Local and trans-local dynamics of innovation practices in the Taipei design industry: an evolutionary perspective

Spatial-organizational proximities are crucial elements underpinning the innovation practices of creative industries. However, few studies have systematically explored how creative industries integrate the heterogeneous synergies of local and trans-local innovation practices as the diversity driving the evolution of a creative cluster within an Asian city. This paper contributes to unpacking the spatiality of local and trans-local innovation practices in the design industry from an evolutionary perspective. Based on 55 semi-structured interviews with Taipei product designers from 2011 to 2015, this paper presents a multi-dimensional framework for the spatiality of innovation practices, which exhibit two evolutionary dynamics in Taipei’s design industry cluster. First, the political-economic context enables the design industry to recombine heterogeneous knowledge by illustrating different proximities and diversities in various spatial-temporal environments. Second, the design industry increasingly depends on local and trans-local innovation practices, leading to a dynamic spatial strategy of design product differentiation. Studying the spatiality of innovation practices in the design industry reveals that the role of strategic agency, not spatial conditions, is crucial to understanding the transformation of the design economy.     

Clothing Economy and Clothing Culture: The Farm Wardrobe from a Gendered Perspective in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

This article examines the clothing of landowning farmers in inland Swedish from a gendered perspective during industrialisation in the nineteenth century. It considers clothes as possessions and goods within a European framework of trade and influence. In particular, it shows how clothing was a means of expression that changed during the course of industrialisation and how gender became an important factor in the supply and making of clothes. In the region examined, clothing changed from being a local fashion, characterised by similarities in material and workmanship between men's and women's clothes, to become a part of fashion in general with its emphasis on differences between men's and women's wardrobes. In the early nineteenth century, the female wardrobe accounted for a higher value as it included a greater share of garments made of manufactured fabrics. In late nineteenth century, when industrial forestry had replaced livestock farming as the main source of income in the area, men's wardrobes grew in value due to increased demand for tailor-made garments and purchased fabrics. By contrast, women's garments were often made of simpler fabrics and sewn by seamstresses. These changes responded to the growing breadwinner–homemaker ideal and to national-romantic ideas about folk costume – two tendencies that emphasised female domesticity and home-woven fabrics.     

民众记忆与服装衍化--1949～2000年中国城镇民众服装流变

服装是社会变迁的组成部分.中国城镇服装以社会大文化的发展为依托,伴随生活方式、价值观念以及行为规范的变化而变化.改革开放以来,随着国家政治经济文化的健康发展,服装开始脱离社会政治和革命范式,凸现自身发展固有的逻辑.同时,中国人的审美观念不断更新,在整体上趋于西化,服装的自身功能日趋彰显.但回首过去,中国特有的、在短时间内形成民众服装急剧变革、走向革命化的现象,颇耐人寻味.在人类历史上,恐怕还没有一个民族将服装当作革命的对象、形式和重要内容,这一现象与中华民族的历史、文化、精神密切相连,是值得深入研究和长久反思的.     

Coexistence in modernity: A euromed perspective

Does cultural diversity lead to a want of respect, intolerance, and violence? Is religious culture in Islamic or other states tending towards a territorial imperative, denying any democracy a chance? Is globalization threatening value, identity and meaning? In the wake of 9/11, war on the Taliban's Afghanistan and Saddam's Iraq, the lingering Israeli–Palestinian tension, and what appear to be re-discovered genres of brutality—such as suicide bombings, beheadings, the wanton destruction of churches and other temples—this article teases out some historical and philosophical contexts in an attempt to assuage contemporary uncertainties. Distinguishing between the Mediterranean and the Middle East as two different realities, the article discusses how seemingly bewildering new theses and premises in a post-war, post-colonial, post-communist world may be read and possibly reconciled during the twenty-first century.     

A Neolithic innovation in eastern Arabia: haematite axes and adzes

Well before metallurgy, Neolithic societies in the Gulf were engaging in a very peculiar form of metal object production, particularly of axes and adzes made from haematite. In the heart of the Neolithic Middle East, this innovation was specific to Arabian shores between the Musandam and Qatar peninsulas. Quite infrequent among Neolithic lithic assemblages from Arabia, axes and adzes were mostly collected on the surface of domestic settlements. One is often dealing with objects to which the most focus has been given, apart from arrowheads and projectile points. Several sites or outcrops are present on the Emirati coastline and Gulf islands. Inland mountain ranges also include some of these. From Ra’s al-Khaimah to Qatar, only 500 km separate the most distant Neolithic domestic settlements which possess haematite axes or hoes, a distance that is quite small when one considers the circulation of polished stone blades in other societies of the same period. Within the Middle East, south-eastern Arabia during the Neolithic engaged in a very original means of production of metal objects, as the latter did not focus on copper, a very malleable and much more available material, but on haematite, which was much harder.     

Women and politeness: A new perspective on language and society

Robin Lakoff. Language and Woman's Place. New York, Evanston, San Francisco and London: Harper Colophon Books, Harper & Row Publishers, 1975. 85 pp. Bibliography. $2.25 (paper).