An Insular Reliquary from Melhus: The Significance of Insular Ecclesiastical Material in Early Viking-Age Norway

THIS PAPER presents and discusses a unique insular reliquary shrine discovered in an early 9th-century woman’s grave at Melhus, central Norway, over a century ago. In addition to a detailed re-evaluation of the shrine and its use in its original ecclesiastical context, the paper also proposes an alternative interpretation as to how the local pagan population may have conceptualised this Christian object after it arrived in Norse hands. While most of the insular ecclesiastical items in Scandinavia were broken up and transformed into personal ornaments, the Melhus shrine was kept complete, suggesting it was considered to be of special value. It is argued here that this status should be seen in association with the shrine’s involvement in local narratives and ritual aspects connected with the earliest voyages across the North Sea. The woman with whom the reliquary was buried may have played a central role in these rituals.     

Unemployed Workers’ Centres (1978–): Spatial Politics, “Non-Movement”, and the Making of Centres

This paper revisits the histories of Unemployed Workers’ Centres to consider the politicisation of unemployment in the UK. Drawing upon archive material and over 50 oral histories, it considers the emergence of centres as a response to a crisis of increasing unemployment and retrenchment of the welfare state. The paper indicates how Asef Bayat’s concept of “non-movement” proves useful for capturing a wider sphere of labour organising, moving beyond more conventional spaces and actions. This approach critically revisits the role of centres in conversation with emerging work in labour geography and social movements studies around the fostering of solidarities. It reveals tensions around their making, whilst also stressing the potential of seemingly small acts when held alongside campaigns. Revisiting this repertoire of activity reveals the persistence of trade union engagements with communities beyond the workplace, as well as a critical insight into the politics of space in forging such alternatives.     

The kingdom's two bodies? Corporeal rhetoric and royal authority during the religious wars

The conventional discourse of the body politic assumed a peculiarresonance during the French religious wars due to the uniqueidentification of the king with the well-being of his kingdom.The duality of this relationship was echoed in the languageand imagery of corporeal rhetoric which infused the declarationsof all sides during the conflict. The combined threat of heresyand civil war, and the shared imperative to defend the unityand integrity of the kingdom, lent a renewed relevance, butalso a profound discord, to this rhetoric. While opinions differedabout the best means to cure France's ills—the royal policyof pacification being the most controversial of them—monarchicalauthority was bolstered by the king's undisputed role as headof the body politic and protector of, and physician to, hisrealm.     

Breastfeeding as custom not culture: Cutting meaning down to size (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Seeing breastfeeding as culturally constructed highlights its overall meaning only to hide the activity's inner dynamic and structural separateness. To study breastfeeding in its own terms, our paper flips culture as meaning on its head, asking how the whole (culture) fits the part (breastfeeding). Addressing that question to cultural, regional and cross‐cultural bodies of evidence, we find that what's viable bioculturally is nowhere near as malleable as what's imagined culturally. In understanding these arrangements, history and function need as much consideration as anthropologists currently give meaning.