The lawn-tennis shoe was a popular, widely available commodity in late-Victorian Britain. Associated with new forms of sporting practice and consumption, this type of footwear was mass-produced in modern factories, promoted in the popular leisure press, and sold to both men and women in a variety of retail environments. This article analyzes processes of product innovation, production, and sale, and it situates the shoes within a wider context of sport, commerce, fashion, and class and gender relations. Like other late-Victorian sporting and recreational practices, lawn tennis combined material objects, physical activity, and the stylized display of gender and class ideals. Footwear was valued for symbolic and physically practical reasons. Ideas of intended use determined its design and material form. Sportswear created and communicated new masculine ideals. As lawn-tennis shoes moved from the court into everyday usage, the meanings attached to them accommodated a broader range of practices and contexts.

This article shows how John Maynard Keynes's lifelong commitment to eugenics was deeply embedded in his political, economic, and philosophical work. At the turn of the century, eugenics seemed poised to grant industrial nations unprecedented control over their own future, but that potential depended on contested understandings of the biological mechanisms of inheritance. Early in his career, Keynes helped William Bateson, Britain's chief proponent of Mendelian genetics, analyze problems in human heredity. Simultaneously, Keynes publicly opposed the efforts by Francis Galton and Karl Pearson to study inheritance through statistical biometry. For Keynes, this conflict was morally laden: Mendelism incorporated the only ethical theory of uncertainty, while biometry rested on false and dangerous concepts. This early study of heredity shaped Keynes's visions of industrial democracy after 1918. Liberals looked for a system of societal and economic management to engineer an escape from the postwar Malthusian trap. Britain's economic plight, Keynes argued, was rooted in the hereditary weaknesses of its leadership. Successful technocratic liberalism would depend on control over the quality as well as quantity of human beings. Ultimately, in his essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Keynes predicted that effective eugenic management would bring about capitalism's end.

There has been little discussion of central bank accountability in recent decades because monetary policy has been seen as an essentially technical problem. Yet, during the 2008 financial crisis and the economic dislocations that ensued, central banks gained considerably in authority—bailing out failing institutions, using unorthodox monetary tools, and wading into sovereign debt crises. At the same time, the financial crisis and the slow recovery that has followed have revealed just how uncertain and volatile the global economy can be—a situation that poses new dilemmas for monetary policy. This article looks at the existing model of central bank accountability and finds it wanting in this new, more uncertain environment. Because the principle of central bank independence involves a very narrow set of objectives—generally focused on an inflation target—and very few opportunities for sanction, the main mechanism for accountability is that provided by the publication of information about the bank's deliberations and activities. In an era of increased economic uncertainty, when central bankers themselves admit that simple rules and models are no longer adequate, a narrow, transparency-based form of accountability is not sufficient. I suggest that we need a thicker, more robust form of accountability that fosters more deliberation and debate, ensures that central banks are answerable to their publics, and broadens the standards by which they are judged.

Drawing on the Mandela file in the Wits University Archives covering all aspects of his relationship with Wits, and on Mandela's prison correspondence, this article rotates around a remarkable story of persistence in the face of adversity and repeated failure – the story of Nelson Mandela's 46-year long pursuit of the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree. In 1943 he first enrolled as a part-time law student at Wits University and finally graduated with an LLB through the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1989, a year before his release from prison. Fresh light is thrown on the Wits University Mandela dealt with, and on the obstacles placed in the way of his prison studies. Throughout there is a focus on Mandela and Wits – the university's impact on him as a student, his attempts to complete his Wits LLB while on Robben Island, his candidacy from prison for the Wits chancellorship, and, as president, his remarkable reunion with the law class of 1946.

This contribution seeks to explore the potential for historical archaeology in Uganda. By reflecting on where the potential strengths of such an approach may lie it is suggested that the most effective contributions will be made where there is a significant breadth and depth of historical sources. However, in Uganda the emphasis has tended to be on archaeological sites with distant or even dubious historical associations. The situation is further complicated by the very active processes of history making that are currently taking place, particularly in association with ‘traditional’ spirit worship. Nevertheless there are a range of themes and contexts which could be explored through historical archaeology and there are also plentiful archaeological resources from the twentieth century. It is concluded that there is great potential for historical archaeology but that there needs to be a readjustment of the contexts and situations that are explored.

On September 25, 2015, the world's leaders adopted a new suite of development goals—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—that are to guide policymakers for the next decade and a half. On first inspection, the declaration is breathtaking in its scope and ambition. Constituted by a list of 17 goals and 169 targets, it is arguably the most comprehensive global agenda adopted since the UN Charter in 1945. Its thematic repertoire ranges from poverty, health, education, and inequality, to energy, infrastructure, climate change, marine resources, peace, security, and good governance. The UN Secretary-General welcomed the SDGs by praising their “universal, transformative, and integrated agenda” that heralded a “historic turning point for our world.”

The battle over who controls Warri has been underway for several generations. The most violent eruption of this struggle occurred between 1997 and 1999. This article traces the history of this struggle to the colonial period, during a time of administrative restructuring called reorganization, which began in 1928. Contrary to the recent popular and scholarly understanding of the Warri crisis as an outcome of crude oil politics, I argue that British colonial state intervention set in motion a deadly, ethnicized struggle over political and material resources, which has only been exacerbated by the zero-sum politics of the crude oil economy.

Patti Tamara Lenard assesses the justifications given for the right to revoke citizenship in democratic states and concludes that this practice is inconsistent with a commitment to democratic equality. She provides three normative reasons for the mismatch between democratic principles and revocation laws: that the practice of revocation discriminates between different citizens within each state; that it provides differential penalties for the same crime; and that it does not provide transparent justification or due process for this harsh punishment. Although I too am repulsed by this practice, I do not think it is necessarily undemocratic. Moreover, such analysis overlooks one legitimate motivation behind expatriation: the aim to regulate national allegiance. The new revocation initiatives act as a powerful symbolic tool in reinforcing a world order based on sovereign nation-states.