Trafficking in Liquor,Trafficking in Heritage: Beer Branding as Heritage in Post‐apartheid South Africa

A burgeoning literature on post‐apartheid heritage configuration has largely overlooked the use of branding in the creation of heritage discourses in South Africa and the significance of liquor for national identity. This article brings these two concerns together through an examination of two heritage‐scapes—the SAB World of Beer and the SAB Newlands Brewery Heritage Centre—constructed by South African Breweries (SAB) in 1995. It suggests that the commercial construction of heritage as branding provided a vehicle for a powerful corporate capitalist narrative in the post‐apartheid rhetorical contestation over a desired path for the future. It also suggests that dissonance within and between these corporate visitors’ centres mirrored a wider uncertainty over the meaning of national identity in early post‐apartheid South Africa.     

What Is Next for Policy Design and Social Construction Theory?1

The study of policy design has made great progress over the past decade in leading scholars to understand why the American political system produces certain kinds of designs rather than others, and the consequences that policy designs have for democracy. This article outlines the distinctive and important elements of policy design theory—the centrality of policy design, the attention to social constructions, the attention to policy consequences (or feed‐forward effects), and the integration of normative and empirical research and theory. It then suggests how policy design theory can complement other policy theories in guiding research and evaluating the conditions of U.S. democracy, and how in its own right it can be further developed and used to guide important inquiry about public policy's politics and social impacts.     

A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne

This article examines the relationship between Cistercian nunneries and the crusade movement and considers the role of gender in light of the new emphasis on penitential piety and suffering prevalent during the thirteenth century. Focused on evidence from the region of Champagne in northern France, it argues that female family members of male crusaders adopted Cistercian spirituality as a means of participating in the experience of suffering and the pursuit of the imitation of Christ that had come to be associated with the act of crusading. The connection between Cistercian nuns and crusaders was further strengthened during this period as the Cistercian order expanded its liturgy to include specific rounds of prayers for success in the east and in southern France, for Jerusalem, and for the well-being of crusaders. Many crusader families in Champagne founded Cistercian nunneries to function as family necropolises, further sharpening the connections between crusaders, memory, and suffering as experienced in female Cistercian houses.     

Paleodiet reconstruction of Bronze Age Siberians from the mortuary site of Khuzhir-Nuge XIV,Lake Baikal

Paleodiet reconstruction using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen was carried out on individuals from the Bronze Age cemetery, Khuzhir-Nuge XIV on the western shore of Lake Baikal, Russian Federation. The cemetery contained 79 graves with 89 individuals and was in use between approximately 2700 and 2000 cal. B.C. with the exception of one burial, dated to around 4000 B.C. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence indicates that hunting and fishing were the main subsistence activities while gathering was less important. δ¹³C from collagen and carbonate apatite was analysed, along with δ¹⁵N from collagen. Bone mineral preservation was evaluated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N of collagen are positively correlated and reflect varying reliance on terrestrial mammals, fish, and seals from Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal biota exhibit considerable variation in δ¹³C at the base of the food web thus; there is variation in human δ¹³C (−20.1‰ to −16.2‰) despite the fact that there are no C₄ plants in the region. δ¹⁵N results (range 10.3‰–16.5‰) indicate that fish, and possibly seals, made up some of the diet for everyone, but in varying amounts relative to terrestrial herbivores. δ¹³C from carbonate is not correlated with δ¹³C from collagen, a situation that has been found in remains from other coastal sites. A mixed diet from both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems is the most likely explanation. Analysis of mortuary variables within the cemetery reveals three distinct clusters of graves with variations in burial treatment among the clusters. δ¹⁵N values are significantly different among these clusters, suggesting an association between diet and mortuary customs.     

Deficiencies and challenges in the study of ancient tuberculosis DNA

We explore the standards of research and reporting needed to justify the destructive analysis of archaeological human bone for biomolecular studies of ancient tuberculosis (TB). Acceptable standards in osteological interpretation have been met in some biomolecular papers, but there are also cases where insufficient care has been taken in distinguishing between pathognomonic lesions and those that are ‘consistent with’ a diagnosis of TB. Some biomolecular studies have failed to recognize that archaeological bones might be contaminated with environmental mycobacteria whose DNA could give rise to false positives in polymerase chain reactions directed at members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. The difficulties of applying spoligotyping to ancient DNA have also been underestimated and conclusions drawn from such analyses are often weakly supported. Assumptions that mycobacterial DNA preserves better than human DNA, and that contamination with modern DNA is less of a problem, has led in some cases to a laxity in research standards with insufficient attention paid to the need to authenticate ancient DNA results. We illustrate our concerns by reference to a recent paper reporting biomolecular detection of ancient TB DNA in skeletons from the eastern Mediterranean Neolithic settlement of Atlit-Yam. We are unconvinced that the skeletal evidence presented in this paper gives sufficient indication of TB to warrant destructive analysis, and we are concerned that during the biomolecular part of the project inadequate attention was paid to the possibility that results might be due to laboratory cross-contamination or to amplification of environmental mycobacterial DNA present in the bones.     

Strategies of learning in the process of transformation

The paper deals with the learning and innovation strategies of manufacturing companies in the economies of transformation. The point of departure is the development of a theoretical framework dealing with innovation, knowledge and learning. The case is of two manufacturing companies in Poland, the learning strategies of which are analysed and compared. These strategies have much in common and can be seen as quite successful. Global knowledge sourcing has become important. Some common problems also exist in relation to mismatches within and between the different knowledge bases. More selective and specialized strategies of learning are recommended to enhance the competitiveness of the companies.