Oslo's Farewell to Urban Sprawl

Sustainable mobility has been an important concern in urban planning and development in Oslo Metropolitan Area since the 1990s. The period has been characterized by concentrated and compact urban development, especially within the municipality of Oslo. This has contributed to a reduction in growth in car traffic. Analyses of selected land use and transport plans and policy documents, professional journal articles and interviews with key actors show that there has been a high degree of consensus about this spatial development strategy. Considerable investments have been made in public transport as well as in road development; the former based on broad consensus. Road capacity increases have been contested among professionals but widely supported by politicians.     

KNOWING THE DEMOS

Concepts like voter and electorate are fundamental in all states practising democratic representation. However, the construction of these concepts following the introduction of universal suffrage is rarely studied. Swedish parliamentary debates on election statistics and sex-segregated ballots in 1921 and 1922 offer an illuminating opportunity to do that. Thus, this article argues that these key democratic concepts were in part constructed through the production of election statistics and in debates about what should be known about the respective political preferences of male and female citizens. Both sides in the debates emphasized sex as a fundamental category for understanding voters. But the debates also feature incompatible ways of representing the electorate – as individuals, as a unified whole, and as target groups – entailing conflicting visions of democratic politics. Thus, rather than being solely remembered as attempts to denigrate women’s votes and hence limit democracy, these debates should be understood as ways of dealing with the conceptual implications universal suffrage.     

Evaluating protein residues on Gainey phase Paleoindian stone tools

Blood protein analysis provides a method for acquiring and interpreting archaeological data bearing on human–animal relationships. The present study makes use of cross-over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) and a large sample of stone tools (N = 130) from an early Paleoindian site pertaining to the Gainey phase (ca. 11,200 BP) of the Midwestern USA. Results are used to interpret toolkit organization and site structure, and indicate that hafted tools with longer use-life potentialities are more likely to be associated with preserved residues than are tools of a more ad hoc or situational character. Protein residues derived from cervids are the largest category of identified samples, a result consistent with an interpretation that these animals were important first-line resources of Gainey phase populations. The identification of caribou (Rangifer sp.) is notable. Interpretations of subsistence importance, however, must be tempered by an appreciation of the possible confounding effects of tool manufacture and maintenance in early Paleoindian contexts.     

The tree as evolutionary icon: TREE in the Natural History Museum, London

As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, the first contemporary artwork to win a permanent place in the Museum. While the artist claimed that the inspiration for TREE came from Darwin's famous notebook sketch of branching evolution, sometimes referred to as his "tree of life" drawing, this article emphasises the apparent incongruity between Darwin's sketch and the artist's design -- best explained by other, complementary sources of inspiration. In the context of the Museum's active participation in struggles over science and religion, the effect of the new artwork is contradictory. TREE celebrates Darwinian evolutionism, but it resonates with deep-rooted, mythological traditions of tree symbolism to do so. This complicates the status of the Museum space as one of disinterested, secular science, but it also contributes, with or without the intentions of the Museum's management, to consolidate two sometimes conflicting strains within the Museum's history. TREE celebrates human effort, secular science and reason -- but it also evokes long-standing mythological traditions to inspire reverence and remind us of our humble place in the world.     

Perspektiver for forskningen ved Nordisk Samisk Institutt

Nordisk Samisk Institutt (Sámi Instituhtta) i Kautokeino er den første samiske forskningsinstitusjon plassert til et sted med samisk majoritet. Instituttet startet sin virksomhet i 1974 med seks ansatte. I dag er 30 personer tilknyttet instituttet alt i alt. Forskningsinstitusjonen skal ivareta ulike interesser innen grunnforskning, utviklingsarbeid, administrasjon og praktisk veiledning i samisk hverdagssammenheng.