The Nordic 'Cultural Industries': A Cross-National Assessment of the Place of the Cultural Industries in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACT In this paper an attempt is made to measure the cultural industries in a cross‐national context. The paper starts with a discussion of the definition and delineation of the term the ‘cultural industries’. It is argued that a large range of goods and services may be considered to be cultural industry products and that it is important to place the production and exchange of such products in the context of an industrial systems approach. Following this the concept is operationalised using data on employment and firm activity from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Results are presented which suggest that overall growth in both employment and firm numbers has been especially strong in the cultural industries. However, interesting differences between the countries emerged from the data. Thus regional dimensions are then examined resulting in the finding that in all four countries cultural industries have a strong attraction to urban areas but an even stronger propensity to agglomerate. It is suggested that the spatial dynamics observed may be key to the development of the industries' competencies and success. In summary the paper presents results of extensive data analysis that show the cultural industries' important contribution to Scandinavian economies and labour markets.     

Interview with Adrián Curiel Rivera

Adrián Curiel Rivera is a Mexican novelist, short-story writer and academic. In addition to his novels Vikingos (2012), A bocajarro (2008) and Bogavante (2000), and the collections of stories Día franco (2016) and Madrid al través (2003), he has published two substantial volumes of critical essays, Los piratas del Caribe en la novelística hispanoamericana del siglo XIX (2010) and Novela española y boom hispanoamericano (2006). In 2013 he published Blanco Trópico, an excoriating and often hilarious fictional account of life in the Mexican Academy in the wake of sweeping neoliberal reforms in the university sector, the nature and consequences of which will be all too familiar to many European and US academics. The book caused something of a storm in his native Mexico. In the following interview, which took place in the summer of 2016, he discusses the genesis of and reactions to the novel, but also touches on a broad range of social and literary issues which the book raises: globalization, publishing, the Mexican literary canon and its sacred cows, as well as the place of the campus novel and science fiction in the current Latin American literary landscape.     

Early Islamic pigments at Nishapur,north-eastern Iran: studies on the painted fragments preserved at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pigments appearing on ninth–twelfth-century AD-carved stucco, wall painting, and terracotta friezes excavated at Nishapur in north-eastern Iran were investigated by optical reflectance spectroscopy, micro X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (μ-XRF), X-ray diffractometry (XRD), micro-Raman spectroscopy (μ-Raman), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Many of the pigments identified including vermilion, red lead, hematite, limonite, carbon black, atacamite, calcite, and gypsum have been identified in previous studies of pigments used in later Islamic periods. However, a series of unusual pigments such as wulfenite, pyromorphite, phoenicochroite, and jarosite were also found in the present study. The association of kaolinite and alunite with limonite and other Fe-bearing yellow pigments points to a local provenance for these pigments. In addition, the presence of orpiment in the vermilion may be indicative that the vermilion was artificially manufactured. These findings suggest that pigment use and manufacturing during the ninth to eleventh centuries in Nishapur was still in a trial-and-error stage and the palette known from the twelfth century onwards had not yet been systematized.