ORGANIZATION,LEGITIMATION, PARTICIPATION

This article suggests a new interpretation of the state formation process in Early Modern Sweden, focusing on three dimensions: The organization of the state as a way to use limited resources in a rational way, the legitimation of rulers in terms of beliefs and values current in society, and the participation of the subjects in state activities. Our model focuses on institutional change as a result of the intensity of interaction between rulers and subjects. Based on our own research, claims are made for new understanding of state formation in Europe that allows more room for political action from below.     

LABOUR AND LANDSCAPES: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LANDESQUE CAPITAL IN NINETEENTH CENTURY TANGANYIKA

In a long‐term and global perspective irrigated and terraced landscapes, landesque capital, have often been assumed to be closely associated with hierarchical political systems. However, research is accumulating that shows how kinship‐based societies (including small chiefdoms) have also been responsible for constructing landesque capital without population pressure. We examine the political economy of landesque capital through the intersections of decentralized politics and regional economies. A crucial question guiding our research is why some kinship‐based societies chose to invest their labour in landesque capital while others did not. Our analysis is based on a detailed examination of four relatively densely populated communities in late pre‐colonial and early colonial Tanzania. By analysing labour processes as contingent and separate from political types of generalized economic systems over time we can identify the causal factors that direct labour and thus landscape formation as a process. The general conclusion of our investigation is that landesque investments occurred in cases where agriculture was the main source of long‐term wealth flow irrespective of whether or not hierarchical political systems were present. However, while this factor may be a necessary condition it is not a sufficient cause. In the cases we examined, the configurations of world‐systems connections and local social and economic circumstances combined to either produce investments in landesque capital or to pursue short‐term strategies of extraction.     

Mobilizing ‘juvenocratic spaces’ by the biopoliticization of children through sustainability

Northern children have been increasingly referred to as competent, participative and influential, called on to protect and produce certain life at times of climate risks. Child–adult relations and the required transition to adulthood are thus transformed by a re-configured ‘biopolitics’. We trace how various collaborative actors invite children to foster life at an aggregate level and illustrate how different age categories are governed at a distance. The results show that pedagogic expertise, in conjunction with sustainability, is mobilized in and by ‘juvenocratic spaces’, where youths are obliged to foster sustainable consumption and ways of living beyond territorial borders.     

Comment on Egil Bakka: Methodological problems in the study of Gold Bracteates,Norw. Arch. Rev. 1, 5–35

At some of the lakes on the mountain plateau Hardangervidda are found the remnants of large stone huts surrounded by middens rich in reindeer bones. On the opposite side of the lakes from these huts a number of cairns making up drift fences indicate that the animals were forced into the water, there to be killed by the hunters.

It appears that the method ‐ which was in use until the Black Death ‐ on the western side of Hardangervidda was known from before the Christian era, whilst on the eastern side it was first introduced in the Early Medieval Period.

The author discusses this variation and relates it to population movements and social change.     

A simulation model of farming systems and land use in Sweden during the early Iron Age, c. 500 b.c. – a.d. 550

In investigating an area with deserted fields and boundaries in the province of Östergotland, Eastern Middle Sweden, pollen analysis has been used as a tool in describing the ecological base of different phases in the development of the cultural landscape. The characteristics of the early Iron Age expansion have thus been proven to be the simultaneous expansion of cattle breeding and arable farming. This indicates an integrated system, with intensely tilled fields, knowledge of manuring and, therefore, need of a vast fence system to gather the cattle and make efficient use of the manure.Assuming a social organization of families with a size of eight to ten individuals, the amount of land required to feed each unit has been calculated. Three hectares of arable land, 30 ha of meadow land and 30 ha of pasture is suggested as a possible combination to support a family. Using a desk computer, units with these proportions of land have been randomly located in an area of 2 × 2 km² taking soil differences into account. Agrarian units can be located several times at random and the resulting land-use patterns studied. The simulated results often very well describe the actual land-use pattern during the early Iron Age as indicated by deserted fields, boundaries and dwelling sites.