Investigating cross-Gulf trade in the Iron Age III period: chronological and compositional data on Burnished Maroon Slipped Ware (BMSW) in southeastern Arabia and Iran

Recently obtained ceramic compositional data from the late Iron Age sites of Tepe Yahya in Iran and Sharm in the United Arab Emirates is presented in this paper. Analysis of this data suggests that a distinctive ceramic, Burnished Maroon Slipped Ware (BMSW), was produced somewhere in southern Iran and exported across the Gulf to eastern Arabia. That this trade was not limited to any defined historical period, such as that represented by the Achaemenid Empire, is suggested by a series of new AMS C¹⁴ dates from Tepe Yahya. The paper concludes with speculative comments on the possible elite nature of BMSW in societies on either side of the Straits of Hormuz.     

The Urban “Cultural Nexus of Power”： Intellectual Elites in Shanghai and Beijing, 1900-1937

In the decades before the full-scale war with Japan in 1937, a robust series of institutions connected the bourgeois with intellectuals （which included professionals and journalists, as well as academics） in Shanghai. Collectively, these institutions can be understood as forming an urban ＂cultural nexus of power＂ that allowed non-state actors to effectively control aspects of Shanghai＇s political life. This bourgeois-intellectual alliance was not inevitable; no similar bonds existed between these same two groups in Beijing. It was forged in Shanghai due to the city＇s unique historical position as a Treaty Port and its dynamic economy, which included an extensive structure of private higher education and a market-based publishing industry. Unlike the rural ＂cultural nexus of power＂ originally described by Prasenjit Duara, this urban nexus grew stronger during the political and economic changes of the early twentieth century. War and revolution in the 1930s and 1940s, however, destroyed the connections between the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals, ending the vibrant urban environment they had created.     

20世纪50年代上海新公私合营企业的工资改革

1956年,全行业公私合营后不久,鉴于建立统一的政治体制及与计划经济体制相适应的新工资制度的需要,国家开始在新公私合营企业中实行工资改革。上海新合营企业的工资改革与全国各地一样正式开始于1956年9月,但由于情况复杂,历经准备试点及全面推开等阶段,直到1957年10月才基本结束。其中工资改革的集中统一领导,工资水平与工资增长指标,新工资等级,变相工资、计件工资、保留工资等问题成为工资改革中最重要的内容。新合营企业工资改革的完成,标志着与计划经济体制相适应的统一的企业工资制度开始全面确立,在收入分配环节上,基本完成了对新合营企业从产权到治理结构、再到分配制度的崭新的企业制度安排。     

Labour Relations and the Transfer of Knowledge in Industrial Clusters: Why do Skilled Workers Share Knowledge with Colleagues in Other Firms?

Industrial clusters are held to offer competitive advantages to firms that accrue from the transfer of tacit knowledge between skilled workers co-located in spatially bound regions. This paper argues that informal knowledge transfers between skilled employees working in spatially bounded industrial clusters might have an association with the labour relationship between employers and employees. In the literature on industrial clusters general knowledge is readily traded through codified texts and collegial networks but high value, tacit knowledge transfers occur less frequently but are critical to the success of firms located in clusters. Tacit knowledge transfers are held to occur when workers move to other firms because of firm death or poaching but less frequently through contacts between colleagues from other firms. Industrial clusters are said to offer labour market advantages for skilled workers in the form of ample job opportunities and rising wages, which engender firm loyalty and discourage the transfer of tacit knowledge of competitive value to other firms. However, the limited empirical evidence available on actual working conditions for skilled workers in regional industrial clusters indicates that this argument is contestable. Some evidence suggests that there are limited wage premiums accruing to the industrial districts, a limited role for geographic proximity, and weak localised returns on seniority and education. We argue that in such circumstances high value knowledge between workers in different firms might be traded as an act of epistemic solidarity or sociability that disregards the interests of employer organisations. Such actions might vary by region and country in relation to the prevailing system of labour relations. Australian labour relations are offered as a case in point.     

Science,industry and the colonial state: a shift from a German- to a Dutch-controlled cinchona and quinine cartel (1880–1920)

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.