The Continuity of Victorian Traces: A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book

Both King Solomon's Mines (1885) and Allan Quatermain (1887) pursue a quest to regenerate the authority of the English gentleman as ‘the highest rank that a man can reach upon this earth’. The present essay focuses upon Haggard's construction of this ideal of masculinity through the combination of the qualities of the gentleman with those of the barbarian. The discussion follows both Laura Chrisman and Bradley Deane in attending to the relationship between the ideological structures of metropole and colony. This article, however, situates Haggard's masculinist ideology in relation to the wider cultural poetics of late-Victorian material culture, particularly as manifested in the imperial souvenir – a complicated category of thing that comprises artefacts, hunting trophies and human relics. Attention to their thingness entails reflection upon the complexity of textual representations of objects and practical encounters with them as constituent elements of late-Victorian material culture. In addition to examining the significance of hunting and battle trophies in Haggard's fiction, close attention is also paid to the keynote spectacle of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at the South Kensington Museum in 1886, Rowland Ward's habitat diorama, ‘The Jungle’, and to Ward's subsequent forays into ‘animal furniture’. Through reflection on such formations of objects, the thingness of the imperial souvenir illuminates the ideological formations within which hegemonic masculinity and imperialism were articulated at this key moment in the mid-1880s.     

Eugenic Sterilisation in Scandinavia

The view that eugenics was based on unscientific views has been put forward by a number of historians. It has been claimed that the early phase of eugenics, so-called mainline eugenics, was unscientific, biased against the lower classes, and racist. An ensuing reform eugenic phase, however, has been considered scientifically sound and politically progressive. This paper, based on recent studies of eugenic sterilisation in Scandinavia, challenges this view. The political and scientific arguments in favour of eugenic sterilisation laws in Scandinavia were complex and ambiguous, and it is empirically impossible to identify a problematic mainline eugenic phase and separate it from a more acceptable reform phase. Social and scientific arguments for sterilisation appeared side by side. To improve the gene pool was only one of a host of aims of eugenics, which “was” not a fixed, well-defined ontological entity with one definite purpose, but a concept with multiple meanings.     

Das Integrierte Gesundheitszentrum als Konzeption für Klinikstandorte Analysiert am Beispiel der Metropolregion München

Das deutsche Gesundheitswesen und insbesondere der Krankenhaussektor befinden sich im Wandel. Kosteneinsparma?nahmen stehen auf Grund der Bev?lkerungsentwicklung einer immer st?rker wachsenden Nachfrage nach station?ren Dienstleistungen gegenüber. Die Zusammenarbeit von ambulanten und station?ren Leistungserbringern spielt eine entscheidende Rolle, wenn es darum geht, einerseits Kosten zu reduzieren und andererseits dem Patienten eine optimale Versorgung gew?hrleisten zu k?nnen. Eine nicht unwesentliche Bedeutung kommt hierbei der Strukturierung und gegebenenfalls Optimierung bzw. Modernisierung von Klinikstandorten zu. Dieser Thematik nimmt sich der folgende Artikel an. Seine Ergebnisse stammen aus einer 2008 angefertigten Diplomarbeit, die am Institut für Geographie der Westf?lischen Wilhelms-Universit?t zu Münster unter der Betreuung von Dr. Christian Krajewski und Dr. Arnd Jenne verfasst wurde.     

The spatiality of trust in EU external cross-border cooperation

This paper argues that effective cross-border cooperation (CBC) networks closely interrelate with the building of ‘trust’ between actors. The aim is to contribute to the CBC literature by investigating the different forms of trust, their spatial attributes and impact on actor relations in the context of the Finnish–Russian European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI) of CBC. The paper applies a specific spatial approach by identifying the territorial and relational aspects of four different forms of trust: rational-personal decisions, social-cultural understanding, general-personal interactions and the historical–institutional environment. The analysis, based on policy documents and semi-structured interviews with relevant Finnish ENI CBC actors, shows that the study of transnational cooperation networks benefits from a conceptualization of trust recognizing its spatial characteristics. The study concludes that sub-national actors are key agents in the formation and maintenance of trust. These actors negotiate with socio-cultural differences through the development of personal relationships which increase social capital in the actor–network. However, the cooperation network is vulnerable towards geopolitical circumstances affecting foreign relations. The paper demonstrates that Finnish ENI CBC actors are operating in a transnational network in which their activities are challenged by territorial constraints such as national border-crossing regulations.     

There are Many Roads to Reindustrialization and Resilience: Place-based Approaches in Three German Urban Regions

Reindustrialization has become a major political objective in the European Union. This paper provides three urban case studies on reindustrialization pathways and experiences during the global economic crisis to reveal the specificities of place-based approaches on the local level despite common policies on EU, federal and state levels. Moreover, the evolutionary perspective on reindustrialization and economic resilience shows the importance of adaptive capabilities on the local level, although the sources for these capabilities differ according to context- and place-specific structures.     

Places of difference: narratives of heart-felt warmth,ethnicisation, and female care-migrants in Swiss live-in care

Care for the elderly is a contemporary issue of multi-level, feminist concern. In Switzerland, private agencies offer so-called 24-h care services, for which they place or employ mobile women as live-in caregivers in private households. The larger discourse has debated care workers’ movements to Switzerland with much controversy. The article explores this interest in issues of mobility and place in an analysis of three central narratives within the larger discourse: care agencies’ ‘warmth’ discourse, scholarship’s uses of ‘ethnicisation’, and public discussions of ‘female care migrants’. Analysis of the narratives shows how care agencies ascribe care workers a particular ‘heart-felt warmth’ based on their so-called countries of origin. Scholarship’s reference to processes of ‘ethnicisation’ in live-in care illustrates a similar focus on care workers’ characteristics, nation-states, and nationalities. While the public discussion of care workers as ‘female care migrants’ frames care workers’ movements as a migration between discreet and distant places. The article argues that the ways in which the three narratives emphasise the places associated with care workers position these places in terms of difference. From a feminist perspective, this focus on difference is of underlying significance for the perpetuation of fundamental inequities in live-in care. In particular, the discursive differentiation between nation states serves to continually justify lower pay for workers associated with ‘other’ places. As such, the article’s analysis suggests that the discursive invocation of places of difference underlies the marked inequities in Swiss live-in care.