Stocking Up: The Role of Temporal and Spatial R&D Stocks

Endogenous growth models are built around the concept of a knowledge stock. This knowledge stock can also be interpreted as a localized stock that operates at the regional level, as is common in the regional innovation systems literature. We use data from the second, third and fourth Community Innovation Surveys (covering 1994–1996, 1998–2000 and 2002–2004) to measure the build-up of knowledge at a very low regional aggregation level (“across streets and hallways”) in the Netherlands. In doing so, we account for regional agglomeration effects. We find that such local knowledge stocks have a small influence on innovation and are far outweighed by firm-specific characteristics.     

The Competitive Position of the Basque Aeroespatial Cluster in Global Value Chains: A Historical Analysis

In this paper, based on the case study of the aerospace cluster of the Basque Country (Spain), we aimed at analysing how local industries develop a new specialization, that is, how a cluster emerges, and how it evolves over time. For that purpose, apart from considering local factors (both forces that are internal to the cluster and to the territory), we explicitly consider the role of institutional and technological changes, and how they affect industry structure and governance patterns of global value chains (GVCs). We observe that global-scale regulations (deregulation and competition policy) and technological change, together with local factors such as the existence of anchor firms, local policies, related variety and social capital at regional and cluster levels played a significant role in the emergence of the cluster and how it became inserted in the GVCs. Later on, the development of suppliers' capabilities also had a relevant role in the evolution of the governance patterns of GVCs.     

An Element of Thought: Phosphorus and Mental Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

Georges Cabanis (17571808), through his writings on the relation of the physical and moral, or psychological, aspects of man, left a legacy that made the study of mental activity a part of physiology. His views on the importance of phosphorus to the function of the brain thrust that element into a prominent stream of research that involved many investigators in several countries. Although that particular stream eventually dried up, its influence remained: by the beginning of the twentieth century basic medical science had become well set on studies of the mind-body relationship.     

How Do Pre-existing R&D Activities in a Region Influence the Performance of Cluster Initiatives? The Case of French Competitiveness Clusters

This article explores the diversity of 66 French competitiveness clusters, which were all accredited in 2005 according to the same specifications, by characterizing the initial context in which they emerged and taking a close look at the link between this initial context and their current performance. Since French competitiveness cluster policy is based on state co-funding of R&D projects, we establish a typology based on a multiple component analysis and a hierarchical ascending classification of the R&D potential of the cluster's territory, the respective R&D efforts of companies and academic laboratories, the kinds of actors setting up the cluster and their pre-existing relationships. We then measure the differences among the five classes relating to their clusters' capacity to obtain state funding for their projects. Our results show that initial context can partially explain competitiveness clusters' performance. Competitiveness clusters in territories possessing significant R&D resources, and involving large companies capable of organizing projects, are the most efficient in obtaining state funding. In contrast, competitiveness clusters without prior cooperation experience perform poorly.     

After Madison. Public-Spiritedness and Local Political Life

This article examines the themes of political community, race, family, and history in the John Sayles film Lone Star. Although Sayles explicitly states that he is using the film to call into question many of the boundaries that individuals and communities take for granted, the author suggests that the film presents a more complex and more positive view of the place of boundaries in the life of an individual or a community.     

Dancing for the King of Congo from Early Modern Central Africa to Slavery-Era Brazil

Breathtaking parades of black kings and their courts enlivened the streets of cities in Europe and the Americas between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Sumptuously dressed queens and kings and their resplendent attendants processed to the sound of music, lifted, temporarily, from the grim the life of enslavement or institutionalized inferiority many of them lived in the age of Atlantic slavery. Drawing from a recent analysis of a prominent ritual performance from the central African kingdom of Kongo called sangamento, this article offers a new interpretation of the black kings festivals, beyond their interpretation as carnivalesque pomp emulating and destabilizing European rule. On both shores of the Atlantic, the performances combined African and European regalia and pageantry to express and enact central African collective identity, political power, and social unity. Restaging performances and reshaping ideas honed in the Kongo, enslaved central Africans not only preserved the memory of their region of origins, but also crafted empowered responses to enslavement and the colonial system at large.     

Indo-Hispanic Dynamics: From Contact to Colonial Interaction in the Greater Antilles

Indo-Hispanic interaction is an essential issue in the colonial period in the Caribbean, but its study is currently marginalized as an offshoot of pre-Columbian archaeology. This state of affairs denies the indigenous contribution to the past and present ethnocultural composition of the region and privileges a colonial approach in scholarship. This paper reviews important aspects of the history of archaeological research on contact and colonial interaction in the Greater Antilles and its theoretical underpinnings. It also presents two recent archaeological case studies that show different facets of the interaction processes using new methodological approaches: El Cabo, Dominican Republic, with evidence of early contact, and El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba, a context of interethnic interaction under colonial conditions.     

Interpretive approaches and the study of Italian politics

This article asks why, despite their doubtful utility, the categories used in accounts of contemporary Italian politics are almost universally negative in character. It is suggested that at least part of the explanation has to do with the ontological and epistemological assumptions informing the accounts, together with the social circumstances that have given rise to their production. More fruitful, less uncritically negative analyses require the adoption of approaches informed by alternative ontologies and epistemologies, that is, interpretive approaches. These seek to account for social phenomena by rendering intelligible the meaningful action in which the latter are rooted and, as the example of corruption shows, yield less negative accounts by allowing researchers to imagine themselves acting, given similar circumstances, in ways similar to those they study.