Precarious masculinities and gender as pedagogy: aesthetic advice-encounters for the Dutch urban economy

In the context of precarious post-Fordist urban labour markets, Dress for Success in the Netherlands, a non-profit working in the context of the welfare state, provides dress advice to a majority of men. Dress advice consists of moments in which demands for immaterial labour find material translations into items of clothing. Building on ethnographic observations, I argue that dress advice-encounters should be seen as exercises in adaptability to new and ever changing economic circumstances. In these pedagogies, gender is a key instrument. Rather than a straightforward feminization of the economy, what is at stake is a performance of openness towards becoming adaptable to future labour market demands. Asking men to depart their attachments to Fordist working class masculinities and its material translations is an exercise toward becoming pliable enough for post-Fordist precarious labour markets.     

Post-WWI military disarmament and interwar fascism in Sweden

The emergence of anti-democratic movements is a central puzzle to social science. We study a novel and rich historical dataset covering Swedish municipalities during the interwar years and find a strong link between the presence of a military garrison and the emergence of fascist parties. We interpret these results as suggesting that fascist mobilization in Sweden was driven by discontent with the process of disarmament brought about by democratization. In contrast, poor economic conditions, as captured both by levels of and changes in the local poverty rate and tax base, do not explain the strong link between the fascists and military garrisons. We relate these results to influential theories of democratization.     

Producer Services, Economic Geography, and Services Tradability

We investigate how the incorporation of producer services linkages affects the outcome of an economic geography model. We specify the production of manufactures such that a variety of producer services is needed to transform tradable unfinished goods into final consumption goods. We find that service linkages promote the concentration of economic activity in a single region, but whether full concentration is achieved depends on the costs and mode of services trade. Applying the model to a multiregion world shows that incorporating producer services may also give rise to regions that specialize in different economic activities.     

Emplacing Current Trends in Feminist Historical Geography

In this article, the authors assess some of the major trends within anglophonic feminist historical geography appearing in the decade since Rose & Ogborn called for the development of an explicitly feminist approach to the subfield. In examining the 'geography' of feminist historical geographies, three main categories of scholarship are evident: a 'new' historical geography of North America, portions of which are informed by feminist theories and methods; a British school of feminist historical geography with a focus on the discipline of geography, geographical knowledges and colonialism/imperialism; and feminist historical geography interventions in cultural politics of space and place. A diversity of feminist methods and epistemologies appears across the literature. In an attempt to avoid a reading of these trends as better or worse approximations of historical 'progress', the authors conceptualize them as emplaced within a number of specific social and spatial contexts. Most recent work is concerned with the production of gender differences as they are worked through economic, political, cultural and sexual differences in the creation of past geographies. The continued need simply to write women into historical narratives and geographies, however, is also evident. The work of feminist historical geography questions and challenges geography's masculinist historical record.     

Towards an early warning system for oxidative degradation of protein fibres in historical tapestries by means of calibrated amino acid analysis

Flemish 15–17th century tapestries are among the most precious testimonies of European cultural heritage. Even in their deteriorated condition, they are still highly valued and exhibited in many museums all over the world. The present state of degradation evidenced by visual assessment in conservation practice, and confirmed with macro-scaled tensile strength tests, reveals the vulnerability of the wool and silk fibres to light exposure.     

Early iron age buffalo hunters on the Kadzi river, Zimbabwe

The faunal sample from Kadzi, an Early Iron Age site in the Zambezi Valley, is the first substantial sample for that period and region in Zimbabwe. The site appears to have been a permanent or semipermanent settlement. The sample consists mainly of bovid remains, dominated by buffalo as a single species, suggesting special hunting skills. The presence of some domestic animals proves that these animals were available to the inhabitants of the site. Their status in the community is, however, uncertain. Possible explanations for the small number of cattle fragments could be the result of paucity of livestock for environmental or other reasons, or may reflect differential disposal of cattle bones as part of ritual expression. Environmental conditions, particularly the possible presence of the tsetse fly, could also have been a factor in determining the distribution of livestock and herd sizes in the region. The faunal remains provide valuable insight into the subsistence strategies of the period. They also provide evidence about animals present in the region during the first millennium AD.

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Résumé  Des restes animaux provenant du Kadzi, un site de l’age du fer supérieur dans la vallée du Zambeze, fournissent pour la première fois des données pour cette période et cette région du Zimbabwe. Le site a été probablement occupée d’une manière permanente ou semipermanente. Les restes se composent principalement d’ossements bovins, dominés par le Buffle comme seule espèce, ce qui temoigne de techniques de chasse avancées. La présence (parmi les ossements) d’un certain nombre d’animaux domestiques indique qu’ils étaient disponibles pour les habitants du site, mais leur statut dans la communauté reste ambigu. Le nombre peu élève de fragments d’ossements de boeuf est peutêtre lié à la taille réduite du troupeau pour des raisons environnementales ou autres ou bien résulte de l’utilisation rituelle de certains ossements. Les conditions environnementales et plus particulièrement la présence probable de la mouche Tse Tse ont pu également être des facteurs determinant pour la repartition du boeuf dans la région et la taille du troupeau. Ces restes faunistiques fournissent ainsi des informations importantes aussi bien sur les stratégies de subsistance pour la période considérée que sur les animaux présents dans la région au cours du 1er millénaire AD.