Out of the crisis: an empirical investigation of place-specific determinants of economic resilience

This article attempts to isolate the structural characteristics that affect the resilience of a regional economy. It focuses on the role played by related/unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience and originally explores their interdependences. Italy is the empirical setting, and Italian local labour systems the unit of analysis. Regional resilience is measured as growth of the employment rate after the Great Recession that began in 2008. Results confirm the importance of related variety and of differentiated knowledge bases as drivers for regional resilience. We found support of the creative capacity of culture argument, providing evidence that a moderate concentration in symbolic knowledge-based economic activities contributes to resilience. Synthetic and analytical knowledge-based activities provide positive and no support to regional resilience, respectively. Finally, the relatedness of the symbolic knowledge-based activities increases regional economic resilience. Some policy implications are then derived from these findings.     

Liberation Theology Undercover

In this article, I start from the claim that liberation theology's ultimate realization lies beyond the discipline and discourse of theology, in other spheres of knowledge and more practical domains of life. Through an elaboration of examples from diverse fields, such as urban planning and architecture, education, and health policy, I develop the concept of an “undercover liberation theologian” the theologian who leaves behind liberation theology's specific theological discourse to better infiltrate and colonize other disciplines through liberation theology's core concerns (the option for the poor and liberation). My aim with this exercise is to demonstrate how the task of the liberation theologian in the world can be extended beyond the theological, ecclesial, or pastoral domain, and how this requires a different model of future-oriented education for theologians.     

Lost writing uncovered by laser two-photon fluorescence provides a terminus post quem for Roman colonization of Hispania Citerior

In this work, two-photon absorption fluorescence is used as a non-destructive method to detect the presence of paint upon an archaeological sample. The objective was to recover writing that, due to the discoloration caused by the passage of the time, was barely readable. The technique has been successfully applied to determine the consular date painted upon the neck of a Dressel 1A amphora found in the Roman village of Iesso (Guissona), in Catalonia. The identification of the consular date provides a terminus post quem for the foundation date for the city as well as a starting date for the Roman colonization of Hispania Citerior.     

Interspatial gender asymmetries in early Soviet Siberia

The article addresses gendered power asymmetries within indigenous communities of early Soviet Siberia and their shifts during the transitional period between the Russian Empire and the totalitarian Soviet state. The concept of entangled relational spaces is the main analytical tool of this article. Seeking to overcome identity-based essentialisms, the article deconstructs gender identity and demonstrates how it can be articulated and interpreted in different relational spaces. It extends the argument that oppressions are produced by various social categories (intersectionality) by adding that a single social category may beget various forms of oppression and that heterogeneous gender asymmetries are produced and manifested across different relational spaces. Evidence deriving from predominantly indigenous sources authored by women enabled the discussion of gendered power asymmetries in economic, legal, and political spaces produced by corresponding relations. Economic and demographic crises, which the indigenous peoples of Siberia endured in the 1910s–1920s, reduced gendered power asymmetries in economic spaces making women less dependent on men. On women's initiative the shifts then spread to legal spaces and, with the support of the Bolshevik government, affected political spaces. These shifts were closely connected to the early Soviet attempts at dialog with indigenous people, decolonizing Siberia and liberating indigenous women, and gave way to instrumental policies.     

Nineteenth-century British psychiatric writing about homosexuality before Havelock Ellis: the missing story

Recent accounts of the emergence of sexology have addressed the role played by homosexuals and sexual radicals in framing the questions posed by psychiatrists. This work has focused largely upon American and Continental psychiatry (with regard to homosexuality), with attention to British sexologists sometimes being tied to contemporary feminist concerns with the sexual double standard. In both cases, psychiatrists are shown to be following other social movements. In the existing work, British psychiatrists of the nineteenth century who wrote about homosexuality have been largely ignored because it appears to have been assumed that very little material existed prior to Havelock Ellis' Sexual Inversion (1897). In this article, I demonstrate that there were a number of British psychiatric discussions of sexual perversions, and that these discourses show an engagement on the part of British psychiatrists with the theoretical issues that occupied their (mostly) Teutonic colleagues, rather than evidence of any other external driving force behind the production of sexological discourses. These sexological texts are either original papers, or reviews of Continental sources, both of which illustrate the importation of sexological ideas into Britain before the writing of Havelock Ellis.     

Oxygen isotopic composition of limpet shells from the Beagle Channel: implications for seasonal studies in shell middens of Tierra del Fuego

Shell middens distributed along the coastal areas of the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego) testify the primary role of marine resources in the successful social dynamic of hunter–gatherer–fisher societies (HGF) in extreme high latitude environmental conditions. Intertidal and subtidal limpet species are frequently identified taxa of these archaeological deposits. We investigated whether shell δ¹⁸O of the limpet species Nacella deaurata is a valuable record of local sea surface temperature (SST) and ambient water δ¹⁸O (δ¹⁸Ow) fluctuations, and in turn can be used to estimate the season of its exploitation by Holocene HGF. Sequential shell δ¹⁸O of modern species track seasonal changes of SST and δ¹⁸Ow. The comparison of shell δ¹⁸O profiles of N. deaurata and Nacella magellanica (a coexisting species) suggests the occurrence of distinct growth rate and physiological adaptations between species. Shell δ¹⁸O of zooarchaeological specimens of N. deaurata from Lanashuaia II suggests that animals were exploited predominantly in winter and that experienced similar environmental conditions of present day at ∼1320 years BP. Results also indicate that N. deaurata is a valuable candidate for studying past seasonal changes in SST and δ¹⁸Ow in this southernmost part of South America.