This chapter suggests that Algernon Charles Swinburne's work might be located in relation to a period in the history of the lyric genre when poetry confronts modernity, and vice versa. It begins with a reading of a central genre 'problem' of Poems and Ballads, First Series. Swinburne may have been caricatured in 1866 as a 'melodious twanger of another man's lyre', but in dramatising the desire lines of a collective lyric subjectivity he makes a crucial statement on the cultural crisis in and formation of the genre. Swinburne's 'The Roundel' is a poem about the form itself and sets the parameters for the volume's commentary on poetic voice. The 'desire lines' concept, elaborated through a reading of the roundels, gives us a model for how Swinburne finds in sexual desire a trope for the community of the lyric subject.

This moves the analysis to community level, examining organisational features: the strike committees and centres, the fund-raising and the soup kitchens; and the contribution of women, as both activists and breadwinners. It explains varieties of pit-level commitment in terms of differential access to factors that reduced the economic cost of striking and increased the social cost of strike-breaking. Moral economy considerations are again emphasised, notably the manner in which communal attitudes to coal, collieries and jobs shaped strike commitment. The gendered nature of this commitment is analysed, with the hounding by women of strike-breakers as deviant and lesser forms of men. Pre-strike performance was also important in building strike endurance, representing a resource around which strikers could organise, to protect something valuable with perceived long-term potential.

This chapter focuses on two aspects of the church's North American experience which both complicated and extended its role as it had developed in the home country. First, the place of the church in North America was very dissimilar from its position in England. Second, North America gave the Church of England the possibility of operating on a far broader canvas and the prospect of bringing its brand of Protestantism to a far wider world than had been dreamt of in the first century of the Reformation. The chapter considers the progress and initiatives made by the church in America during the later Stuart period. The presence of the Church of England in North America offers an interesting case study of the later Stuart church, where some of the issues and problems encountered by the church in Old England were transplanted to British North America.

This chapter demonstrates the extent of women's involvement in a theatre of the Second World War, the Battle of the Atlantic, which in the popular memory is an entirely masculine affair. As victims of the Battle of the Atlantic, women had a particularly high value in the propaganda war. The chapter shows the diversity of contemporary and life-writing texts produced for women, about women and by women in relation to their involvement in this particular theatre. The ENIGMA texts are usually marked by a continuing discretion and deference to the male on gender issues. The chapter also shows how concerns about national morale, a willingness to utilise existing stereotypes about gender, led to the production of strikingly similar narratives to explain the involvement of women in the war at sea.

Lil' Kim's first musical track, 'Big Momma Thang', is audible as he purchases a small order of popcorn, a large order of butter and a load of napkins. Lil' Kim's Hardcore introduces and develops the Queen Bitch persona, Lil' Kim's alter ego, who features in all her records to date. Hardcore essentially tells the tale of Queen B's rise to wealth and fame in a music business that for a woman is virtually no different from the sex business. As if confirming Queen B's work ethic gone bootilicious, the male hip hop stars past and present involved in the porn industry all stressed its economic dimension and the hard work involved. The chorus to Lil' Kim's track 'We Don't Need It' stages a sexual stand-off in which that relation is contested in the form of a symbolic exchange.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book presents a study of the communist life and the communist experience of membership. The study will place itself on the interface between the membership and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) by considering the efforts of the latter to give shape to that experience. The book claims that a communist life provided a positive life experience for those who embraced the Bolshevik 'faith', although it also recognises that it could bring pain and disillusionment to others. It aims to give a qualitative sense of the experience of membership and activism as it was felt by different individuals in different ways. The book draws on the experiences, recollections and commentary of long-serving members and those who remained in the communist framework for shorter periods.

In the conclusion, Levine makes more explicit the themes throughout the work: figure-ground reversal, obviation, and scale. At the same time, she relates these themes to the ethnographic moment both in South Korea and ethnography more generally. Finally, the conclusion restates the key arguments and contributions of the book.

This chapter describes the conflagration of forces from above (the rapid expansion of the foreign aid regime) and below (the rise of an increasingly powerful NGO sector) that transformed aid and humanitarianism into key constituents of international relations in the 1970s. It illustrates how these twin themes became the defining elements in the ‘fire brigade’ states’ relationships with the developing world. The resulting description acts as a distillation of several key narratives at the heart of this book. It describes increasing Irish government interest in foreign aid (including the birth of the official aid programme in 1974) as a result of changes in the international environment, pressure to match the contributions of its peer group of states, and the obligations of its membership of the European Community, but also as a response to growing domestic debate – not least the consolidation and expansion of the NGO sector in the post-Biafra period. The chapter concludes by emphasising the important link between aid and Irish state identity: as an extension of the country's colonial and missionary heritage, its anti-colonialism, and its approach to international relations (the pursuit of justice, collective security, and the creation of a stable international system).

Grace Ashley-Smith had managed to make practical arrangements through her contacts in Belgium to provide nursing and ambulance support for the Belgian Army in Calais. This chapter focuses on the developments and highlights the ways the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) were able to take opportunities and risks that stretched them and helped them cope with the labours of the First World War. It shares the story of the first FANY working for the Belgians at Lamarck Hospital from 1914-1915. The FANY at Lamarck came close to the firing line through their work at a Regimental Aid Post associated with the battalion doctors of the Belgian Army. Ashley-Smith nonetheless set out with her colleagues to find an appropriate site and settled upon a church hall at St Ingilvert. The big opportunity for the FANY was the running of a canteen for Belgian convalescents at Camp du Ruchard.

Militarization and post-armistice demilitarization had been active and hybrid processes. This chapter explores the history of militarized environments between 1918 and 1940 that was characterized by the lingering physical and cultural legacies of one war and the ever-heightening fears, and then arrival, of another. It begins the story with the devastation wreaked by the First World War. As battlefield tourism increased after the cessation of hostilities, the guidebooks portrayed a war-ravaged land. War-damaged forests that pre-existed the Western Front would simply be subsumed within the new forest. The afforestation programme was therefore poised to transform the region. Cemeteries and memorial sites gave sections of the red zone a national purpose by turning former battlefields into sites of remembrance and commemoration. The trauma and immense loss of life during the First World War made the French determined to avoid another war.

The Highland support for Jacobitism gave it a degree of military credibility in the same way that the French connection boasted its political and diplomatic standing, but the commitment of the clans seems paradoxical. The clans of the inner and outer Hebrides played little part in the '45. The appeal of Jacobitism for the clans may have been based on the fact that they could readily identify with the values of kinship and hereditary right which were shared by both monarchy and clanship. There were two key differences from the aftermath of the '15 rebellion. First, a huge regular army, supported by naval units, had been drawn into the heart of the Highlands and could be used in effective combination for punitive action against the clans. Second, the '45 rebellion had come too close to success and the social system which had produced the attempted counter-revolution had to be destroyed.