Global Fordism in 1950s Urban China

This article highlights the striking similarity of underlying social forms on both sides of the 1950s Cold War divide. Urban China in the early People’s Republic is interpreted as a variant of Fordism, a coherent social system that assumed hegemony across the globe in the postwar period. Under Fordism, bureaucratic mediation of a rationalized production process was brought together with a new regime of inclusive and homogeneous work and culture, all of which supported a vision of national unity and industrial development. Such an understanding may prove useful in working through difficulties in theorizing this period and in pursuing new directions for research.     

Recent archaeobotanical investigations into the range and abundance of Neolithic crop plants in settlements around Lake Constance and in Upper Swabia (south-west Germany) in relation to cultural influences

An overview is presented of the cultivated plants found at Lake Constance (Bodensee) and in the Upper Swabia region including the Federsee (Baden-Württemberg/south-west Germany) between 4000 and 2400 cal BC. This work relates to recent archaeobotanical investigations of the waterlogged sediments of 30 different Neolithic lakeside settlements. These sites provided almost 500,000 crop plant macro-remains, excellently preserved under waterlogged conditions. Taken in conjunction with other previously collected samples from the region, they provide an added dimension to the understanding of crop plant development in the lakeshore Neolithic in south-west Germany.     

Diverse unity: creole contributions to interethnic integration in Guinea‐Bissau

The paper explores how creole categories of people who have constituted a small but influential minority in Guinea‐Bissau for centuries contributed to a countrywide, integrated national culture since the eve of independence in 1974. Since independence, several cultural representations previously exclusive to creole communities have been – driven by the nationalist independence movement and the early postcolonial state – transformed into representations of a new national culture, crossing ethnic and religious boundaries. The fact that creole identity and culture had been transethnic – i.e. creole identity brings together individuals of heterogeneous cultural, ethnic and geographic descent – during the colonial period, has fostered in postcolonial times the countrywide spread of previously exclusively creole cultural features. I argue that this ‘transethnicisation’ of creole cultural representations has unified Bissau‐Guineans across ethnic lines, causing a strong commitment with their nation ‘from below’.     

Catholic Mission and Conversion in Scandinavia

The relation between mission, religious conversion and identity construction is the subject of my paper. On a concrete level, I discuss the Catholic mission and conversions in Scandinavia from the middle of the 19th century to the present time. Up to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Catholic Church strongly emphasised its claim to be the only true church, and as a consequence, all non-Catholic regions were regarded as missionary areas. Most of the priests and sisters working in Scandinavia were foreigners, whereas converts from Protestantism dominated the parishes. I pay special attention to the question of national and religious identity and the changing discourses of Catholic conversion, reflected in conversion narratives.     

Chemische Laboratorien: Funktion und Disposition

In this essay laboratories are dealt with as symbolic spaces that structure social relationships and ways of knowledge in chemistry. The spatial vicissitudes of the nineteenth‐century research laboratory reflect, and at the same time direct, the way chemical knowledge is being produced, transmitted, and perceived.