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This article calls for greater attention within urban history to the 'civic economy of the book'. By means of a case study of the Manchester Free Public Library and its context, examining the internal workings of the library system and its impact on the broader cultural life of the city, it is argued that the nineteenth-century public library, if not an especially successful disciplinary institution, may yet have been a significant mechanism of cultural disempowerment.

A central issue about social movements is whether or not their needs- eg women's, Green's, welfare recipients' - are relevant to society at large; whether their needs are universal or specific. Theorists divide between those stressing the specificity of movement needs and others their universality - a division at the core of debates about postmodem politics. This: article argues that Touraine's, Melucci's and Laclau & Mouffe's accounts maintain a particularist view alongside a problem atic universalism. By contrast, writers as diverse as Habermas, Doyal & Gough and Townsend provide more coherent accounts of universal and particular needs. These maintain the universality of: real needs, despite their cultural variations; social norms; and notions of human natute, which provide important rational foundations for social policy