Canada’s Hemisphere: Canadian Culture and the Question of Continental Identity

Canada has always been ambivalent about its spatial location. Even though it is situated in the Americas, historically it has perceived itself—and has been perceived by the world—largely as a European outpost. In particular, Canada has identified much more with the Northern Hemisphere than with the Western Hemisphere. This article examines the reluctance of Canadian writers and artists to engage with the continent below the United States–Mexico border. However, it will conclude by analyzing some of the songs that Bruce Cockburn wrote in response to his tours of the Central American war zones in the 1980s, which mark a turning point in Canada’s inter-American identity.     

What’s so good about parliamentary hybrids? Comment on ‘Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarianism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies’

Commenting on ‘Australian Bicameralism as Semi-Parliamentarianism’, this paper reconstructs the underlying justification of the issue-by-issue median as a rule of collective choice, a rule central to the theory of complex majoritarianism. In semi-parliamentary systems, this rule is institutionalised in parliamentary chambers that make law and policy by issue specific majorities. The comment questions whether it is necessary to balance the vision of complex majoritarianism with the principle of simple majoritarianism, arguing that the values of identifiability, clarity of responsibility and stability are instrumental rather than intrinsic values. It notes further problems with semi-parliamentarianism as a two-chamber system.     

Europe’s mediation junction: technology and consumer society in the 20th century

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between consumption and technological development to understand the character of Europe’s 20th‐century trajectory, i.e. the hidden integration of Europe long before the formal process of unification started. Within the rich historiography, the paper focuses on the intersection between production and consumption, where a range of social actors and institutions sought to represent consumers and mediate consumption. It is at this juncture of mediation that social actors and institutions negotiated the mediated design and the appropriation of new products and technologies. The paper further historicizes the juncture of mediation by introducing the European politics of the state, marketplace, and civil society within the context of economic crises, world wars, revolutionary changes, post‐war reconstruction, and cold war. By looking at the mediation junction, a conceptual frame is offered to understand the connection, the disconnection, or the reconfiguration of technologies and consumer identities in 20th‐century Europe. In a final section, the article suggests new avenues for research to examine the hidden integration of Europe.     

Microstructural,chemical and isotopic evidence for the origin of late neolithic leather recovered from an ice field in the Swiss Alps

Archaeological leather samples recovered from the ice field at the Schnidejoch Pass (altitude 2756 m amsl) in the western Swiss Alps were studied using optical, chemical molecular and isotopic (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of the bulk leather, and compound-specific δ¹³C analyses of the organic-solvent extracted fatty acids) methods to obtain insight into the origin of the leather and ancient tanning procedures. For comparison, leathers from modern native animals in alpine environment (red deer, goat, sheep, chamois, and calf/cow) were analyzed using the same approach. Optical and electron microscopically comparisons of Schnidejoch and modern leathers showed that the gross structure (pattern of collagen fibrils and intra-fibrils material) of archaeological leather had survived essentially intact for five millennia. The SEM studies of the hairs from the most important archaeological find, a Neolithic leather legging, show a wave structure of the hair cuticle, which is a diagnostic feature for goatskins. The variations of the bulk δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values, and δ¹³C values of the main fatty acids are within the range expected for pre-industrial temperate C₃ environment. The archaeological leather samples contain a mixture of indigenous (from the animal) and exogenous plant/animal lipids. An important amount of waxy n-alkanes, n-alkan-1-ols and phytosterols (β-sitosterol, sitostanol) in all samples, and abundant biomarker of conifers (nonacosan-10-ol) in the legging leathers clearly indicate that the Neolithic people were active in a subalpine coniferous forest, and that they used an aqueous extract of diverse plant material for tanning leather.     

Where dogs,ghosts and lions roam: learning from mobile ethnographies on the journey from school

This paper draws on mobility research conducted with children in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. It has two interlinked aims: to highlight the potential that mobile interviews can offer in research with young people, especially in research contexts where the main focus is on mobility and its impacts, and to contribute empirical evidence regarding the significance of everyday mobility to young people's lives and future life chances in sub-Saharan Africa. During the pilot phase of our research project on children, transport and mobility, the authors undertook walks home from school with teenage children1 We use the terms children and ‘young people’ interchangeably in this paper. When we asked young people aged ca. 12–18 years from the three countries at our Malawi inception workshop about terminology, they expressed no concern about the use of the term ‘child’ for people in their teens. View all notes in four different research sites: three remote rural, one peri-urban. As the children walked (usually over a distance of around 5 km) their stories of home, of school and of the environment in-between, gradually unfolded. The lived experiences narrated during these journeys offer considerable insights into the daily lives, fears and hopes of the young people concerned, and present a range of issues for further research as our study extends into its main phase.