WILL ATTRACTING THE “CREATIVE CLASS” BOOST ECONOMIC GROWTH IN OLD INDUSTRIAL REGIONS? A CASE STUDY OF SCOTLAND

Attracting in-migration of the creative class has been argued by Florida (2002) to be a route to higher economic growth in the era of the knowledge economy. This paper critically evaluates this proposition in relation to old industrial regions using the example of Scotland. The paper presents an assessment of, in the first instance, to what extent there is a shortage of skilled, talented and entrepreneurial individuals and, in the second instance, whether a talent attraction strategy alone can hope to attract such people to Scotland. It is proposed that for most migrants the availability of appropriate economic opportunities is a prerequisite for mobility. However, despite uncertain evidence that place attractiveness is a catalyst to mobility among the so-called creative class, this is not a reason for dismissing talent attraction programmes. Instead it is argued that talent attraction programmes have the potential to contribute to old industrial economies, but their success will be greatest when talent attraction is carefully targeted and based on economic realities rather than the marketing of ethereal conceptions of place attractiveness.     

An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde‐Freinet

In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde‐Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass (Mons Iovis) in the western Alps. This article analyses a little‐known letter that Maiolus sent to his Cluniac brethren to secure payment for his release. Interwoven with biblical passages drawn from the Book of Samuel and the Psalter, the abbot's ransom letter provides the rare opportunity to examine how one of the most influential Christian leaders of the tenth century perceived his Muslim captors and their religion.     

The Fictions of Autonomous Invention: Accumulation by Dispossession,Commodification and Life Patents in Canada

Abstract: In 2002 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled to deny Harvard College a whole organism patent over the oncomouse. In 2004, the same court ruled that Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser had violated Monsanto patents covering GM canola. Both decisions rejected whole organism patents, running counter to US precedents. Yet both, nevertheless, consolidate private claims to life as patentable inventions, and critics claim, with some support from Justices in the Schmeiser case, that patents over genes amount to de facto patents over whole organisms. In this paper I argue these cases are broadly consistent with the notion of accumulation by dispossession as a means to expand the scale and scope of capital accumulation via so‐called ‘extra‐economic’ means. As such, I examine the cases as privatizations, but also as relational moments in the commodification of nature. However, in hoping to unpack and fill out this notion of the extra‐economic, as well as to critically examine the necessarily incomplete character of commodification as a tendency, I look to the ways in which judges and interested activists deliberate over the economic, legal, ecological, ethical, and even metaphysical arguments and representations required to uphold discrete genes, processes, and whole organisms as inventions.     

Catholic Child Migration Schemes from the United Kingdom to Australia: Systemic Failures and Religious Legitimation

Between 1938 and 1956, an estimated 1,147 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia through child migration initiatives delivered by Catholic organisations. Whilst experiences of child migrants varied, there has been a growing public recognition over the past thirty years of the trauma experienced by many. Although the suffering of child migrants occurred in the context of wider policy failures, this article argues that there was a particular pattern of systemic failures characteristic of these Catholic schemes. After providing an overview of the complex organisational structure through which Catholic child migration operated, the article identifies six systemic failures in this work relating both to organisational processes and the institutional conditions to which child migrants were sent. It goes on to argue that these occurred in a framework of religious legitimation which emphasised the unique role of the church as a mediator of salvation, the need to safeguard children's faith, the child as a member of a corporate body more than as an individual and the relative moral authority of the church over secular institutions. Within this framework, these systemic failures were either unrecognised or seen as tolerable in the context of wider organisational and theological priorities.     

Beyond Characterisation. Polished Stone Exchange in the Western Mediterranean 5500–2000 BC

Using new provenance studies on stone implements from the Valencia region of Spain between 5500–2000 BC, we show not only the large scale of some exchange systems, but also consider how, and why, tastes and fashions are co-ordinated over much of the Western Mediterranean. The study considers the processes of raw material substitution underlying the observed patterns. These processes operate for a wide range of lithic materials, including rare minerals like variscite and fossil shells for ornaments. Simple gravity models of distribution and exchange predominate at all periods. Our study extends from Portugal to Italy, and indicates that a system of shared symbolic values, of axeheads, beads and bracelets, was in operation. The discussion concludes that consumption patterns were centred on these values rather than functional categories of tools or prestige items.