Richard Mcmahon
Biographic Data
| ID | 3624207 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Mcmahon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcmahon |
| SIGNATURE | MCMAHON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1194-1933 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
New Europeans on the cultural cleavage
Making sense of the European Union
Geopolitical triangle
Is Alt-Europe possible? Populist radical right counternarratives of European integration
After the 2016 Brexit referendum, European populist radical right (PRR) parties shifted towards what I call an alt-European policy programme. Alt-Europe is a conservative, xenophobic intergovernmental vision of a European 'community of sovereign states', 'strong nations' or 'fatherlands', that abhors the EU's 'centralised' United States of Europe. Whereas most work on the PRR examines its national impact and plots party programmes on a spectrum f…
Narrative Ju-jitsu
Recent scholarship has increasingly recognised the crucial role of political narratives in and for European integration. Since its earliest days, supporters have justified integration by telling stories about its beneficial contribution to peace, prosperity, and democracy. In this article and the special issue, we contribute to the burgeoning literature on (counter)narratives to European ‘union’ (any integration beyond intergovernmental cooperati…
Resurecting raciology? Genetic ethnology and pre-1945 anthropological race classification
This article places the current high-profile and controversial scientific project that I call 'genetic ethnology' within the same two-century tradition of biologically classifying modern peoples as pre-1945 race anthropology. Similarities in how these two biological projects have combined political and scientific agendas raise questions about the liberalism of genetics and stimulate concerns that genetic constructions of human difference might re…
National Races
National Races
The history of transdisciplinary race classification
A recently blossoming historiographical literature recognizes that physical anthropologists allied with scholars of diverse aspects of society and history to racially classify European peoples over a period of about a hundred years. They created three successive race classification coalitions – ethnology, from around 1840; anthropology, from the 1850s; and interwar raciology – each of which successively disintegrated. The present genealogical stu…
Religion, civilisation, geography
Taking scholarship on the European Union’s (EU) 2004 eastern enlargement as a case study, this article asks whether EU studies scholars make normative judgements about how far east the EU should expand and whether these judgements involve civilisational thinking. Civilisations are categories devised by scholars to classify peoples into coherent ancient, continental-scale cultural groups, largely defined by shared history and religious tradition. …
Narrating European integration
This article introduces the special issue on narrating European integration. Narratives, or stories, are a key mechanism for constructing individual and collective identities, and other politically important elements of discourse. The articles in this special issue go beyond most existing work on narratives. First, they examine the actors and networks, ranging from EU institutions to political parties and social groups, which create, foster and d…
Progress, democracy, efficiency
This article identifies influential political narratives in the 73 currently most highly cited political science articles on the EU. It is based on systematic analysis of expressions of normativity, which signal that European integration, or its institutions or policies, are bad, good, flourishing or declining. A normative narrative of continuous progress in integration, connected with a 1990s grand theoretical debate in EU studies, accounts for …
Fall and Rise
Sociologists of science emphasize the crucial role of the day‐to‐day practices of scholars in defining academic disciplines and epistemological schools. Taking the case of EU Studies (EUS), this article examines the key practice of normative writing. I analyze the degree to which 70 highly‐cited journal articles of political science writing in EUS explicitly or implicitly suggest that European integration or its institutions or policies are bad o…
The Races of Europe
The Irish Dilemma
This chapter spotlights the eclectic relationships of nineteenth-century ethnology with history, philology and literary studies. Irish race classifiers used these interdisciplinary links to capitalise on Ireland’s living Celtic language.
Not all low-carbon energy pathways are environmentally “no-regrets” options
Energy system pathways which are projected to deliver minimum possible deployment cost, combined with low Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, are usually considered as ‘no-regrets’ options. However, the question remains whether such energy pathways present ‘no-regrets’ when also considering the wider environmental resource impacts, in particular those on land and water resources. This paper aims to determine whether the energy pathways of the UK’s Ca…
Homicide in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland
Was pre-Famine and Famine Ireland a violent society? The dominant view among a range of commentators at the time, and in the work of many historians since, is that violence was both prevalent and pervasive in the social and cultural life of the country. This book explores the validity of this perspective through the study of homicide and what it reveals about wider experiences of violence in the country at that time. The book provides a quantitat…
Euroscepticism and Neighbourhood Peace
This article argues that the exceptionally complex spatial organisation of integration is shaped by spatial patterns of socio-cultural difference and similarity which emerge over the course of history. I outline two interacting socio-cultural factors that help shape the spatial patterns of integration: the international relations culture of demilitarised relations between neighbouring countries and northern Euroscepticism. I show that these have …
Networks, narratives and territory in anthropological race classification
This article aims to integrate discourse analysis of politically instrumental imagined identity geographies with the relational and territorial geography of the communities of praxis and interpretation that produce them. My case study is the international community of nationalist scientists who classified Europe's biological races in the 1820s-1940s. I draw on network analysis, relational geography, historical sociology and the historical turn to…
Equal Access to Justice for All
Larry and I worked together as volunteer members of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services for a number of years. The Pro Bono Committee was charged with the responsibility, among others, of documenting the pro bono legal assistance being undertaken across the Commonwealth as well as seeking to promote and increase the delivery of pro bono legal services. I continue to serve on the Committee. Ever…
On the margins of international science and national discourse
This article examines the local reception and manipulation of ideas at the edge of an international cultural network. Poorly institutionalised interwar Romanian race anthropology was a weak voice in both the formulation of domestic nationalist discourse and in internationally centralised scientific race classification. The author discusses how its scientific methodologies, models, institutional links and citation practices, and the national ident…
Cultures of communication
This contribution locates the current collection of papers by young European historians in the historical context of historical and social scientific study of culture, and especially the historical turn, which reconciles poststructuralist culture scholarship with older concerns of cultural history. The contributors are all influenced by linguistic turn deconstruction of discourse, studying culture and identity as systems of shared meaning, which …
Anthropological race psychology 1820–1945
This article examines ethnic stereotypes in biological race classification of Europeans between the 1830s and 1940s as part of political discourse on national identity. Anthropologists linked physical‐psychological types to nations and national character stereotypes through ‘national races’, achieving an often quite enduring international consensus on each race's mentality. The article argues that race mentality narratives were therefore partly d…
Nursing As Therapy
Therapeutic nursing - theory, issues and practice reflection and the evaluation of experience - prerequisites for therapeutic practice? the presentation of the nurse - a neglected dimension of therapeutic nurse-patient interaction ordinariness in nursing as therapy facilitating therapeutic nursing and independent practice quality discourse and nursing as therapy tailoring research for therapeutic-nursing practice an exploration of touch and its u…
A Case for Confucian Sexuality
Vol. 9 No. 2 Late Imperial ChinaDecember 1988 A CASE FOR CONFUCIAN SEXUALITY: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL Yesou Puyan R. Keith McMahon Introduction Some books are not necessarily good literature but are all the same unique in marking extremes of creative determination. Yesou puyan, or A Country Codger Puts His Words out to Sun, is just such a book, written by an eccentric polymath who never amounted to anything in what counted in China, official…
Narrating European integration
This article introduces the special issue on narrating European integration. Narratives, or stories, are a key mechanism for constructing individual and collective identities, and other politically important elements of discourse. The articles in this special issue go beyond most existing work on narratives. First, they examine the actors and networks, ranging from EU institutions to political parties and social groups, which create, foster and d…
Anthropological race psychology 1820–1945
This article examines ethnic stereotypes in biological race classification of Europeans between the 1830s and 1940s as part of political discourse on national identity. Anthropologists linked physical‐psychological types to nations and national character stereotypes through ‘national races’, achieving an often quite enduring international consensus on each race's mentality. The article argues that race mentality narratives were therefore partly d…
Is Alt-Europe possible? Populist radical right counternarratives of European integration
After the 2016 Brexit referendum, European populist radical right (PRR) parties shifted towards what I call an alt-European policy programme. Alt-Europe is a conservative, xenophobic intergovernmental vision of a European 'community of sovereign states', 'strong nations' or 'fatherlands', that abhors the EU's 'centralised' United States of Europe. Whereas most work on the PRR examines its national impact and plots party programmes on a spectrum f…
Narrative Ju-jitsu
Recent scholarship has increasingly recognised the crucial role of political narratives in and for European integration. Since its earliest days, supporters have justified integration by telling stories about its beneficial contribution to peace, prosperity, and democracy. In this article and the special issue, we contribute to the burgeoning literature on (counter)narratives to European ‘union’ (any integration beyond intergovernmental cooperati…
Progress, democracy, efficiency
This article identifies influential political narratives in the 73 currently most highly cited political science articles on the EU. It is based on systematic analysis of expressions of normativity, which signal that European integration, or its institutions or policies, are bad, good, flourishing or declining. A normative narrative of continuous progress in integration, connected with a 1990s grand theoretical debate in EU studies, accounts for …
Not all low-carbon energy pathways are environmentally “no-regrets” options
Energy system pathways which are projected to deliver minimum possible deployment cost, combined with low Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, are usually considered as ‘no-regrets’ options. However, the question remains whether such energy pathways present ‘no-regrets’ when also considering the wider environmental resource impacts, in particular those on land and water resources. This paper aims to determine whether the energy pathways of the UK’s Ca…
Geopolitical triangle
The history of transdisciplinary race classification
A recently blossoming historiographical literature recognizes that physical anthropologists allied with scholars of diverse aspects of society and history to racially classify European peoples over a period of about a hundred years. They created three successive race classification coalitions – ethnology, from around 1840; anthropology, from the 1850s; and interwar raciology – each of which successively disintegrated. The present genealogical stu…
Religion, civilisation, geography
Taking scholarship on the European Union’s (EU) 2004 eastern enlargement as a case study, this article asks whether EU studies scholars make normative judgements about how far east the EU should expand and whether these judgements involve civilisational thinking. Civilisations are categories devised by scholars to classify peoples into coherent ancient, continental-scale cultural groups, largely defined by shared history and religious tradition. …
Fall and Rise
Sociologists of science emphasize the crucial role of the day‐to‐day practices of scholars in defining academic disciplines and epistemological schools. Taking the case of EU Studies (EUS), this article examines the key practice of normative writing. I analyze the degree to which 70 highly‐cited journal articles of political science writing in EUS explicitly or implicitly suggest that European integration or its institutions or policies are bad o…
Networks, narratives and territory in anthropological race classification
This article aims to integrate discourse analysis of politically instrumental imagined identity geographies with the relational and territorial geography of the communities of praxis and interpretation that produce them. My case study is the international community of nationalist scientists who classified Europe's biological races in the 1820s-1940s. I draw on network analysis, relational geography, historical sociology and the historical turn to…
A Case for Confucian Sexuality
Vol. 9 No. 2 Late Imperial ChinaDecember 1988 A CASE FOR CONFUCIAN SEXUALITY: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL Yesou Puyan R. Keith McMahon Introduction Some books are not necessarily good literature but are all the same unique in marking extremes of creative determination. Yesou puyan, or A Country Codger Puts His Words out to Sun, is just such a book, written by an eccentric polymath who never amounted to anything in what counted in China, official…
Nursing As Therapy
Therapeutic nursing - theory, issues and practice reflection and the evaluation of experience - prerequisites for therapeutic practice? the presentation of the nurse - a neglected dimension of therapeutic nurse-patient interaction ordinariness in nursing as therapy facilitating therapeutic nursing and independent practice quality discourse and nursing as therapy tailoring research for therapeutic-nursing practice an exploration of touch and its u…
On the margins of international science and national discourse
This article examines the local reception and manipulation of ideas at the edge of an international cultural network. Poorly institutionalised interwar Romanian race anthropology was a weak voice in both the formulation of domestic nationalist discourse and in internationally centralised scientific race classification. The author discusses how its scientific methodologies, models, institutional links and citation practices, and the national ident…
Cultures of communication
This contribution locates the current collection of papers by young European historians in the historical context of historical and social scientific study of culture, and especially the historical turn, which reconciles poststructuralist culture scholarship with older concerns of cultural history. The contributors are all influenced by linguistic turn deconstruction of discourse, studying culture and identity as systems of shared meaning, which …
Anthropological race psychology 1820–1945
This article examines ethnic stereotypes in biological race classification of Europeans between the 1830s and 1940s as part of political discourse on national identity. Anthropologists linked physical‐psychological types to nations and national character stereotypes through ‘national races’, achieving an often quite enduring international consensus on each race's mentality. The article argues that race mentality narratives were therefore partly d…
Equal Access to Justice for All
Larry and I worked together as volunteer members of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's Standing Committee on Pro Bono Legal Services for a number of years. The Pro Bono Committee was charged with the responsibility, among others, of documenting the pro bono legal assistance being undertaken across the Commonwealth as well as seeking to promote and increase the delivery of pro bono legal services. I continue to serve on the Committee. Ever…
Networks, narratives and territory in anthropological race classification
This article aims to integrate discourse analysis of politically instrumental imagined identity geographies with the relational and territorial geography of the communities of praxis and interpretation that produce them. My case study is the international community of nationalist scientists who classified Europe's biological races in the 1820s-1940s. I draw on network analysis, relational geography, historical sociology and the historical turn to…
Euroscepticism and Neighbourhood Peace
This article argues that the exceptionally complex spatial organisation of integration is shaped by spatial patterns of socio-cultural difference and similarity which emerge over the course of history. I outline two interacting socio-cultural factors that help shape the spatial patterns of integration: the international relations culture of demilitarised relations between neighbouring countries and northern Euroscepticism. I show that these have …
Homicide in pre-Famine and Famine Ireland
Was pre-Famine and Famine Ireland a violent society? The dominant view among a range of commentators at the time, and in the work of many historians since, is that violence was both prevalent and pervasive in the social and cultural life of the country. This book explores the validity of this perspective through the study of homicide and what it reveals about wider experiences of violence in the country at that time. The book provides a quantitat…
Not all low-carbon energy pathways are environmentally “no-regrets” options
Energy system pathways which are projected to deliver minimum possible deployment cost, combined with low Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, are usually considered as ‘no-regrets’ options. However, the question remains whether such energy pathways present ‘no-regrets’ when also considering the wider environmental resource impacts, in particular those on land and water resources. This paper aims to determine whether the energy pathways of the UK’s Ca…
The Races of Europe
The Irish Dilemma
This chapter spotlights the eclectic relationships of nineteenth-century ethnology with history, philology and literary studies. Irish race classifiers used these interdisciplinary links to capitalise on Ireland’s living Celtic language.
Religion, civilisation, geography
Taking scholarship on the European Union’s (EU) 2004 eastern enlargement as a case study, this article asks whether EU studies scholars make normative judgements about how far east the EU should expand and whether these judgements involve civilisational thinking. Civilisations are categories devised by scholars to classify peoples into coherent ancient, continental-scale cultural groups, largely defined by shared history and religious tradition. …
Narrating European integration
This article introduces the special issue on narrating European integration. Narratives, or stories, are a key mechanism for constructing individual and collective identities, and other politically important elements of discourse. The articles in this special issue go beyond most existing work on narratives. First, they examine the actors and networks, ranging from EU institutions to political parties and social groups, which create, foster and d…
Progress, democracy, efficiency
This article identifies influential political narratives in the 73 currently most highly cited political science articles on the EU. It is based on systematic analysis of expressions of normativity, which signal that European integration, or its institutions or policies, are bad, good, flourishing or declining. A normative narrative of continuous progress in integration, connected with a 1990s grand theoretical debate in EU studies, accounts for …
Fall and Rise
Sociologists of science emphasize the crucial role of the day‐to‐day practices of scholars in defining academic disciplines and epistemological schools. Taking the case of EU Studies (EUS), this article examines the key practice of normative writing. I analyze the degree to which 70 highly‐cited journal articles of political science writing in EUS explicitly or implicitly suggest that European integration or its institutions or policies are bad o…
The history of transdisciplinary race classification
A recently blossoming historiographical literature recognizes that physical anthropologists allied with scholars of diverse aspects of society and history to racially classify European peoples over a period of about a hundred years. They created three successive race classification coalitions – ethnology, from around 1840; anthropology, from the 1850s; and interwar raciology – each of which successively disintegrated. The present genealogical stu…
National Races
National Races
Resurecting raciology? Genetic ethnology and pre-1945 anthropological race classification
This article places the current high-profile and controversial scientific project that I call 'genetic ethnology' within the same two-century tradition of biologically classifying modern peoples as pre-1945 race anthropology. Similarities in how these two biological projects have combined political and scientific agendas raise questions about the liberalism of genetics and stimulate concerns that genetic constructions of human difference might re…
Is Alt-Europe possible? Populist radical right counternarratives of European integration
After the 2016 Brexit referendum, European populist radical right (PRR) parties shifted towards what I call an alt-European policy programme. Alt-Europe is a conservative, xenophobic intergovernmental vision of a European 'community of sovereign states', 'strong nations' or 'fatherlands', that abhors the EU's 'centralised' United States of Europe. Whereas most work on the PRR examines its national impact and plots party programmes on a spectrum f…
Narrative Ju-jitsu
Recent scholarship has increasingly recognised the crucial role of political narratives in and for European integration. Since its earliest days, supporters have justified integration by telling stories about its beneficial contribution to peace, prosperity, and democracy. In this article and the special issue, we contribute to the burgeoning literature on (counter)narratives to European ‘union’ (any integration beyond intergovernmental cooperati…
Making sense of the European Union
Geopolitical triangle
New Europeans on the cultural cleavage
Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Social science (8 works) · European union (7 works)