Capacity and regulations against overloading of commercial ships in Byzantine and Islamic maritime practices

The article deals with the methods employed in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds during the seventh to early eleventh centuries to compute the ship capacity at a time when a uniform system did not exist in the Mediterranean world. It describes the responsibility of central and provincial authorities for inspection, construction, and registration of mercantile ships, sheds light on the arrangement of loading, and provides legal solutions to two fundamental questions: How did judicial authorities handle cases of overloading of ships when they were brought to court? Or, what did they advise the contracting parties to do when overloading was discernible while the ship was still berthed or underway?     

Coping with Iberian monopolies: Genoese trade networks and formal institutions in Spain and Portugal during the second half of the eighteenth century

Abstract

This article explores Genoese trade interests in Cadiz and Lisbon, the two capitals of Iberian colonial trade at the end of the early-modern period. The author aims to explain the persisting intermediary role of a merchant community that has been largely overlooked by historians. The structure of the trade networks established in the two cities will be reconstructed by using the primary sources conserved in the archive of the Durazzos, a powerful aristocratic family of the Republic which has left a unique collection of private correspondence. This sizeable and largely unexplored documentation illuminates the different strategies used to access the Spanish and Portuguese monopolistic systems, the main actors who traded in both contexts, their relations with the local elite, and the nature of the business networks linking Genoese investors in the mother city with the expatriated agents. The author concludes with a comparative analysis of the institutional resources that Genoese used to maintain their interests, with particular attention paid to the religious institutions established by the ‘nation’ in the two port cities.     

Religion, Policy, and Secrecy: The Latter Day Saints and Masons

On a vanished secret order: "Had politics, as in Masonry, been its main object, it would have held on with tenacity to its principles, as to the threads of life, and, disregarding its departure from sound morals, or patriotism, would still have contended, with the infatuation of a Mormonite, for the enjoyment, in secret, of that which in the eye of the public would overwhelm its members in confusions.""A Traveller in the United States", A Ritual and Illustrations of Free-Masonry and the Orange and Odd Fellows' Societies, Accompanied by Numerous Engravings, and a Key to the Phi Beta Kappa , S. Thrne, Devon (Shebbear, near Hatherleigh, England), 1835, 251.     

Rural masculinities and fathering practices

Fatherhood and fathering practices have been surprisingly absent from the literature on rural men and masculinity. This article draws on interviews with two generations of farm fathers in Norway to examine how rural masculinities are constructed through fathering practices. It explores how fathering creates potential for the development of alternative rural masculinities in two socio-historical contexts. Findings demonstrate that farm work is important for masculine legitimization in both generations, but, in contrast to the older generation, for the current generation farm work and fathering practices have become spatially separated. Their greater involvement in childcare within the domestic spaces indicates a slight shift towards more equal co-parenting driven by the movement of mothers into the non-farm labour force and the new fathering moralities in society. However, fathering practices through outdoor sports, wilderness activities and hunting constitute stable sites of rural masculinity. As fathering requires nurture and compassion, these ‘traditional’ rural activities display the fluidity of rural masculinity.     

The Insider and the Ethnography of Secrecy: Challenges of Collecting Data on Fearful Komo of the Tagwa-Senufo

As with many other ethnic groups in Africa, Senufo identity was the creation of the French colonial administration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In spite of some similarities, those subgroups collectively named Senufo by the French do not share the same artistic and traditional forms and values. For example, while the Poro association and the art related to it are the core of the socio-religious organization of the central and southern Senufo, northern Senufo groups do not have Poro or its associated arts. Northern Senufo groups are invested in the Komo men’s society and its associated objects like their Mande-speaking neighbours. This is particularly true for the subgroup known as the Tagwa, which has a Komo male secret association. The Komo is a sacred mask society with great power and authority, inaccessible to the general public, women and non-circumcised males. This is the most important religious cult of the Tagwa, who have shaped the Komo for their own tradition and customs. This paper describes my experience as a researcher working on sensitive topics such as secrecy and sacred objects among my own people: the Tagwa of Burkina Faso.     

Hume,modern patriotism,and commercial society

Contemporary liberal thought is increasingly baffled by the question of what kinds of moral obligations we ought to attribute to our common civic ties. Liberal patriotism is often seen as an obsolete inheritance, fundamentally in tension with values of liberty, equality, and impartiality. This paper examines the moral theory of David Hume in order to counter this assertion of incompatibility and uncover the roots of a view of modern patriotism that can incorporate impartiality, interest, and partial benevolence.     

Hume,modern patriotism,and commercial society

Contemporary liberal thought is increasingly baffled by the question of what kinds of moral obligations we ought to attribute to our common civic ties. Liberal patriotism is often seen as an obsolete inheritance, fundamentally in tension with values of liberty, equality, and impartiality. This paper examines the moral theory of David Hume in order to counter this assertion of incompatibility and uncover the roots of a view of modern patriotism that can incorporate impartiality, interest, and partial benevolence.     

The British commercial development industry

Academic and professional accounts of the commercial development industry often portray an implicit but false picture of homogeneity, when in reality the sector is highly diverse. This diversity has important implications for the production of the built environment, since the extent to which particular developers see themselves also as dealers or investors will colour their approach to a development project. Building on earlier work, this paper therefore presents a four-fold typology of the British commercial development industry, by distinguishing between property dealers, developer/dealers, developer/investors and investor/developers. Recent case studies are included in each case to demonstrate how the motives, operations and financial stability of each type of developer reflect this distinction.