The Nordic Shrimp Industry: state entrepreneurship,intellectual and industrial structures,c. 1895–1950

This paper focuses on the emergence in the 20th century of a fishing industry based on northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland. Development in these countries exhibited noteworthy common features that are examined and compared in this paper, which emphasizes the intellectual, political and industrial conditions that facilitated the expansion of the fishing fleets and processing industries. The diffusion of knowledge and technology was a necessary condition for the industry's establishment, both at a national and an inter-Nordic level. Central to these transfers of knowledge was the interaction between scientists and fisheries experts and fishermen and industrialists.     

How Many Household Formation Systems Were There in Historic Europe? A View Across 256 Regions Using Partitioning Clustering Methods

Abstract

This paper reconsiders one of historical demography’s most pertinent research problems: the fiddly concept of historical household formation systems. Using a massive repository of historical census micro-data from the North Atlantic Population Project and the Mosaic project, the four markers of Hajnal’s household formation rules were operationalized for 256 regional rural populations from Catalonia in the west to central Siberia in the east, between 1700 and 1926. We then analyze these data using the Partitioning Around Medoids algorithm in order to empirically derive the “natural groups” based on the similarity and the dissimilarity of their household formation traits. Although regional differences between European household formation systems are readily identifiable, the two statistically most valid clustering solutions (k?=?2; k?=?4) provide a more complex picture of household formation regimes than Hajnal and his followers have been able to compile. Our finding that when regional populations cluster on similar household formation characteristics, they often come from both sides of Hajnal’s “imaginary line,” calls into question strict bipolar divisions of the continent. By and large, we show that the long-lived idea of two household formation systems in preindustrial Europe obscures considerable variability in historical family behavior, and therefore needs to be amended.     

The Historic Landscape of the Saga of the People of Vatnsdalur: Exploring the Saga Writer's Use of the Landscape and Archaeological Remains to Serve Political Interests

Abstract

The saga of the People of Vatnsdalur (Vatnsdaelasaga) provides a case study for a new approach to the Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur). This treats the saga as a cultural product of the 13th century that can give insights into its creator's ideas and worldviews. Fieldwork at five sites in the Vatnsdalur valley in NW Iceland seeks to establish what these places were like in the 13th century. This knowledge, alongside the saga and place-name evidence, illustrates how the saga writer, presumed to come from a powerful 13th-century family, systematically used the landscape and archaeological remains in the valley to serve his political interests when describing 10th-century events.     

Peers,Politics and the Price of Pepper: Skinner v. the East India Company

The case of Thomas Skinner v. the East India Company brought parliament to a standstill in 1668 in a confrontation between the Houses over their respective privileges that lasted nearly two years. There is no doubt that the case was exploited for political advantage by presbyterians anxious to block the passage of a new conventicles act, but that is far from being the whole story.  This article examines for the first time the details of the case and reliability of Skinner's claims against the East India Company.  It reveals that Thomas Skinner was somewhat of an obsessive fantasist who, far from being a presbyterian sympathiser, was close to the household of James, duke of York. At one stage his daughter was even reputed to be the mother of the ‘pretended’ prince of Wales. It concludes that Skinner was himself an unscrupulous opportunist, eager to exploit political and commercial uncertainty for private gain.     

The Roles of Pit Houses and Gendered Spaces on Viking-Age Farmsteads in Iceland

Abstract

THE SMALL SEMI-SUBTERRANEAN buildings (jarðhús) with slab-built ovens that have been found on many Viking-Age farmsteads in Iceland (late 9th–11th century) have been subject to wide-ranging interpretations, from short-lived, expedient dwellings to saunas, women’s workrooms, the houses of Slavic settlers and in one case a cult building. This paper tests these hypotheses by making a thorough revaluation of pit-house dates, architectural forms, internal structural features and artefacts, and presents new geoarchaeological evidence from the pit house at Hofstaðir, NE Iceland. This lends strong support to the interpretation that they were women’s workrooms, primarily for the production of woollen textiles. Their abandonment in the later 10th and 11th centuries may be interpreted in the light of changing religious beliefs and social structures, the growing importance of homespun cloth as a valuable export commodity, and the rise in status of the women who made it.     

Reconstructing the past in medieval Iceland

Locating and dating sagas is a difficult but still important task. This paper examines the relationship between the Sagas of Icelanders, which are concerned with tenth‐ and eleventh‐century events, and the contemporary sagas of the mid‐thirteenth century. Drawing upon models from anthropology, it looks at how contemporary ideas permeated these historicizing texts and how genealogy and geography act as structures around which the past is remembered. The many political relationships which occur in Laxdæla saga are analysed in relation to those from contemporary sagas from the same area of western Iceland. Since it appears that there is relatively little in common between the political situations depicted in Laxdæla saga and those portrayed in the contemporary sagas, it is likely that Laxdæla saga and the contemporary sagas were actually written down in different periods. It is possible, therefore, that the Sagas of Icelanders give us a view of the past which originates earlier than is usually suggested.     

After ‘the collapse’: Strategic selectivity,Icelandic state elites and the management of European Union accession

Iceland’s 2008 financial crisis has received considerable scholarly attention from economics and business science perspectives. Far less consideration has been given to the political–administrative consequences of ‘the collapse’ in terms of its restructuring state-based projects and instituting new scalar strategies, and, specifically, the role played in this process by Icelandic political and policy elites. We focus on this issue by analyzing recent attempts to reconfigure Iceland’s sceptical position towards the EU by promulgating state narratives of ‘EUrope’ as a ‘safe haven’ for the shattered national economy as part of the country’s formal application for EU membership. We show within the Icelandic state there is, however, a highly fragmented and polarized position on EU accession. Drawing on Jessop’s strategic relational approach, we demonstrate that this derives from the actions of different elite fractions seeking to establish parameters for strategic selectivity on EU accession in ways that support their own interests. ‘EUrope’ emerges as a complex institutional category which is both shaped by, and shapes, the rhetorical interventions and actions of Icelandic state elites in often contradictory ways, demonstrating the fundamental political dynamics of what is emerging as a fraught, fiercely contested EU accession process. We conclude that times of conflicting elite narratives are also moments of potentially significant state change.     

Value chains,business conventions,and market adaptation: A comparative analysis of Norwegian and Icelandic fish exports

Business transactions’ value chains can constrain their capacity to maximize market value from limited resources. Seafood markets exhibit a strong demand for fresh, high‐quality seafood yet empirical studies show large variations in value chains’ adaptation and exploitation of market opportunities. This article presents a comprehensive model that identifies the main drivers and constraints in value chains for wild harvested seafood that generate differences in market adaptation. The model is built on theories of value chains, business conventions, competitive behaviour, governance conventions, legal regulation, and direct ecological and economic constraints. The model is applied in a comparative case analysis of market adaptation by value chains for North Atlantic cod products in Norway and Iceland, which explains why business conventions in Iceland are more consumer market adapted than those in Norway.     

Charred remains of grains and seeds from the medieval high-status farm site of Reykholt in western Iceland

Abstract

Iceland was settled, primarily by peoples from Norway and the northern British Isles, in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first settlers brought with them from their homelands an agricultural system based on animal husbandry, of which cereal cultivation was an element and also with inputs from fishing, hunting and gathering of wild plants. There are strong indications that barley was cultivated during the first centuries in some parts of the country and that cultivation was at least attempted in other areas. However, Iceland is near the climatic limits of the barley-growing zone, and it is open to discussion how reliable a food source locally grown barley would have been. This paper discusses a seed assemblage of cultivated barley and archetypical weeds of cereal crops dated to between the 10th and 12th centuries AD obtained during archaeological excavations at the high status farm of Reykholt in western Iceland.     

Cases of hydatid disease in medieval Iceland

Eight individuals with calcified cysts preserved in the thorax and abdomen, one of which had a maximum diameter of 17–20 cm, were recovered during recent excavations at Skriðuklaustur, a medieval monastic site which also functioned as a hospital during its operation from AD 1493–1554 in Eastern Iceland. Hydatid cysts are the result of parasitic infection by Echinococci commonly in the liver and lungs of the accidental human host. Echinococcus granulosus was likely introduced to Iceland soon after the settlement period (9th century AD) and became endemic around AD1200 when dogs were introduced from Germany. It has since been eradicated in Iceland due to an extensive educational literature programme and government controls implemented since the mid‐1800s. Reviews of the palaeopathological literature mentioning calcified shell fragments indicated hydatism to be the most logical aetiology. The eight individuals in question were buried in close proximity to one another. This may indicate that this particular ailment (sullaveiki) had its own classification during the medieval period in Iceland and perhaps even a distinct treatment if not in life, at least in death. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Identity of Capitalists and the Legitimacy of Capitalism: Sri Lanka since Independence

In many Asian countries, the early decades of independence after World War II were marked by tension between ‘indigenous’ political elites and business elites that were in large part alien, or from minority ethnic groups. This tension was one reason for the preference that most governments showed for statist and nationalist economic policies. It has abated in most cases; political and business elites now tend to pursue more co-operative strategies. Much of the explanation for this lies in changes in the international political economy that made market-oriented economic policies more attractive to political elites. There are in addition internal political reasons for this rapprochement. These vary from case to case, and have been explored in most detail by scholars in relation to the Southeast Asian countries where Overseas Chinese have dominated larger scale business. This article extends this literature by examining the causes of the gradual rapprochement between ‘majority’ politics and ‘minority’ business in Sri Lanka.     

Revisiting Settlement Contemporaneity and Exploring Stability and Instability: Case Studies from the Indus Civilization

ABSTRACT

“Map overestimation,” or “the contemporaneity problem,” derives from the assumption that settlements identified during surface surveys were occupied throughout individual periods. Inductive and simulation analysis have been used to ascertain the degree of contemporaneity in surface survey data sets, as variation in settlement location is critical for understanding population density and demography, which inform social, economic and political interpretations. This paper revisits the inductive approach to interrogating survey data developed by W. M. Sumner and the simulation model approach developed by R. E. Dewar to explore the survey data from two regions within South Asia’s Indus civilization. This analysis demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. It also highlights the variability in settlement systems in different areas within the Indus civilization and shows that consideration of stability and instability within settlement systems is an important factor when considering dynamics of resilience and sustainability.     

Vikings in Brazil: the Iceland Brazil Association shaping Icelandic heritage

Abstract

The Iceland Brazil Association (AISBRA) was established in 1996 by a group of Brazilians of Icelandic descent, more than 100 years after the first generation of immigrants settled in Brazil in the nineteenth century. The association was the first organisation in Brazil to collectively emphasise and celebrate Icelandic heritage. The association caters to a disparate group of people that had, in many cases, little knowledge about their historical links to Iceland. In spite of the fragmented activities of AISBRA since its establishment, the number of participants has increased, reflecting their growing interest in their Icelandic past. This paper examines how the members of Iceland Brazil Association produce their heritage independently, outside the state recognised heritage, within the Brazilian national context. We analyse how identities are re/shaped in new ways to engage with the past and how values from the past are extracted and turned into contemporary economic, social, and political values. This paper stresses heritage-making as a social imaginary used to define collective identity, which, while based on ancestry, also intersects with ideas of race and class. Representations of their Icelandic heritage allow the members of the Brazil Iceland Association to emphasise their ‘Europeanness’ and thus their associations with whiteness in contemporary post-colonial Brazil.     

The Buddhist Ineffable Self and a Possible Indian Political Subject

ABSTRACT

It is well known that the sovereign, the cakkavatin, in India is the one who turns the wheel of dhamma. What is not so well appreciated is that the Buddha’s dhammachakkapabbatana, the turning of the wheel of dhamma and the attainment of nibbana, can be read as a political act, involving the emergence of a political subject. It will be seen that the 4th Century AD Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu’s vijnanavadin notion of the Ineffable Self (anavilapya atman) helps us unravel the epistemological underpinnings of the political subject in consonance with the revolutionary act of turning the wheel of dhamma. Seen in this light, we can better appreciate B. R. Ambedkar’s attempt at treating Buddhism as the “Revolution” against the Brahminical “Counter-Revolution,” something whose implications unfold almost daily in India’s political struggles. What can be called (in academic-speak) Buddha’s “pluralist non-essentialist framework,” even a convergence of sorts between Buddha and Spinoza, does not necessarily exclude the notion of a revolutionary political subject. This opens up the possibility of reading Buddha's notion of the turning of the wheel of dhamma alongside more recent ideas of revolution as another turning and churning.     

Confucianism,Secularism, and Atheism in Bayle and Montesquieu

It should be hardly surprising to discover that eighteenth-century European perspectives of other cultures were shaped to a large extent by concerns internal to European political life. Objective or unprejudiced accounts of non-European cultures are rarely found among travellers, missionaries, and philosophers of the time. While the insights of Enlightenment political thinkers on the non-European world may shed little light on the cultures being commented upon, they are useful for assessing the nature of the Enlightenment's engagement with cultural traditions external to Europe. In particular, Enlightenment conceptions of China were extremely varied and reflective of the debates between Enlightenment thinkers, especially on the proper relation between religion and politics. I shall argue that Montesquieu's account of Confucianism in The Spirit of the Laws (De l’esprit des lois, first published in 1748) was in part influenced by his critique of Bayle's position on the role of religion in society as expounded in his Various Thoughts on the Comet (Pensées diverses sur la comète, published in 1682). While Montesquieu's account and assessment of Chinese thought and culture are “Eurocentric,” his evaluation of Confucianism nevertheless arises from a considered philosophical position on religion and politics.     

Revitalizing Federalism: A Brownsonian Prescription for Preserving National Unity Amidst Growing Diversity

Abstract

Historically, the United States has achieved a relatively high degree of political stability. The reason: the Federal Constitution provides a complex architecture that checks and divides political power and compels compromise. In A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty, Richard Reinsch and Peter Augustine Lawler recommend the work of Orestes Augustus Brownson, a Civil War era theorist, to properly interpret the genius of this unique American constitutional order. In The American Republic (1865), Brownson emphasized that America’s written constitution is rooted in its unwritten constitution; the habits, customs, and sentiments of the people. The Founders’ federal division of authority between the nation’s general government and the particular governments of the states simultaneously recognized Americans’ national unity and genuine diversity. Today, that diversity—racial, religious, ethnic—is even more granular. In accommodating that diversity, a revitalized federalism would return greater power to the people of the states over domestic policies. This would not only regenerate democratic decision-making, but would also help to reduce the political polarization by allowing policy outcomes suitable to diverse communities.     

Gendered spheres: theorizing space in the English printing house

The English printing house was initially conceived, legally, as a printing house, with public work taking place in a private setting. This private space emphasised the traditional hierarchies of political and legal order: Women’s work that took place within the printing house thus fell into the traditional role of household labours. This erasure of labour is one that foregrounds the erasure of women’s writing from history; women who worked in essence as publishers, as printers and booksellers, are very clearly present in the historical records but invisible in our narratives of book history. How did this erasure happen, and why is their presence, and work, overlooked? If we consider the language of space in theory and reread Moxon’s Mechanickal Exercises closely, we see the ways in which the ideas of space itself can be implicitly gendered, and how this might shape our idea of the printing house.     

‘Gender hates men’: untangling gender and development discourses in food security fieldwork in urban Malawi

This article examines the social construction and contestation of gender and gender roles in the city of Blantyre in Malawi. In fieldwork on gendered household roles related to food security, interviews with men and women revealed a distinct set of connotations with the word gender, which reflected Malawians’ historical and contemporary engagement with concepts of development, modernity, and human rights. We denote the Malawian concept of gender as gender in order to distinguish the word participants used in interviews from the more widely accepted conventional definition. We then use this distinction to highlight the ways in which ideas of gender equality have been introduced and received in the Malawian context. The urban setting of the research is key to drawing out the association of gender with Westernization, bringing into focus the power dynamics inherent in the project of translating global discourses of gender rights and gender equality into meaningful social change in developing countries. Gender in Malawi denotes a top-down (and outside-in) process of framing Malawi’s goals for gender equality. This creates political constraints both in the form of resistance to gender, because it resonates with a long history of social change imposed by outside forces, and in the form of superficial adherence to gender to appear more urban and modern, especially to a Western researcher. Local understandings of gender as gender undermine efforts to promote gender equality as a means to address Malawi’s intense urban poverty and household food insecurity.     

‘Tangled up in Blue’: The Death,Dress and Identity of an Early Viking-Age Female Settler from Ketilsstaðir,Iceland

IN 1938, a woman’s burial was uncovered by road builders at Ketilsstaðir in north-eastern Iceland. Recently, her physical remains and associated funerary goods were re-examined by an international, interdisciplinary team and formed the basis for an exhibition at the National Museum of Iceland in 2015. This paper focuses on the items of dress that accompanied the woman — born in the British Isles, but who migrated to Iceland at a very young age — to gain insights into the ways her cultural identity was expressed at the time of her death. Here we explore the roles played by material culture in signaling her identity, and the technologies and trade networks through which she was connected, visually, to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the Viking world at large.