Pope Clement V and the crusades of 1309–10

There were three crusading expeditions in 1309– 1310: against the Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean, the Moors in Granada, and the Venetian soldiers occupying the papal city of Ferrara. The campaigns illustrate the continuing vitality of the crusading movement despite the setbacks of the previous decades; but they also reveal the consequences of extending the crusade to various ‘fronts’, both outside and within the frontiers of Christendom. For Clement V's original intention of concentrating the crusading energy of the West on his project for a Hospitaller passagium particulare was frustrated first by insistent Aragonese and Castilian demands for crusade privileges and taxes for the Granada campaign, and later by the draining-off of papal funds to the Ferrara war. It was the crusade against Venice which proved most successful, and the lesson was clear to the papal court: in a period of soaring military costs and growing suspicion about the real motives of crusading kings and princes, the papacy could best promote the cause of Christ by concentrating on the ‘home front’, the policy pursued by Clement's successor, John XXII.     

Small Product,Big Issues: Value Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross-border Commodity Networks

This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value.