersing themselves in the pictures, sometimes attempting to interpret them, and sometimes considering their own relation to the photographs.