The Political Trinity of Conservative Laestadianism: God,His Kingdom and Authorities

This article aims at analyzing the concept of the authority in the theology of Conservative Laestadianism, the biggest revival movement inside Finnish Lutheran Church. Author argues that the concept of the authority has a form of a political trinity, where God, the Kingdom of God and secular authorities rule the world of the believer. Furthermore, Laestadianism is a particular and seemingly somewhat functional answer to the difficult challenge of combing a conservative religion and secular modernity.     

Gone to smelt iron in Courland: technology transfer in the development of an early modern industry

SUMMARY: In the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, corresponding to the southern and western parts of present-day Latvia, an iron industry based on blast-furnace technology, mainly using local bog iron ore, existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Transfer of knowledge and skill through the recruitment of specialists from other countries of Europe was crucial to the development of this industry; technology was also re-exported to Russia and elsewhere. Recent archaeological and archaeometallurgical investigations supplement the written evidence, highlighting the specific local conditions that influenced the development of ferrous metalworking here in the early modern period.     

Red Foxes in the Filing Cabinet: Günter Tembrock's Image Collection and Media Use in Mid-Century Ethology**

This paper considers the epistemic career of visual media in ethology in the mid-20th century. Above all, ethologists claimed close contact with research animals and drew scientific evidence from these human-animal communities, particularly in public relations. However, if we look into the toolboxes of comparative behavioral biologists, it becomes evident that scientifically valid research results were primarily obtained by experimenting with model images. These visual specimens tell a technical story of the methodological requirements in behavioral science necessary to bridge everyday observations between the laboratory and the field. By neutralizing individual traces of animal bodies as well as their observers, they prompted the abstraction of ethological hypotheses. The case study of East-German biologist Günter Tembrock (1918–2011), who maintained his own collection of newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs, and films, offers a new perspective on the methodological development of this field. Furthermore, this article contributes to a scholarly discussion geared toward expanding the spaces of ethological research. My analysis of the image collections of the Forschungsstätte für Tierpsychologie presents the archive as a relevant site of study in the history of ethology.     

A civilized nation: Japan and the Red Cross 1877–1900

Abstract

The history of both the Red Cross and the Japanese Red Cross is based on a teleological and eurocentric narrative which is strongly shaped by national histories and focused on persons. To assume 1863 as the founding date of the Red Cross is highly debatable, considering that most national relief organisations were renamed ‘Red Cross Societies’ only in the 1880s. In this Japan is no exception, since first a Haku-Ai-Sha (Philanthropic Society) was founded in 1877 and then turned into the Japanese Red Cross Society in 1887. Japanese actors must be regarded as intrinsically motivated and active participants in the Red Cross movement who saw an ideal and a model in the Euro-American ‘way of civilisation’ and humanity. It has taken about 30 years to turn the Haku-Ai-Sha in Japan into a humanitarian society which is accepted both at home and abroad and, with its 728,507 members in 1900, which constituted the largest Red Cross Society in the world.     

The sound of music heritage: curating popular music in music museums and exhibitions

A significant amount of previous academic research into popular music museums centres on critiques of the content, design and layout of predominantly authorised institutions. Throughout much of this research, authors consistently criticise the use, or rather, the perceived misuse, of music played within music museums, arguing that the music itself, rather than artefacts, constitutes the most significant part of popular music exhibition. This article seeks to counter this trend by exploring the challenges of incorporating recorded sound into popular music exhibits as understood by curators and exhibit designers. Utilising interviews conducted within 14 authorised and DIY museums devoted to popular music, the researchers demonstrate a distinct contrast between current academic critiques of music use in these museums and the attitudes of the people who create them. The result is a varied discussion surrounding sound in the museal space, including issues of sound bleed, technology and the creation of balance between artefacts and sound. This account draws attention to curators’ intentions of telling the story of popular music history by engaging with both the visual and aural memories of museum patrons, and suggests a new understanding of the purpose underpinning popular music museums in modern contexts.     

Politics of tangibility,intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is ‘placing heritage’ – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physical European heritage sites are crucial elements in the policy through which the EU seeks to govern both the actors and the meanings of heritage. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of diverse policy documents and informational and promotional material, this article presents five strategies of ‘placing heritage’ used in the EU initiatives. In addition, the article presents a theoretical model of circulation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage in the EU heritage policy discourse and discusses the EU’s political intents included in the practices of ‘placing heritage’.     

First discovery of ancient soft‐stone (chlorite) vessel production in Arabia: Aqir al‐Shamoos (Oman)

Soft‐stone vessels are a prominent feature of ancient culture throughout south‐east Arabia and the Gulf. Chlorite and steatite occur naturally in the al‐Hajar Mountains of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman; but until now, apart from the discovery of a few unfinished pieces, ancient production of soft‐stone vessels had yet to be documented in Arabia. This paper reports the discovery and preliminary analysis of soft‐stone vessel production at the site of Aqir al‐Shamoos. At this small and secluded mountain village, a range of soft‐stone vessels that are well known in the south‐east Arabian Iron Age were produced on a scale far beyond what was needed for local consumption.     

Action research for tourism planning in rural areas? Examining an experience from the Couto Mixto (Galicia,Spain)

This paper reviews a tourist planning experience developed for the Couto Mixto in 2007–2008. The Couto Mixto is a small territory of three hamlets situated in Galicia (Spain) and bordering Portugal that, until the end of the 19th century, used to be a virtually independent state of 25 km². This tourism planning process is compared and contrasted with the well‐described Action Research (AR) approach. The paper begins by providing the conceptual foundations of tourism planning which were used as a framework for the research. Then, the tourism planning experience is introduced in detail, focussing on the results of the interviews conducted to identify the tourism resources of the area. Therefore, 23 resources were inventoried and further audited to determine their various degrees of potential for the purposes of tourism planning. Previous AR experiences and the tourism planning initiative developed for the Couto Mixto share a common objective to facilitate change in communities in trouble. However, the case‐study tourism planning experience was not fully compliant with genuine AR in several respects. We conclude by recommending AR as a worthy approach for tourism planning as a way to effectively put the local community in focus.     

The Influence of Indoor Climate Control on Risk for Damages in Naturally Ventilated Historic Churches in Cold Climate

This article analyzes the indoor climate that creates risk of damages in naturally ventilated churches in the cold climate of Estonia. Indoor temperature and humidity were measured over a one-year period and the results were analyzed on the basis of damage functions: mold growth, risk of cracking and fracturing of wooden objects, and delamination of the gesso layer of panel paintings.

In unheated churches, one of the most dominant problems was very high relative humidity throughout the year, creating a high risk for mold and algae growth. Churches may need background heating to avoid freezing during a long cold winter that causes low surface temperatures of massive walls during the spring–summer period. It was found that mold risk was significantly lower in heated churches than in unheated or intermittently heated churches. The risk of mold growth was not decreased by the use of intermittent heating.

In heated churches, overheating (room temperature >+10ºC) causes a RH below 50% during cold periods, and the favorable period for irreversible response of panel paintings was significantly longer, so there is a higher risk that the gesso may crack or delaminate. From the point of view of the cracking and fracturing of wood, indoor climate conditions are in the safe range for most of the year.     

Defusing Dualism: Mind,Materiality and Prehistoric Art

The paper presents a sculpture made of a fossilised shell. It was found during an excavation at the site Torpum 9b in Østfold, south‐eastern Norway. The site and thereby the figure are dated to the late Mesolithic period. The sculpture is interpreted as an essence of female attributes, that is the hips and pelvis of a female human with the genitalia marked. This interpretation requires a discussion of the relations between general principles and actual historical situations. The interest in fossils is presumable universal, but the specific culture‐historical interpretation of the sculpture from Østfold must take the local Mesolithic context as its framework. Through an examination of fossils in folklore and prehistory, and a presentation of the particular fossil's geological origin and context, the universal and non‐historical meaning of the sculpture is presented. This perspective is then discussed in the context of the east Norwegian Mesolithic.