‘Our home,our way of life’: spiritual homelessness and the sociocultural dimensions of Indigenous homelessness in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada

In this article, I examine the sociocultural dimensions of Indigenous home and homelessness through a case study of increasing visible homelessness in two northern Canadian communities. Drawing on five years of ethnographic research on Indigenous homelessness in Yellowknife and Inuvik, two regional centres in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, I suggest that Indigenous experiences of homelessness are at once collective and immediate. In particular, I draw on the concept of ‘spiritual homelessness’ (Keys Young 1998) to examine the multiple scales of homelessness experienced among northern Indigenous people. Research participants highlight several key elements of rapid sociocultural change that have an enduring impact on a collective sense of home and belonging, and play integral roles in shaping the experiences of homeless Indigenous people. Social and material exclusion, breakdowns in family and community, detachment from cultural identity, intergenerational trauma and institutionalisation are all woven throughout the personal narratives of homelessness articulated by research participants. I argue that the alleviation of Indigenous homelessness in the NWT depends on a decolonising agenda that specifically addresses contemporary colonial geographies and their expressions in the key institutions in Indigenous peoples' lives.     

Cluster evolution and the change of knowledge bases: the development of a design cluster

Most studies portray cluster knowledge bases as a given resource, tied to specific industries and locations. However, this paper challenges that view and uncovers their dynamic nature by identifying endogenous and exogenous triggering events that influence and change the cluster knowledge base mix over time. This is done by building on the theoretical concepts of pre-existing conditions, triggering events and knowledge bases and by drawing on a case study of the design cluster located in the Triangle Area of Denmark. The paper concludes that the design cluster has changed its mix of knowledge bases several times during its evolution. Starting out as a firm-driven cluster with a dominant synthetic knowledge base, it then evolved into an artistic and creative cluster with a prevailing symbolic knowledge base. In the last few years, the cluster has increasingly adopted an analytical knowledge base at the expense of other knowledge bases. These developments have caused numerous changes in both knowledge building and the sources of knowledge in and around the cluster. These findings have implications for the framing of cluster knowledge bases, considering how they emerge, change and combine, as well as how that affects clusters’ composition of actors, activities and resources.     

The Development of Geographical Specialization of Venture Capital

Many regions have realized that access to capital is an important prerequisite for establishment and growth of businesses, and have therefore focused policies to ensure an adequate supply of risk capital. The growth of the venture capital industry in the 1990s put pressure on venture capital firms (VCFs) to act more strategically. Many VCFs have thus specialized along one or more dimensions: certain industries, stages of development of the firm, or geographical areas. A theoretical dichotomy is developed in this paper to explain regionally focused venture capital. A competence-based theoretical view sees increased competition in the industry as promoting the growth of geographical specialization, while, according to financial theory, it would lead to diversification in order to spread risk. The empirical analysis illustrates the development in the average distance between VCFs and their Danish portfolio firms. All venture capital investments are included. Findings suggest that the process of geographical specialization follows an inverted V-shaped curve. This is interpreted in light of the developments in competition and in the competencies in the market. VCFs search broadly for investment opportunities in the first phase of the emergence of the venture capital industry, but when competition increases they tend to confine themselves to investments within a closer geographical distance. The implications of these findings are important both for funds-of-funds, regional governments, and VCFs.     

Lucien Basch: Ancient wrecks and the archaeology of ships A comment

The material we have today indicates that shell building was known and practised in the Mediterranean in classical antiquity. Comparative material shows that the‘intermediate stages’between shell and skeleton shipbuilding are in most, or all, cases shell building with some skeleton influence. The date when‘the skeleton idea’first struck a boatbuilder is not established. There are indications that this happened in the Mediterranean. No definite proof of skeleton work is found in the Mediterranean earlier than the Yassi Ada wreck, where a bottom shell may have been equipped with a skeleton on which topsides were built. The shell-skeleton division is a working tool for research on shipbuilding history, and should be used critically. The wrecks from Blackfriars I and New Guy's House indicate a kind of skeleton approach to shipbuilding in northern Europe (Marsden, 1967). If the 'skeleton idea’existed in the Mediterranean in classical antiquity, especially in warships, proof will turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, publishers of shipwrecks should take into consideration that we know very little, and that all details count. Field work on the existing tradition in the Mediterranean should be pursued. The lesson learned in Scandinavia is that the archaeologist may theorize as much as he wants, but the boat-builders will be able to give definite answers, if he takes the trouble to ask them, and watch them at work.     

Controlling for Doubt and Uncertainty Through Multiple Lines of Evidence: A New Look at the Mesoamerican Nahua Migrations

Nahuatl represents a relatively recent extension of the Uto-Aztecan language family into Mesoamerica. Ethnohistorians have linked Nahuatl's arrival to the historically attested migrations of nomadic people into central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Archaeologists have tended to treat migration as an explanation for a change in material culture rather than a social question to be examined theoretically. We approach this migration through the comparison of multiple data sets and conclude that what has previously been treated as a historical event is instead part of a longer term process tying together Mesoamerica's northern periphery with its highland core. While we find that certain themes from migration theory are reflected in this preindustrial migration as well, other variables are unique and bode well for archaeology's ability to address and contribute to theoretical issues relating to migration.     

‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter

This paper considers the importance of walking for many children and young people's everyday lives, experiences and friendships. Drawing upon research with 175 9- to 16-year-olds living in new urban developments in south-east England, we highlight key characteristics of (daily, taken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) walking practices, which were of constitutive importance in children and young people's friendships, communities and geographies. These practices were characteristically bounded, yet intense and circuitous. They were vivid, vital, loved, playful, social experiences yet also dismissed, with a shrug, as ‘just walking’. We argue that ‘everyday pedestrian practices’ (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require critical reflection upon chief social scientific theorisations of walking, particularly the large body of literature on children's independent mobility and the rich, multi-disciplinary line of work known as ‘new walking studies’. In arguing that these lines of work could be productively interrelated, we propound ‘just walking’—particularly the often-unremarked way it matters—as a kind of phenomenon which is sometimes done a disservice by chief lines of theory and practice in social and cultural geography.