Sue Middleton
Biographic Data
| ID | 347206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sue Middleton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sue |
| FAMILY NAME | Middleton |
| SIGNATURE | MIDDLETON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waikato |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5952-0882 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 168 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Time is always guilty
This essay explores representations of modernity in interwar detective fiction in Britain. It argues that Agatha Christie's Poirot novels break with the classical function of detective fiction by highlighting an unmasterable disorder behind the apparent regularity of modernity; and that the conservative tendencies commonly perceived in those novels were, paradoxically, much more prominently exhibited in detective fiction by politically "progressi…
The Crisis of Democracy in Interwar Britain
This article reconstructs and examines the idea that democracy (in various senses) was fragile or, as some had it, in ‘crisis’ in interwar Britain. Recent scholarship on interwar political culture has generally emphasized its democratic or ‘democratizing’ character, in line with a conventional historical view of Britain as an exception to the instability and contestation of democracy in Europe. It is argued here that Britain's embroilment in a Eu…
As the crones fly
Catalysed by conversations amongst a group of colleagues, this article is an initial exploration of what happens to women academics aged 60+ who work in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is an example of when academic theories, in this case feminism, are called forth by real-world experiences – in this case, increasing academic job insecurity, catalysed by post-pandemic economic shortfalls. We blend together personal anecdotes and f…
The Concept of “the Establishment” and the Transformation of Political Argument in Britain since 1945
This article examines the formation and development of the concept of the Establishment in British political argument after its recoining in a celebrated article by the journalist Henry Fairlie in 1955. The author argues that the term “the Establishment” did not have a stable referent but rather acquired a range of possible meanings and uses as part of a new political vocabulary within which the course and significance of recent political and soc…
Raymond Williams's "Structure of Feeling" and the Problem of Democratic Values in Britain, 1938-1961
This article traces a history of the literary critic and theorist Raymond Williams's idea of the "structure of feeling", the formation of which is situated within debates about the place of artistic and moral values in democratic politics during the 1940s and 1950s. It demonstrates that the "structure of feeling" was intended to circumvent an equation of collective normative legislation with totalitarianism in the early cultural Cold War, by conc…
Henri Lefebvre on education
The ‘spatial turn’ in education policy studies fuelled interest in Lefebvre’s work: initially, in his work Production of Space and, more recently, Rhythmanalysis and Right to the City. Yet, although in these texts Lefebvre critiques universities and schools and introduces original pedagogical concepts, their educational strands have attracted little attention. Lefebvre’s other works available in English have been largely overlooked in education l…
Time and Politics
This ambitious and provocative book aims to show how the emergence of ‘modern’ understandings of time influenced the reform of parliamentary procedure in Britain and the ‘British World’ during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resulting in a transition from deliberative to ‘executive-centred’ legislatures that continues to shape contemporary political cultures. From the early nineteenth century, Ryan Vieira claims, the use and effecti…
The Concept of “Experience” and the Making of the English Working Class, 1924–1963
Despite intense scholarly interest in the “Anglo-Marxism” that rose to prominence in Britain from the mid-1950s, its intellectual lineaments and lineages have yet to be fully accounted for. This is particularly the case with the concept of “experience,” which was a central category in the work of two of the most influential figures of the early “New Left” in Britain: Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson. This essay traces a conceptual history of “…
One Hundred Years of Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Affluence’ and the Left in Britain, c .1958–1974
Accounts of British politics in the 1950s and 1960s have treated ‘affluence’ as a socio-economic condition to which political thinkers and actors responded, with greater or lesser success. This overlooks the contemporary significance of ‘affluence’, which is better understood as a conceptual field in which many of the Left’s crucial ideological and strategic battles were fought during the 1960s. Whereas historical usage has broadly followed Labou…
I Wouldn’t Change Having the Children—Not at All.’ Young Women’s Narratives of Maternal Timing
Putting Sylvia in her place
New Zealander Sylvia Ashton‐Warner, a teacher in remote rural Māori schools in the 1940s–1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre a…
Schooling the labouring classes
Published in London between 1839 and 1852 and aligned with the commercial \nobjectives of the New Zealand Company, the New Zealand Journal included letters from \nemigrants. This paper studies letters written by a small cohort of rural labourers who \nemigrated from Ham House in Surrey to Wellington in 1841. Following Dorothy Smith, \nI read them as ethnographic data, interrogating them in relation to ruling-class texts \nincluding Company record…
Research assessment as a pedagogical device
Recent restructuring of research funding for New Zealand’s higher education institutions is ‘outputs‐driven’. Under the Performance Based Research Fund, units of assessment of research quality are individuals, every degree teacher receiving a confidential score of A, B or C (if deemed ‘research active’) or ‘R’ (‘Research Inactive’). Despite its relatively high number of A and B rated individuals, Education’s collective ranking was low. I intervie…
The Declaration of Independence
The place of theory
The year 1998 marked 50 years of doctoral study in New Zealand, and in 1999 I embarked on a history of Ph.D. theses in Education. Influenced by Foucaultian genealogy, this employed a fusion of bibliographic, archival and life-history interview methods. One hundred and eighty-three Education theses were identified and 57 of these graduates interviewed. How has New Zealand's 'corpus' of Education Ph.D. thesis production been enabled and constrained…
Poverty and social exclusion in Britain
Young People as Real Citizens
Based on a major qualitative study, this article examines young people's status as citizens. It argues that UK social policy assumes that young people lack citizenship—and so need interventions to develop their citizenship—but that this assumption is not based on concepts of citizenship, but on how youth is (mis)perceived. The research found that the young people prescribed to a number of different interpretations of citizenship, often simultaneo…
Overview-Bodies of Knowledge
The three authors in this symposium have been reading, conversing, writing, teaching, studying, and presenting together for many years. As a group, or in various combinations, we have participated
Pedagogy and Post-coloniality
The academic study of Education1 1. A capital E is used when Education refers to Education as an academic subject or discipline. A lower case e is used to refer to education as a process. (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of “contrapuntal reading” with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course …
Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607-1800
1University of East Anglia Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607–1800 KennethMorgan EdinburghEdinburgh U. P. 2000152Paperback£12.95
Young People Talk about Citizenship
The citizenship literature includes remarkably few empirical studies. In this\narticle we report on how young people in a British city perceive citizenship and\ntheir own transitions as citizens. Of five models which emerged, the most\ndominant was ‘universal status’, followed by ‘respectable economic independence’,\n‘constructive social participation’ and, less frequently, ‘social-contractual’\nand ‘right to a voice’. The extent to which the you…
Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe
There are estimated to be almost 60 million people living in poverty throughout the European Union. This bleak statistic underlines the value of this important book which explores the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in six European countries, namely: Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK. The book focuses on four ‘life course’ groups who might be considered particularly at risk: young adults, lone parents, the si…
Teachers Talk Teaching 1915-1995
Schools at War
This paper was presented at the Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, 8‐12 April 1996. The wider study is reported in Middleton & May (1997)
Young People as Real Citizens
Based on a major qualitative study, this article examines young people's status as citizens. It argues that UK social policy assumes that young people lack citizenship—and so need interventions to develop their citizenship—but that this assumption is not based on concepts of citizenship, but on how youth is (mis)perceived. The research found that the young people prescribed to a number of different interpretations of citizenship, often simultaneo…
Young People Talk about Citizenship
The citizenship literature includes remarkably few empirical studies. In this\narticle we report on how young people in a British city perceive citizenship and\ntheir own transitions as citizens. Of five models which emerged, the most\ndominant was ‘universal status’, followed by ‘respectable economic independence’,\n‘constructive social participation’ and, less frequently, ‘social-contractual’\nand ‘right to a voice’. The extent to which the you…
Affluence’ and the Left in Britain, c .1958–1974
Accounts of British politics in the 1950s and 1960s have treated ‘affluence’ as a socio-economic condition to which political thinkers and actors responded, with greater or lesser success. This overlooks the contemporary significance of ‘affluence’, which is better understood as a conceptual field in which many of the Left’s crucial ideological and strategic battles were fought during the 1960s. Whereas historical usage has broadly followed Labou…
Doing Feminist Educational Theory
This paper arises from my work as a teacher of courses in feminist educational theory in a New Zealand university. Students usually encounter educational theories as disembodied abstractions scattered in fragments in various, often seemingly unrelated, courses. In a crowded curriculum there is little space for them to create their own educational theories or to reflect on the processes of educational theorising. In this paper I speak with two voi…
Raymond Williams's "Structure of Feeling" and the Problem of Democratic Values in Britain, 1938-1961
This article traces a history of the literary critic and theorist Raymond Williams's idea of the "structure of feeling", the formation of which is situated within debates about the place of artistic and moral values in democratic politics during the 1940s and 1950s. It demonstrates that the "structure of feeling" was intended to circumvent an equation of collective normative legislation with totalitarianism in the early cultural Cold War, by conc…
Making claims
I Wouldn’t Change Having the Children—Not at All.’ Young Women’s Narratives of Maternal Timing
Schooling and Radicalisation
This paper overviews part of a wider study of feminist teachers, born and educated in New Zealand in the years immediately following World War Two. The method used is life history analysis, which explores ‘biography, history and social structure’. The first part discusses the post‐war educational context through analysing contradictions in curriculum policies and expectations for girls’ education and exploring the relevance of these to the resurg…
The Concept of “the Establishment” and the Transformation of Political Argument in Britain since 1945
This article examines the formation and development of the concept of the Establishment in British political argument after its recoining in a celebrated article by the journalist Henry Fairlie in 1955. The author argues that the term “the Establishment” did not have a stable referent but rather acquired a range of possible meanings and uses as part of a new political vocabulary within which the course and significance of recent political and soc…
Putting Sylvia in her place
New Zealander Sylvia Ashton‐Warner, a teacher in remote rural Māori schools in the 1940s–1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre a…
Research assessment as a pedagogical device
Recent restructuring of research funding for New Zealand’s higher education institutions is ‘outputs‐driven’. Under the Performance Based Research Fund, units of assessment of research quality are individuals, every degree teacher receiving a confidential score of A, B or C (if deemed ‘research active’) or ‘R’ (‘Research Inactive’). Despite its relatively high number of A and B rated individuals, Education’s collective ranking was low. I intervie…
The place of theory
The year 1998 marked 50 years of doctoral study in New Zealand, and in 1999 I embarked on a history of Ph.D. theses in Education. Influenced by Foucaultian genealogy, this employed a fusion of bibliographic, archival and life-history interview methods. One hundred and eighty-three Education theses were identified and 57 of these graduates interviewed. How has New Zealand's 'corpus' of Education Ph.D. thesis production been enabled and constrained…
Towards an oral history of educational ideas in New Zealand as a resource for teacher education
Feminist Educators in a University Setting
The Crisis of Democracy in Interwar Britain
This article reconstructs and examines the idea that democracy (in various senses) was fragile or, as some had it, in ‘crisis’ in interwar Britain. Recent scholarship on interwar political culture has generally emphasized its democratic or ‘democratizing’ character, in line with a conventional historical view of Britain as an exception to the instability and contestation of democracy in Europe. It is argued here that Britain's embroilment in a Eu…
As the crones fly
Catalysed by conversations amongst a group of colleagues, this article is an initial exploration of what happens to women academics aged 60+ who work in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is an example of when academic theories, in this case feminism, are called forth by real-world experiences – in this case, increasing academic job insecurity, catalysed by post-pandemic economic shortfalls. We blend together personal anecdotes and f…
The Concept of “Experience” and the Making of the English Working Class, 1924–1963
Despite intense scholarly interest in the “Anglo-Marxism” that rose to prominence in Britain from the mid-1950s, its intellectual lineaments and lineages have yet to be fully accounted for. This is particularly the case with the concept of “experience,” which was a central category in the work of two of the most influential figures of the early “New Left” in Britain: Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson. This essay traces a conceptual history of “…
The Declaration of Independence
Schools at War
This paper was presented at the Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, 8‐12 April 1996. The wider study is reported in Middleton & May (1997)
The Sociology of Women's Education as a Field of Academic Study
(1984). The Sociology of Women's Education as a Field of Academic Study. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 42-62
The Wealth of the Churches
Review of The Religious Empire by Lowell Martin, A. Larson, and C. Stanley.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Making claims
The Sociology of Women's Education as a Field of Academic Study
(1984). The Sociology of Women's Education as a Field of Academic Study. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 42-62
Schooling and Radicalisation
This paper overviews part of a wider study of feminist teachers, born and educated in New Zealand in the years immediately following World War Two. The method used is life history analysis, which explores ‘biography, history and social structure’. The first part discusses the post‐war educational context through analysing contradictions in curriculum policies and expectations for girls’ education and exploring the relevance of these to the resurg…
Feminist Educators in a University Setting
Why Gender Research
The Lives of Teachers
Doing Feminist Educational Theory
This paper arises from my work as a teacher of courses in feminist educational theory in a New Zealand university. Students usually encounter educational theories as disembodied abstractions scattered in fragments in various, often seemingly unrelated, courses. In a crowded curriculum there is little space for them to create their own educational theories or to reflect on the processes of educational theorising. In this paper I speak with two voi…
Towards an oral history of educational ideas in New Zealand as a resource for teacher education
Disciplining Sexuality
The Present as History Time Travels - Canes, Berets, and Rock 'n' Roll Swinging Chicks? - Sex Education, Feminists, and the Sexual Revolution Indecent Thoughts - the Politics of Censorship Embodying Educational Theory
Teachers Talk Teaching 1915-1995
Schools at War
This paper was presented at the Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, 8‐12 April 1996. The wider study is reported in Middleton & May (1997)
Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe
There are estimated to be almost 60 million people living in poverty throughout the European Union. This bleak statistic underlines the value of this important book which explores the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in six European countries, namely: Austria, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal and the UK. The book focuses on four ‘life course’ groups who might be considered particularly at risk: young adults, lone parents, the si…
Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607-1800
1University of East Anglia Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607–1800 KennethMorgan EdinburghEdinburgh U. P. 2000152Paperback£12.95
Young People Talk about Citizenship
The citizenship literature includes remarkably few empirical studies. In this\narticle we report on how young people in a British city perceive citizenship and\ntheir own transitions as citizens. Of five models which emerged, the most\ndominant was ‘universal status’, followed by ‘respectable economic independence’,\n‘constructive social participation’ and, less frequently, ‘social-contractual’\nand ‘right to a voice’. The extent to which the you…
Young People as Real Citizens
Based on a major qualitative study, this article examines young people's status as citizens. It argues that UK social policy assumes that young people lack citizenship—and so need interventions to develop their citizenship—but that this assumption is not based on concepts of citizenship, but on how youth is (mis)perceived. The research found that the young people prescribed to a number of different interpretations of citizenship, often simultaneo…
Overview-Bodies of Knowledge
The three authors in this symposium have been reading, conversing, writing, teaching, studying, and presenting together for many years. As a group, or in various combinations, we have participated
Pedagogy and Post-coloniality
The academic study of Education1 1. A capital E is used when Education refers to Education as an academic subject or discipline. A lower case e is used to refer to education as a process. (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of “contrapuntal reading” with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course …
Poverty and social exclusion in Britain
The place of theory
The year 1998 marked 50 years of doctoral study in New Zealand, and in 1999 I embarked on a history of Ph.D. theses in Education. Influenced by Foucaultian genealogy, this employed a fusion of bibliographic, archival and life-history interview methods. One hundred and eighty-three Education theses were identified and 57 of these graduates interviewed. How has New Zealand's 'corpus' of Education Ph.D. thesis production been enabled and constrained…
Schooling the labouring classes
Published in London between 1839 and 1852 and aligned with the commercial \nobjectives of the New Zealand Company, the New Zealand Journal included letters from \nemigrants. This paper studies letters written by a small cohort of rural labourers who \nemigrated from Ham House in Surrey to Wellington in 1841. Following Dorothy Smith, \nI read them as ethnographic data, interrogating them in relation to ruling-class texts \nincluding Company record…
Research assessment as a pedagogical device
Recent restructuring of research funding for New Zealand’s higher education institutions is ‘outputs‐driven’. Under the Performance Based Research Fund, units of assessment of research quality are individuals, every degree teacher receiving a confidential score of A, B or C (if deemed ‘research active’) or ‘R’ (‘Research Inactive’). Despite its relatively high number of A and B rated individuals, Education’s collective ranking was low. I intervie…
The Declaration of Independence
I Wouldn’t Change Having the Children—Not at All.’ Young Women’s Narratives of Maternal Timing
Putting Sylvia in her place
New Zealander Sylvia Ashton‐Warner, a teacher in remote rural Māori schools in the 1940s–1950s, became internationally renowned as a novelist and educational theorist. Earlier commentators portrayed her educational theory as in conflict with those of her time and place, but recent studies conceptualise them as enabled by it. While space/place has often been considered the preserve of the geographer and time that of the historian, Henri Lefebvre a…
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · History (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works)