SOME NOTES ON GEOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING

"A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words." Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations . "Instead of posing as prophets we must become the makers of our fate. We must learn to do things as well as we can and to look out for our mistakes." Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies .     

Proselytizing Islam — Problematizing “Salafism”

This article discusses the contemporary European setting pertaining to Islamic interpretations, mainly so called Salafi Islam. The empirical material is based on publications by a Swedish group that conducts street da?wa, aiming to proselytize among non‐Muslims. The ideology, as presented in official publications to be used for da?wa, is described and analyzed as part of a larger da?wa‐movement with Salafi‐inclinations in Europe. The group is not unique, but rather one example of many in Europe, at least concerning the activism advocated. The presentation of the group serves to reflect upon global influences and similarities among contemporary Islamic da?wa activism, as well as effects that the national context has on the choice of predominant themes addressed by the group as well as interpretative strategies used. The overarching aim with the article is to problematize the common usage of the concept Salafi among scholars of religion to describe and characterize contemporary Islamic groups of various kinds. The conclusion calls for a more nuanced approach concerning conceptualizations and the use of typologies in studying contemporary Islamic groups in a minority setting.     

Molecular and isotopic traces of cooking and consumption of fish at an Early Medieval manor site in eastern middle Sweden

This paper is a presentation of a comparison between prehistoric food culture signals obtained through analyses of lipid food residues in pottery, i.e. pottery-use, from settlement remains on one hand and bone chemical analyses of human skeletal remains from an adjacent and contemporary cemetery on the other. The materials derive from the Early Medieval site Tuna in Alsike par., Uppland, Sweden. The results show a discrepancy between the two food signals and it is argued that pottery-use do not by necessity reflect everyday diet. But it is also argued that the integration of several food signals together with contextual archaeological data is a fruitful way to begin to understand the complexity of prehistoric cultures of food.