Popul?r oder elit?r? Anmerkungen zum Kulturbegriff in der Geschichtswissenschaft

While the Historische Kulturwissenschaft (new cultural history) is introduced as a new way of writing history the question has to be answered what Kultur (civilization) means or how it should be interpreted. The paper deals primarily with the special German notion of ‘Kultur’. The distinction between ‘intension’ and ‘extension’ is made and contrasted with both the narrow and the wide concept of ‘Kultur’. Writing history as new cultural history is shaped at least by five aspects: space, perspective, language, acting and time (particularly memory) which are discussed in this thesis. The intension of ‘Kultur’ in Historische Kulturwissenschaft leads to popularisation. The sense of the popular approach to history emphasizes modality in the conception and writing of history.     

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.     

The Central Adriatic Wine Trade of Italy Revisited

Since Maria Teresa Cipriano's and Marie‐Brigitte Carre's seminal 1989 paper ‘Production et typologie des amphores sur la côte adriatique de l'Italie’ in the volume ‘Amphores romaines et histoire économique’, our knowledge of Adriatic Italian wine amphorae has much improved. Most of these ‘new data’, however, remain poorly known among the wider scholarly community and no real update regarding their production loci and distribution patterns has as yet been attempted. This paper fills the void for the central part of the eastern coastline between Rimini and Pescara and reviews the latest evidence regarding the manufacture and circulation of these amphorae. In the process, the central Adriatic area of Italy emerges as a key player in the Late Republican and Early Imperial wine trade. This reassessment provides a new starting point for the diachronic exploration of the Adriatic wine commerce between c.250 BC and AD 150.     

SPATIAL MOBILITY AND COMMUTING: THE CASE OF TWO‐EARNER HOUSEHOLDS*

ABSTRACT We examine the effects of the spatial configuration of workers' residence and workplace location on intraregional residential and job moving decisions of workers belonging to two‐earner households. We hypothesize that two‐earner households' residential mobility depends positively on the commuting distance of both spouses, but negatively on the distance between workplaces. Further, we hypothesize that workers' job mobility depends positively on the worker's commuting distance, negatively on the spouse's commuting distance, and positively on the distance between workplaces. Using data for Denmark, it appears that these hypotheses hold, and that the effects of the spatial configuration are rather large.     

Christening Masculinity? Catholic Action and Men in Interwar Belgium

Masculine reactions to the ‘feminisation of Christianity’ among Protestants have been widely explored; the Catholic case is less well known. This article focuses on Catholic Action, an organisation regarded as specifically appealing to men. Through an analysis of the discourses of Catholic Action in Belgium, it examines how important masculine involvement was for Belgian Catholicism and how Catholic Action ‘christened’ masculinity. The article also analyses Catholic femininity. It examines the ways that the ideal Catholic man and woman and their corresponding gendered behaviour and role models were defined in relation to each other and the various forms that these ideals assumed.     

Life Sciences in the Netherlands: Weakness in a Strong National Policy

The Netherlands is an example of a European country in which the commercialization of knowledge is hampered by a somewhat risk-averse culture at universities and a shortage of venture capital for early growth of start-up firms. This article addresses the policy programme in the Netherlands to improve the situation for the life sciences since the early 2000s. The target number of newly established firms could easily be achieved and the programme was able to improve the business climate for new firm establishment. However, the programme could not improve conditions for growth of new firms because it could not achieve a comprehensive turn in the business climate, due to the short cycle-time of the programme (4–5 years). In addition, the programme did not take advantage of existing critical mass in the largest cluster or from any other competitive strength of particular clusters. These circumstances were influencing a relatively large number of small and vulnerable firms. The article concludes with a set of insights from which lessons can be drawn.     

The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas

Spanish colonial archaeology has undergone a fundamental shift since the Columbian Quincentenary due to the adoption of a bottom-up understanding of colonialism that emphasizes the analysis of local phenomena in a global context and the active ways in which people negotiated the processes set in motion by the conquest. This review examines five key research foci: culture change and identity, missionization, bioarchaeology, economics, and investigations of the colonial core. It ends with a consideration of ongoing challenges posed by the archaeology of colonialism, particularly the relationship of the individual to broader social processes and the emerging role of comparison.