History, Politics, Society and Media Research
Introduction
Researchers in this group are trained in History, Politics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and Cultural Studies and are specialised in the study of Western Europe, Chinese Central Asia, and Latin America. Their research focuses on:
- State and nation-building in colonial, post-colonial and (post-)Communist societies
- the articulation of national, regional, gender, ethnic, religious, and hybrid identities and their deconstruction through the analysis of discourses, representations, and socio-cultural practices
- the interactions between public policies and diverse social agents (processes of resistance, negotiation, and accommodation)
- State and nation-building in post-colonial and post-industrial societies
Research Aims
The profile of staff in History, Politics and Society (HPS) is heterogeneous but all of our researchers share the ability to interpret history and contemporary society by using a combination of archival sources and field work. While we are aware of the tensions between History and Social Sciences, with the former applying an individualising and contextualising perspective and narrative style and the latter focusing on abstraction and theorisation, we strongly believe in the fruitfulness of combining historical and institutional perspectives. According to J. R. Seeley's bon mot, History without Politics does not bear fruits while Politics without History lacks roots. Meanwhile, Historical Sociology and Social Anthropology allow for the building of bridges. For developing nations, often called "living museums" or "mausolea of modernity", these bridges are vital. On the one hand, the structures and functions of political rule result from their constitutive elements and cannot be reduced to aberrations from Western models or a Weberian idealtyp. On the other hand, developments in Latin America and Asia have had an important, and still under-researched, impact on Western civilization. In the age of globalisation and supra-regional block formation these two-way interactions increase.
Our aims are to
- study new theoretical developments and methodological approaches in History and the Social Sciences
- provide a forum for the discussion of research projects and funding bids, both by "lone scholars" and by small teams
- debate the outcome of research leave
- exchange manuscripts for critical comments
- discuss how research can inform teaching and, with this purpose, peer-review classes across sections
- help establish disciplinary pathways for UG and attract PG students to our fields
The area includes a range of interests in Media particularly in relation to Sport and to Popular culture.
HPS members are prominently represented in the leading national and international associations in our fields, for example:
- Society of French History and Societé de L'Histoire, Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
- Latin American Studies Association, Asociación de Historiadores Latinoamericanistas Europeos, Society for Latin American Studies, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutsche Lateinamerika-Forschung, American Historical Association, Asociación de Colombianistas, Society for Latin American Studies
- Association for Asian Studies, Central Eurasian Studies Society, and British Association of Chinese Studies
Howard and Oliart were co-convenors of the 2007 Annual Conference of the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) at Newcastle. Cross presides over the Association of Modern and Contemporary France and Hentschke is a member of the SLAS committee. All of us have run international research teams.
Research Interests
1. State- and Nation-Building in Colonial, Post-Colonial and (Post-)Communist Societies
(Jens R Hentschke, Nick Morgan, Patricia Oliart, Joanne Smith Finley)
Our researchers share an interest in the historical construction and reconstruction of states, nations, and communities, the political and socio-cultural philosophies which shaped these processes, and the differential impact supra-national integration and globalisation have had on societies, in postcolonial Latin America as well as in colonial Xinjiang ('New Dominion') in Northwest China..
Frontier modernization will inform HENTSCHKE's new cycle of research, beginning in 2008. He is interested in the impact different supra- and sub-national frontier regions in Latin America had on economic modernization and state formation and has begun explorative research for a pilot on Batlle y Ordóñez's Uruguay. His innovative combination of micro- and macro-history, intimate knowledge of Brazil's southern frontier, and comparative approach provide an excellent platform for an extension of his research into the thriving area of borderland studies. Part of this platform is his revisionist Positivism gaúcho-Style: Julio des Castilhos's Dictatorship and its Impact on State- and Nation-Building in Vargas's Brazil.
In this monograph, Hentschke reveals the extent to which the authoritarian interpretation of Auguste Comte by Castilhos, the first republican governor of Brazil's southernmost state Rio Grande do Sul, was inculcated in the polity of Getúlio Vargas's regime (1930-54) and beyond. At the 2007 SLAS Annual Conference, Hentschke also organised a two-panel session on 'Statistics, Mapping and Organograms' in which U.S., Latin American, and European scholars applied, in case and comparative studies, Laurence Whitehead's concept of the cognitive capacity of the public administration to a variety of Latin American countries during the 19th and 20th cc. Hentschke's interest in state organisation and reorganisation is shared with OLIART. Her forthcoming book La resistencia de los pequeños poderes y la reforma del estado en el Perú [Resistance of Lesser Powers and State Reform in Perú] is groundbreaking in showing how externally induced state reforms, suggested by the World Bank, collided with postcolonial realities which set limits to their implementation. MORGAN is working on a co-authored monograph on the development and perception of the nation in Colombia. It addresses the question of how Colombians relate their understanding of their immediate social reality to the idea of a 'national project'. Funded by COLCIENCIAS, this research results from field work carried out in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Cartagena and seven other municipalities. It notes that in spite of their deep cultural differences Colombians share a remarkably consistent scepticism towards state institutions and the formal mechanisms of democracy, as well as a common understanding of how power 'really' works. This negative perception of the political plays a key role in thinking beyond both officially sanctioned visions of nationhood and the somewhat naïve attempts to imagine an alternative, inclusive form of the nation that have tended to characterise current work in this area.
SMITH FINLEY is one of just few experts working on a politically contested border area presently called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regions, also known as Chinese Central Asia or Eastern Turkestan. Her work on the Turkic Muslim Uyghurs at China's Northwestern frontier posits that the emergence of ethno-nationalist ideologies during the 1990s resulted on the one hand from internal factors (adverse domestic policies such as Han Chinese immigration; related socio-economic inequalities), and on the other from external factors (in particular the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent socio-political transformations occurring directly across the border). 
Smith Finley's article 'Four Generations of Uyghurs: The Shift Towards Ethno-Political Ideologies among Xinjiang's Youth' nuances the contrastive attitudes of these generations and of different social groups towards the ethno-nationalist project. In a Times Higher Education Supplement review, it was hailed as one of the best articles to appear in the first issue of Inner Asia, the journal published for the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. This aspect of Smith Finley's work should offer interesting comparisons with the incorporation of ethnic minorities during periods of socio-political change in Latin America.
2. The Articulation of National, Regional, Gender, Ethnic, Religious and Hybrid Identities and their Deconstruction Through the Analysis of Discourses, Representations, and Cultural Practices
(Máire Cross, Hugh Dauncey, Rosaleen Howard, Nick Morgan, Patricia Oliart, Joanne Smith Finley)
CROSS is the author of several in-depth studies of French socialist activist and feminist Flora Tristan. Her current work analyzes the impact of Tristan on political networks of the late July Monarchy. The wider questions this research addresses are in what way the growth of political ideas in France interacted with mass literacy and to what extent correspondence contributed to the spread of political ideas as a form of social networking. An important source for exploring local political discourses and identities are Flora Tristan's journal and letters during her tour of France in 1843 and 1844. These documents allow conclusions with regard to the relationship between feminism and socialism in the life and work of Tristan and thereby contribute to a better understanding of French political feminism, as a collective movement, in the early nineteenth century. In addition, Cross and Oliart are preparing a conference on travel and transnational identities, including Tristan's stay in Peruvian Arequipa. DAUNCEY is also interested in the development of political ideas, identities, and values in France but focuses on the period from the late 19th century to the present time. His area of expertise, media and sports culture, is unique at Newcastle. 
He has contributed to a refocusing - within some fields of French Studies - on the 'popular', and his most recent edited volume on the centenary of the Tour de France was and remains the only serious overall analytical study of this major sporting event. His current project, a single-authored monograph on the history of cycling in France intends to shed further light on both professionalism and amateurism. The project will focus on the development of a 'model' of sport independent of British 'Corinthian' values, the institutionalization of sporting sociability, and the impact of technological innovation on the patterns of sport and leisure. Dauncey will continue to research public cultural policies, the sociology and economics of popular music, and the politics of the media, areas in which he has widely published.
All other scholars in our grouping focus on contemporary issues. The three Latin Americanists - Howard, Oliart, and Morgan - deconstruct discourses in the Andean region and the continental Caribbean. HOWARD, in her book chapter 'Yachay: The Tragedia del fin de Atahuallpa' as Evidence of the Colonization of Knowledge in the Andes" is concerned with conflicting popular constructions of history. This study provides an exegesis of a traditional Quechua drama, whereby the Spanish conquest is revealed as a process of colonisation of indigenous systems of knowledge, including knowledge of history. Howard is now working on cultural politics in the Bolivia of Evo Morales, with focus on the idea of 'performance' of power, mediated in public discourse, dress, and other expressive channels. OLIART works on Peru in a comparative perspective. Past research included the situation of indigenous intellectuals and the politics of their identity construction, drawing on Oliart's experience as executive director of a project involving academics, activists and indigenous leaders from nine Latin American countries. More recently she has explored the political, economic and scientific challenges of the country's biodiversity and the environment as well as the implications of development policies. This has resulted in a chapter in the edited volume Perú: El Problema agrário en debate [Peru: The Debate on the Agrarian Problem], co-edited by Oliart. She is currently concluding a project on the future of biodiversity and the creation of natural reserves in the Peruvian Amazon. 
The third Latin Americanist in our group, MORGAN, is a specialist of Colombia, Venezuela and Panama who tries to analytically capture in what way race, class, and gender merged in the construction of national identity in Colombia. Among the outputs of his research are the book chapter 'Ese oscuro objeto del deseo: raza, clase, género y la ideología de lo bello en Colombia' and the article 'Lo decimos con cariño? Articulating Blackness in Colombia: Affection, Difference or Inequality?'. From a broader perspective, Morgan addresses the methodological crisis within the inter- or trans-disciplinary projects associated with cultural studies. He examines whether key concepts like representation, discourse and hegemony allow us to account adequately for social phenomena and questions whether such analytical tools should be modified or abandoned. He also considers how discourse analysis and qualitative research methods can be better integrated to produce results capable of contributing to the current debate on democracy in Latin America.
SMITH FINLEY's work on changing identities among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang analyzes how Uyghur national identity (in opposition to state representation of minority identity) is embodied in, and promoted through, negative stereotyping of the Han Chinese 'Other', the construction of ethnic boundaries, and the more recent phenomenon of Islamic renewal. These themes have been explored in two articles, 'Making Culture Matter: Symbolic, Spatial, and Social Boundaries Between Uyghurs and Han Chinese' and 'Chinese Oppression in Xinjiang, Middle Eastern Conflicts, and Global Islamic Solidarities among the Uyghurs'. Another dimension of Smith Finley's research in this area complements both Dauncey's work on popular music and that of our Latin Americanists on ethno-political discourses and practices. She is interested in alternative representations of Uyghur identities in 'new folk' and other popular songs in Chinese Central Asia. The most prominent outcome of this research is her book chapter 'The Quest for National Unity in Popular Uyghur Song: Barren Chickens, Stray Dogs, Fake Immortals and Thieves.' Here she shows how the works of certain contemporary singers struck an emotional resonance with diverse sectors of the Uyghur populace from the late 1980s on, and began to transcend social divides of oasis origin, occupation, generation, political orientation, educational level and degree of religious observance. By focusing instead on the ethnic boundary between the Uyghurs and a monolithic Han 'Other', these singers were able to blur intra-ethnic divides to a significant degree. At the same time, the hierarchical older/younger sibling relationship inherent in Chinese government rhetoric surrounding Han-minority relations was deliberately re-cast as a relationship of coloniser to colonised.
3. The Interactions Between Public Policies and Diverse Social Agents
(Jens R Hentschke, Nick Morgan, Patricia Oliart, Rosaleen Howard, Joanne Smith Finley)
The topic of education reform unites the Latin Americanists in our grouping. HENTSCHKE's monograph Reconstructing the Brazilian Nation: Public Schooling in the Vargas Era deals with regulated citizenship during the long Vargas era and exemplifies how a combination of historical and institutional approaches can shed new light on the development and implementation of public policy in regionally diverse and multi-ethnic societies. This study goes beyond the analysis of national debates and laws and explores the implementation of education policy from the national to the regional, municipal, and individual school levels in two key states, Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul. Hentschke shows that Vargas's reforms were characterised by a technocratic modernization philosophy, political indoctrination, and the aim of cultural and ethnic homogenization. Such a policy left little room for genuine inter-governmental co-operation, had no ear for critical educators and inspectors, and by-passed teachers. Real progress was possible, but it resulted from remarkable grassroots initiatives, rather than an increasing infrastructural power of the State. OLIART's above-mentioned study on the ambiguities and limitations of World Bank-led state reforms in Peru's rural Quechua communities also focuses on the educational sector. It explores the particular translations that local officials make of innovative technical state discourses such as 'gender equity', 'respect for cultural diversity', and 'decentralisation', when it comes to the distribution of power and control over rural schools. Racism remains predominant and girls receive almost half the years of schooling than boys get. Work as a consultant also prompted Oliart to write an article on the politics of indigenous rights, gender, equity, and indigenous women's organisations in Peru that examines the complex relationship between these grassroots associations and the discourses of gender equity and indigenous rights promoted by donor organisations and the State. The other Andeanist in HPS, HOWARD, has carried out field research on intercultural bilingual education programmes for Quechua-speaking people in the Andes. Her Por los linderos de la lengua: Ideologías lingüísticas en los Andes [Along the Boundaries of Language: Linguistic Ideologies in the Andes] explores the often conflicting discourses of state education policy planners and agents at the grassroots, such as teachers and community leaders. Howard taught on university postgraduate programmes on inter-cultural education in Ecuador and Peru and, like Oliart, acted as a consultant on inter-cultural education.
MORGAN's recent research in Colombia focuses on public policy making and participatory democracy. In his role as a consultant of the Alcaldía de Bogotá he was involved in a project that used qualitative methods to evaluate the impact of the participatory programmes put into place by the Polo Democrático administration of Lucho Garzón. His executive report to the Alcaldía, which is currently being reworked in the form of an article for the Bulletin of Latin American Research, concludes that the Polo's attempt to open up the political process is characterised by an unequal conflict between the desire to involve a variety of social actors in decision-making and the bureaucratic logic that drives the agenda of most municipal institutions. At the same time, the second Polo triumph in the recent elections can largely be understood as a result of the popularity of the welfare programmes introduced to deal with extreme poverty. At the same time, however, the increased expectations produced by Polo's discourse of political inclusiveness have gone some way towards combating the deep scepticism towards politics that characterises vulnerable communities in Bogotá.
Education, one of the Latin Americanists' interests, and the tensions between official government language policies (as enshrined in the Chinese Constitution) and the situation at the grassroots are also a central theme of SMITH FINLEY's research. In Xinjiang, Uyghur parents have been increasingly forced to place their children in Chinese - rather than Uyghur - medium schools if they are to later benefit from the educational and vocational opportunities open to Han Chinese. In a paper given at the international conference 'Situating the Uyghur between China and Central Asia' (SOAS, 2004), co-organised by the author, Smith Finley explores the resultant cultural hybridity of the minkaohan, or young Uyghurs educated in the Chinese language. Minkaohan grow up in Uyghur families and are given a traditional education in Uyghur socio-cultural practices, practices deeply penetrated by Islam. Later they attend Chinese-medium schools, where they are exposed to the Chinese language and contrastive Chinese notions of culture. The transfer produces a myriad of 'types' on a broad spectrum of hybrid cultural combinations. Some experience a sense of shame or cultural lack; others consider themselves 'modern', 'progressive' and 'internationalist'. Upon leaving education, minkaohan enter adult life to find that their partial sinicization can earn them only partial entrance to the sphere of Han privilege, while the two worlds they span are fundamentally divided by inter-ethnic tension and conflict. This paper will shortly appear in the volume Situating the Uyghurs between China and Central Asia, co-edited by Smith Finley, and related questions will take up in more detail in her monograph Between Purity and Hybridity: Negotiating Uyghur Identities in Contemporary Xinjiang (work in progress).
Staff
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Professor Máire Cross
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Dr Hugh Dauncey
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Professor Jens R Hentschke
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Professor Rosaleen Howard
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Dr Nick Morgan
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Dr Patricia Oliart
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Dr Joanne Smith Finley
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