This chapter presents the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in São Paulo. This criminal group rose to the position of legitimate normative regime among a minor but relevant part of the residents of the city outskirts. Mapping alternative ‘courts’ performed by criminals in São Paulo, in three different levels of conflict, including a ‘debate’ via cell phone conference in seven of São Paulo’s prisons, the chapter argues that these mechanisms are central factors explaining the drop in homicide rates in São Paulo during the 2000s. Claimed publicly by the state’s government and military police, these courts themselves became important sources of legitimacy for the PCC’s expansion in Brazil.

Mobilisation is associated both with modernisation of the armed forces and security of the nation and, related to that, readiness to face challenges as the leadership seeks to establish the kind of force structures required to resolve weaknesses and maximise advantages. This chapter discusses the ongoing debate in the Russian armed forces about structure, particularly the need for large armies in modern war and the difficulty of economically sustaining them. The Russian armed forces are undergoing an intensive period of reform and re-equipment. Following the Russo- Georgia war in 2008, the Russian leadership instigated what Mikhail Barabanov has called the 'most radical military reform since the creation of the Red Army following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution'. Alongside the reform, re-equipment and establishment of new structures, many thousands of exercises have been conducted. These have taken three main forms: civil defence and emergency management, policing and military.

If genre is an analytical category or formal property shared with other art forms, it has long proved especially important to film. The first of four substantive sections here considers attempts to devise taxonomic and iconographic models of film genres, and assesses their explanatory force. A second section positions genres less as quasi-scientific categories than as provisional labels attached to groups of movies by diverse interest groups: it asks, therefore, who gets to enjoy definitional power in such situations. The section that follows is preoccupied by genres and history, exploring both the internal history and evolution of a genre and the complex ways in which that genre is related to broader historical shifts and tendencies. Subsequently, discussion takes place of the continuing analytical viability of the idea of genre (in the face of some critics’ claims that we live now in a period of filmmaking characterised not by strict generic demarcation but by generic assemblage or hybridity). The chapter’s case study, bringing together and testing these various conceptual strands, is of the superhero movie.

The ability to construct a clear coherent case, supported by argument, evidence and references is an obviously valuable skill, as is recognised in the subject benchmarking statement for History, drawn up by the Quality Assurance Agency. This chapter focuses on the issues of planning and structuring in the process of writing an essay and explains what plagiarism is. It offers a guide to the writing of academic history at undergraduate level, to the skills involved, and contrasts this with the non-academic uses of history. A crucial starting point when approaching an essay question is to identify the historical debate to which it directly or indirectly refers. The chapter examines the wider benefits of developing an aptitude for writing essays. The knowledge gained by history students and the skills and aptitudes that they develop as they learn to write historically have a significance that extends well beyond the seminar room.

The first tentative indications that times were changing came in the 1960s and, more particularly, the 1970s. The sustained civil rights protests of these years contributed to growing interest by scholars in examining the strategies of protest and accommodation adopted by African Americans in earlier periods. The daily lives of black slaves in the antebellum South became an especial focus for academic study. Historian Daniel Leab's line of enquiry typified what by the 1980s had become a dominant trend in studies by cultural historians, namely to explore the origins, character and significance of stereotyped depictions of African Americans in US popular culture. The 1990s saw both rapid and unprecedented developments in the academic study of popular culture. In part this interest can be seen as reflecting the cult of celebrity that enveloped the leading stars of sport, music, film and television entertainment at the close of the century.

This chapter explores the first defining moment in Mancunian football, the 1904 FA Cup success, and its impact on the city’s footballing culture, considering how Manchester’s footballing identity became established during this period. Manchester City established a successful sporting heritage for the city at a time when those connected with Newton Heath recognised the significance of utilising the Manchester name. The identity of Manchester’s football clubs became fixed at this time as Newton Heath became Manchester United. Success helped to establish civic pride and marked a turning point in the way the game was viewed locally and, as a result, Manchester started the process of becoming established as a major centre for the game at all levels. Manchester became a footballing city.

The 'Great Migration' from 1915 to 1925, during which some 1.25 million blacks left the South to settle in major urban centres of the North like New York and Chicago, was an issue that attracted the attention of white Americans. This chapter discusses the approach of W. E. B. Du Bois to the academic studies on black migrants from a sociological, rather than a historical perspective. The emphasis on cultural awareness and achievement during the Black Power era highlighted the fact that African American cultural history remained a largely neglected area of twentieth century black history. In an influential 1937 article the African American scholar and leading inspiration of the Renaissance, Alain Locke, famously recorded what appeared to be a virtual obituary for the movement.

The collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War altered the international system. For half a century, its bipolar structure had affected the behavior of the world’s states. Suddenly, the collapse of the USSR left the USA as the world’s only remaining, ubiquitous superpower. The collapse suddenly released a score of states from Soviet dominance; all of them sought to preserve and enhance their new-won independence while scrambling for new alignments to help maximize their wealth and security. The result was realignments and flux. Pessimistic observers saw breakdown of order and increasing uncertainty. Optimistic observers saw new opportunities and a new world order based self-determination. The optimistic attitude prevailed in the West. This chapter explores this optimism. It considers in particular the resurgence of neo-idealist values which informed the liberal-democratic activism of the USA and its Western allies. The prime reflection of this neo-idealist thrust was the theory of the democratic peace, which is presented and assessed in this chapter.

The growth of football in Manchester saw clubs such as Manchester Football Club, the ‘absolute pioneers’ of rugby in the region, established in 1860, with several other clubs also being founded, mostly in the then wealthier residential areas of the conurbation, such as Broughton, Didsbury, Sale, Whalley Range and Old Trafford. The prominent members of these clubs appear to have been from the upper class or from respected middle-class occupations, and many were former public school boys. The major focus of this chapter is a detailed analysis of Hulme Athenaeum and its development as an association football club. This informs a discussion on the influence of class, public schools and communities on the propagation of the sport. When considering longue durée thinking, it is evident that Hulme Athenaeum’s influence was felt from 1863 through to the establishment of the Manchester County Football Association in the mid-1880s and on to the professional game. Manchester’s first trophy successes came at a time when John Nall, Hulme’s first football secretary in 1863, was still an active member of the conurbation’s footballing community.

Drawing on the cultural tradition of the martyr as a figure whose suffering confirms the truth of his testimony to a cause, this chapter examines the precarious terms on which singular individuals are allowed – or called upon – to speak for themselves and others. Moving from live art practices of self-injury where blood is really flowing through performative renditions of endurance to works which invoke the logic of the confessional, it examines the narratives of self-sacrifice and redemption which surround martyrdom – and the contemporary works which challenge their logic.Featured practitioners: Ron Athey, Kira O’Reilly, Franko B, Eddie Ladd, Adrian Howells, Scottee.

This chapter examines the social and ideological bases of voting behaviour in 2016. Referring to the classic debates in the comparative literature on political cleavages and upon earlier empirical investigations of the Irish case, the core question the chapter seeks to answer is whether there may be a strong link between voters’ socio-demographic traits, their broad policy beliefs and their party choice in this election. Building on a similar study of the 2011 election, which found evidence of the emergence of class-based politics, the analysis on this occasion reveals some interesting trends, particularly relating to Sinn Féin. Its steady rise in electoral support over time has seen it emerge as a major player in Irish party politics, with important implications for how we might view the ideological basis of voting behaviour in Ireland. The analysis in this chapter finds that Sinn Féin’s strong socio-demographic profile (working class, left–wing and in favour of Irish unity) sets it apart from the other major parties, differentiating it in terms that would be familiar in a political cleavage-based analysis.

This chapter presents the book’s analytical framework and analyses three micro-scenes of interaction, arguing that everyday life plays a critical role in the objectification of differentiation. With special focus on the third interaction, involving the representation of peripheries and the ‘world of crime’ in São Paulo, it discusses how difference operates when the marginals appear to be getting closer to the established middle classes. Native categories and analytical concepts are both understood here as intervals of plausible meaning, a formal structure where contents are always mutually situated and constructed within the normative ideal boundaries established by routine use. The ethnographic reflection on the three empirical situations gives rise to a broader interpretation of how the recent authoritarian wave in Brazil is based on the construction of ideal categories. The authoritarians rely on how gender and state, as well as race, religion, family, class, sexuality and crime are entangled to serve their national project. The aim is to debate how the contemporary social life flows intertwine the production of those ideals, and to reflect on how the aesthetic of their emergence in the quotidian impacts on the construction of the general public sphere.