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.     

Collaboration for Local Economic Development: Business Networks,Politics and Universities in Two Swedish Cities

In this article we want to show how conceptions about collaboration for local eocnomic development in Sweden are constructed on national and local levels. We also show how these conceptions have been realized in two different company networks; in the city of Östersund (“Odenskog företagsstaden”) and in the city of Karlskrona (“Telecom City”). In politics and research, local collaboration or cluster formation are viewed as important tools and levers for local economic development. However, we argue that the local labour markets and unemployment rates in our case studies do not differ significantly, despite very different strategies for collaboration. Therefore, we suspect that the political focus on collaboration is a way of legitimizing the change in regional policy rather than a delegation of real power to the local level. If this continues, we fear that the current regional policy is reduced to a discourse of popular concepts rather than a real instrument for local economic development.     

Reviews

Feldbæk, Ole, Slaget på Reden (The battle of Copenhagen), K0benhavn (1985), 282 pp., ill.

TVÅKAMMARRIKSDAGEN 1867–1970. Ledamöter och valkretsar. På riksdagens uppdrag utarbetad av Andreas Tjerneld. Band 2, Östergötlands, Jönköpings, Kro‐nobergs, Kalmars, Gotlands och Hallands län. (The bicameral parliament 1867–1970). Prepared by Andreas Tjerneld at the request of parliament. Volume 2. The provinces of Östergötland, Jönköping, Kronoberg, Kalmar, Gotland and Halland). Riksdagen och Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm (1985), 438 pp.

Martti Turtola Tornionjoelta Rajajoelle. Suomen ja Ruotsin salainen yhteistoiminta Neuvosto‐liiton hyökkäysen varalle vuosina 1923–1940. Puolustuspoliittinen vaihtoehto. (From the River Tornio to the Border River. The secret collaboration between Sweden and Finland against Soviet attack 1923–1940. A defence policy alternative) (Porvoo, 1948). 259 P#lb

Nissborg, Agnete, Danmark mellan Norden och väst (Denmark between the North and the West). (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningeni Uppsala, vol. 101, Uppsala 1985.) ISBN 91–554–1676–4. 147 pp. English summary.

The North Sea. A Highway of Economic and Cultural Exchange. Character — History, Edited by Arne Bang‐Andersen, Basil Greenhill, Egil Harald Grude, (Norwegian University Press, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1985). NOK 260, ISBN 82–00–072 67–3.     

Archaeological and Historical Materials as a Means to Explore Finnish Crop History

ABSTRACT

In Northern Europe, barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) has been cultivated for almost 6000 years. Thus far, 150-year-old grains from historical collections have been used to investigate the distribution of barley diversity and how the species has spread across the region. Genetic studies of archaeobotanical material from agrarian sites could potentially clarify earlier migration patterns and cast further light on the origin of barley landraces. In this study, we aimed to evaluate different archaeological and historical materials with respect to DNA content, and to explore connections between Late Iron Age and medieval barley populations and historical samples of barley landraces in north-west Europe. The material analysed consisted of archaeological samples of charred barley grains from four sites in southern Finland, and historical material, with 33 samples obtained from two herbaria and the seed collections of the Swedish museum of cultural history.

The DNA concentrations obtained from charred archaeological barley remains were too low for successful KASP genotyping confirming previously reported difficulties in obtaining aDNA from charred remains. Historical samples from herbaria and seed collection confirmed previously shown strong genetic differentiation between two-row and six-row barley. Six-row barley accessions from northern and southern Finland tended to cluster apart, while no geographical structuring was observed among two-row barley. Genotyping of functional markers revealed that the majority of barley cultivated in Finland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was late-flowering under increasing day-length, supporting previous findings from northern European barley.