What Can the State Do for You?

It has been suggested that Swedish policy during the early post-war period was strongly directed towards mobility-increasing expenditures – most notably relocation allowances – aimed at moving labour from north to south. While this view has dominated the academic discussion on labour market policy, there is little direct evidence. We make three claims. First, the relocation allowances have to be evaluated against the regional policy. Second, by doing so we show that the mobility-oriented policy was predominant only for a short period of time: in the early 1970s, there was a decisive shift towards a policy directed at stimulating employment in the north. Third, drawing on this, we revaluate the previous view on policy making in Sweden. Our analysis suggests that the Social Democratic government acted in a voter-maximizing way. The relocation allowances were introduced at the behest of the Trade Union Confederation (LO). The regional subsidies were expanded when voter sentiment turned against the perceived depletion of rural regions. However, this strategy interacted with the political and institutional environment. The new election law in 1970 and political competition from the Centre Party pushed the Social Democrats to shift their policies on regional subsidies.     

Palaeopathology in Britain: a critical analysis of publications with the aim of exploring recent trends (1997–2006)

This study collects data from three major journals and analyses them in order to assess the recent (1997–2006) nature of the study of palaeopathology within Britain. It considers the types of study published (case, population or method), whether findings are integrated with other data, the particular ‘theme’ that is considered (diet, activity patterns, etc) and the particular pathological condition focused upon (metabolic, dental, etc). The findings show there is a move away from the traditional case study and an increase in the acknowledgement of the value of integrating data with wider information. There is also a bias towards certain ‘themes’ and pathologies, reasons for which are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Caricatures of clergymen in nineteenth-century Sweden

This article investigates caricatures of clergymen in the nineteenth-century Church of Sweden. It offers the first attempt in Sweden to study these images as an enduring historical source. As case study, six caricatures of bishops from 1790–1870 will be analysed in terms of both their motifs and their significance. The bishops have been selected as the object of study because of their visibility as ex officio members of Parliament and leaders of the clergy. It is argued that graphic satire was used as a medium to criticise the bishops' influential position in the government and their defence of the Parliament of the Estates. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that as the techniques used to produce caricatures improved during the period, the images were more widely spread and had a greater impact on Swedish society. Finally, it is shown that caricature in Sweden reached a peak in the middle of the nineteenth century thanks to the extended debate on parliamentary reform and restrictions on press freedom.     

‘It’s a Good Job Nobody Mentioned Hedgehogs’: The Use of Narratives in Discworld Fandom

This article examines the use of staged narratives in the Hogswatch celebration—a celebration of Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld held in November in Wincanton, Somerset. Different narratives are used in fandom as part of the process of qualia resituation, in which the what-it-is-like of the Discworld series is conveyed in the fandom celebration.     

Peripheralization and knowledge bases in Austria: towards a new regional typology

Scholars are increasingly interested in innovation in peripheral areas. However, research and policy documents are still often based on a traditional understanding of the core–periphery dichotomy. Here, the peripheralization discourse argues for a broader understanding and highlights the importance of economic, demographic, and political factors as well as knowledge intensity for defining core and peripheral areas. Concerning the latter, the differentiated knowledge base approach provides new insights, as it emphasizes the varying foundations for different kinds of innovations. By combining these hitherto unconnected strands of literature, this paper first develops a conceptual framework for a new regional typology, which considers both the degree of centralization/peripheralization and the prevailing knowledge base. Second, an exploratory analysis applies this framework to the 95 districts of Austria and provides first insights into peripheralization and issues of regional prosperity. The results show that there are indeed many nuances and that regions that are clearly either central or peripheral are the exception. Furthermore, peripheries come in many shades and are not uniform, as often assumed implicitly. Consequently, this paper argues that a tailor-made innovation policy for lagging regions would benefit from the incorporation of the peripheralization discourse. To conclude, it outlines directions for future research.     

Ethologists in the Kindergarten: Natural Behavior,Social Rank,and the Search for the “Innate” in Early Human Ethology (1960s-1970s)

During the 1970s, ethologists at the German Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen started a series of research projects at several regional kindergartens in search of natural predispositions in human behavior. This so-called “Kindergarten Project” became one of the pillars of research activity at the newly founded Forschungsstelle für Humanethologie (Research Center for Human Ethology) where Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and a team of researchers set out to explore new fields of research for the discipline of ethology. Taking the research project conducted by biologist Barbara Hold on ranking behavior among kindergarten children as a vantage point, this paper explores the shift in ethology from animal to human behavior which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes how human ethologists coped with the methodological, conceptual, and ethico-political challenges which arose from crossing the human-animal divide. This article thus sheds light on the hitherto unwritten history of human ethology as it was developed at the MPI since the late 1960s.     

The Unimaginable

Arthur Danto advocates the thesis that we cannot imagine the art or artwork of the future. This thesis is motivated primarily by his Hegelian conception of history and secondarily by his holistic conception of art, which is informed by Wittgenstein. At first glance the thesis seems to conflict with Danto's second thesis that anything (any object) can be a work of art. Danto's solution to this problem is not very convincing. A more promising approach can be found in Kant's aesthetics and especially in his concept of genius.