Empowering marginal lifescapes: the heritage of crofters in between the past and the present

There is a rich, but unacknowledged, heritage of rural subalterns, crofters, in Scandinavia. A Swedish-Norwegian interdisciplinary research-network investigated the most prominent category – the remains of crofts. Due to industrialisation, urbanisation and the modern welfare state, the institution of crofting was abolished, and many crofters left for opportunities elsewhere. The welfare state transformed a landscape of living and working people into a one filled with relicts mostly from the nineteenth century. Although numerous and important to local citizens, these sites fall outside the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) in terms of both research and heritage management. This paper takes an environmental justice perspective to challenge the AHD. Three themes are in focus: (1) bringing out the history of a subaltern and marginalised group of people; (2) promoting crofts as heritage of importance to local citizens and demanding complex management due to the various historical narratives and risks; (3) considering the crofting landscapes in relation to the (economisation) framing of heritage in development processes, especially in relation to fair development in present rural communities.     

L’autobiographie allemande du XVIIIe siècle,interprétée à la lumière de la sociologie de niklas Luhmann

With the help of Luhmann’s theory, this essay tries to define the connection between the boom of autobiographical writing in the late 18th century and the rise of the middle classes. Central to this, is his definition of “career”, with which he describes the individuals’ behaviour in the new functional bourgeois society. Strictly speaking, the individual gains personal and social identity, through his or her spoken or written autobiography as can be seen clearly in Jung-Stilling’s autobiography, which was published bit by bit. The individual hereby improves its prospects of social advancement. On the other hand, K. P. Moritz in hisAnton Reiser describes his hero’s life as the “career” of a failure whose hyperactive imagination interferes with the formation of his identity. Thus autobiographical writing in the 18th century shows itself as the literary autopoiesis of the authors’ concrete individuality.     

Some New Methods of Topologic Classification of Channel Networks

Some new methods for the topologic classification of channel networks are proposed. These methods are all based on the concept of topologic path length, or number of links from the network outlet to a junction or source. Two parameters, the total path length (sum of all path lengths) and the diameter (largest path length) are shown to be useful in network analysis. Some advantages of these parameters are that they are easy to measure, have straightforward topologic interpretations, and are closely related to important geometric measures. Moreover, they are capable of explaining various empirical geomorphic “laws,” such as the 0.6 power relation between mainstream length and area.