Culture for competitiveness: valuing diversity in EU-Europe and the ‘creative city’ of Berlin

The European Union (EU) has in recent years propagated an approach to ‘culture’ that pulls together support for the creative and cultural industries with diversity-sensitive immigration and integration strategies, drawing on popular policy visions of the ‘creative’ and ‘intercultural’ city. This approach emphasizes the role that the diversity of culture, as personal resource, can play in enhancing economic competitiveness. The article examines its logic and possible effects through an analysis of EU documents and policy in Berlin. Berlin intersects with the EU’s agenda, using EU structural funds and participating in the European program ‘Intercultural Cities’. It is shown that the attempt to use ‘culture for competitiveness’ equates support-worthy ‘diversity’ with forms of culture that conform to (neo)liberal values and priorities. The attempt to shape a cosmopolitan place attractive for investment and the high-skilled feeds into gentrification processes that create ‘diverse’ neighborhoods where ‘difference’ has no place.     

THE LIMITS OF OTTOMAN PRAGMATISM

In this paper I reflect critically on the concept of pragmatism as it is used in Ottoman historiography. Pragmatism has gained increasing currency over the last ten to fifteen years as one of the defining features of the Ottoman polity. I argue that unless it is properly defined from a theoretical‐philosophical perspective, and carefully contextualized from a historical perspective, pragmatism cannot be used as an explanatory or comparative category. When used as a framework of explanation for historical change, pragmatism blurs more than it clarifies an essential aspect of the Ottoman polity that it seeks to define, namely, the political. It is essential to reflect on the difference between the political and politics because whereas the political refers to the configuration of the power relations that organize a society as a legitimate entity, politics refers to the strategies, practices, institutions, or discourses whose purpose is to construct and retain hegemony within a polity. Through an analysis of the concept of pragmatism in Ottoman historiography, I show that for most proponents of Ottoman pragmatism, pragmatism pertains to politics rather than to the political. From a perspective rigorously confined to political theory, I argue that much like the discourse of modern tolerance, pragmatism in Ottoman historiography posits a problematic periodization, relegates the political to the background, and depoliticizes essential power relations.     

From the ‘spirit of capital’ to the “spirit” of capitalism: The transition in German economic thought between Lujo Brentano and Max Weber

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft.

The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois.     

Fixity and fluidity: chiefly authority and settlement movement in colonial Botswana

This article proposes that anthropologists and historians of colonialism, landscape and the colonial construction of chieftaincy in Africa should examine particular case studies in more detail to elicit the complex social and material processes implicit in such notions. In particular it focuses upon the colonial conflation of the notions of settlement nucleation and sedentism in the period of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in Botswana (1885–1966), processes of material change, and the position of Tswana chiefs with regard to settlement and authority. The perceived “failure” of the Tawana chiefs in Ngamiland District to exert settlement control over the dispersed population is analyzed through detailed colonial records of conflict to argue that what failed was the colonial construction of chieftaincy itself, as well as the colonial imagination of landscape in Africa. The article’s emphasis upon the materiality of dwelling in the landscape also seeks to convince historians and anthropologists alike of the vast research potential of material culture in the analysis of colonial histories, social and cultural change, and indigenous notions of modernity.     

Madonna,Glamour and Politics: Nation Branding and Pop Concerts in the Promotion of Montenegro as an Elite Tourist Destination

Tourism is a strategically important industry for Montenegro, which especially since the restoration of its statehood in 2006, is utilized by the governing structures to enhance the country's economy and symbolic representation. Tourism also serves as a vehicle to depart from the socialist past, as a significant effort and money are invested in rebranding Montenegro as a Mediterranean tourist destination offering natural beauty, coastal folklore and “spectacular” entertainment and pop culture events. This article focuses on music events contributing to the development of “pop/rock tourism”. In the past few years, Montenegro has staged performances by some of today's biggest music stars and thus tries to boost Montenegro's image as an attractive and, above all, exclusive tourist destination in the Mediterranean. Their organization has been supported by the current political and economic elite with an aim to produce a prominent commercial effect but also to refurbish the state image on the international tourist market.     

Technology and Global Politics: The Modern Experiences of Bertrand Russell and John H. Herz

As questions of technology and world government are returning to the agenda of International Relations (IR), there is a risk that technology is approached in a simple, instrumentalist manner. Beginning from an overview of the overwhelmingly instrumental approaches to technology lodged in the dominant traditions of IR, the article revisits the post-war decades when scholars thought profoundly about the impact of technology on global politics. Combining the history of (international) political thought, IR theory, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) the article examines the relationship between technology and politics, authority, and liberty in the thought of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and John H. Herz (1908–2005), which leads to the unearthing of a sophisticated and complex set of ideas. Particularly during the nuclear revolution, these figures developed global visions in which the interrelations among technology, security, democracy, sustainability, and freedom were critical. Russell and Herz's approaches to technology and (global) politics are insightful and relevant for IR's attempt to re-engage with technology: by anticipating contemporary critical and reflexive approaches to technology, they can help bridge the fields of IR and STS and open new avenues for research. The Large Technical Systems (LTS) approach within STS is used to exemplify this possibility.     

An empirical test of the relative frequency of bipolar reduction in Beds VI,V, and III at Mumba Rockshelter,Tanzania: implications for the East African Middle to Late Stone Age transition

Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania, is the only East African site spanning a continuous record of more than 100,000 years, including the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to Late Stone Age (LSA) Transition. Rather than examine the presence or absence of traditional markers of “behavioral modernity”, we have endeavored here to respond to the calls of Shea (2011) and Basell (2008) by examining the proportional similarity of a trait present throughout the MSA–LSA sequence at Mumba Rockshelter: the bipolar technique of lithic reduction. We use a quantified, experimentally derived proxy to track the relative amount of bipolar percussion among Mumba's Beds VI, V, and III, namely, waste shatter. Our examination of Mehlman's previously unanalyzed collections from Mumba demonstrates that in terms of bipolar production Bed V is statistically indistinguishable from the Late Stone Age (LSA) Bed III, but significantly different from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) Bed VI. Given that Bed V dates to 56.9 ± 4.8 − 49.1 ± 4.3 ka cal BP, this result is consistent with other evidence that the origins of the LSA in East Africa began well before 40 kya, and that Mumba Bed V represents one of the earliest manifestations of the LSA in East Africa. We conclude with a discussion of factors that may have influenced the increased dependence of bipolar production at the site.     

唐代安西碎叶镇位置与史事辨析

本文在1986年发表《唐代安西四镇之一的碎叶位置新探》一文的基础上,详检有关碎叶史事,从时空两方面综合分析,其绝大部分发生在哈密碎叶及其周围。巴尔喀什湖附近的碎叶,从乌质勒徙其牙帐以后,在整个四镇存在期间,一直是突骑施安身立命之处。裴行俭留王方翼于安西筑碎叶城,位于其东归途中的伊州（哈密）,不可能在今新疆玛纳斯河以西。《资治通鉴》胡三省注,把王方翼筑碎叶城,放在焉耆都督府名下,是因为焉耆王龙嫩突在突骑施占据焉耆后隋唐军移徙伊州碎叶,该地曾长期作为焉耆都督府的侨置治所。“碎叶”（Suyab）,突厥语意为两水交汇处,西域有多处以“碎叶”为地名,对有关史事必须具体分析,以免张冠李戴。