This Sporting Cloth: Tweed,Gender and Fashion 1860–1900

Abstract

This article explores the manufacturing, design and consumption of tweed cloth in relation to issues of gender in the late nineteenth century. It focuses on tweed produced on mainland Scotland by factory methods and the wider influence of that industry on woollen manufacturers in other areas of Britain. Exploring the history of this textile reveals the shifting ambiguities linked to male and female social and sartorial identities and the gender coding of tweed in the late nineteenth century.     

'To attract the attention of fish as little as possible': An Object-Led Discussion of Three Garments,for Country Wear for Women,Made of Scottish Woollen Cloth,Dating from 1883–1908

Abstract

This article aims to establish the precise social and cultural function of three day costumes, worn by women in Scotland in the 1880–1910 period, all made from heavy-duty woollen cloth, using an object-focused, material culture approach. Discussion is built around Tim Breen's view that things acquire meaning only once woven into cultural debate about the structure of society.     

Author response: between liberty and discipline

Abstract

Most accounts of the microelectronics revolution have emphasized the role of military patronage and procurement in the shaping of silicon technology and the consolidation of the semiconductor industry. Little attention has been devoted, however, to the silicon industry's shift from military to commercial markets in the early and mid‐1960s. Drawing on an examination of Fairchild Semiconductor, the firm that initiated this shift, this essay argues that the silicon industry's expansion into non‐military markets was indissociable from deep changes in manufacturing, organizational structures as well as component and system technologies. Special attention is devoted to the ways in which Fairchild created a user base for its products in the computer and consumer electronics industries by hiring engineers from these sectors and encouraging them to design components as well as applications for the firm's potential customers. This article also examines how Fairchild introduced mass production techniques from the automotive and electrical industries, delocalized its assembly operations to South‐East Asia, and developed new packaging techniques to meet the cost and manufacturing requirements of commercial users. This article is intended to contribute to recent interest in the role of user ‐ supplier relations in technological change and, more specifically, to the question of the pervasive use of silicon components across a wide range of industrial sectors, a central phenomenon in the history of industrialized economies since the 1960s.     

Fashion Curating: Critical Practice in the Museum and Beyond

Abstract

The commercial value of a quantity of yarn depends on two things, the length and the fineness. This article describes how practical methods of measuring these quantities led to systems of units that were noteworthy mainly for their profusion and complexity. The story covers the period from 1600 to the present day, and examples from the woollen, linen, and cotton trades are given. Progress towards standardization, both nationally and internationally, was slow. Even when opportunities for simplification arose, the trades were reluctant to abandon their customary measures in favour of ones that would have been simpler to use and understand.     

Staying Power: What Influences Micro-firm Survival in Tourism?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how previous experience and location of entrepreneurs influence the survival of new tourism firms. The paper departs from recent evolutionary economic geography advancements, highlighting the importance of routines and skills as well as location-specific knowledge for firm success. While having been well-researched for manufacturing industries characterized by high entry barriers, little knowledge is currently available on the factors influencing survival rates in service sectors with low entry barriers. A quantitative approach applies hazard models to investigate the survival rates over a seven-year period of a total of 133 new micro-tourism firms started between 1999 and 2001 in the four northernmost counties of Sweden. The geo-referenced micro-database ASTRID links information on firm features (e.g. firm births and deaths, spatial coordinates and industry codes) to characteristics of entrepreneurs (e.g. age, education, previous experience). The main finding is that entrepreneurs with previous work experience in related sectors are more likely to survive and, in this case, entrepreneurs without local experience tend to be less successful. We find no evidence that new firms operating in regions specialized in tourism have a survival advantage. Our analysis also indicates that surviving firms improve performance over time. The paper thus contributes new knowledge on the determinants of micro-firm survival in tourism.     

Knitting,Autonomy and Identity: The Role of Hand-Knitting in the Construction of Women's Sense of Self in an Island Community,Shetland, c. 1850–2000

Abstract

Hand knitting of woollen clothing by women was a key economic activity throughout the nineteenth and for most of the twentieth century in the Shetland islands. It integrated women into the market and enabled women to construct an identity for themselves based on their relationship with production and the wider economy. Generally regarded as a either a backward remnant of the pre-industrial economy or a traditional craft with little economic value, hand knitting does not belong to the story of women's work and independence in the modern industrial era. This article argues that hand knitting and the means by which it was produced and traded occupied a central place in the web of female relationships on the islands, helping to create a female culture characterized by an acknowledgement of women as producers with economic autonomy.     

Beyond ‘related variety’: how inflows of skills shape innovativeness in different industries

ABSTRACT

Building on recent evolutionary thinking, this paper focuses on inter-industry differences in the receptiveness of firms to inflows of skills from different domains of the external economy. The empirical analysis of innovation performance finds that firms’ dependences on recruiting outside their own industry domains were inversely related to the vibrancy of knowledge dynamics within them. Moreover, inflow distances that are ‘optimal’ from the perspective of learning are closer to manufacturing firms’ own industry domains, than they are to the domains of services firms. As a result, only low-tech manufacturing and technology-intensive services firms exhibit the receptiveness to inflows from ‘related’ industries found in prior evolutionary research. Firms in high-tech manufacturing, by contrast, capture strong learning benefits from intra-sectoral mobility flows, whereas firms in traditional professional services depend on skills developed outside their own industry domains. Implications for the theory, empirics and policy relevance of evolutionary economic geography are discussed.     

Unfolding the relationship between resilient firms and the region

ABSTRACT

This research explores organizational resilience in four manufacturing firms in four different regions of Norway. While regional resilience has gained attention in research, there have been few studies with a micro-level focus, investigating firms and their distinctive features of resilience. We chose a qualitative multiple-case study approach and employed a critical incident technique to study resilience in selected firms that had experienced external shocks and shifts in regard to changing markets, globalization and advances in technology. Each, however, had managed to continually develop resilience capacity over time. Our framework considered three dimensions of organizational resilience: the cognitive, the behavioural and the contextual. We address how resilience is sustained over time, the evolutionary nature of organizational resilience in firms and how resilient firms relate to the region. We found that all three dimensions of resilience capacity were evident in each firm, but appeared as a complex and unique blend. Furthermore, each dimension was supported by regional ties and affiliations. The findings suggest that organizational resilience is a dynamic capability conditioned by firm–region interactions, which are cultural, social and economic. Regional resilience is built through the contribution of the firm to the economic and social systems of the region.     

The Agroindustry: A Neglected Aspect of the Location Theory of Manufacturing

The agroindustry, that is, the industry of processing of agricultural products, plays an important role in the economy of a developing country. However, the location theory of manufacturing, as developed to date, is not applicable to this type of manufacturing. This paper attempts to examine this neglected aspect of the location theory of manufacturing. The model is built on a framework that is adopted by most previous studies on production location, except that one of the inputs is of the von Thunen type, that is, produced over space and initially sold to consumers in the town. The location behavior of an agroindustrial firm is systematically analyzed. Moreover, and more importantly, a comparison of an agroindustrial firm with its non-agroindustrial counterpart is presented, demonstrating clearly that in many respects, the location behaviors of these two categories of manufacturing are significant different.     

David Evans & Co. The Last of the Old London Textile Printers

Abstract

The Glasgow 'Tobacco Lords' were the subject of a classic study, but there has been no overall survey of their successors, the Scottish cotton masters. This article draws on a rich and surprisingly underused source, the wills and probate inventories of Scottish cotton merchants and manufacturers, to give a fuller picture of a group, which played a key role in Scotland's early industrialisation. It also casts light on the early decline of the cotton industry in Scotland by demonstrating how, as profits declined, the cotton masters, who had always had diverse business interests, began to move into more lucrative areas of investment, such as coal mining, iron manufacturing, railways, shipping and overseas trade.     

Explanations of firm survival in renewable energy in the United States: a study of ethanol refineries

ABSTRACT

Firm survival is key in understanding the evolution of industries and the larger economy. Although exit and entry are common occurrences during an industry’s life cycle, it is not always easy to predict who will survive. Literature suggests a range of factors, both internal and external to the firm, and corresponding measures as determinants of survival or exit. However, these measures do not directly explain firm-level strategies such as internal adjustments to external conditions. In this paper, we use the U.S. biofuel industry to examine firm survival. As a resource-based industry focused on process innovation, biofuel production attracted farmer-entrepreneurs and related-industry investors after policies mandates and subsidies generated a dedicated market for the fuel. Despite support, not all firms survived a period of industrial sorting that followed the 2007–2008 recession. This study shows that local connections/embeddedness, knowledge base and knowledge sharing, and entrepreneurial efforts were critical for firm survival in addition to age, capacity, ownership, and location.     

Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300‒1600

Abstract

As the most important specialized enterprise in eighteenth‐century Germany, the Homann map printing firm affords a good case for an investigation of the factors underlying map production. Commercial success seems to have rested on the production of maps which made a political statement as well as presenting geographical and topographical information. Publication of maps concerning specific events, such as sieges, or based on new surveys had no chance of success until the publishing firm had achieved commercial stability with its basic stock of maps.     

Mazamet and the Skin Wool Trade 1850–1913

Abstract

In 1955, northern Nigerian government officials, working together with the British textile firm, David Whitehead &; Sons, successfully began arrangements to build the first large textile manufacturing mill in Nigeria, Kaduna Textiles Ltd (KTL), which began production in 1957. In the following decade, several textile mills opened in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, including Arewa Textiles, United Nigerian Textiles Ltd (UNTL) and Nortex among others. Textile production, spinning and dyeing operations expanded in Kaduna during the oil boom years of the 1970s. Yet by 1997, KTL, Arewa Textiles and UNTL were barely functioning, operating with obsolete equipment, without capital to obtain spare parts and without a regular source of electricity. By 2007, all three mills had closed. In this paper, we examine the growth and the reasons for the subsequent decline of textile manufacturing in Kaduna. We argue that the industry’s decline reflected both internal problems — such as frequent changes in political leadership, which contributed to abrupt shifts in industrial policy and a failure to maintain power infrastructure — and external factors — such as the implementation of a structural adjustment programme in 1986 that deregulated the currency and made imports of spare parts and modern weaving equipment prohibitively expensive. In addition, changes in international textile trade agreements and the liberalisation of Nigerian-Chinese trade after 2010 have undermined present efforts at revitalising local textile manufacturing. The paper concludes with an assessment of efforts in the first decade of the twenty-first century to reopen these Kaduna textile firms.     

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.     

Marketing Fabrics and Femininity in Interwar France

Abstract

This article examines discourse about the gender of garments and dress fabrics in the French fashion media, using Roland Barthes's 'informal semiotics' of modern consumption, and particularly his notion of the fashion magazine as a 'machine' articulating the meaning of fashion, including the gender implications of fashion and fabrics. The article also tracks the response of French couturiers and textile manufacturers to anxieties about gender ambiguities in ladieswear between the two world wars. The first part analyzes coverage of chemise dresses and ladies' suits in 13 illustrated magazines: four fashion magazines, three fashion supplements, three trade magazines and three society magazines. The second part of the article explores the attitudes of textile manufacturers' associations, of prominent woollen and silk producers, and of their marketing campaigns, to more androgynous styles using the same sources, professional bulletins, and the minutes of the Silk Manufacturers Syndicate (Chambre Syndicale des Fabricants de Soieries).     

A Detailed Study of the Effectiveness and Capabilities of 18th Century Musketry on the Battlefield

Abstract

During the mid 18th century, the standard British Army issue weapon was the Brown Bess Musket. There are various accounts of the performance of this early form of firearm and its tactical deployment (e.g. Hanger 1816). Using a technical replica of the Brown Bess, range trials and computer modelling have been used to asses the weapon's capabilities and likely performance. The research found the Brown Bess musket to be a lethal weapon at the ranges at which enemy was commonly engaged, so long as it was accurate enough to hit the target. A single shot fired at 150 yards could penetrate at least two soldiers, even if bone were hit. The armour of the day (shields of wood, leather and sometimes steel, and the layers of woollen clothing) was easily pierced by the shot. The shot was found to readily deform on impact with metal targets. The maximum range could extend to around 1200m, with 202m reached when fired horizontally.     

Manufacturing Disorder: Liberalization,Informal Enterprise and Economic ‘Ungovernance’ in African Small Firm Clusters

Small enterprise clusters are viewed as an important means of promoting competitive small‐firm development even in contexts of unstable markets and weak states. Yet the emergence of successful enterprise clusters in developing regions of Southern Europe, Asia and Latin America contrasts with their conspicuous absence in Africa. This article challenges ahistorical and culturalist explanations regarding the lack of successful enterprise clusters in Africa through a comparative analysis of three dynamic and increasingly globalized informal manufacturing clusters in two different regions of Nigeria. Focusing on a Muslim Yoruba weaving cluster in the town of Ilorin in south‐western Nigeria, and two Christian Igbo shoe and garment clusters in the town of Aba in south‐eastern Nigeria, this article explores the role of culture, religion and the state in shaping informal economic governance in an African context. An account of the varied and complex history of these Nigerian enterprise networks reveals both their capacity for institutional innovation and economic linkages across ethnic, religious and gender boundaries, as well as their vulnerability to fragmentation and involution in the context of liberalization, state neglect and political opportunism. Far from demonstrating the inadequacies of African cultural institutions, the slide of African entrepreneurial networks into social disorder and economic ‘ungovernance’¹ is traced to the destructive impact of neoliberal reforms in a context of poverty and formal institutional exclusion.     

Working Museums and Historic Mills in the Textile Industry

Abstract

The making of worsteds was critical to the economic success of Norwich from 1400 to 1550, replacing woollens as the town's main industry. Critical to this success was the development of very high quality double worsted, woven and finished to give it qualities similar to silk. It was used for both clothing and home furnishings. In the second half of the fifteenth century double worsted became an important and profitable export. Double worsted declined in the second quarter of the sixteenth century as cheaper, continental light draperies entered the market. Historians have underestimated the importance of the double worsted, and have incorrectly viewed the early sixteenth century as a period of rapid decline. However, there is evidence that Norwich was reasonably successful in diversifying its worsted cloths to sustain its textile manufacturing, and that this prepared it for even greater success in the seventeenth century.     

Cleaning up down South: Supermarkets,ethical trade and African horticulture

Supermarkets in Great Britain have joined the country's Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) in order to demonstrate their commitment to social welfare and environmental standards in their supply chains. They have been particularly concerned to enforce ethical as well as food safety standards in the African horticultural industry, which has historically depended on cheap labour to produce high-value vegetables. The supermarkets' 'ethical turn' appears to signal an important change from forms of commodity fetishism that obscured exploitative relations of food production in the South. This paper, however, argues that in an era of high food anxiety for both retailers and consumers, ethical standards are themselves fetishized. It also shows how the effort to impose such standards on Zambia's horticultural export industry resembles the colonial 'hygienic mission', and faces a similar contradiction.