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From 1782 to 1834, the English social legislation shifted from a safety net devised to deal with emergencies to a social security system implemented to cope with the threat of unemployment and poverty. In the attempt to explain this shift, this chapter concentrates on the changed attitudes toward poverty and power relationships in eighteenth-century British society. Especially, it looks at the role played by eighteenth-century British economic thinkers in elaborating arguments in favor of reducing the most evident asymmetries of power characterizing the period of transition from Mercantilism to the Classical era. To what extent did economic thinkers contribute to creating an environment within which a social legislation aimed at improving the living conditions of the poor as the one established in 1795 could be not only envisaged but also implemented? In doing so, this chapter deals with an aspect often undervalued and/or overlooked by historians of economic thought: namely, the relationship between economic theory and social legislation. If the latter is the institutional framework by which both individual and collective well-being can be achieved the former cannot but assume a fundamental role as a useful abstraction which sheds light on the multifaceted reality in which social policies are proposed, forged, and eventually implemented.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, British public debt, accumulated over the eighteenth century and during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), had attained extremely high levels, at times even reaching 200% of the gross national product (GNP). This increase in debt paradoxically coexisted with the early progression of the industrial revolution.

In this chapter, we explain this concomitance by the effective policies of sovereign debt management put in place by the State and the Bank of England (BoE). First, the State put in place measures to lower its risk of default by funding its debt with tax revenue that would allow it to honour due payments. Second, following the suspension in 1797 of cash payments for pounds sterling, the BoE, in addition to its role in financing the State, followed an active policy of sovereign debt management, promoting both bank liquidity and market liquidity.

Received histories present national accounts as universal, purely economic measures based mostly on theoretical foundations. This paper argues that this is an anachronistic approach to the long and uneven development of these estimates and builds on geopolitical economy to examine national income estimates as quantifications of state power. First, it reveals national income accounts to be historically and geographically contingent rather than universal, suggesting contestation instead of any hegemony or dominance of one central ideology. Second, the economic power and motivations of nation-states, rather than economic theory, are at the core of the design of national income estimates, which are used to promote states’ position in international competition as well as advocate for particular national economic policies. The history of national accounting closely tracks the rise of the nation-state, the unique phase of British hegemony, the two World Wars, the east-west competition of the Cold War, and the north-south competition of the recent two decades. To this day, revisions to national accounting systems reflect the shifting balance of power and incessant international competition.

The eastern‐most lands of New Zealand are the Chatham Islands. Farming and fishing form the backbone of the local economy. These islands have great potential, in terms of food production and food exports. Yet, over the years, local entrepreneurs have encountered difficulties beyond their control. Essential to food exports is an effective transportation service at an affordable price. A local airline has been instrumental in exporting the fresh catch of local fishermen, who formerly obtained lower prices for frozen products. Livestock farmers, however, are subjected to schedules, rates and conditions imposed by an external firm, which appears to look after its own interests more than the common good of the island group.

We used the preceding definition to introduce our original article on resources in technology transfer that appeared in the fall 1994 issue of this publication. The emphasis is on technology transfer as a process, a series of interconnected events along a spectrum, leading from the discovery of a technology with potential value conceived in one institution up through its ultimate use by another institution. Naturally the process is frequently not a smooth one. Obstacles arise at many points along the way. These include such problems as lack of funding (by either or both parties to the process), lack of a champion to promote the technology (again in either or both parties to the process), cultural barriers within organizations, including the “not invented here” syndrome, impatience on the part of management to see quick results when it may not be possible to produce them, and lack of good information upon which to base decisions about the discovery, acquisition, adaptation, and use of technology. Clearly the technology transfer process is often expensive, protracted, and difficult.

BOOKS and Libraries for the Blind form the subject of a paper by Dr. Robert C. Moon in the May Library Journal. The writer is the son of William Moon, the inventor of the system of embossed writing bearing his name. He describes the systems of writing for the blind in use, and the various agencies for circulating literature. After examining the existing departments for the blind in Public Libraries, he comes to the conclusion that “all the libraries need more books, and if they are to reach and teach the adult blind they must have a fair proportion of them in the Moon type. All Public Libraries should possess a few works printed in the various types, care being taken to have a good supply of those embossed in the special type which is taught in the schools for the blind of the immediate locality, in order that the pupils in vacation time, and the graduates of the schools may be provided with reading matter, but the infirm and aged blind will be found in almost all communities, and for them books printed in the Moon type are indispensable. Alice S. Tyler describes the League of Library Commissions. “The success of the experiment in co‐operation which was inaugurated in 1901 by the library commissions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, whereby printed matter of common interest and equal necessity and value to these commissions was issued jointly, led to the suggestion that a national organization might more economically carry forward these and other lines of co‐operative work, leaving to the overcrowded state commission workers more time and money for the peculiar problems of each state.” This suggestion was brought up at the St. Louis conference, and resulted in an organization being formed under the title of the League of Library Commissions, consisting of one representative from each of the commissions included. The particular directions in which the League will promote co‐operative work are: carefully prepared lists of books for first purchase for small libraries; lists of new books which, upon examination, had been found desirable ; handbook of suggestions and direction as to the organization and management of small libraries; printed statement regarding the aims and methods of state library commissions, with comparison of their laws; definite help and suggestions on the subject of library buildings, especially floor‐plans arranged for economic administration, growing out of the experience of the library commissions in connection with the erection of Carnegie and other library buildings within the last few years; united effort to bring to the attention of book publishers the urgent need of good, durable binding, adequate indexing, &c.

This chapter discusses portrayals of attitudes towards and experiences of gender and sexuality diversity in The Archers and discusses the role of media in shaping social change. Using existing data on attitudes across the UK, a survey was developed for The Archers’ audience to measure listener perceptions of key character attitudes. The survey findings are compared against the UK data. Broadly, the audience perceived characters in The Archers as reflecting a similar attitudinal spread to the UK. However, irrespective of attitudes, within The Archers, there is a lack of representation of the experiences of gender diversity or alternative forms of sexuality. In conclusion, I argue The Archers could do more to drive social change by featuring a wider range of gender diversity and non-heteronormative queer experiences.

This paper compares the contexts of the writing of T. R. Malthus’s first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798); its reception by William Godwin, to whom the Essay was addressed; its interpretation by naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace; and its interpretation by modern commentators Kenneth Boulding and A. M. C. Waterman. The analysis helps explain how an essay that was written to defend social and economic institutions from critiques in utopian visions associated with the French Revolution came to be regarded as a model predicting overpopulation and exhaustion of natural resources.

To examine communities that temporarily demonstrated successful social and economic success, but regressed, or may have cycled through periods marked by unusual success and unusual failure.

The authors analyse events in two communities that have experienced disentrepreneurship.

The authors attribute three main forces accountable for community disentrepreneurship: a failure in community leadership that allows the continuation of path dependent patron‐client relationships, peripheralisation resulting from both geographical and infrastructure constraints, and failure to adequately diversify the economic environment. It is believed that further study of communities that have experienced such cycles is both warranted, and essential.

A useful source of information for academics as well as for town planners, policy‐makers and economists.

This paper addresses a largely overlooked area of the landscape.