Vicarious habitation – reinterpreting the role of peripheral living in a Nordic context

ABSTRACT

This article argues that some of the contemporary attention given to sustaining habitation of regions and communities beyond capacity and prospects of economic growth can be understood by introducing the concept of ‘vicarious habitation’. By this term is understood ‘the notion of rural habitation performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing’. In many late modern societies, a substantial portion of the population seems willing to pay symbolically and politically to let a minority act on their behalf as caretakers of rural peripheries left behind by structural transformations. Signs of vicarious habitation occur that may vary in form and importance from country to country. Empirically, the argument is substantiated by Norwegian examples.     

Piloting Regional Innovation or Much Ado about Nothing?—Evaluating the R&D Policy Initiative of Nordland,Norway

This article evaluates the results of almost a decade of experience with regional R&D development and implementation for enhanced innovation in the county of Nordland, Norway. Following a 2002 national devolution initiative, the county of Nordland was the first among Norwegian counties to coin and implement a distinct R&D policy for business-related innovation and development. This was done by setting up a broad regional partnership, framing a regional strategy and by coordinating substantial budgetary resources to implement the strategy. The evaluation describes the results of this process as ambiguous. This article looks at the process from three perspectives. First, we look at the organizational side of how the policy formation and implementation processes have performed. Second, we evaluate the business community response to the policy initiative to see whether any signs of altered behaviour can be found. Third, we look at how the partnership dynamic can explain policy outcomes. Theoretically and policy-wise we then discuss how our findings contribute to new insights in the field of analysing and generating regional innovation policy.     

Cats of the Pharaohs: Genetic Comparison of Egyptian Cat Mummies to their Feline Contemporaries

The ancient Egyptians mummified an abundance of cats during the Late Period (664 - 332 BC). The overlapping morphology and sizes of developing wildcats and domestic cats confounds the identity of mummified cat species. Genetic analyses should support mummy identification and was conducted on two long bones and a mandible of three cats that were mummified by the ancient Egyptians. The mummy DNA was extracted in a dedicated ancient DNA laboratory at the University of California - Davis, then directly sequencing between 246 and 402 bp of the mtDNA control region from each bone. When compared to a dataset of wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris, F. s. tristrami, and F. chaus) as well as a previously published worldwide dataset of modern domestic cat samples, including Egypt, the DNA evidence suggests the three mummies represent common contemporary domestic cat mitotypes prevalent in modern Egypt and the Middle East. Divergence estimates date the origin of the mummies' mitotypes to between two and 7.5 thousand years prior to their mummification, likely prior to or during Egyptian Predyanstic and Early Dynastic Periods. These data are the first genetic evidence supporting that the ancient Egyptians used domesticated cats, F. s. catus, for votive mummies, and likely implies cats were domesticated prior to extensive mummification of cats.     

Amorite names and old testament onomastics 1

Abstract

Amorite personal names, particularly those attested in texts from the Old Babylonian period, provide most valuable evidence for research in dia‐chronic aspects of Old Testament onomastics. The paper presents a general introduction to research on these names and to their grammatical structure. It further discusses possible Amorite parallels to the divine name Yahweh and lists a large number of names and name elements paralleled in the Hebrew Bible. Most prominent among the Hebrew cognates are names appearing in narratives with reference to the so‐called proto‐history and the Patriarchal period.     

Affective politics and colonial heritage,Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the spatial entanglement of colonial heritage struggles through a study of the Rhodes Must Fall student movement at the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. We aim to shed light over why statues still matter in analyzing colonial traces and legacies in urban spaces and how the decolonizing activism of the RMF movement mobilizes around the controversial heritage associated with Cecil Rhodes at both places – a heritage that encompasses statues, buildings, Rhodes scholarship and the Rhodes Trust funds. We include a comparative study of the Facebook use of RMF as it demonstrates significant differences between the two places in the development of the student movements as political activism. Investigating in more detail the heritage politics of RMF at UCT we fledge out what we call an affective politics using non-representational bodily strategies. We argue that in order for actual social movements to mobilize in current political controversies, they need to put affective tactics to use.     

Modeling Discontinuous Change in Retailing Systems: Extensions of the Harris-Wilson Framework With Results From a Simulated Urban Retailing System

This paper provides a test of an extension to the Harris-Wilson (1978) model for examining discontinuous change in retailing systems. While the Harris-Wilson model has been used almost exclusively to examine discontinuous change in the size of retail outlets, Fotheringham (1985) and Fotheringham and Knudsen (1986b) have recently shown it can be extended to model discontinuous change in the size and the relative location of retail outlets. Here, we present a test of this extension in a simulated urban retailing system. We also consider in more depth the supply side of the Harris-Wilson framework and show how discontinuous changes between non-zero equilibria can be modeled. Until now this has been impossible due to the previously restricted nature of the model. The generalization presented and examined here also allows an investigation of the trade-off between the size and the location of retail outlets and of the effects of different types of consumer shopping behavior.     

The flint daggers of Denmark: Studies in chronology and cultural relations of the South Scandinavian Late Neolithic

A main topic in this issue of Norwegian Archaeological Review is the book Die Flintdolche Dänemarks. Studien über Chronologie und Kulturbeziehungen des südskandinavischen Spätneolithikums by Ebbe Lomborg. The Scandinavian Late Neolithic has not been a subject of discussion for many years, and this publication is an important contribution to the study of this formative period in the prehistory of the Scandinavian countries.

Comments by Niels Bantelmann, Jay J. Butler, Klaus Ebbesen, and Märta Strömberg are followed by a reply from Ebbe Lomborg.     

GHANA'S COCOA FRONTIER IN TRANSITION: THE ROLE OF MIGRATION AND LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION

Since the first commercial planting of cocoa in Ghana more than a century ago, the production of cocoa has been a key factor in the redistribution of migrants and has played a pivotal role in the development of both sending and receiving communities. This process has been acknowledged in the literature for decades. However, how migration flows have changed in response to changing livelihoods dynamics of the frontier and how this has impacted on the development of the frontier has only attracted limited attention. Based on a study of immigration to Ghana's current cocoa frontier in the Western Region, this article aims to examine how immigration and frontier dynamics in the Western region are contributing to livelihood transitions and small town development, and how this process is gradually becoming delinked from the production of cocoa. The article focuses on how migration dynamics interlink with livelihood opportunities and strategies. It is argued that migrants to the current frontier can be divided into at least four different types based on their migration, settlement and livelihood practices. Accordingly, to understand how the cocoa frontier changes as well as its continuation beyond the frontier crop, there is a need for a broader understanding of the frontier concept, and how frontier transformation interacts with migration and livelihood dynamics.     

A Dynamic Analysis of Interaction Data: U.S. Rail Freight Flows, 1972-81

The purpose of this paper is to extend Poisson regression to the analysis of spatial interactions over time. The methodology involves derivation of models using information methods and calibration using Poisson regression. Poisson regression is then used to analyze interannual variation in U.S. rail freight flows, 1972-81. Findings indicate that import and export variability is less important than is flow variability. Import and export variability is highest for the northeastern United States, but flow variability is highest for the southern and western United States. This has implications for the specification of dynamic models of commodity flow.