Democracy and political culture : studies in modern British history / Ross McKibbin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McKibbin, Ross, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Democracy--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Democracy.

Political culture--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Political culture.

Social structure--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Social structure.

Political culture--Great Britain--Cross-cultural studies.

History.

Great Britain.

Genre:

Cross-cultural studies.

History.

Physical Description:

184 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Summary:

Democracy and Political Culture: Studies in Modern British History attempts to give a total picture of the political-social culture of Great Britain in the twentieth century. To do so it chooses a number of particular subjects which nonetheless stand for this culture as a whole, and which together allow us to reach a number general conclusions about modern British history. In this sense it is a successor to McKibbin's previous collection of essays, The Ideologies of Class (1991), while it also takes up a number of the themes of his Classes and Cultures (1998). Above all, it is a study of British democracy and asks the questions: what does it mean to describe Britain as a democratic society and how might we measure it against other comparable societies? To do so, McKibbin has chosen not only more 'global' subjects - Britain's social structure and the sources of political authority; the social and political effects of the first world war; Britain's electoral and party system; its literary culture; its sporting culture, and the relation of that culture to the rest of the world, as well as to Britain itself; and a comparison of Britain's political culture with one of the closest comparable societies, Australia, and what that tells us about Britain - but also individual studies of three men, very prominent in British life, who, in different ways, both contributed to Britain's political culture and were also students of it: J.M. Keynes, an economist, Harold Nicolson, a politician and writer, and A.J. Cronin, a novelist. All three represented British political culture in its broadest spectrum.

Contents:

1 J.M. Keynes as Sociologist: The Rentier in the Social System p. 6

2 A Story of His Time: The Political Career of Harold Nicolson p. 31

3 The Triumph of the Medical Hero: A.J. Cronin's The Citadel p. 52

4 The Two-Party System in Britain: End or New Beginning? p. 77

5 Sport Between 'Play and 'System' p. 102

6 Sport as Religion and Emotion p. 120

7 Undoing Stereotypes: Britain and Australia in the Twentieth Century p. 143.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0198834209

9780198834205

OCLC:

1048285760