Suchergebnisse

The essay deals with the innovative representation of espionage in Maugham's "Ashenden, or the British Agent" (1928) against a background of rising British spy fictions. It also explores the important influence of Maugham's work on this genre and its ability to offer a privileged perspective on the contemporary political world and the workings of power. In Ashenden this is further reinforced by the overlapping of the modalities of espionage and fiction writing, and by the ambiguous representation of villains.

One evening as he made his way to a local church social in the village hall during the 1950s, a loud crack shook the ground and the night sky turned to an orange glow, lighting the way for him. Shrugging his shoulders, the author made his way through the village, and in the distance he heard an explosion as a jet aircraft hit the ground. It was a common enough occurrence in the village of Ilton; RAF Merryfield was always losing aircraft and on a regular basis. Fifty years later, and in an effort to put his indifference right, the author began to investigate air crashes in and around Somerset

This paper examines the way in which farmers use survival strategies to ensure the reproduction of the family farm. These survival strategies develop from farmers' individual motivations and their attitudes towards social processes - the way they read history. However, farmers are constrained by their structural relationships. I argue that what is important is the way farmers understand their structural relationships and the meaning they give to them. This is so especially in the case of family farming, where there is an intersection between family-centred motivations and vocation-centred motivations. Initially I explore these issues by introducing the theoretical literature which attempts to understand the structural relationships in which farmers live and act. Then I describe farmers' family-centred and vocational-centred motivations (or privatisms) and the way in which they understand social processes. These form the foundation for farmers' survival philosophy and practice. I conclude by arguing that farmers are (unintentionally) reproducing the structural relationships that are threatening the survival of the family farm in its present form.