Interpreting cultural remains in airborne laser scanning generated digital terrain models: effects of size and shape on detection success rates

In this study, detection success rates were evaluated for cultural remains that were detected manually based on interpretation of digital terrain models (DTM) derived from airborne laser scanning data and with a resolution of 1, 5 and 10 points m⁻². The group of cultural remains included charcoal kilns, charcoal pits, hollow-roads, various pits, house foundations, tar kilns, grave mounds and pit-falls. The effects on the interpretation success of different types of cultural remains and their physical properties were studied: size, shape and elevation difference showing that the detection success rates varied considerably. The main tendency was that large cultural remains with clear geometrical shape (ovals and circles) and large elevation difference were much more successfully detected and classified compared to the smaller ones, especially those without a clear geometrical shape. The study also showed that it was the identification of the larger structures which profited most from an increased resolution of the DTM, and it was of no help to increase resolution in order to improve the identification of the irregularly shaped cultural remains.     

Why Are Some Policy Agendas Larger than Others?

Most research on policy agendas is based on the assumption that space on the agenda is fixed and, hence, focuses on how problems compete for this limited agenda space. This article holds that policy agendas may be limited but not fixed, meaning that problems may not always be traded off but confronted through a larger policy agenda. Based on an extensive collection of local council agendas from 98 Danish municipalities over time, this article investigates variations in agenda size across local governments and examines the extent to which this reflects the local problem environment. The analysis reveals that a large council agenda arises in response to an unfriendly problem environment, particularly if there are many committees to channel problems onto the agenda and, to a lesser extent, if center‐left parties hold office.     

Establishing an Ideologically Coherent History

This article analyses the historical culture of the Swedish Social Democratic Worker’s Party (SAP) during its formation in the last decades of the 19th century. Utilizing the theoretical concepts of myth and conceptual metaphor, the sense-making aspects of historical narration are studied, especially the way coherent stories are told, in which the movement under formation is made part of a long history leading to a desirable future. The SAP utilized history both morally-defensively and tactically-offensively. The moral use of history depicts Jesus, Münster, and the French Revolution, establishing the righteousness of revolt. The revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune, during which the workers are seen as acting more independently, are depicted in a way that draws attention to tactical aspects; lessons are learned on how the workers should act in a revolutionary situation. As has been shown to be the case regarding national narratives, the sense-making mechanisms of historical narration also tend to appeal to issues of identity. The metaphorical conceptualization of ideas and movements as individuals and families further underlines these issues.     

The Norwegian 9/11: In the Church Without a Bible

The article identifies roles and conditions for the Bible within modern politics in the West. By comparing the official Norwegian response to the terror attack in Oslo July 22, 2011, with the similar response in the US on September 11, 2001, it is explained why the Bible is nearly absent in the official discourse of Norwegian Prime Ministers. While religion resurfaced in the process of national recuperation with the Cathedral of Oslo as a center for mass ritualization and national grief, the biblical legacy played no part in the Prime Minister's speech. The primary political leader of the Norwegian state has rarely bolstered his argument with the Bible, although this state has officially adhered to a Protestant confession from its Constitution in 1814. The Liberal Bible that appears to be operative in US presidential discourse is not playing a major role on a comparable political level in Norway.     

“The need and ability for expansion”: Conceptions of living space in the small-state geopolitics of Gudmund Hatt

Although they are often subjected to critical scrutiny, formal geopolitical practices have rarely been put on trial. One exception is the case of Gudmund Hatt (1884-1960), professor of human geography at Copenhagen University from 1929 to 1947, who was found guilty of “dishonorable national conduct” for his geopolitics during the German occupation. As a contribution to the critical history of geopolitical traditions, this article investigates Hatt as an example of a small-state geopolitician. Particular attention is given to his view of geopolitics as a practice and as an essentially material struggle for Livsrum (living space), and what this made him infer for the great powers and for small-state Denmark. Hatt’s geopolitical ideas had many parallels to those of his great-power contemporaries, but in important respects, his analyses also differed from traditional geopolitics. It is argued that, to a significant degree, this difference is related to the fact that Hatt narrated geographies of world politics from a small and exposed state with few territorial ambitions. This made him emphasize economic relations, efficiency rather than territorial size, and the geopolitical role of the Danish Folk (i.e., the nation). Hatt’s position as a peripheral observer to the geopolitical mainstream may also explain his understanding of geopolitics and living-space politics as practices pursued by all great powers.