Politics of affect in the EU heritage policy discourse: an analysis of promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and ‘move’ the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the several sites is in various ways intertwined with extreme agony, violence, hatred, oppression, and injustice. However, the stories of the sites in the videos turn their legacy into a positive ethos of conquering these negative extremes and cherishing their positive opposites: freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. The affectivity of the videos prepares the receivers to adopt their political aim: support for the EU and European integration. The analysis indicates how affect has a key role in producing an impression of the irrefutability and choicelessness of EU politics.     

The temporality of territorial production – the case of Stortorget,Malmö

In recent years, we have seen the development of a more relational approach to territoriality. This perspective, which focuses on events rather than space, also opens up for an elaboration of temporal aspects of territorial production. In this study, I investigate the central urban square, Stortorget, in Malmö, Sweden, in order to develop a discussion of a time–space territorology. In 1978, Korosec-Serfaty performed a thorough study of the square, observing its everyday activities. The present study compares territorial productions at Malmö’s Main Square during 1978 with those of 2013. The results of the study indicate a change of time–space production in which temporary territorial appropriations and tactics tend to become shorter in duration, whereas the number of temporary and large-scale territorial strategies has increased and the role of these become more important. The study also shows how these territorial transformations include changes (in pace, rhythm, temporal salience and scale) that seem to vertically stabilise the territorial structure of the square, and thus decrease both territorial complexity and the possibilities for new publics to evolve.     

Advisory Professorship Model as a Tool for Practice-Based Regional University–Industry Cooperation

The growing importance of “practice-based innovation models” has challenged the current consensus on the role of universities as main drivers of regional innovation systems. New models are needed to ensure the efficiency of co-operation between the region and universities. In this article, we present and analyse the effects of one practice-based innovation tool, the advisory professorship model, developed in the Lahti region, Finland. The Lahti region is relatively big by Finnish standards, but has no university of its own, which makes new types of knowledge transfer necessary. The empirical analysis is based on interviews of the companies that participated in the materials technology advisory professorship programme, developed and operated by Tampere University of Technology. In the analysis, we utilize the conceptual framework and analytical matrix developed by Tura et al. [(2008) Breaking inside the black box: Towards a dynamic evaluation framework of regional innovative capability, Science and Public Policy, 35(10), pp. 733–744] in the measuring of regional innovation capability. The study approach is based on regional and industrial viewpoints. In the light of the study, the programme had positive impacts on the innovation capability and innovation processes of companies. The advisory professorship model can be considered a useful practice-based innovation tool for regional university–industry co-operation with some limitations.     

How to Attract Managers and Professionals to Peripheral Regions? Recruitment Strategies in the Weser-Ems Region,Germany

An adequate supply of highly qualified workers is a central prerequisite for the ability of peripheral and economically lagging regions to develop. In order to take advantage of endogenous potential, bottlenecks in human knowledge and know-how must be overcome by means of support from outside. An important element in this is migration. Taking as an example the Weser-Ems region in northwestern Germany, the strategies used by local enterprises to motivate managerial staff to move from other regions are shown and the level of success achieved is described. As is shown, the regional labour market has lost significance for the upper segment in the course of structural changes in the economy, which has led to an increase in the necessity for cross-regional searches in order to fill managerial posts. As enterprises in peripheral locations have poor starting conditions in the cross-regional competition for highly qualified workers, this development demands that more and more enterprises mobilize considerable resources for the recruitment of staff. Although the findings indicate that the potential of workers willing to migrate is greater and more diverse than is often assumed, they also show that certain types of enterprises have great difficulty in overcoming independently the personnel-related disadvantages resulting from the location, and require support through regional structural policy.     

Die Embryologie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Tradition und Empirie

Already in classical antiquity people dealt with the principle of formation, developing different theories. Researchers in the renaissance, working in the conflict zone between tradition and experience, tried to prove one or the other of these theories by the means of new observations, especially of chicken development. Aldrovandi was the first to see the real principle of formation of the hen's egg, i. e. the blastodisc, but he didn't recognize the importance of his discovery due to his close adherence to Aristotle in the theoretical field. Fabricius even thought that traditional knowledge was of more importance than his own excellent observations. Parisano was the first to succeed in making a correct interpretation of the function of the blastodisc, but only by holding to a ‘false’ classical theory. Harvey combined his attempt to restore the developmental theory of Aristotle with a religious interpretation postulating God's intervention in all development. Subsequent to atomism, Highmore evolved a two seed theory of development, which in his view made a permanent engagement of God superfluous. Also the first observations using the microscope did not contribute to any improvement in developmental theory. Malpighi used them to confirm the theory of epigenesis, whereas Croone attributed to a piece of blastoderm the proportion of a whole embryo to demonstrate his ovistic theory of preformation. The founder of animalculism Leeuwenhoek, an amateur researcher, was at first not influenced by the trends of the scientific community. He postulated that the spermatozoa, which he discovered, contained perfect miniature animals. His investigations are a good example of where prejudices can lead, even when the observations are excellent. In the 17th century the tension between experience and tradition shifted in favour of experience, but a final solution had not by any means been reached.     

When do decision makers listen (less) to experts? The Swiss government's implementation of scientific advice during the COVID-19 crisis

Under which conditions do politicians listen to scientific experts in a crisis? This study addresses this question by assessing how the Swiss government implemented 186 policy recommendations formulated by the National COVID-19 Science Task Force (STF) to combat the spread of the virus and alleviate its impact on the health system, society and economy during the first year of the pandemic. Results of multiple regression analyses show that the impact of problem pressure on the propensity of the government to implement experts' recommendations varies over time: it was considerably larger during spring 2020 than afterwards. We argue that this reflects a change in status of the STF during the second phase of the pandemic: it was distanced from the political-strategic level of the crisis management organization and its epistemic authority was increasingly questioned by political parties and interest groups. Policy scholars should thus give more attention to how rapidly the government's propensity to rely on expert advice can change.     

National indifferences during everyday nationalism: Experiencing the nation in Finland in the aftermath of the Second World War

Our article discusses the adaptability of the concept of national indifference to the context of post-war Finnish society and everyday nationalism. This period witnessed a transformation of previously exclusive and aggressive nationalism into a tempered and relatively inclusive version. Within this historical context, national indifference became an entangled category that could not be clearly attributed to a specific group of people but which carried with it a gradual change in subjective attitudes and consciousness. The case of post-war Finland demonstrates that just as nationalism changed its shape over time, becoming subtly embedded in everyday life, so too did national indifference. The article thus argues that an increase in the level of national indifference could actually make space for national integration and, furthermore, that any given expressions of nationalism, as well as the lack of them, must be studied against the background of people's experiences, which lend historically conditioned meaning to national sentiment and indifference alike.