Eilert Sundt. A founding father of the social sciences in Norway

The cult of St Nicholas spread in Scandinavia and northern Rus' in approximately the same period, namely in the last decades of the 11th and the first decades of the 12th centuries. In spite of such a correspondence, the dissemination of the cult in the two adjacent regions has been treated as two separate phenomena. Consequently, the growing popularity of the cult in Scandinavia has traditionally been dealt with as an immanent part of the transmission of the Catholic tradition, and a similar phenomenon in northern Rus' has been discussed with reference to the establishment of Orthodox Christianity. By contrast, the evidence analysed in this article shows that the establishment of the cult of St Nicholas in the two regions was an intertwined process, in which the difference between Latin Christendom and Greek Orthodoxy played a minor role. The early spread of this particular cult thus suggests that, as far as some aspects of the cult of saints are concerned, the division between Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity in Northern Europe was less abrupt in the 11th and 12th centuries than has been traditionally assumed. This was due to the fact that the medieval cult of saints was not limited to the liturgy of saints, but was a wider social phenomenon in which political and dynastic links and cultural and trading contacts across Northern Europe often mattered more than confessional differences. When we leave the liturgy aside and turn to kings, princes, traders and other folk interacting across the early Christian North, then the confessional borders are less useful for our understanding of how some aspects of Christian culture were communicated across Northern Europe in the first two centuries after conversion.     

Between Marx and Heidegger: Politics, Philosophy and Lefebvre's The Production of Space

This article argues that the work of Martin Heidegger is extremely important in understanding Henri Lefebvre's intellectual project. It suggests that Lefebvre's trio of influential thinkers—Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche—are partnered by Heidegger. But this is Heidegger read in a particular way, and subjected to a Marxist critique—turned back on his feet, grounded, made real.
This is pursued in detail through a rereading of Lefebvre's The Production of Space . The two terms in this title need to be examined, and while the importance of space develops a number of insights from Heidegger, the stress on production shows the political and Marxist nature of this research. The Production of Space is therefore situated, and needs to be read, between Marx and Heidegger. The article closes with some comments on the interrelation of history, space and politics, and offers the possibility of a left-Heideggerianism.     

Identity and social solidarity: an ignored connection. A historical perspective on the state of Europe and its nations

The article comments on the ongoing de‐Europeanisation and re‐nationalisation of Europe from a historical perspective. The article argues that the building of national community from the 1870s onwards focused on the problem of social integration where the development of emotional feelings of belonging and solidarity was linked to the building of institutions for social politics in mutually reinforcing dynamics. The social question emerged in the wake of the spread of industrial capitalism. Its role is underexplored in the study of the building of national and European communities. The social question draws attention to the institutional capacity of nation states rather than nations based on emotions. Nationalism did not only mean the building of friend‐ enemy distinctions through ethnicity but also national socialism as a conservative reform strategy against class struggle socialism. This contention between two approaches to the problem of social integration moulded together national communities through emotions and institutions without deploying the concept of identity. The article outlines this development, culminating in the (West) European welfare states as nation– states in the strong sense of the merger of these two terms, and how it came to an end in the 1970s when a reverse development began towards social disintegration at the end accompanied by accelerating nationalism and xenophobia. The identity concept was mobilised in 1973 as a tool in the European integration project to compensate for the erosion of social institutions by means of emotions. It was taken over and politicised from having been a technical term in mathematics and psychoanalysis. The politicisation of the identity concept was an indication of a deep identity crisis in Europe and its nations. The identity therapy failed, and the identity crisis remains, accompanied by an ever louder nationalistic and xenophobic vocabulary. Emotions replace institutions. The methodological focus of the article is on the semantics around key concepts such as social politics, solidarity and identity in their historical context as forward‐looking and action‐oriented concepts in the construction of community. This approach with a focus on past futures is an alternative to the application of the retrospective analytical concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism outlining present pasts.     

Economic despondency and social division: A political review of the year, 1996

Verschave, F. X., La Françafrique. Le plus long scandale de la république (Stock 1998). 379 pp. 130F ISBN 2 234 04948 2

Gourévitch, J.‐P., L'Afrique, le fric la France. L'aide, la dette, l'immigration, l'avenir: vérités et mensonges (Le pré aux Clercs, 1997) 372 pp., 110F. ISBN 2 84228 022 9     

旗民与满汉之间:清代“随旗人”初探

作为满族特有的农奴制经济标本,庄园制度得到了史学界的普遍重视。但由于研究焦点的相对集中,该领域仍有诸多重要问题尚未得到关注。生活在这一制度层面下的人,即庄头、庄丁以及他们家眷和后裔,就是其中非常值得探讨的内容。这是一个较为特殊的群体,他们与正身旗人不同,与民人也不一样。时至今日,其后裔依然用随旗人来描述自己,生动说明了这群人的边缘性地位。本文以畿辅为例,就随旗人进行了考察,希望能由此对庄园制度以及清代满汉关系中的某些问题做一个探讨。     

美加联盟中的政治与经济利益博弈——以加拿大对华粮食贸易为核心的考察

20世纪50年代末60年代初,面对中国发生的粮食紧缺问题,作为美国冷战盟友的加拿大开始采取自主行动,主动与中国开展粮食贸易。此时美国仍对中国进行政治孤立和经济封锁,加拿大的行为无疑与美国的冷战遏制战略相冲突,美国与加拿大的博弈由此开启。美加双方具有不同的利益诉求,加拿大希望扩大粮食销售市场,解决国内粮食过剩的问题,而美国更看重冷战联盟,并着眼于维护冷战联盟内部的团结,为此在不涉及美国核心利益的问题上向加拿大做出一定的让步。美国与加拿大之间的博弈反映了作为联盟主导者的美国开展联盟管理的困境,也体现了联盟政治与经济利益之间的张力。     

Regional innovation systems and the foundation of knowledge intensive business services. A comparative study in Bremen,Munich, and Stuttgart,Germany

Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) are believed to be one of the main drivers of technological change, innovation, and economic progress. Although firm foundations play a crucial role among KIBS, entrepreneurship research has hardly ever investigated the sector. As firm founders in early stages of their firms' development mostly draw on regional resources, and as the provision of the services is an interactive process, “proximity” between the different actors of the particular territorial innovation and production system clearly matters. This contribution analyses the interrelationships between KIBS foundations and their respective innovation and production systems by performing qualitative and conceptual in-depth studies of three German metropolitan regions.     

Futurism from foundation to world war: the art and politics of an avant-garde movement

The cultural influence of the Futurist art movement on the modern era is undisputed. Of course, it is also undisputed that the movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, but in the early years were also known for advancing ideas more associated with the extreme left, such as republicanism, anti-clericalism, and workers’ advancement through revolution. There is no consensus on how to narrate Futurist politics, or their relationship to Futurist art. Were the politics more of the left or the right? And, more to the point, should the politics be studied in isolation, or as integral to the broad ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’? This article takes the latter approach and offers an interpretation that unifies the art and politics of the Futurist movement from its foundation in 1909 through to Italy’s entry into the Great War. I argue that the Futurists themselves did not differentiate between their cultural initiatives to modernize Italy or their political interventionism. In looking at key moments in the political evolution of the movement, and the corresponding artwork of the period, I show that Futurism offered a confused political message in its first years, mixing elements of the left and right, but after the Libyan War and especially in the interventionist period, the political message became much more stridently nationalistic and bellicose, and such themes became prevalent in the art of that time.