bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Peasant Houses
Authors: Suggett Richard
Published: February 2018

Archaeology (excavation, building survey, scientific dating) has established that peasant houses in much of Britain had a durability that was probably exceptional in late medieval Europe. Peasant houses in late medieval England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland were more complex) were not self-built homes but professionally made by craftsmen, and a central aspect of material culture. Building the late medieval peasant house was an aspect of consumption that entailed important choices relating to expenditure, construction, and, above all, the plan that structured household life. The widespread adoption by peasants of the hierarchical hall-house plan was in part an appropriation of high-status housing culture and inseparable from the construction and maintenance of free peasant social identity. The eventual rejection of the hall-house in the sixteenth century ended a peasant building tradition that had begun in the thirteenth century and matured during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Medieval Shops
Authors: Antrobus Abby
Published: February 2018

This chapter reviews the evidence for and recent current debates on the types and character of medieval shops, shophouses, stalls, selds, and undercrofts, revealing in the process some of the environs experienced by the medieval shopper and the types of structure students of towns should consider. It also draws out geographical and chronological trends in commercial building stock (1050–1550) and, in doing so, frames the street as an arena where consumer choices and the businesses and identity of sectors of urban society were made. Britain had a widespread and well-developed shopping culture by at least 1300.
Urban Infrastructure
Authors: Dean Gareth
Published: February 2018

The infrastructure of the medieval city comprised roads, bridges, waterways, and their associated structures. This chapter argues that archaeology, in conjunction with the study of historical and pictorial evidence, can shed important insights into the construction, modification, and development of streets, waterfronts, rivers, bridges, and perceptions of hygiene in the medieval city. The importance of infrastructure to transport and urban ports, markets, and civic pride is reflected in the contemporary historical records. Through the archaeology of urban infrastructure it is possible to show they are more than a backdrop to the urban environment and formed an integral part of the active expression of daily life and a statement of civic pride.
The Medieval Workshop
Authors: Hinton David A.
Published: February 2018

Archaeological evidence of medieval production is mostly in the form of residues rather than of workshops, although pits and hearths have been excavated. Apart from bone and antler, few organic products survive, unlike metal objects. This chapter considers the evidence for agricultural processing and production, textiles, metal-working, carcass products such as tanning, shoe-making, and bone-working, as well as stone, mineral (e.g. salt), and the more familiar clay products of pottery and tile production. Most recent developments have been in analyses, distribution studies, and considerations of the financial values and personal meanings of medieval objects. Most workshops were small scale and often temporary; only the cloth industry had the capacity to raise the capital required for substantial investment.
Water and Wind Power
Authors: Rynne Colin
Published: February 2018

The inhabitants of most urban and rural communities in both Britain and Ireland during the later medieval period would have lived a relatively short distance from either a watermill or windmill. This chapter examines the most recent archaeological evidence for water- and wind-powered mills in later medieval Britain. The use of water power, in particular, was widespread in the later medieval period for a wide range of industrial activities. However, during this same period nearly all of the grain harvest was processed in either wind- or water-powered mills. The archaeological record also demonstrates a large degree of continuity, from the late Roman and early medieval periods, in the design of waterwheels and the mechanisms they actuated.
Old Money, New Methods
Authors: Kelleher Richard
Published: February 2018

This chapter discusses the relationship between numismatics and archaeology in the later medieval period. It begins by tracing the beginning of the serious study of medieval coins in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and discusses the estranged relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and numismatics into the modern period. It demonstrates the vital role that coin hoards have played in the study of the monetary economy of medieval England and Wales and the growth of numismatics as a discipline. However, the emergence of single find evidence (principally metal-detector finds recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme) provides us with a new dataset that has the potential to rewrite what we can say about monetization, especially in rural contexts. Imported coins and those used as jewellery or as votive objects are discussed.
The Medieval Parish ChurchArchitecture, Furnishings, and Fittings
Authors: Fawcett Richard
Published: February 2018

This chapter considers the architecture, fixtures, and furnishings of the parish churches and chapels of medieval Britain and the range of functions they were designed to accommodate and reflect. After an introduction and discussion of the essential and more common component elements of the church buildings, the processes of design and construction are touched upon. Reference is made to changing architectural fashions, taking account of regional preferences and the availability of building materials. Discussion then focuses upon the features that might be provided to support worship and to enhance its setting, especially in the vicinity of the altars but also in the areas of the churches occupied by the laity.
The Devotional Image in Late Medieval England
Authors: Giles Kate , McClain Aleksandra
Published: February 2018

In the later Middle Ages, the parish churches of England were populated not simply by parishioners and clergy, but by a community of images: paintings on the walls, depictions in stained glass, and sculptures carved in wood, alabaster, or metal. Lit by beeswax and tallow candles and adorned with gifts of rosaries, textiles, and votive offerings, they held the gaze of worshippers, forming a series of devotional foci within the parish church. In England, most of these images have disappeared, swept away by the reforms and iconoclasm of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They survive as references in contemporary written sources, in decorative schemes exposed during nineteenth-century restoration works, and in museum and art gallery collections. This chapter considers the evidence and assesses the archaeological contribution to current understandings of imagery in medieval religion and belief.
Overview
Authors: Astill Grenville
Published: February 2018

This overview examines the different units of scale at which the medieval countryside has been studied, the ‘geographies’ of the title. It discusses the application of the term pays as distinctive environmental and cultural entities, archaeological work at the scale of the parish or township and the influence of new techniques and methodologies such as LiDAR and GIS. The impact of ‘big data’ projects such as the characterization of medieval rural settlement and Historic Landscape Characterization is highlighted, though some weaknesses are identified. The importance of specialized landscapes is stressed such as those set aside for hunting, seasonal activities, and the extractive industries. Finally, a plea is made for greater attention to chronological changes at different scales of study and for the full potential of environmental archaeology to be exploited by landscape projects.
Overview
Authors: Wells Emma J.
Published: February 2018

Despite a wealth of studies on the history of the medieval sensory world, key issues remain regarding how sensory experiences were constructed and conducted, and thus impacted the archaeological record. A particularly overlooked consideration has been the relationship between worshipper and church building, as the senses played an integral part in determining not only devotional experience, but also the formation of its aesthetic and physical setting. This overview provides a general introduction to the archaeology of the senses, addressing the role of the senses in late-medieval society with emphasis on their impact on religion and spirituality, and how current understandings have arisen. It then examines the possibilities for how the senses might be interpreted and understood through the archaeological evidence available today. It will be argued that the senses played an integral part within daily life but particularly within worship which, at this time, structured society in the widest sense.
Birth and Childhood
Authors: Crawford Sally
Published: February 2018

This chapter provides a brief overview of the emergence of children and childhood as a subject for archaeological investigation, before outlining archaeological evidence for medieval birth and childhood from settlement and cemetery excavations. Children’s burials provide information on the social persona and treatment of children at death, attitudes to the death of infants and older children, and their memorialization in the form of burial location, and above-ground monuments such as brasses. Skeletal material yields evidence of age at death, as well as information on health and life-course. Isotope and other scientific analyses of skeletal material is providing further information about childhoods, including diet and migration. Settlements are a fruitful source of information about geographies of medieval childhoods, children’s involvement in work and play, and the material culture of medieval childhood.
Dressing the Body
Authors: Standley Eleanor R.
Published: February 2018

This chapter presents the archaeological evidence of dress from later medieval Britain. It includes the often fragmentary textile and leather remains of clothing and shoes, and the dress accessories worn with them. Excavated finds from different types of sites are considered, and the numerous chance finds recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Accessories such as rings, brooches, buckles, badges, and rosaries, made of base or precious metals, gemstones, or other natural materials, were valued for more than their monetary worth. They had the ability to hold memories and beliefs, convey messages, and protect and display identities. Their role in everyday life makes them suitable for inclusion in future studies on the ‘archaeology of emotion’. The article also highlights the relatively slow development of medieval archaeologists’ interest in apparel, and the need for further work that encompasses a range of sources.
Gender and Space in the Later Middle Ages Past, Present, and Future Routes
Authors: Richardson Amanda
Published: February 2018

This article traces approaches to social space back to the 1950s and the subsequent pursuit of the ‘rise of privacy’. It then delivers a historiography of late medieval gender and space since the 1990s under three main themes: sacred spaces (churches, nunneries, and monasteries), vernacular architecture, and high-status residences including gardens and deer parks. It is noted that from the mid-1990s the impulse to make women ‘visible’ was largely replaced by an emphasis on differences—and similarities—among and between women, men, and other social categories and contexts, such as urban and rural, and that recent studies have moved on to explore the transgression of gendered boundaries. Methodologies such as access analysis are discussed and suggestions are made for future research, including the opportunities afforded by GIS.
Overview
Authors: Gutiérrez Alejandra
Published: February 2018

Trade in the medieval period linked people from different countries together and transferred their goods, ideas, and fashions across continents. This overview explores the archaeology of these connections but also stresses other forms of cultural contact such as pilgrimage, gifts, commissions, and direct personal acquisitions. Key circuits of trade are identified, in the twelfth century overland through French fairs which exchanged northern European wool for southern products and afterwards along the Atlantic seaboard. This maritime route became viable only once the Islamic Empire lost its control and monopoly in Spain and Sicily. Among the goods imported to Britain were dyes and mordants for the cloth industry, wine, spices, and salt, few of which leave any archaeological trace. Coins, cloth seals, building stone, and pottery are among the best clues for trade but should always be combined with documentary studies.
Looking South-East
Authors: Hanusse Claire
Published: February 2018

This chapter presents a selection of topics in French later medieval archaeology which are relevant to a British context, such as landscape archaeology, villages and agriculture, towns and building traditions, power and belief, and burial rites. The development of ‘preventive’ or developer-led archaeology has had a significant impact in France, not just on techniques such as large-scale stripping of rural sites and associated landscapes but also for the development of new themes such as bioarchaeology. In towns many studies now combine the study of buried structures with surviving buildings, textual sources and plan analysis. Themes such as power and belief, crafts and industry and funerary practices are summarized and may be compared against British perspectives. Among products exported to Britain were salt, stone from Caen which was cut to order and then shipped, and pottery.
Field Systems and the Arable Fields
Authors: O’Donnell Ronan
Published: February 2018

This chapter discusses the arable field systems of the later medieval period and the demographic and social changes that lay behind their expansion, contraction, and enclosure. Field systems across the country are contrasted, the north of England and Scotland being less well understood. This was not a period of stasis, as has sometimes been implied. Instead, there was regional variation and change over time. The period before the Black Death contrasts provides evidence for the expansion and intensification of farming in the form of assarting, the sub-division of holdings, agricultural improvement, and the creation of new fields, including the reclamation of wetland landscapes for which there is significant evidence from landscape archaeology. After the Black Death agriculture contracted, arable was put down to grass, and direct demesne farming reduced. By the close of the period, a complex variety of field systems and land tenures existed across Britain.
Methods in Medieval Archaeology
Authors: Fradley Michael
Published: February 2018

Key trends in methodological practice in later medieval archaeology in Britain largely follow those seen elsewhere in the discipline of archaeology. This chapter considers the key field techniques used in the study of later medieval archaeology. This includes traditional techniques such as archaeological excavation and survey, as well as more recent innovations such as the analysis of LiDAR data. Consideration is also given to how methodological practice has been influenced by changing theoretical viewpoints within the discipline, as well as pragmatic constraints and opportunities in undertaking archaeological research in Britain in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Royal and Aristocratic Landscapes of Pleasure
Authors: Mileson Stephen
Published: February 2018

This chapter summarizes the current state of research on royal and aristocratic landscapes of pleasure, including forests, parks, warrens, gardens, and tournament grounds. It is shown that archaeological evidence has made a strong contribution to knowledge about the function, extent, and significance of these landscapes across Britain. Nevertheless, much fieldwork remains to be done, especially in Wales and Scotland. The most fruitful approach to individual case studies and regional analysis is to combine documents, maps, and place-names with material remains. Future advances in understanding will require close engagement with wider debates about changes in the distribution of power during the Middle Ages.
Overview
Authors: Mellor Maureen
Published: February 2018

This overview explores material aspects of craft and industry through Britain’s landscape of medieval industry and commerce, highlighting the increasing output of production. The power houses behind the introduction and nurturing of the new technologies associated with iron working or pottery manufacture were often abbeys and their monastic houses. Consumption is addressed, through local, regional, and interregional trade and international commerce, which on occasions ignored geopolitical tensions. This overview sets out potential future research directions: raw materials; a better understanding of infrastructure and industrial processes; the experienced workforce to be explored through multi-disciplinary approaches and collaboration between archaeologists, economists, historians, and numismatists, backed up by analytical scientific research.
Medieval Fishing and Fish Trade
Authors: Barrett James H.
Published: February 2018

This article discusses major developments in British marine (and to a lesser degree freshwater) fishing and fish trade between ad 1050 and 1550. Much information derives from study of fish bones recovered by archaeological excavation. Historical evidence is also important, as is information regarding human diet based on stable isotope analysis of skeletal remains. By combining these sources it is possible to infer the initial growth of marine fishing (especially of herring, cod, and related species), the emergence of long-range fish trade, and the late-medieval reorientation of traditional fisheries to harvest ever more distant grounds. Concurrently, it is possible to document a declining catch of freshwater fish, as they became more exclusively associated with elite consumption.
Play and Playfulness in Late Medieval Britain
Authors: Hall M. A.
Published: February 2018

Play and playfulness is a key element in enabling social performance and one that transcends ethnicity, time, and space across all social levels. This contribution explores board games as a case study of play and performance in the medieval period, in a European context. It highlights some of the key discoveries of gaming material culture and their diverse contexts: castles, monasteries, churches, villages, and ships included. These underpin questions of gender, identity, pilgrimage behaviour and ritual, and the life-course. Play, it is argued is fundamental to the performance and negotiation of agency in a range of gendered settings both secular and religious.
Overview
Authors: Gowland Rebecca , Penny-Mason Bennjamin
Published: February 2018

Historical evidence has provided a rich source of information concerning the structure and experience of the medieval life-course. Archaeology has also contributed to these debates, through the material remains associated with different age groups and the structural remains of houses, but primarily via the wealth of evidence provided by the medieval cemeteries. Human skeletal remains are proving to be a particularly fruitful source of data for understanding the relationship between chronological, biological, and social ages in medieval England. This overview examines the historical, archaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence for the medieval life-course, from infancy to old age. This range of evidence is integrated and discussed with reference to current theoretical approaches to the life course and age identity within the social sciences.
Health and Well-Being
Authors: Roberts Charlotte , Bekvalac Jelena , Redfern Rebecca C.
Published: February 2018

This chapter outlines the contributions bioarchaeology has made to understanding health and well-being in the late medieval period in Britain. Some of the history of the study of medieval bodies is followed by a commentary on the evidence base used to consider health and disease, integrated with contextual data, and the limitations of the data. This is followed by a focus on the largest excavated and well-studied cemetery site globally, to date (St Mary Spital, London). It also discusses the bioarchaeological field, including training and standards, advances in analytical techniques (biomolecular), the need for context in studies, and future developments.
Sound and Landscape
Authors: Mileson Stephen
Published: February 2018

This article explores the role and significance of sound in medieval social relations. In the Middle Ages as in other periods sound was a vital medium through which people experienced their environment and a vehicle for the expression of meaning and assertion of power. It is argued that archaeologists are well placed to make a major contribution to the study of sound in medieval Britain, both through qualitative analysis of ‘soundscapes’ and through more quantitative fieldwork research on ‘soundmarks’. Special attention is paid to the use and significance of church bells in rural settlements, and findings are presented from experimental fieldwork conducted in Ewelme hundred in south Oxfordshire.
Symbols of Power
Authors: Hinton David A.
Published: February 2018

Medieval people who had authority acquired it through lineage and success in battle; they symbolized their social positions by display of costume, jewellery, gold and silver plate, weapons, buildings, and funeral monuments. Some of these represented portable wealth that could be used as gifts to create and confirm alliances, and as pledges against loans. Royal power was bestowed at coronations, for which appropriate regalia were needed. Heraldry and coats of arms became increasingly important for those high in the social structure or aspiring to it. Those of lower status might own things made in base metal, pottery, and stone, but whether any of those expressed symbols of resistance to the power of authority is debatable. The need to exercise that authority through the permanency of written documents led to increased use of seals for authentication.
Overview
Authors: Gerrard Christopher
Published: February 2018

This overview traces early engagements with the medieval past in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through the impact of the Landscape Movement in gardens, Romanticism in poetry and fiction, the Picturesque in painting, and particularly the Gothic Revival in architecture. It discusses the seeds of later medieval archaeology in the twentieth century, framed by war and new ideals of a common national heritage, and picks out the influential people, projects, and institutions that have shaped the subject.
The Animal in Late Medieval Britain
Authors: Gidney Louisa
Published: February 2018

Evidence is considered here for the utilization of domestic farm and companion animals for products other than meat, for example goat horns and calf and cat skins. Selection pressures driving changes in the stature of cattle are suggested to reflect environmental changes from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. An example of catastrophic cattle mortality is examined with regard to the difficulty of establishing the causative effect, the sex ratio of the bodies, and the impact on the manorial farm. Routine disposal of inedible carrion is discussed with regard to urban disposal of horse bones. Constraints on livestock husbandry and the survival of faunal evidence in the uplands of Wales, northern England, and Scotland are used to demonstrate the effect of legal and commercial considerations on the Scottish data.
Overview
Authors: Rippon Stephen , Dixon Piers , Silvester Bob
Published: February 2018

During the later medieval period, the vast majority of the British population lived in rural settlements whose primary means of subsistence was agriculture. This overview summarizes the evidence for the villages, hamlets, and farmsteads of medieval England, Scotland, and Wales. Regional differences in the intensity of fieldwork are explored, followed by discussions of nucleated and dispersed settlement patterns, planned villages, and specialist grazing (including seasonal), coastal, industrial, and high-status settlements associated with different forms of landscape exploitation. This exposes some of the commonalities between settlement patterns in the different regions of medieval Britain, although it is also apparent that there have been separate research traditions in England, Scotland, and Wales.
Rural Living 1100–1540
Authors: Dyer Christopher
Published: February 2018

This chapter considers the material culture of rural life in the later Middle Ages and the motives behind peasant consumption. Rural settlements with their houses and plots may contain evidence for agricultural tasks such as ploughing, tools of cultivation, and the storage of crops as well as space for the production of pigs, poultry, honey, and garden produce. The house, its buildings, yards, gardens, and orchards was not just the base from which cultivators set out to work in the fields, meadows, and woods. Much of the working lives of the family, especially the females, was devoted to processing crops for household consumption and sale. Food preparation has left archaeological traces such as fragments of hand-mills for home grinding of grain and malt in the home, and shallow pottery pans for dairying; meat production is suggested by butchers’ waste. The article argues that the rural poor made skilful adaptations to their environment.
Introduction Economic Geography in the Twenty-first Century
Authors: Clark Gordon L. , Feldman Maryann P. , Gertler Meric S. , Wójcik Dariusz
Published: February 2018

The introduction approaches economic geography with reference to where, why, and so what questions focused on understanding economy. The latter is defined broadly as a totality of processes through which individuals, households, and societies make a living and sustain themselves. This economic–geographical approach is then elaborated with the concepts of location, place, territory, distance, proximity, diversity, scale, heterogeneity, and differentiation. The evolution of the discipline, the main challenges facing the world economy in the twenty-first century, and ways in which the discipline has responded to understanding these challenges are outlined briefly. The chapter demonstrates that the discipline has remained open and dynamic in a pursuit of explaining the spatiality of economic processes and their impacts on growth, uneven development, stability, and sustainability. Finally, the structure and arguments of the Handbook are previewed, highlighting how the discipline has changed since the first Handbook was published in 2000.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Standards
Authors: Hughes Alexandra
Published: February 2018

This chapter charts the contribution of economic geography to the field of research concerned with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and standards. Following explanation of the historical and political–economic context of CSR and the rise of codes and standards as tools in the private regulation of the global economy, it places the critical spotlight on studies of ethical and labour standards in global supply chains. Within this area, the different critical insights into CSR and standards offered by the global value chains and global production networks frameworks, as well as postcolonial critique, theories of governmentality, and sociologies of standards and marketization, are summarized and debated. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the recent economic, geographical, and regulatory challenges to the ways in which CSR and standards are operating and transforming in practice, from the global economic downturn to the influence of ‘rising powers’ and emerging economies.
Inequality in Advanced Economies
Authors: Dorling Danny
Published: February 2018

Levels of economic inequality differ extensively when comparisons are made between nation states, although, worldwide, inequalities remain highest in the poorest countries. Yet now even some of the wealthiest nations have markedly high levels of income inequality. This chapter concentrates on illustrating this unprecedented, contemporary transformation in income inequalities towards greater geographical variation between affluent countries. In particular, new data analysis included here uncovers significant idiosyncrasies in the income distributions of the UK and USA, as compared with other wealthy countries. Increasingly robust evidence suggests that high and rising inequalities in a few affluent nations have far-reaching implications, and income inequality should be recognized as a source of extensive negative externalities. These recent developments underscore the need for the subdiscipline of economic geography to focus far more on understanding patterns and changes in income inequality within prosperous nations. Thus far, geographers have largely neglected the subject and its consequences.
How Geography Shapes—and Is Shaped by—the Internet
Authors: Greenstein Shane , Forman Chris , Goldfarb Avi
Published: February 2018

The literature on the geographical implications of the Internet are reviewed, both those studying the adoption and use of the Internet, as well as those examining the Internet’s economic consequences for productivity, wealth, innovation, trade, and consumer behavior. The chapter emphasizes that the Internet reduces three key interrelated economic frictions: communication costs, transportation costs, and search costs. The impact of reducing these frictions varies across locations because it depends on three factors that vary locally: preferences, the availability of substitutes, and the availability of complements. Thus, the diffusion of the Internet benefits some locations more than others. The chapter concludes by discussing directions for future research.
Precarious Work and Winner-Take-all Economies
Authors: Strauss Kendra
Published: February 2018

This chapter examines the concept of precariousness in work in relation to income and labour market polarization. Although there is growing interest in the separate but related notion of precarity in human geography, economic and labour geographers have engaged less with the literature on precarious work and the decline of the standard employment relation. This chapter provides a brief overview of how precarious employment is understood, before turning to focus on two particular dimensions: the role of labour market intermediaries, and the challenges of regulation in an era of flexible work.
‘Organic Finance’: The Incentives in Our Investment Products
Authors: Monk Ashby H.B , Sharma Rajiv
Published: February 2018

The increasing complexity and de-localization of finance has allowed for an obfuscation of fees, costs, and expenses, leading to distortion in the underlying incentives that are being created. This distortion is driving an increasingly short-term and disconnected financial world. Here it is argued that the world of finance and investment needs to better understand the underlying ingredients of financial products, in particular the fees and costs of intermediated products. At the core of the arguments is a more professional and engaged community of asset owners that can understand the ingredients in all the financial products being consumed. This paradigm shift, termed ‘organic finance’, requires a research programme that examines the relational dynamics between financial products, intermediaries, and asset-owner investors using methodologies that go beyond those within pure economics. Economic geographers are enlisted to new studies of these important actors and agents, and how their interactions will play out over time.
Vulnerable Regions in a Changing Climate
Authors: Leichenko Robin
Published: February 2018

Economic geographers have made important contributions to the understanding of many facets of climate change, yet the field has had relatively limited engagement with the study of climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation. Instead, most work on the economic consequences of climate disruption is being done by researchers in other disciplines or in other subfields of geography. This chapter argues that broad recognition of humanity’s role in shaping Earth’s planetary systems, combined with new hope and opportunity engendered by the 2015 Paris Agreement on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, present a pivotal moment for economic geographers to take a more central role in the study of climate change and in broader, interdisciplinary conversations about the meaning and implications of the Anthropocene.
Reconceptualizing Resource Peripheries
Authors: McElroy Caitlin
Published: February 2018

This chapter evaluates how engagement with the periphery in economic geography has come to intersect with resource geographies. This intersection of resources and the periphery as ‘resource peripheries’ has structured models of economic development that have had a performative effect on the development strategies of resource-driven economies. This chapter argues that three emerging trends are challenging this discourse and there is now a need to reconceptualize our understanding of resource peripheries. These trends are changes in the resource super-cycle; the increasing exposure of the periphery to environmental change; and growing expectations of extractive industry-led development. These new trends illustrate the ways in which resource peripheries are simultaneously enmeshed in the global economy and well as spaces of distinct vulnerabilities and opportunities.
Schumpeterian Customers? How Active Users Co-create Innovations
Authors: Grabher Gernot , Ibert Oliver
Published: February 2018

Up until recently, the role of the customer in economic geography seems to have been confined to a passive recipient of products at the end of the value chain. Innovation, in particular, has been conceived as an affair within and between firms. More recently, however, this traditional perception has been challenged. Consumers, in fact, are no longer seen as mere buyers of commodities but are more and more perceived (and perceive themselves) as competent users who contribute valuable knowledge to innovation processes and who have the power and capacity to intervene at all stages in the value creation process. Value co-creation has emerged as a new paradigm that signifies this transformation of the role of consumers. The prime aim of this chapter is to map out the evolving terrain of value co-creation and to draw conclusions for economic geographical inquiry into innovation processes.
Crisis and Austerity in Action: Greece
Authors: Tsampra Maria
Published: February 2018

The chapter addresses uneven prosperity in Europe, based on the geographically divergent outcome of the 2008 global financial and eurozone crisis. Austerity-induced recession has led to dramatic output and employment decline in Greece, raising questions about the causes of territorial economic vulnerability, or resilience. Metropolitan Athens, the hub of Greece’s economy, has suffered even more severe employment losses and unemployment, massive business closures, increasing poverty, and homelessness. The factors defining the vulnerability of the national and regional economy to the downturn are traced in inherited and evolving industrial, entrepreneurial, and employment structures. However, the causes and nature of the crisis, as well as the policy addressing it, determine its place-specific impact as much; and raise critical issues concerning the recovery of economies severely affected by such shocks.
Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Contemporary India
Authors: Corbridge Stuart
Published: February 2018

India is an exception to many so-called rules in social science. This chapter considers why accounts of long-term economic growth, which assume that either institutional quality or geography is a foundational driver of change, are confounded by India. Attention is directed instead to consistency of economic policymaking, competition between provinces, and the stability of underlying political settlements. The chapter also considers why India’s growth success has been so much less efficient at reducing extreme income poverty than is the case in most East Asian countries. Poverty reduction in the east and centre-north of India has been undercut by persistent underinvestment in state capacity and public services. It has also been harmed by systems of political calculation that made investments in security and growth seemingly unnecessary for incumbent re-election. This is now changing in areas not under Maoist control, but the legacies of persistent social exclusion cast a long shadow.
Relational Research Design in Economic Geography
Authors: Bathelt Harald , Glückler Johannes
Published: February 2018

This chapter discusses the nature of relational research designs that aim to overcome separations between different disciplinary perspectives within economic geography and create linkages to other academic fields. The relational approach is a comprehensive research perspective grounded in three principles of relationality of economic action: contextuality, path dependence, and contingency. Using the cases of manufacturing versus professional services clusters, it is shown that the relational approach does not proclaim a meta-theory of economic organization in space but provides a framework for contextual theorization, adjusted to the specific sectoral and technological contexts under investigation. Relational research designs across academic fields agree (i) that social relations between people and organizations are key to understanding the contemporary economy, (ii) that economic processes rest on the spatial and temporal interplay between regional and global networks, and (iii) that innovation and learning depend on simultaneous inter-firm, intra-organizational and community-based interactions and relations.
Outside Regional Paths: Constructing an Economic Geography of Energy Transitions
Authors: Christopherson Susan
Published: February 2018

Moving beyond theories of socio-technical adaptation, a new economic geography of energy transitions is developing that contributes to a deeper understanding of adaptation and change in energy systems. This new geography of energy transitions draws on concepts in evolutionary economic geography but moves beyond regional analysis to recognize the nation state as a critical venue for strategic action by firms. The dependence on the nation state for access to the resource; financing of exploration and production; favourable regulatory oversight; and the infrastructure to transport the commodity to profitable markets, make it the essential venue for strategic action. Drawing on the US case of shale gas and oil extraction, this chapter argues that, despite the emergence of global production networks in the oil and gas industry, national-scale governance remains central to understanding energy transitions.
Eugène Minkowski
Authors: Urfer-Parnas Annick
Published: February 2018

This chapter discusses the psychopathological ideas of Eugène Minkowski, a French psychiatrist of Jewish Polish origin who is regarded as a dominant figure in phenomenological psychiatry due to his translation of theoretical and abstract philosophical notions into ordinary clinical work. After a brief biography, the chapter considers Minkowski’s psychopathological orientation, citing some of the influential figures in his life and work including Henri Bergson and Max Scheler. It then examines Minkowski’s notion of schizophrenia and what he refers to as vital contact with reality, which he describes as a basic mode of human presence in the world. It also looks at two forms of autism proposed by Minkowski, along with one of his most original concepts known as trouble générateur, or generative (generating) disorder. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the contemporary relevance of Minkowski’s ideas.
Word Sense Disambiguation
Authors: Agirre Eneko , Stevenson Mark
Published: February 2018

Word sense disambiguation (WSD) is the process of identifying the meanings of words in context. The difficulty of this problem stems from the subtlety of word sense differences and the need for some level of understanding. This chapter describes the main approaches to the problem, methods for evaluating performance, and potential applications. Recent developments in deep learning have led to renewed interest in this long-established task.
Dietary Shifts at the Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition in Europe
Authors: Schulting Rick J.
Published: February 2018

The nature of the transition to agriculture has been widely debated, particularly in the context of north-western Europe, where stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data have been argued to indicate a rapid, sharp shift in diet. However, other lines of evidence sometimes suggest a less complete break. This chapter provides a broad overview of this debate, drawing on the large amount of isotope data now available that permits wider regional considerations of trends in coastal and inland contexts across Europe. A clear pattern emerges, with significant differences between Mesolithic and Neolithic isotopic composition, and, by inference, diets. There are a number of notable exceptions—at the individual, site, and regional levels. Some of these can be explained simply through terminology (i.e. ‘Neolithic’ being defined regionally through technology rather than subsistence), while others appear to relate to specific local environmental conditions placing foraging and farming on a more equal footing.
Queer Audiovisual Creativity
Authors: Treadwell Nina
Published: February 2018

This chapter introduces readers to the practice of creating fan music videos, commonly referred to as vids or fanvids. Fans combine preexisting material from films or television with music in order to refocus the original source material for various purposes, ranging from critique to celebration. This chapter focuses on vidding as queer practice; it provides an overview of vidding from the mid-1970s to the present and incorporates close readings of vids dedicated to Star Trek and the British drama series Bad Girls, originally broadcast on ITV from 1999 to 2006. The chapter argues for the importance of music as a central facet related to the meaning-making process of vids, a dimension that has been neglected in current scholarship on fannish vidding.
Algorithmic Trading based on Biologically Inspired Algorithms
Authors: Vassiliadis Vassilios , Dounias Georgios
Published: February 2018

The chapter discusses algorithmic trading, which refers to any automated process, consisting of a number of interconnected components, whose main aim is to perform financial transactions of any kind. Its chief advantage lies in the fact that human intervention is minimized to an acceptable extent. This is quite desirable because nowadays numerous factors affect financial decisions. Financial managers are able to deal with a limited amount of information. There are many ways to implement algorithmic trading systems. This chapter aims to highlight the efficiency of biologically inspired methodologies when incorporated in such systems. Biologically inspired intelligence comprises a range of algorithms whose common philosophy is based on the behavior of real-world, natural systems and networks. What is more, the performance of the applied nature-inspired intelligence (NII) methodologies is compared to traditional benchmark approaches such as the random portfolio construction.
Computational Spatiotemporal Modeling of Southern California Home Prices
Authors: Kaboudan Mak
Published: February 2018

Average quarterly price changes in six contiguous southern California cities are obtained and used, first, to determine if price changes in contiguous cities are spatiotemporally contagious, then to forecast each city’s average prices for four quarters (or one year, 2014). In order to capture the contagious effects, a spatiotemporal contagion response measure is proposed and computed. The measure quantifies the responsiveness of residential home-price changes in one location (or city) to lagged price changes in another location. Average home characteristics (such as square footage and number of bedrooms), as well as lagged average quarterly mortgage rates, lagged average quarterly unemployment rates, and lagged average quarterly price changes of all locations, are input variables used to estimate the response measures and produce price forecasts. Models and forecasts are obtained first using genetic programming then compared to outcomes obtained using linear regressions.
Computational Models of Financial Networks, Risk, and Regulatory Policies
Authors: Soramäki Kimmo
Published: February 2018

This chapter introduces the concept of financial networks and reviews research in three of the most active research areas of financial systems: interbank payment networks, interbank exposure networks, and asset correlation networks. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 revealed the intertwined nature of modern financial systems. A promising methodology for capturing and modeling connections in the financial system is provided by network theory. The intricate structure of linkages between financial institutions, among sectors of the economy, and across financial systems can conveniently be captured by using a network representation. Empirical research on describing existing networks is presented, as well as new modeling and simulation approaches for financial risk that take into account the complex structure of financial markets and infrastructures.
An Overview and Evaluation of the Cat Market Design Competition
Authors: Miller Tim , Niu Jinzhong , Chapman Martin , McBurney Peter
Published: February 2018

The rise of online commerce has led to an emerging discipline at the intersection of economics and computer science, a discipline which studies the properties and dynamics of automated trading in online marketplaces. The CAT Market Design Tournament was created to promote research into the design and deployment of economic mechanisms for such online marketplaces, particularly mechanisms able to adapt automatically to dynamic competitive environments. This research competition, which ran from 2007 to 2011), was won by four different teams and had entrants from thirteen countries. This chapter describes the motivation and history of the tournament and presents research that has arisen from it. The winners were experimentally “played off” to evaluate whether the state of the art in automated mechanism design improved during the CAT competition. The results show a clear and consistent improvement, supporting the belief that the competition has encouraged research in the field.
Tax-Rate Rules for Reducing Government Debt
Authors: Lim G. C. , McNelis Paul D.
Published: February 2018

This chapter uses an example to demonstrate the steps of specifying, calibrating, solving, and simulating a macroeconomic model in order to evaluate alternative policies for reducing domestic public debt. It extends the simple closed-economy New Keynesian model by incorporating the zero lower bound and asymmetric wage adjustment (in which wages are much more rigid in the downward direction). We examine the dynamics of adjustment, given a sharp increase in government debt due to a once-only big increase in spending. We find that selective tax-rate rules, incorporating a degree of tax relief in a period of fiscal consolidation, are effective instruments for rapidly reducing the overhang of a large stock of public debt.