The American Revolution and Christine Desan's New History of Money

This essay argues that Christine Desan's Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism intervenes decisively in debates over the origin of money, while making a fundamental contribution to the legal history of money, the philosophy of money, and the history of capitalism. Desan shows money to be a mode of governance, created by rulers to extend their power, and maintained and managed by their successors. She argues that British politicians reinvented money at the end of the seventeenth century, creating the essential institutional basis for contemporary capitalism. The essay builds on Desan's analysis, showing how the tools she develops to understand the origins and development of British money can help us explain the expansion of capitalism, and the transition to capitalism associated with the American Revolution.     

Local authority performance indicators: Dousing the fire of campaigning consumers?

Much criticism has been levelled at the reliability of the Audit Commission's measures of local authority performance, but less attention has been paid to the reality of their empowering effect on consumer groups. This article reports on the impact of the policy on one consumer group, ALL MOD CONS, a national charity which campaigns for more and better public toilets. It argues that, far from empowering the group, the annual publication of performance indicators has diverted its energies and resources into disseminating the Audit Commision's statistics to their members and drawing misleading conclusions from them which risk undermining the group's credibility. The case raises questions about the role of performance indicators in the democratic process.     

Blood and bone: body mass,gender and health inequality in nineteenth-century British families

In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, a new institution emerged: the modern prison. Some prisons invested in scales. Upon entry, prisoners were measured and personal details documented. These meticulously compiled records afford a new vantage point from which we can peer into the dynamics of the household. Body measurements – height, weight, and body mass (weight adjusted for height) – connect to both patterns of consumption and health risk. Prison data thus speak to both gender and health inequality in the past. The paper juxtaposes a service economy (Wandsworth near London) with a modern manufacturing sector (Paisley near Glasgow) in order to contrast how economic form and opportunities in the market sector shaped relations and outcomes in the household sector. We find that families bargained over the allocation of resources; that bargaining position was influenced by economic value, mediated by maternal sacrifice; that this was an earner bias rather than gender bias; and that new industrial work for women and children supported a more egalitarian distribution that improved everyone's health status via superior heights and heavier weights. We examine Irish immigrants to assess cultural differences in family behaviour. Finally, the paper offers, for the first time, a detailed interpolation of Waaler's health risk for women.     

Practical lessons from gender audit of an education sector plan in Lao PDR

In 2013, the Laos Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) commissioned a mid-term review of the Education Sector Development Plan 2011–2015 (ESDP, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Ministry of Education and Sports 2010). Plan International, a United Nations Girls Education Initiative partner, worked with MoES to lead a gender audit for the mid-term review. The gender audit strengthened the mid-term review and contributed to the design of the new ESDP. A MoES gender and inclusion working group was established, providing an institutional structure to support focused policy dialogue and address recommendations. This note recommends the inclusion of gender audits within mid-term reviews and final evaluations of sectoral plans to ensure that investments adequately address gender equality.