In the Valley of the Sweet Mother: Gendered metaphors,domestic lives and reproduction under a Brazilian state mining company

Metaphors have been studied by feminist geographers as examples of both power over and empowerment by women. In this article, the author takes three gendered metaphors used by people in the Brazilian mining town of Itabira as starting points to enlarge a discussion of the mining economy's effects on women's lives. One, the 'sweet mother,' describes the company's reskilling and cultural education of male workers from the 1940s to the early 1980s. Second, women react to these strategies with a contending image of the company as 'the rival.' Finally, the phase of company downsizing has created a new metaphor: 'the stepmother.' These metaphors elucidate ways that public and private spaces become intertwined in three moments of the state mining company's life: its arrival in the region in the mid-1940s; its expansion from the 1960s to the 1980s; and its restructuring in the last 10 years. The author suggests that women's ironic rewriting of the foundational metaphor of 'sweet mother' is central to their reconceptualization of economic change under the company. The alternative metaphors also reflect women's changing views on motherhood, sexuality and family partnership.     

Noril'sk Nickel: A Global Company?

Two specialists on Russia's minerals industries examine the evidence supporting the argument that the Russian mining conglomerate Noril'sk Nickel can be viewed as a global company. Included among the criteria they assess are the geographic dispersion of the company's markets and operations, the diversified and multinational character of its ownership, whether it has matched the performance standards set by its major international competitors, and the effect of the company's ownership presence on the management style of its foreign operations. A particular focus is on how an ongoing conflict between two major Russian oligarch shareholders (Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska) has shaped Noril'sk Nickel's ownership and management structure, which is characterized by the continued (background) presence of the state, the lack of any organized policy for training a multinational management cohort, and the absence of a major block of foreign shareholders. In the end, they conclude that Noril'sk Nickel is not a genuinely global but rather a Tier-1 Russian company, albeit one with a global scale of operations.     

‘Tailoring the Millions‘; the Women Workers of the Leeds Clothing Industry, 1880–1914

Abstract

This article concerns the ways in which J. &; P. Coats, the major British multinational company manufacturing cotton thread, did business in Latin America before 1945. The company carried out a total of some 21 foreign direct investments in six countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, exemplary business practice among British contemporaries. The evidence on origins, performance and management, drawn from the company's archives for the first time, begins to fill a long-standing gap in the history of British business in Latin America. To this point, most studies have focused on the tertiary and primary industries. In the light of the extensive business interests of J. &; P. Coats alone, further research may show that the significance and role of British manufacturing companies, seemingly minor actors in Latin American economies, was much greater than has been assumed.     

Easton & Anderson and the water supply of Antwerp (Belgium)

Abstract

Investigation into the origin and establishment of the Antwerp Waterworks Company Limited (AWW), revealed that the engineering firm of Easton & Anderson (E&A), of London and Erith, which had purchased the concession for supplying water to the City of Antwerp, were able to interest water companies in London and southern England in investing in the new business. Through their engineers, the influence of E&A lasted until the expiration of the Antwerp concession in 1930. Faced with problems with the quality of the raw water source, they had to work out specific treatment techniques. From 1881 to 1885, Bischof's spongy iron filter was used in combination with sand filters. This application proved unsuccessful, so that Anderson developed his revolving purifier, the operation of which was also based on the action of iron on water. These 'revolvers' were used for the Antwerp supply from 1885 until 1914. The process subsequently became widely used at other sites all over the world. E&A also supplied the heavy pumping machinery to AWW, consisting of two screw pumps, four rotative beam engines, a steam-driven Appold centrifugal pump, a triple expansion engine and all the plunger pumps. The author describes the above-mentioned treatment techniques and pumping machinery, and expands on the English character of the former Antwerp water supply company.     

Italianità and internationalism: Production,design and mediation at Alessi, 1976-96

This article considers the Italian household product design company Alessi as quintessentially Italian and international. The interplay of mass-production and craft techniques at Alessi, an extended design process and the presentation of the family in company publicity exemplify the ambiguities identified within Italian design. The extent to which Alessi typifies Italian post-war design is questioned with reference to the company's international design team and the marketing of its products to foreign consumers as manifestations of italianità. The findings are based on primary research in Milan and the Alessi factory, including a series of interviews with designers, retailers, curators and media workers, combined with secondary material centred upon design history.     

Business and Decolonisation in Central Africa Reconsidered

This article re-examines the role of the copper mining industry during the decolonisation of central Africa. By focusing on the actions of the Anglo American Corporation, and the Rhodesian Selection Trust's (RST) American parent company, American Metal Climax (AMAX), it expands on Larry Butler's recent article and argues that Anglo American continued to support the federal prime minister, Sir Roy Welensky, following their public withdrawal of funding from his governing United Federal Party in May 1959. This marked divergence with RST's policy of engagement with aspirant African leaders was driven by the company's close personal links with Welensky as well as geopolitical factors. Furthermore, the influence of RST's American connections on directing the company's policy should not be understated. Harold Hochschild, AMAX's chairman, played a pivotal role in directing RST's strategy.     

The Textile Fabrics of India and Huddersfield Cloth Industry

Abstract

There was a large and rapidly expanding cloth finishing industry in London in the late fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. London merchants brought provincial cloth to the City, some of which was finished prior to export, and some was finished for the City's expanding clothing industry. The success of the London Fullers and Shearmen was reflected in their merger to form the Clothworkers' Company in 1528, and their acceptance ten years later as the last and twelfth merchant company in the City. The paper traces both the economic progress of the company and some of its principal members, and the difficulties that the Fullers and Shearmen faced as they decided to merge, and then to become accepted as one of the leading companies in the City.     

Consuming icons: nationalism and advertising in Australia*

ABSTRACT. In extension of Billig's (1995) and Edensor's (2002) contribution to the literature, this paper examines an often overlooked element in ‘mundane’ nationalism, company advertising. Through the development of a typology of advertising strategies, it examines the role of companies as nationalist actors, and highlights how advertisements can engage with and impact on wider national discourses. Nationalist company advertising is classified into types, depending on how associated the company is with nationalism in popular discourse, and whether the advertising campaign involves the company's participation in broader nationalistic political projects. The types developed in this typology include (1) ‘ordinary marketing/achieving nationalist credentials’, (2) ‘ordinary marketing/established nationalist credentials’ and (3) ‘activist marketing/achieving nationalist credentials’. Case studies from the Australian context are used to illustrate these types, how the different types use nationalism, and their varying impact on shaping wider nationalistic discourses.     

Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting,Wolverhampton, 1872

Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the relatively unusual form taken by Lincoln's gatehouse-cum-guildhall, which was rebuilt in 1520. It is argued that the Stonebow's elevation bears a superficial similarity to the contemporary royal palace at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The local political background may suggest that the two buildings are, indeed, connected — through the city council's efforts to renegotiate the terms of their fee-farm with their feudal lords. The new building, and its simple Annunciation iconography, were intended to be understood at several levels of symbolic meaning, all of which referred to the city's relationship with its various lords. Consequently, the Stonebow's simplicity is deceptive; it is, in fact, a multi-faceted political statement, summing up the city's own view of its place in contemporary politics and, as such, it is a good example of the complexity sometimes achieved in early Renaissance architectural iconography.     

Class,Place, and Gender: Contested Industrial and Domestic Space in Kohler,Wisconsin, USA, 1920–1960

The Kohler company, a family‐owned plumbing manufactory in Wisconsin, USA, known for the ‘garden industrial village’ erected for its workers during the 1910s, managed class relations through a gendered spatial arrangement of its model town. In the 1930s and 1950s, unionists striking at the plant responded by articulating their class alliances within and outside the town in spatial terms that revised the meaning of the place. In the process, the Kohler unions also necessarily refigured domestic space in ways that challenged the company's mapping of domesticity in the 1930s, but they drew back from such challenges in the 1950s.     

The Hydrometallurgy of Gold Processing

Abstract

Gold has captured mankind's admiration for centuries as a medium of currency or exchange, for personal jewellery and for decorative and ornamental purposes. The mythical tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece may have its origins in the placer miners' technique of placing sheep's fleeces in sluices to capture gold flakes. This practice evolved around 1200bc and perhaps marked the start of the development of the 'art' and 'science' involved in recovering gold which existed at low levels in the Earth's crust and even in sea water. Since then gold processing technology has changed significantly to cope with the increasing scarcity of gold and the complexity of its ores. Today, 1 t of dirt has to be processed to recover a few grams of gold. This difficulty has not stopped mankind from looking for this metal, which is considered both precious and evil by Eastern and Western civilisations. The scarcer the metal becomes, the more sophisticated must be the exploration technology that is developed to look for gold. Likewise, processing techniques have been continually improved and modified to cope with the increasing complexity of the ores from which gold must be recovered.     

Structural ways to embed a research laboratory into the company: A comparison between Philips and General Electric 1900-1940

This paper compares the Philips Research Department and the Research Laboratory of the American company General Electric (GE). 1 It argues that it is, above all, the issue of the organization of industrial research, appropriate leadership and the embeddedness of a research department in the company as a whole that is important for an historical analysis of an industrial research department. The complex structures that Gilles Holst (the first Philips research director) and Willis Whitney (the GE research director during the first decades of the twentieth century) set up in their organizations enabled scientists to keep in touch with the resources provided by the universities, and made it possible for them to come up with articles, patents and devices for their respective companies. It enabled them also to strengthen their contacts inside and outside the laboratory's walls. However, more than his colleague Whitney at GE, Holst at Philips intended to integrate the research laboratory into the company as a whole. Holst's policy as a research director will be illustrated using the case of Philips' radio research. A comparative discussion of industrial research in the 1930s within both companies shows that the "successful" integration of research activities is context-dependent.     

'It's only as stupid as you are': Children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school

Contemporary discourses about children's use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—which both celebrate children's command of a technology which is seen to be our future, and raise fears that this technology is putting children's emotional well-being at risk—are problematic, resting as they do on essentialist ideas about children, and overt technological determinism. Drawing instead on work within the new social studies of childhood, and the sociology of science and technology, we identify a need for research which examines how children and technology come together in diverse communities of practice. The communities of practice we study are the home- and school-based ICT usage of British school children in the late 1990s. Our research identifies the different ways in which children and adults negotiate children's technical and emotional competence in relation to ICT, and uncovers the varied meanings of childhood and technology which emerge for adults and children in these two socio-spatial environments. These findings not only highlight the spatiality of children's and adults' performances and understandings of ICT competence, but also how these are constituted through the socio-spatial relations which shape the off-line spaces of home and school.     

Defying Comprehension: Resistance to Uniform Appearance in Depicting the Poor, 1770s to 1830s

Abstract

Applied to contemporary Western clothing as part of the new cultural turn in textile history, anthropology provides unique insights into the relationship between commerce and culture; into the symbolic and social processes that influence the market; and into the ways capitalism functions as a cultural system, not just as a purely economic one. This paper takes an anthropological approach to children's clothing and the changing consumer culture of childhood in Britain in the mid-twentieth century, seen through a particular company (Pasolds Ltd.), their Ladybird symbol and its associated popular culture, and an iconic garment, the Ladybird dressing gown. It provides a case study in a field and period dominated to date by studies of American children's garments and material culture and focuses on the production, advertising and indirect marketing of children's clothing through public culture, from the producer's point of view, a perspective hitherto generally overlooked in work on children's clothes and consumer culture in the mid-twentieth century.     

Historical Perspectives on Pre-Colonial Irrigation in Southern Africa

Abstract

One of the basic areas of interaction between water as natural resource and human societies as agents of cultural transformation is the technology of irrigation. In Africa at least 66 per cent of the available water is used for purposes of irrigation. For more than 4 000 years irrigation has secured food supplies for humans on a continent that is noted for its relative shortage of sufficient natural water supplies.

There is a remarkable hidden power of water in the history of southern Africa. This is particularly the case when we consider the development of early irrigation technologies of Iron Age farmers. The small irrigation furrow of the subsistence farmer was just as important to an insular community of Bantu-speaking people in pre-colonial times, as is the sophisticated irrigation technology in present-day South Africa. Currently there is a paucity of information about pre-colonial indigenous irrigation technology. This can be ascribed to a number of factors of which the invasion of modern Western traditions in the nineteenth century is perhaps the most important. A number of other factors for the apparent blind-spot is also presented in this study.

In southern Africa there are traces of indigenous pre-colonial irrigation works at sites such as Nyanga in Zimbabwe; the Limpopo River Valley; Mpumalanga; and South Africa's eastern Highveld. Reference is also made in this article to specific strategies of irrigation used by Iron Age communities, prior to the advent of a colonial presence. Finally, attention is also drawn to pre-colonial land tenure and state formation against the backdrop of Wittfogel's theories on hydraulic society.     

Synthesis by microbes or chemists? Pharmaceutical research and manufacturing in the antibiotic era

This article presents a case study of the rise of Pfizer as a leading pharmaceutical company, with a focus on changing relationships between manufacturing technology and R&D between the mid 1940s and the mid 1960s. Pfizer first moved into pharmaceuticals through participation in the US government's penicillin effort during World War II. The company had expertise in deep tank, biological fermentation for the production of chemicals that it adapted to the manufacture of penicillin. Having greatly expanded its biological manufacturing capacity to meet state needs, Pfizer adopted an R&D program to find new microbial antibiotics suited to its manufacturing technology after the war ended. Pfizer's successes in this antibiotic era established the firm as a major pharmaceutical company. In looking to larger commercial markets for drugs, Pfizer, like its competitors, pursued medicines for chronic diseases rather than acute infections. For this pursuit, in the 1950s and 1960s, Pfizer transformed itself into a chemistry‐orientated pharmaceutical firm by reorienting its R&D toward chemistry. This led to a growing divergence between R&D and manufacturing and the eventual replacement of biological manufacturing with chemical manufacturing. The article explores the changing trajectories of R&D and manufacturing at Pfizer, their shifting positions within the firm, and the consequences of these changes and shifts for the firm's strategy and organization.     

Between Principles and Pragmatism: India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in the Post-PNE Era, 1974–1980

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that even when India had posited its peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) of May 1974 as a mark of resistance against a prejudiced nuclear order based upon the NPT, India's policies in the post-PNE period confirmed with many aspects of the emerging non-proliferation consensus. India's response was guided by two major factors. On one hand, were its long-held principles such as the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy (including PNE's) and the right to nuclear technology cooperation for peaceful purposes. On the other hand, were the pragmatic policy choices it had to make as advanced nuclear states worked towards a stricter non-proliferation regime. In this struggle between India's principles and its necessities, India's nuclear behavior was guided much more by pragmatism rather than by its normative preferences. Yet, even when India made major compromises on its nuclear principles in private, in public India stuck to the rhetoric of its principled opposition to the NPT regime. These tensions between India's actual practice and its public policy are evident on three major non-proliferation issues: nuclear safeguards, export controls and the danger of nuclear proliferation in its neighborhood.     

The Mafia misunderstood – again

Abstract

Observers who have investigated Alleanza Nazionale's relationship to historical fascism have mostly relied on programmatic documents as well as Gianfranco Fini's speeches and interviews. This article tackles the same question by considering the visual propaganda produced by the party from its launch in 1994 to its merger with Silvio Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà in March 2009. An examination of the logos, the portraits of Fini and other imagery that feature on posters, brochures, websites and the party daily Secolo d'Italia shows that they frequently refer, albeit mostly covertly, to the iconographies of fascism. The contemporary visual sources used by Alleanza Nazionale and the strategies adopted to present a modern and respectable image are also explored. The article argues that much of the propaganda of Alleanza Nazionale incorporates two levels of meaning: an overt and moderate one, which addressed the general public, and a concealed one celebrating ideas and values of the Ventennio, which aimed to reassure a hard-core of activists that the party had not betrayed its original identity.