The proverbial Hippocratic injunction that medical practitioners must 'do no harm' makes accusations against doctors of crimes against the body particularly problematic. This chapter focuses on the occurrence and reporting of violent crime by medical men, specifically serious sexual assault and murder, where the latter includes all cases of suspected intentional, malicious killing rather than instances of incompetent treatment. It presents a case study of James Cockburn Belaney. The case of James Cockburn Belaney arguably went some way to create the discourse later satisfied by William Palmer as referent. It demonstrates that an acquittal in the 1840s was not necessarily sufficient to reassure a sceptical public that had already become convinced of a practitioner's guilt. Alfred William Warder's treatment by public opinion and the press in 1866 confirms in addition that the absence of a trial by jury was no protection against condemnation.

This chapter is based on an analysis of letters sent by members of the public to Casey Anthony, while she was awaiting trial for the capital murder of her daughter, Caylee. Caylee Anthony went missing in Orlando, Florida, in 2008, which Casey did not report to the police. After Casey’s mother had reported her granddaughter’s disappearance several weeks later, Casey was charged with her murder. Caylee’s body was not discovered until two months after this. The case was very high profile and received intense media coverage, including via social media. In June 2010, Florida’s state attorney’s office released letters that had been sent to Casey while she was in jail. She was tried and acquitted of Caylee’s murder and manslaughter in 2011. This chapter focuses on the letters sent to Casey by people who did not know her personally. It explores how they negotiated what they already knew of her and her case from media sources in relation to their own experiences and biography, in order to relate to Casey. In doing so, it analyses how correspondents variously drew on, utilised, reshaped and rejected discourses of femininity that circulate in legal and media constructions of high profile cases of women accused of murder. The chapter also examines how correspondents’ identification with, or rejection of, Casey Anthony and elements of her story was part of the process of their own identity construction

Research on decommissioning usually falls within a larger literature on disarmament-demobilization-reintegration (DDR). Although much of the literature on DDR treats it as a single process, some scholars have narrowed in on the process of disarmament (or decommissioning as it was called in Northern Ireland). This work makes several assumptions. First, a process for disarmament is usually an integral part of most peace processes. Second, international third parties are crucial to the process. Third, failure to decommission quickly or in full faith is usually a sign that violence between parties will resume. This chapter argues that decommissioning in Northern Ireland’s peace process does not conform to theoretical expectations about the role of decommissioning. In Northern Ireland peace makers avoided establishing a detailed process for decommissioning because many worried such details would thwart a deal. Though the failure to decommission did have political consequences—the power sharing Assembly at the centre of the Agreement was shuttered for several years—it did not lead a resumption of violence between parties. Rather, delays in the process contributed to spikes in internal violence.

This chapter examines two key programmes from the 1970s which were among the first to discard the thinly defined fictional agencies of the 1960s and make more serious claims towards representations of an ostensible 'real thing'. It also examines Special Branch (ITV, 1969-74), a series focused on the Metropolitan Police unit of the same name whose brief was focused on maintaining national security, gathering intelligence and protecting the state against threats of subversion. The chapter then describes The Sandbaggers (ITV, 1978-80), a series which focused on a fictional Special Operations section within SIS, which was notable for its unprecedented drive to demystify the bureaucracies of the intelligence world. The chapter provides some background information regarding shifts in the aesthetics of television drama over the late 1960s and early 1970s, arguing that this too had a key impact on changing conceptions of 'realism'.

From the beginning of the Troubles, groups in Northern Ireland deliberately sought and made use of transnational allies to further their political goals and gain strategic advantages vis-à-vis their opponents. Organizations on both sides of the conflict turned to external allies, including diaspora groups, like-minded movements, and groups with ideological affinities for accessing resources, expanding and practicing their tactical repertoires, and strengthening their claims to legitimacy. While the existence of this transnational dimension of the Troubles is well documented, the differences among cross-border networks—how they were structured, how they functioned, and their impact on the dynamics of the conflict—are less well understood. Drawing on social movement theory, particularly work on transnational advocacy networks, coalition formation, and diffusion, this chapter compares the structure and function of two types of cross-border networks that resulted: licit ties that publicly connected two or more groups, and illicit ties that allowed groups to forge secretive connections with potential allies.

This chapter outlines how by 1842 it is clear that Chartists across the movement highly valued moral, physical, and mental improvement and saw it as a prerequisite for any meaningful social or political change. Teetotalism was initially Chartism's most clearly popular politicisation of healthcare and attempt to build a 'self-culture' and 'elevate a higher nature'. Beyond teetotalism, the most important and visible means of inculcating the sorts of behaviour required by the new strategy was a broader culture of self-care. It was designed to improve the body and mind through sobriety and moderation in all things and the judicious use of medicine. Chartism's medical material and commodity culture was a clear expression of a moral politics that sought to restore natural law in order to undermine the conditions in which tyranny flourished.

Sinn Féin’s far reaching commitment to activist materials since the late 1960s included a devotion to the newspapers An Phoblacht/ Republican News. It was almost quixotically committed to producing AP/ RN and the paper became a far-reaching organ of political identity. During the Hunger Strikes of 1980/ 81 it was the authentic voice of those on the protests. Later, during the reforms of Peace Process era it articulated the changes in policy. However, Sinn Féin activists were keen to develop a mainstream vehicle for the newly dominant and optimistic strand of republicanism, one that might compete against the media outlets that had been overtly critical and hostile towards the party dating back to the beginning of the Troubles. The Belfast Media Group whose primary paper, the Andersonstown News, became associated with articulating Sinn Féin’s position throughout the 1990s and 2000s launched the republican daily newspaper Daily Ireland in 2005 in competition with the Irish News, the paper that has traditionally captured sales among the nationalist population of Northern Ireland. It was an experiment in assessing how far the shifts in the cultural and political tectonic plates of nationalism played into the media consumption habits of the people.

Andreas Höfele examines the ‘monstrous legacy of a Renaissance construe[d] as irrepressibly Gothic and ominously modern’ in a reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest through Oscar Wilde’s late nineteenth century Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Höfele takes Wilde’s reference to Caliban in the preface of the novel as a starting-point for a comparative investigation into the human/animal boundary within early modern and post-Darwinian discourses revealing ‘the grounds of the late nineteenth century Gothicization of the Renaissance’ in the striking affinities between unstable early modern boundaries and the ‘metamorphic’, ‘abhuman’ Gothic body of the fin de siècle (Hurley). Foregrounding a fascinating ‘swap of epistemic affiliations’, Höfele shows how ‘Dorian Gray roots himself in Renaissance Knowledge culture’, while ‘Caliban is adopted into the image store of popular science’ turning into the ‘Shakespearean icon of Darwinism’.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about the friendship between sovereign political agents, whose role in the modern world is performed by states. Friendship among nations or friendship between states constitutes a distinct kind of friendship. The book suggests that without an insight into the institutionalisation and conceptualisation of friendship, research into the expansion of the international society prompted by the founding fathers of the English School would remain incomplete. The study of the concept of friendship casts a critical light on the fundamental institutions of international society, such as international law, diplomacy and great power management. The book also practises a particular combination of the history of concepts and genealogy connected by the idea of rhetorical contestation. In doing so, it builds on insights from genealogical research and Quentin Skinner's methodological injunctions.

This chapter discusses several forms of witnessing horror, pain and torture in the context of religious and colonial massacres. Visual and textual evidence indicates that perpetrators used the forced witnessing of torment as a device to inflict additional terror upon their victims. Physical torment, hurtful bodies and witnessing were central features of English representations of the Irish rebellion. Martyrdom, barbarism and hell were crucial to the depiction of both victims and perpetrators. Catholics also adopted the hunt as a theme when attempting to highlight the victims' innocence and their tormentors' ferocity: Father Quinn, a Jesuit, wrote that the Cromwellian army was hunting priests 'with more fury' than when chasing wild beasts. The visual and textual strategies used to represent tormented bodies in the context of massacres fostered empathy towards the victims and the rejection of massacring practices.