Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker (Ideas in Context)
Cambridge University Press, 8/26/1994
EAN 9780521461252, ISBN10: 0521461251
Hardcover, 270 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
The definition of 'Englishness' has become the subject of considerable debate, and in this important contribution to Ideas in Context, Julia Stapleton looks at the work of one of the most wide-ranging and influential theorists of the English nation, Ernest Barker. The first holder of the Chair of Political Science at Cambridge, Barker wrote prolifically on the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, and his writings are notable for fusing three of the dominant strands of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century political thought, Whiggism, Idealism and Pluralism. Infused with a strong cultural sense of nationhood, Barker's writings influenced a broad non academic audience, and their subsequent neglect graphically demonstrates the fate of a certain vision of Liberal England in the generation after World War One. With, however, the erosion of a particular sense of Englishness, Barker's ideas have begun to assume renewed resonance.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Lancashire, Idealism and Whiggism
the making of an English political scientist
2. The polis, law and the development of political studies at Oxford, 1900–20
3. Society and the state in the English national past
the lure of Pluralism
4. Statehood, nationhood, and internationalism
English political theory and the First World War
5. Education and national character
the milieu of King's College London
6. 'Continental' political science and the Cambridge Chair
7. Traditions of civility
the construction of Englishness in the Second World War and beyond
8. The expansion of Englishness
the Books Commission, Europe, and the Commonwealth
Conclusion. A late-Victorian liberal-conservative
Select Bibliography
Index.