Beowulf and Archaeology

THIS SHORT CONTRIBUTION discusses an early medieval copper-alloy disc with polychrome enamel from Lincoln (England), held by ‘The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire’, and identified as a brooch dated to the 10th century and of probable continental manufacture. Only four brooches of this type are currently known, three of which were found in England, with a fourth from France. Following discussion of its stylistic characteristics and metallurgical composition, we discuss the implications of the Lincoln find for the understanding of the relationship between the area of the Danelaw and the Continent, highlighting a growing body of evidence for the popularity of continental ‘fashions’ in areas of Scandinavian settlement.     

A Scandinavian Relief Brooch: Artistic Vision and Practical Method Combined

THIS PAPER considers the craftspeople that created ornamental metalwork, the contexts in which they operated, and the communication they had with their contemporaries. The study focuses on the Dalem brooch, a 6th-century Scandinavian relief brooch from Norway. By examining an object which expresses a complex symbolic language through intricate and demanding crafting processes, we emphasise the importance of considering both ornamentation and technology when studying these exquisite dress items. The brooch was manufactured from a variety of materials and decorated in Salin Style 1. This ornamentation, with its religious, political and social connotations, was completely integrated into the object from its conception. A combination of new and old designs indicates that the craftspeople purposefully created and transformed motifs for use on the brooch, operating within a creative, cross-disciplinary and intellectual centre of expertise.     

The Wirral Brooch: The Form,Distribution and Role of a Regional Romano-British Brooch Type

The Wirral brooch is a distinctive and easily recognizable type of Romano-British brooch with a distribution primarily focused on rural sites around the Wirral peninsula in the north-west of England. The article provides a brief catalogue of the type, investigates whether it is a truly regional form, and establishes its relationship with other contemporary brooches. The accepted dating of this brooch type to the second century AD is discussed as well as its function, typology and manufacture. The role of Wirral brooches in trade, fashion and identity within the northwest of Roman Britain is considered. In wider terms, this paper demonstrates an aspect of provincial material culture from an area often seen to be lacking in material evidence and highlights the importance of the data provided by the Portable Antiquities Scheme for new insights into the material culture of Roman Britain.     

AN ANGLO-SAXON DISC BROOCH FROM BLETCHINGDON, OXFORDSHIRE, WITH STYLE II ANIMAL ART

Summary.   The brooch was found in 2003 near Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire. ¹ Its gilt Style II animal ornament and garnet setting indicate that it is a high status dress-fastener, datable to the period AD 575–610. Analysis of its form and ornament suggests that it was a local experiment in the application of a new animal style.     

On Early Church Windows

Abstract

Anglo-Saxon garnet cloisonné composite disc brooches form a small but important group of jewellery, representing an extremely high level of design and craftsmanship. While a good deal has been written about them in various contexts, this paper sets out to analyse the brooches in terms of their construction. All eighteen known examples (with the exception of one now lost) were examined in detail, from a practical manufacturing point of view, and a number of their components classified: cloisonné work, rims, back-plates, brooch fittings and general construction. On the basis of this examination, clear distinctions could be drawn between two groups — those with gold cloisonné work and those with copper-alloy. Within these groups, it is further possible to draw parallels between three sets of brooches (two pairs with gold cloisonné and a trio with copper alloy) which appear likely to have had a common manufacturing source.

Very little is known of the Anglo-Saxon jewellers, but there can have been only a small number of them. Because of this, and the high level of skill needed to make both types of brooch, it would not be safe to assume that the copper alloy cloisonné examples necessarily represent a degenerate form of the gold. The Sarre brooch illustrates levels of accomplishment comparable with that seen on many gold cloisonné brooches.     

The construction of an international: Debord,Jorn, and situationist praxis

Though the Situationist International (SI) was a network connecting artists and theorists across Europe, scholars have mainly focused on its Paris branch. Guy Debord, its leading French member, has been cast as the undisputed author of situationist praxis and his ‘Rapport sur la construction des situation’ (1957) understood as the SI’s launching manifesto. By situating Debord’s ‘Rapport’ in its original context, this paper argues that the ‘Rapport’ should be seen less as an articulation of the SI’s aesthetic project than as the conceptual basis for an incipient transnational co-operation between the movement’s branches. Engaging the thought of the Danish artist Asger Jorn, who organised the conference at which the ‘Rapport’ was first delivered, Debord started a conversation in which the non-French participants were invited to be critical interlocutors. Through their discussion, I suggest, these theorists and artists not only together brought the SI into existence as a continental formation but also, by moulding the ‘Rapport’s’ concepts to new ends, shaped its organisational praxis. I conclude by considering how this reading of the SI’s emergence recasts our understanding of later situationist developments and theory.     

Grief as method: topographies of grief,care, and fieldwork from Northwest Arkansas to New York and the Marshall Islands

Abstract

When we grieve during fieldwork, our grief forms new geographies of knowledge production and emotion. In this article, I use autoethnography to theorize my grief during fieldwork following the death of my sister. I examine grief’s methodological implications using the concept of ‘grief as method,’ an emotionally-inflected practice that accounts for the vulnerability produced by grief. By centering vulnerability, ‘grief as method’ also urges researchers to consider the practices and politics of ‘caring with’ our research subjects and caring for ourselves, raising larger questions about the role of care in research. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how grief’s geographical features—its mobility, its emergence in new sites and landscapes, and its manifestation as both proximity and distance—shape ‘grief as method’ profoundly. I examine grief’s spatial implications by building on Katz’s ‘topography’ to theorize a ‘topography of grief’ that stitches together the emotional geographies of researchers, blurring both spatial divisions (‘the field’ vs. ‘the not-field’) and methodological ones (the ‘researcher-self’ vs. the ‘personal-self’). If we see grief as having a topography, then the relationships between places darkened by grief come into focus. Moreover, by approaching grief methodologically, we can better understand how field encounters—relationships between people—are forged through grief. ‘Grief as method,’ in offering a spatial analysis of grief’s impact on fieldwork, envisions a broader definition of what engaged research looks like and where it takes place.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

New World,New Politics,New Labour: Third Way Revisionism and Prophetic Political Theology

Abstract

Tony Blair's vision of a ‘third way’ political programme is formative of New Labour's second term revisionism, claiming to transcend traditional left-right distinctions and embody the principles of ‘equal worth’, ‘opportunity for all’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘community’. Drawing upon a variety of sources, Anthony Giddens among them, the following material sketches the lineaments of the ‘third way’ agenda Having identified its political aspirations and principal theoretical components, the article suggests a number of areas representing potentially fruitful points of contact for further theological reflection.     

Karl Loewenstein,Max Lerner,and militant democracy: an appeal to ‘strong democracy’

ABSTRACT

In the 1930s Loewenstein responded to the ease with which the Nazi Party rose to power within parliamentary democracy. In America Lerner echoed Loewenstein’s call for a ‘militant democracy’, but identified a different ‘enemy within’ – rogue capitalist interests. Loewenstein’s response to populism was an ‘authoritarian democracy’, whereas Lerner wished to embrace the people in a public engagement. This paper seeks a middle path towards a conception of democracy that avoids the vicissitudes of transient majorities without yielding the ground to either transient or entrenched minorities. In its modern guise of ‘neoliberalism’, corporate capitalism has made inroads into the sensibilities of democrats, and needs to be confronted by a notion of ‘strong democracy’ expressed through the engagement of whole populations.     

Class,capital, and identity in Australian society

Despite a comparatively ‘flat’ social structure and lack of obvious class-based cleavages, Australian society is stratified by objective, multidimensional measures of social class. Using data from a July 2015 survey of a random sample of Australian citizens, latent class analysis identifies six class types in Australian society, based on the distributions of cultural, social, and economic capital among respondents. The resulting classes are categorised as ‘precariat’, ‘ageing workers’, ‘new workers’, ‘mobile middle’, ‘emerging affluent’, and ‘established affluent’. The precariat is characterised by high numbers of retired pensioners, the ageing worker class the highest mean age, and the new worker class by its low rate of unemployment. The established middle class accounts for one quarter of the adult population, while the emergent affluent class has the youngest mean age, and the established affluent is the most advantaged. We also show Australians are acutely aware of their class identity.     

Commuting,exercise and sport: an ethnography of long-distance bike commuting

The uniqueness of this article is that it deals with long-distance bike commuting in pro-cycling Copenhagen and its environs. Informed by practice theory and sensuous studies of urban and sport practices, I discuss the ‘things and environments’, ‘meanings’ and ‘competences and biological bodies’ that typify long-distance commuter cycling. This article develops cycling literature and the ‘mobilities paradigm’ in the following ways: by outlining a practice approach to cycling; challenging the idea that commuter cycling is only for short distances; undermining the distinction between utility and sport cycling; and lastly by connecting the ‘mobilities paradigm’ with literature on active travel and sport studies.     

The Mythos,Ethos, and Pathos of the Humanities

Summary

Justifications of the humanities often employ a mythos that exceeds their historical dispositions and reach. This applies to justifications that appeal to an ‘idea’ of the humanities grounded in the cultivation of reason for its own sake. But the same problem affects more recent accounts that seek to shatter this idea by admitting an ‘event’ capable of dissolving and refounding the humanities in ‘being’. In offering a sketch of the emergence of the modern humanities from early modern humanism, the paper argues that these twin philosophical justifications fail to capture both the array of intellectual arts that have informed the humanities disciplines and the variety of uses to which these arts have been put. Nonetheless, the two philosophical constructions have had a concrete impact on the disposition of the modern humanities, seen in the respective structuralist and poststructuralist reconfigurations of the disciplines that began to take place under the banner of ‘theory’ during the 1960s. In discussing the effects of theory on the humanities in Australia, the paper focuses on the unforeseeable consequences of attempts to provide arts-based disciplines with a foundation either in cognitive structures or in an ‘event’ that shatters them.     

Explorations in Rome, 1871, 1872

The identification of an eighteenth-century plan and a set of nineteenth-century photographs, in conjunction with a new survey of its remains, has permitted the reinterpretation of an early eleventh-century building at Avranches, in the Département of Manche, Normandy. This has shown that it measured 37 m by at least 27 m, was at least 16 m high, and that it can be considered as a donjon or ‘keep’, or, as now more usually termed, a ‘tour maîtresse’ or ‘great tower’. The remains of the building and its interpretation are described, with the aid of plans and the key material referred to above. Among the largest ‘great towers’ known (at least in plan) and one of the three known pre-Conquest examples in the Duchy, it is of great significance to the rapidly advancing study of this class of building.     

A Political History of Nagriamel on Santo,Vanuatu

ABSTRACT This article relates the political history of the Nagriamel movement on Santo, Vanuatu, and tries to account for its traditionalist excesses by reference to biographical aspects of its charismatic leader Jimmy Stevens. Stevens was the main architect in the unification of the ‘dak bus pipol’ (communities living in the island's remote interior) under a form of custom (kastom) he himself partially devised. This review of the life of this unusual character, who started as a ‘boy’ serving his colonial masters and became an ‘island king’, a self‐proclaimed ‘Prince’ of ‘Santo Custom’, and of the way he exploited the nativist assertions of his indigenous supporters, will also provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the troubled period surrounding Independence in the Republic of Vanuatu.     

The spirit of place of Bhaktapur,Nepal

There is no clear approach to defining the authenticity of the ‘spirit and feeling’ of a place or how it could inform heritage conservation. I argue that the notion of spirit of place may be defined in a manner that directly links it with the concept of cultural significance of historic places, how it is understood by a community and with heritage conservation goals and development needs of that place. Residents in the World Heritage Town of Bhaktapur, Nepal, were interviewed to explore their shared understanding of its spirit of place. The residents identify the spirit of place of Bhaktapur in terms of four interrelated place dimensions; that is, the ‘sense of sacrality’, the ‘sense of community’, the ‘sense of historicity’ and the ‘sense of serenity’.     

The State,the Rebel and the Chief: Public Authority and Land Disputes in Assam,India

Based upon an ethnographic study of two land disputes in the rural Assamese district of Karbi Anglong (India), this article challenges the idea that the entry of new institutional players, with their multiple sets of rules, inevitably leads to open institutional conflict. Although a wide range of political actors are involved in the regulation of land tenure in Karbi Anglong, they cannot be regarded as institutional structures ready to undercut one another. As in other parts of Northeast India, none of the claimants of public power involved —‘the state’, ‘the rebel’ or ‘the chief’— attain full sovereignty, which forces them to exercise authority predominantly through practices of negotiation and accommodation, and only selective contestation. If open institutional conflict does occur, as in the Dhansiri forest and the Singhason plateau cases studied here, this is due to the fact that one of the institutional players has overstretched and attempted to exercise authority beyond its realm of power. This article thus argues for a more agency‐oriented method of analysis in the study of land relations. The focus on everyday interactions between ‘the state’, ‘the rebel’ and ‘the chief’ in Karbi Anglong is a first attempt in that regard.     

War,memes and memeplexes

Meme theory has been attracting much attention in recent years. Pioneered by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett it suggests that there are self‐replicating units of culture analogous to genes. Like genes these ‘memes’ seek to copy themselves as widely as possible. One of them may be war. Memetics remains in its infancy but the truly sobering aspect is that ‘fitness of purpose’ for a meme may have little to do with the biological fitness of the people who are ‘programmed’ by it; it simply evolves because it is advantageous for itself. Memes also persist because they flourish in the presence of other memes (such as religion) in what Dawkins calls ‘memeplexes’. One of the most persistent memes is honour, and another is revenge for dishonour imagined or real. War is a powerful medium for both. Even if meme theory never catches on it encourages us to think about war more creatively.     

UNDERPOPULATION, TELEVISION ECONOMIES, AND THE POWER OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION

This article addresses the power of popular geographical ‘imaginations’ and ‘knowledges’ to foreclose public debate and, in the process, to reinforce often contentious policies or practices. It argues that historically, a prominent example of such a powerful geographical knowledge has been that of ‘ overpopulation’. The concept of ‘underpopulation’, meanwhile, has been much less discussed, but in this article I argue that it, too, needs to be queried in much the same way that critics have examined claims of overpopulation. I make this case first at a generic level, describing some of the main situations in which notions of underpopulation are popularly invoked, before substantiating it in much greater detail in one specific context: that of the television economy in New Zealand, a country, it is frequently said, with ‘too few people’ to support a publicly funded broadcaster. I show that in this particular instance the underpopulation thesis is backed by flawed arguments, but that none the less it is widely accepted and seldom countered, hence serving to protect its protagonists from disclosing in public debate the real reasons for the television policies they pursue and which the idea of underpopulation actively allows.     

Fiddling for outcomes: traditional music,social capital,and arts policy in Northern Ireland

Arts development policies increasingly tie funding to the potential of arts organisations to effectively deliver an array of extra‐artistic social outcomes. This paper reports on the difficulties of this work in Northern Ireland, where the arts sector, and in particular the so‐called ‘traditional arts’, have been drawn into a politically ambiguous discourse centred on the concepts of ‘mutual understanding’ and, more recently, ‘social capital’. The paper traces the recent history of these policies and the difficulties in evaluating the social outcomes of arts programs. The use of the term ‘social capital’ in the work of Putnam and Bourdieu is considered. The paper argues, through a rereading of Bourdieu’s articulation of the ‘forms’ of capital and Eagleton’s ‘ideology of the aesthetic’, the concept of social capital can be released from its current neoliberal trappings by imagining a reconnection of the concepts of ‘capital’ and ‘the aesthetic’.