Documentation as part of the research process. Some considerations actualized by the application of photogrammetric measuring techniques in history of culture

Within the fields of the history of culture increased applications of advanced measuring techniques, e.g. photogrammetry, have clearly demonstrated the difficulties of communication between various scientific branches. The demands of measuring technicians for precise instructions have been very difficult to satisfy. We have partly landed up in a new situation of scientific work where the lack of adequate education and experience prohibits proper utilization of existing technical innovations.

Presentation of applications and problems regarding instruments, treatment of mechanical equipment and so on, are not ‐ in our opinion — meaningful to a wider public until the general background of the documentation has been accounted for in greater detail ‐ practically as well as theoretically.

These circumstances have called for a serious examination of the very base of dataproduction regarding the relevance of data as well as the problem of education in order to make it easier for the two blocs ‐measuring techniques and history of culture ‐ to understand each other.     

‘That Moral League of Nations against the United States’: The Origins of the 1856 Declaration of Paris

The Declaration of Paris, signed by seven European powers on 16 April 1856, is almost forgotten today. Yet it marks the beginning of modern international law as we know it: multilateral treaties open for accession by all powers with the intention of creating new universal rules. Its extension of neutral rights to trade undisturbed in peace-time was a radical reversal of the centuries-old British tradition of extensive belligerent rights. But there is no convincing explanation why Britain signed this treaty and lobbied for its global acceptance. This article shows that the Declaration was a package deal in which Britain accepted broader neutral rights but gained the abolition of privateering. Privateering was no anachronism, but the linchpin of US strategy in case of a conflict with Britain. The Declaration of Paris closed most of the world's ports to privateers and thus ended the practice. The Declaration was also the first multi-lateral law-making treaty and marks the invention of the main instrument we use today to create international law.     

Doing is Learning: Analysis of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Adapt TEK/IK Methodology to Norwegian Sámi Circumstances

Abstract

This article describes a case where an attempt was made to introduce TEK/IK into a conflict between Sámi reindeer owners and environmental institutions. The conflict was brought on by the establishment of a national park in Southern Sámi areas in Norway. At first, the Sámi were in favour of the park, but later on their attitudes changed as the content of planned national park developed. The reindeer owners discovered that the size of the park would be reduced, leaving out what they thought were significant areas in need of protection. They saw the encouragement of increased tourism activities as a threat to reindeer herding and felt alienated by the number of representatives they received in the park management structures. On the basis of these observations reindeer owners protested, but were ignored. As researchers well-established in the Southern Sámi area, we were brought into conversations regarding the park as the local reindeer owners searched for ways of bringing new arguments into the process. At this point we thought TEK/IK represented an opportunity to add weight to Sámi perspectives. As the title of this article indicates, as push came to shove we did not succeed in making room for local participation in our TEK/IK project, despite these existing on-going relations. The article attempts to understand what happened. Our analysis is based upon a perception of TEK/IK as not one, but at least two co-constituted knowledge practices. The premise is that research failures are as important to publish as successes. Our joint ethnographic experience has methodological implications for future TEK/IK research.     

Struggles for the Folk. Politics of Culture in Czechoslovak Ethnography, 1940s–1950s

Focusing on politics of culture in early socialist era, this article explores struggles for imposing particular visions of “folk” during the revolutionary zeal characterizing the post-1948 period's development in the discipline of Czechoslovak ethnography. It examines the self-proclaimed turn from previous ethnographic traditions, accused of bourgeois nationalism, to socialist orientation towards studying “true folk”. By tracing struggles around the re-conceptualization of constitutive criteria and boundaries defining the essential object of ethnographic inquiry, the socialist ethnographers readjusted to the changes by focusing on more “progressive” traditions and shifted towards the “working-class” seen as possessing revolutionary spirit and the true authentic essence of the nation. The article argues that the new ethnographic wave ultimately re-inscribed the essentialist categories they virtually combatted by embedding them within the same structural framework rooted in the national order of things.     

Selective woodland exploitation for charcoal production. A detailed analysis of charcoal kiln remains (ca. 1300–1900 AD) from Zoersel (northern Belgium)

A detailed study of charcoal burning activities has been made for the Zoersel forest (Northern Belgium) based on an inventory of charcoal kiln remains, the analyses of wood charcoal and other charred botanical macroremains and radiocarbon dating of 10 of these kilns. Age determination of the youngest kilns was refined by dendrochronological analysis of trees growing on top of these kiln sites. The results show that, although many kilns were found, charcoal was produced in Zoersel only at certain moments during late and post-medieval times suggesting that charcoal burning was not a part of the regular management practice of these forests. The wood used for the production of charcoal mainly consists of taxa of alluvial (alder) forests while the kilns are situated on sites that currently are rather dry, with an oak dominated vegetation. For the older kilns, this contrast could be explained by an important change in local soil conditions. The younger kilns may be related to the conversion of alder woodland to grassland in the lower parts of the domain, with the kilns being constructed in the nearby dryer woodland areas.     

The Swedish ‘military state’, 1560–1720

Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest and Action. A Cultural Explanation of Sweden's Intervention in the Thirty Tears’ War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 236 pp. ISBN 0–521–56314–3.     

No Italian Stalingrads. The C.G.I.L. and the working class in the northern industrial heartlands, 1945-1955

ABSTRACT

This article challenges conventional wisdom on the northern Italian industrial heartlands during the first decade after the Second World War. For there still exists a certain mythology about the post-war proletarian north as a region that was both intensely political and united in purpose. What this article demonstrates is that the ‘industrial triangle’ of Genoa, Milan and Turin was far more divided than historians have assumed. By revisiting the manifold (wildcat) strikes, trade union demonstrations, and factory occupations of the early post-war years, it shows the industrial north to be divided along both social and geographical lines. In doing so, it sheds fresh light on the series of defeats that the main Italian trade union confederation (C.G.I.L.) suffered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that these defeats were due as much to the explicit politicization of labour struggles and their exclusive focus on the interests of skilled workers as to the hostile socio-political climate in which the C.G.I.L. had to operate.