Discovering Harbours? Reflection on the State and Development of Landing Site Studies in the Baltic Sea Region

For the study and understanding of the structure and use of the ancient landscape and the maritime aspects of society, landing sites are one of the most sought after and discussed antiquities in the cultural landscape. Methodologically, in locating the places for landing, looking at their context, such as the prehistoric landscape, has been given a high priority throughout the history of research and landing sites are presumed to have existed in the vicinity of several material and non-material indicators of maritime presence. However, as the category of landing sites and their nature have not been properly defined, such indiscriminate designation based purely on circumstantial evidence poses serious problems. This paper evaluates research into landing sites in the Baltic Sea region, scrutinising terminological and methodological approaches used and suggests a way forward.     

The Schillers of the suburbs – creativity and mediated sociality

Theories around the cultural geography of creativity have given new life, in recent years, to negative perceptions of the suburbs as ‘isolated’. These theories have emphasised the importance of ‘clusters’, ‘precincts’, ‘incubators’ and ‘hubs’, suggesting that even in the era of the Internet, creativity requires an immediacy of social interaction, which can only be found where there is social concentration. The paper brings these theories into question through a long historical perspective on the relation between creativity and ‘mediated sociality’. Drawing on the work of Elias, it suggests some surprising parallels between the position of German artists and intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and suburban creative practitioners today. The former were in many respects ‘isolated’, relatively dependent on mediated sociality, and yet they produced a major historical flowering of creative activity. The example prompts us to think more sympathetically and optimistically about the creative potential of contemporary suburbia.     

Could woodworking have influenced variation in the form of Acheulean handaxes?

The relationship between tool form and function is fundamental to hominin behaviour and evolution. Acheulean handaxes are known for their general consistency across more than a million years and three continents, albeit with some variation in size and shape. However, the influence of this variation on cutting has only rarely been studied, mostly in either butchery or generalized cutting tasks. Yet evidence indicates that handaxes were used for woodworking by at least 1.5 mya. Here, we experimentally tested whether woodworking could have exerted selective pressures on handaxe form. Additionally, these data were compared with a previous experiment that tested flakes during woodworking. For handaxes, no significant relationships were detected in woodworking efficiency. Accordingly, woodworking likely did not exert strong selective pressures on handaxe variability. However, the effectiveness shown by handaxes further demonstrates the functional flexibility of this technology, which is likely a factor contributing to their use over broad temporal, geographical and ecological spans. When comparing handaxes with flakes, only the smallest flakes were found to be significantly less efficient than handaxes. Therefore, the functional demands of woodworking were likely influencing hominin technological decisions about flake morphology, or the selection of flakes for woodworking, more than they were handaxe morphology.     

“There are only realities built in the mind”

Abstract

In the wake of the First World War, Vilhelm Bjerknes and his colleagues in Bergen established their so-called front meteorology. With their new concepts and models they “appropriated” the weather – to use Robert Marc Friedman's expression – for physics and for Norwegian science. A regular weather forecasting service was established at the same time for the whole of the Norwegian coast, and fishermen soon became the meteorologists’ primary allies in their struggle for state support and resources. This article examines how the alliance was established, how weather forecasting was “appropriated” by the coastal population, particularly in the north, and what difference this made.     

Industrial suburbs and the growth of metropolitan Pittsburgh, 1870–1920

In 1907, the Pittsburgh Survey team recognized that dispersed industrial development had created a metropolitan area stretching 30 to 50 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Traditional interpretations of metropolitan formation fail to account for the crucial role of industry in this process. Beginning in the 1870s, the transformation from small, craft organized factories to integrated mills, mass production, and modern management organization in steel and other industries led many manufacturers to search for large sites with railroad and river accessibility. They purchased land, designed modern plants, and sometimes built towns for workers. Other firms bought into new communities begun as speculative industrial real estate ventures. Some owners removed their plants from the city's labour politics to exert greater control over workers. The region's rugged topography and dispersed natural resources of coal and gas accentuated this dispersal. The rapid growth of steel, glass, railroad equipment and coke industries resulted in both large mass-production plants and numerous smaller firms. As capital deepened and interdependence grew, participants multiplied, economies accrued, the division of labour increased, and localized production systems formed around these industries. Transportation, capital, labour markets, and the division of labour in production bound the scattered industrial plants and communities into a sprawling metropolitan district. By 1910 the Pittsburgh district was a complex urban landscape with a dominant central city, surrounded by proximate residential communities, mill towns, satellite cities, and hundreds of mining towns.     

‘So long,and thanks for all the fish?’* Examining the built and cultural heritage of the Jaffa port redevelopment

‘Heritage’ is a term that is ambiguous in the best of circumstances; however, it becomes even more so in urban environments where conflicts of identity and culture are pivotal, as in Israel’s mixed Israeli-Palestinian cities. In this paper, I examine the recent redevelopment of the Jaffa port, Israel. Jaffa’s ancient port has had a significant role in facilitating industry, commerce and social ties in the area, and it has recently been remodelled by the city as a cultural and entertainment hub. Through interviews with key stakeholders and observations, I examine the role of heritage in the redevelopment using two broad categories: heritage of the built environment and cultural heritage, including the practice of fishing. I argue that while efforts have been made to conserve the waterfront’s heritage, the redevelopment has resulted in an artificial space that does not speak to the local culture of Jaffa as it is interpreted by the port community, including the fishermen. The Jaffa case study suggests that more attention should be paid to the delicate role of urban planners in facilitating change in a politically and culturally contested environment.     

Do social scientists and historians write the same minority histories?

This paper is a comparison between two books, each dealing with the history of a different rural community in Northern Norway. These are Fjordfolket i Kvænangen and Balsfjorden og Malangens historie (Volume 1) written by the social anthropologist Ivar Bjørklund and the historian Anders Ole Hauglid respectively. In this comparison, two main points are emphasized: (1) To what extent can knowledge about ethnic processes of categorization, which has been acquired through contemporary research in the social sciences, be of use in the writing of the history of minorities? (2) Should the history of a minority only be a history of ethnic relations'?     

Do Women Need the Renaissance?

Joan Kelly's path‐breaking article, ‘Did Women have a Renaissance?’, first published in 1977, led historians of women in many fields to question the applicability of chronological categories derived from male experience. Thirty years later, the questioning continues, augmented by doubts about whether all systems of periodisation over‐simplify the diversity of gender. This paper examines what might be lost if feminist historians, in their sensitivity to difference, refuse to apply structures of periodisation. It looks at challenges to both ‘Renaissance’ and ‘early modern’ as conceptual categories and suggests ways in which gender is and must remain central to understandings of these eras.     

Do Regions Make a Difference? Regional Innovation Systems and Global Innovation Networks in the ICT Industry

Access to global innovation networks (GINs) has been unequal across the regions of the world. While certain regions are considered knowledge hubs in GINs, others still remain marginalized; this points to the role of regional innovation systems (RISs) in the emergence and development of GINs. Using firm-level data collected through a survey and case studies in 2009–2010, this paper systematically compares the patterns of global networks in the information and communications technology industry in a selection of European, Chinese and Indian regions. The results show that GINs are more common in regions which are not organizationally and institutionally thick, suggesting that GINs may be a compensatory mechanism for weaknesses in the RIS.     

The boundaries of suburban discontent? Urban definitions and neighbourhood political effects

Residents of city and suburban neighbourhoods have diverged in the way they vote, with inner-city dwellers preferring political parties on the left while suburbanites increasingly vote for parties on the right. Yet it is not clear whether such a division is more evident between residents of central and suburban municipalities (the jurisdictional hypothesis), or between residents of neighbourhoods differentiated by urban form and, by assumption, lifestyle (the morphological hypothesis). While there are clear reasons for the predominant reliance on municipal differences in research based in the U.S. and other countries, it is not evident that these reasons apply in the Canadian context. This article examines how urban boundaries articulate electoral differences between metropolitan residents in Canada's three largest urban regions, using aggregate election data for federal elections between 1945 and 2000, survey data from the 2000 Canada election study and a series of indices developed by the author. It is found that while trends towards city–suburban polarization are similar regardless of the boundaries used to define the zones, in the Canadian case the results are stronger and more significant when boundaries based on urban form (between pre-and post-war development) are employed. The implications of these results for the relationship between urban space and political values in Canadian cities are then discussed.     

Do the Buildings Really Matter? Czech,Polish and Slovak Museums and Centres of Contemporary Art in Adapted Buildings

This paper discusses the connection between museums and centres of contemporary art operating in adapted buildings, on the one hand, and on the other, the history of the place where the buildings are located. I discuss seven discrete case studies, representing a variety of approaches to buildings and the areas in which they operate, in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. My analysis of each case study covers four main subject areas: (1) discussions connecting the building’s history with its new role; (2) the architectural features and appearance of the building; (3) references3 to the history of the site in the institution’s programme and communication; and (4) efforts to build bonds with local communities. In my conclusions, I argue that the identity of the institution may either be rooted in the history of the place presented and discussed in its programme, or be independent of the history of the building but nonetheless connected to the area in which it is located.     

Where is the state? How is the state? Accessing water and the state in Mumbai and Johannesburg

This article examines the water distribution systems in Johannesburg and Mumbai to argue that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people’s access to the state and its resources, and also mediation between citizens and government institutions by councillors. Through ethnographies of water supply and distribution systems in Mumbai and Johannesburg, I explain how the organizational structure of the water utility, institutional arrangements of service delivery, regulatory systems, councillors’ proximity to decision makers and their relationship with municipal officials, civil servants and party members variously influence councillors’ mediation capacities and their ability to fulfil the claims of their constituencies for piped water supply and connections.     

Migration and the built environment: a spatial analysis of resettlement in Çeşme,Turkey

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the retreat of the Ottoman Empire caused a massive scale migration in the Aegean regions. This process was furthered by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) between the Turkish Republic and Greece. Gradually, more than one million people were formally exchanged under the control of the respective national authorities. This study shows that the predictions made by political authorities regarding the expected adaptation and homogenization based on religious affiliations failed to materialize; instead, the process of migration generated its own unique and autonomous processes derived primarily from cultural aspects and social origins. This research examines the materialization of the migrants’ adaptation practices and the spatial transformations in the built environment at both urban and domestic level, in order to indentify spatial and related social conflicts that arose as a result of socio-cultural mixing through a case study of the Çe?me Peninsula, Turkey. The study concludes that the relationship between social space and the physical environment is intertwined, with spatial transformations based on residents’ home of origin, professions and economic prosperity positioned in a clearly defined hierarchy of meaning.     

Do Australians want the welfare state?

The failures of the Australian welfare state are often implicitly argued to derive in large part from the conservatism of the Australian public. This research uses public opinion poll data from 1940 to 1985 to question some of the claims made about public opinion and Australian welfare. These data indicate that post‐World War Two governments were not the captives of public opposition to expanded welfare provision. The public favoured generous, universal and contributory welfare provision in specific areas where the policies of successive Australian governments favoured selective, illiberal welfare measures funded by taxation. Moreover, public support for government health schemes suggests that welfare programmes generate public support rather than result from it.

This evidence suggests that explanations for the conservatism of the Australian welfare state lie elsewhere.