2. CONSTRUCTIONS OF “HOME,”“FRONT,” AND WOMEN'S MILITARY EMPLOYMENT IN FIRST‐WORLD‐WAR BRITAIN: A SPATIAL INTERPRETATION

In First‐World‐War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for the military faced considerable public opposition. Nevertheless, by late 1916 up to 10,000 members of the female volunteer corps were working for the army, laying the foundation for some 90,000 auxiliaries of the official Women's Services, who filled support positions in the armed forces in the second half of the war. This essay focuses on the public debate in which the volunteers overcame their critics to understand how they obtained sufficient popular consent for their martial work. I explain the process in terms of shifting hegemonic understandings of space. As critics' arguments in the debate indicate, the gender attribution of war participation was organized and represented spatially, assigning men to the warlike “front” as warriors and women to the peaceful “home” as civilians. To redefine the meaning of these gendered wartime spaces, women volunteers deployed rival spatial discourses and practices in their campaign for martial employment. The essay explores the progress of these competing definitions through feminist and spatial theories, including gender performativity, discursively constructed and constructive spaces, and heterotopias. I argue that the upheaval caused by the war in gender and spatial norms undermined absolute conceptualizations of space with dichotomous binary areas on which critics drew for their arguments and reinforced more recent, relative spatialities, including the cultural construction of militarized heterotopic sites in between and paralleling both “home” and “front” for soldiers in training or recovery. The volunteers' efforts to gain access to military employment both contributed to and were supported by this shift. Heterotopic sites offered ideal discursive locations for constructing the new gender role of auxiliary soldiering through the performance of martial training and work, and competing spatial definitions provided arguments through which they could justify their activities to both critics and supporters.     

1. AT HOME AND IN THE WORKPLACE: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO THE “SPATIAL TURN”

This introduction places the forum contributions in the wider context of the “spatial turn” within the humanities and social sciences. Following a survey of the historical trajectories of the field, a review of impulses from different disciplines, and a sketch of general developments over the last few decades, the editors exemplify key approaches, methods, and conceptual advances with reference to gender studies. The focus then turns to the structure, main themes, and specific contents of this collection, which features both case studies and theoretical reflections. In conclusion, the essay underlines the significance and further potential of the “spatial turn.”     

“DOING TIME” IN CARCERAL SPACE: TIMESPACE AND CARCERAL GEOGRAPHY

By bringing debates over experiential time within human geography and criminology/prison sociology into dialogue with one another, this article draws attention to the imperative of considering time in the geographical study of incarceration. Informed by an understanding of space and time which sees them as analytically inseparable from each other, TimeSpace, it revisits existing empirical material previously generated through qualitative research within criminology and prison sociology, and identifies some potential synergies with human geography; in highlighting overlapping temporalities in a carceral context, and in demonstrating both the significance of perceived control over time, and the experience of the lifecourse, when past, present and future are viewed through “each successive now” in a context where (clock) time “moves on” but space is fixed.     

CHARTING THE “TRANSITIONAL PERIOD”: THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN TIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This paper seeks to chart a concept of historical experience that French Romantic writers first developed to describe their own relationship to historical time: the notion of the “transitional period.” At first, the term related strictly to the evolving periodic conception of history, one that required breaks, spaces, or zones of indeterminacy to bracket off periods imagined as organic wholes. These transitions, necessary devices in the new grammar of history, also began to attract interest on their own, conceived either as chaotic but creative times of transformation, or, more often, as slack periods of decadence that possessed no proper style but exhibited hybrid traits. Their real interest, however, lies in their reflexive application to the nineteenth century itself, by writers and historians such as Alfred de Musset, Chateaubriand, Michelet, and Renan, who in their effort to define their own period envisioned the “transitional period” as a passage between more coherent and stable historical formations. This prospective self‐definition of the “age of history” from a future standpoint is very revealing; it shows not just the tension between its organic way of apprehending the past and its own self‐perception, but it also opens a window on a new and paradoxical experience of time, one in which change is ceaseless and an end in itself. The paper also presents a critique of the way the term “modernity” has functioned, from Baudelaire's initial use to the present, to occlude the experience of transition that the Romantics highlighted. By imposing on the nineteenth‐century sense of the transitory a heroic period designation, the term “modernity” denies precisely the reality it describes, and sublimates a widespread temporal malaise into its contrary. The paper concludes that the peculiarly “modern” mania for naming one's period is a function of transitional time, and that the concept coined by the Romantics still governs our contemporary experience.     

POLITICS OF BEING‐RELATED: ON ONTO‐TOPOLOGIES AND “COMING EVENTS”

This article grows from a discontent with the equation of topology to relational thinking in the recent geographical literature operating under the rubric of post‐mathematical topology. In order to find a more subtle way for comprehending topology, the article shows that there exists an entirely different tradition of topological thought, which is explicitly connected to the problematic around the notion of ontology. An alternative approach is suggested, where not only the relational constitution of topology is properly taken into account, but where an in‐depth reading of the ontological aspect is offered. Instead of fabricating another “ontology of topology”, the article argues that it is the ontology itself, which takes place topologically, that is, it is place‐bound. By relying on Heidegger's insight about the bond between place (topos) and being (ontology), the article proposes an approach that is concentrated on the manifold modes through which topological relations are ontologically revealed, ordered, and defined. It acknowledges three topological tensions – thing‐gathering, gathering‐revealing, and concealing‐revealing – in order to highlight the structure of the place in which the question of ontology, and ontological politics are entwined.     

Heritage Discourse and the Desexualisation of Public Space: The “Historical Restorations” of Bloomsbury's Squares

Abstract: In recent years, the local authorities in London's historic Bloomsbury district have carried out a number of refurbishments of the area's public squares. These landscaping schemes have typically been labelled “historical restorations” in attempts to predetermine the evaluation criteria as “historic” rather than political, social and aesthetic. Focusing on Russell Square and Bloomsbury Square, this paper illustrates how the “restorations” were selective: the introduction of gates and railings and the removal of planting were not primarily designed to restore these historical gardens, but reflect a surveillance‐friendly ideal of urban space, specifically introduced to displace the men who used these squares for cruising. Through a detailed review of archival material from both mainstream and gay media, I illustrate the shifting forms of policing and landscaping in Bloomsbury's squares, while also highlighting how homonormative capital has colluded with the regulation of public space in this part of London.     

METAPHORS OF POLICY MOBILITY: FLUID SPACES OF “CREATIVITY” POLICY

This article considers the metaphors we use when studying what geographers have come to call policy mobility. Specifically, it argues that a metaphor developed by Mol and Law (1994) of fluid space offers something different to metaphors that are currently being used in the area, including diffusion, transfer and network. In particular, the metaphor of fluid space describes a distributed and highly differentiated space of policy mobility and circulation that remains connected and robust despite the lack of a strong centre. This is illustrated through a discussion of the global spread of policies that claim to act on or through some aspect of human creativity, such as the creative industries, the creative class, the creative city and so on. The article concludes that this metaphor helps us to explain why some policy types are able to move to so many places while avoiding the tendency to link this movement to a universal critique.     

WHITE,FRIEDLÄNDER, “… AND THE REST IS HISTORY”: A PAX HISTORIANA

Close analysis of the ostensive disagreement between Saul Friedländer and Hayden White on the necessarily literary character of Holocaust historiography shows instead of conflict two compatible and even mutually supportive emphases in that project: the assumption in modernist and disruptive narratives as elsewhere of a “corpus of facts,” together with the role of figurative discourse in conveying relevant features of events that linear chronological or causal narratives alone do not convey.     

THE “ROUTINE‐SCAPE” AND SOCIAL STRUCTURALIZATION IN THE FORMATION OF JAPANESE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES

Recent archaeo‐botanical research has suggested that the introduction of farming did not immediately cause a sufficient shift in subsistence strategy to form an agrarian society but that the process took as long as hundreds of years. It is therefore suggested that it was not the farming technique in itself but the establishment of routinized day‐to‐day activity patterns and world views associated with farming that eventually led to the formation of a new social structure. The holistic concept of a dynamic day‐today routine and its associated physical and conceptual landscape is termed routine‐scape through which the process of agrarian society formation in Japan is examined around 1000–500 bce when paddy rice farming was introduced from China to Japan. A new crop storage system of a raised‐floor granary was also adopted as a part of the rice‐farming routine, which resulted in changing the Japanese routine‐scape. The community leaders increasingly associated the granary with both symbolic and practical significance; alongside controlling the storage‐related routine they finally gained centralized power. This paper indicates that agriculture brought along a new range of routine activities and their dynamic interactions with landscape produced new social structures.     

REGIONALIZING “MODE 2”? THE ADOPTION OF CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE IN SWEDISH RESEARCH POLICY

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of university research for innovation and economic growth, a debate highly influenced by concepts such as Mode 2 and regional innovation systems and clusters. A prominent trend in many EU and OECD countries is to direct research funding towards so‐called Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in order to stimulate the industrial output of scientific research. The implementation of the CoE approach is viewed as an attempt to bridge research and innovation policy. By using Sweden as an example and providing an overview and critical discussion concerning Swedish research policy during the period 2001 to 2007 we show that the rhetoric within research policy has changed and become increasingly intertwined with innovation policy. In practice, however, this is not as evident. The study draws on (a) an analysis of policy literature pointing out regulatory and organizational changes concerning the increasing emphasis on linking research to competitive industrial milieus, and (b) a comprehensive database including 110 CoEs, presenting a detailed picture of university‐industry collaboration, cross‐disciplinarity, and prioritized sectors. We fiind that the CoEs account for a relatively small share of government funding, but may however have a strengthening impact on particular research milieus and industries, especially in the life sciences. Additionally, although contemporary policy rhetoric appears to highlight steering funding to geographically‐concentrated milieus, thereby linking leading university research to regional industrial clusters, this has only been manifested in a few cases – notably in the Vinnväxt programme run by Vinnova, the national agency promoting innovation systems.     

Von Vielschichtigkeiten und Verschränkungen “Kulturen der Wissenschaft – Wissenschaften in der Kultur”

On Multiple Levels and Linkages: Introduction to the Symposium ‘Cultures of Sciences – the Sciences in Culture’. – The article presents briefly approaches to cultural history and cultural studies that seem potentially useful to or have recntly been applied in historical studies of the sciences. The first section discusses three such approaches: discourse analysis, symbolic artefacts (images and text), and cultures of scientific practice. Each of the three approaches raises issues of its own, and all of them share a common problem characteristic of cultural and social history in general: linking micro and macro levels of analysis. The second section presents three approaches to resolving this dilemma by focusing on specific linkages between cultures of science (or culture in the sciences) and general history: scientific thought and practice as norms for professional behavior, for example in fields of knowledge dominated by women; spaces of knowledge, for example the city; and linkages of cultural, media and economic history in fields such as radio and television.     

The Post‐Industrial “Shop Floor”: Emerging Forms of Gentrification in San Francisco's Innovation Economy

The San Francisco Bay Area in California is undergoing a technology‐driven wave of growth arguably more thoroughgoing than the first “dot‐com” bubble, fueling hypertrophic gentrification and tales of a deeply class‐divided, “Blade Runner kind of society”. While Silicon Valley is still the industry's employment center, San Francisco is seeing faster tech firm growth, and is transforming its downtown to become more “livable” and promoting public space as key to innovation. In this context, this paper offers a reading of urban public space not just as a consumption amenity but also as the “shop floor” of a labor process that goes beyond the walls of the firm to mobilize the social itself in the production of privately appropriated value. With innovation now the watchword of gentrification, the stakes of this shift oscillate between the total commodification of urban vitality and the recognition of the social process of value production itself.     

“LANDSCAPISM” AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: DARKNESS AND ILLUMINATION IN MOTION

In conditions of darkness, how is landscape experienced when mediated by the artful staging of mass movement and artificial illumination? The article offers a response to this question of perception, phenomena and sensation, through culturally informed consideration of Speed of Light, a performance event staged in Holyrood Park, produced by arts charity NVA, during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. Speed of Light was a large‐scale, open‐air public artwork, illuminating the form and motion of walkers and runners, fusing the role of performer and spectator. Following an introduction to the event's design and delivery, and consideration of recent literatures on spaces of darkness and the illumination of landscape in contemporary social life, the authors describe and explain their respective roles as participating walker and runner in Speed of Light, and offer a series of participant‐informed interpretations. Observations arising from the social experience of darkness, illumination and motion, lead to closing reflections on what is termed “landscapism”. Landscapism, a sensibility encapsulated in Speed of Light, is suggested as a transporting and enchanting affect achieved by estranging the expected encounter with topography and atmosphere. It is a staged sensibility that dramatizes the experience of looking at, listening to and feeling for the temporary transformation of landscape.     

“SEEING” THE PAST: TEXT AND QUESTIONS OF HISTORY IN THE RĀJATARAṄGIṆĪ

Traditional scholarly opinion has regarded Kalha?a's Rājatara?gi?ī, the twelfth‐century Sanskrit chronicle of Kashmiri kings, as a work of history. This essay proposes a reinvestigation of the nature of the iconic text from outside the shadow of that label. It first closely critiques the positivist “history hypothesis,” exposing its internal contradictions over questions of chronology, causality, and objectivity as attributed to the text. It then argues that more than an empiricist historical account that modern historians like to believe it is—in the process bracketing out integral rhetorical, mythic, and didactic parts of the text—the Rājatara?gi?ī should be viewed in totality for the kāvya (epic poem) that it is, which is to say, as representing a specific language practice that sought to produce meaning and articulated the poet's vision of the land and its lineages. The essay thus urges momentarily reclaiming the text from the hegemonic but troubled understanding of it as history—only to restore it ultimately to a more cohesive notion of historicality that is consistent with its contents. Toward this end, it highlights the concrete claim to epistemic authority that is asserted both by the genre of Sanskrit kāvya generally and by the Rājatara?gi?ī in particular, and their conception of the poetic “production” of the past that bears a striking resonance with constructivist historiography. It then traces the intensely intertextual and value‐laden nature of the epistemology that frames the Rājatara?gi?ī into a narrative discourse on power and ethical governance. It is in its narrativity and discursivity—its meaningful representation of what constitutes “true” knowledge of time and human action—that the salience of the Rājatara?gi?ī may lie.     

THE “THEORETICAL REVOLUTION” IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: FROM THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS TO THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL LANGUAGES

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so‐called new “politico‐intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico‐conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico‐intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.     

WILL ATTRACTING THE “CREATIVE CLASS” BOOST ECONOMIC GROWTH IN OLD INDUSTRIAL REGIONS? A CASE STUDY OF SCOTLAND

Attracting in-migration of the creative class has been argued by Florida (2002) to be a route to higher economic growth in the era of the knowledge economy. This paper critically evaluates this proposition in relation to old industrial regions using the example of Scotland. The paper presents an assessment of, in the first instance, to what extent there is a shortage of skilled, talented and entrepreneurial individuals and, in the second instance, whether a talent attraction strategy alone can hope to attract such people to Scotland. It is proposed that for most migrants the availability of appropriate economic opportunities is a prerequisite for mobility. However, despite uncertain evidence that place attractiveness is a catalyst to mobility among the so-called creative class, this is not a reason for dismissing talent attraction programmes. Instead it is argued that talent attraction programmes have the potential to contribute to old industrial economies, but their success will be greatest when talent attraction is carefully targeted and based on economic realities rather than the marketing of ethereal conceptions of place attractiveness.     

SELECTION AND HEATING OF COLOURING MATERIALS IN THE MOUSTERIAN LEVEL OF ES‐SKHUL (c. 100 000 YEARS BP,MOUNT CARMEL,ISRAEL)

The transformation of yellow goethite into red hematite by heating has long been assumed for Palaeolithic red artefacts excavated close to fireplaces. However, this transformation is extremely rare. Using SEM–FEG–EDX, PIXE–PIGE, TEM and μXRD, we characterized the mineralogical and chemical compositions of four microsamples of colouring materials from the Mousterian layer B in the es‐Skhul rock‐shelter, from about 100 kya ago. For some colouring materials, the Mousterian people of es‐Skhul chose to gather remote yellow lumps for heating. Their significant transport distance provides evidence of the possible high cultural value of these colouring materials for transformation into red pigments.