II. The farm territories

Abstract

The enquiries into the organization of farm territories in Norway must be based partly upon the study of old records, and partly upon field work. As long as the breach with the past is still a fairly recent occurrence, the field investigations will produce more than simply a record of the visible traces of the past. Of course, this record itself plays a very important part. Features such as characteristic boundary marks, various traces and relics found within the old multiple abode (tun), of holdings which have moved outside it, former balks that are still visible—these are all important pieces in the jigsaw puzzle which must be completed in order to obtain a picture of the ancient organization of the farm territory. But in addition to this, we can make use of the memories of those of the farming population who grew up in earlier times and took part in the daily work and who know of old traditions which were handed down to them by still earlier generations. The younger generations worked alongside the older and carried on the inheritance from them. This is clearly shown in the story about the man who took his young son along to show him the boundaries of the farm. Every time they reached an important marking on the boundary the father gave his son a box on the ear so that the spot should stand out in his memory. One of the Institute's most reliable informants, an old schoolmaster from Sunnmöre, can account for traditions as far back as to the middle of the eighteenth century; he usually confirms his tales with such expressions as: ‘The old man said so, and he got it from grandma’.     

Structural change,industrial upgrading and China’s economic transformation*

Abstract

After more than three decades of opening up and reforms, China has moved from a low to an emerging middle-income country. The main challenge facing the country is how to sustain this momentum and develop into a high-income country and avoid the middle-income trap. In order to achieve this, industrial upgrading and structural change is crucial. This is not an easy process given that very few countries in the world achieved this in the past 50 years. What are the challenges for this transformation? How can the innovation and technological capabilities be developed to upgrade Chinese industries into one of the world’s innovation leaders? These are important questions to address for policy-makers and academics, and are the main theme of an International Conference on Transition and Economic Development (TED), held at Fudan University in 2015.     

The settlement preferences of Scandinavian emigrants to the United States, 1850–1960

Abstract

In the past, text books have made a false distinction between the former agrarian structure of Denmark on the one hand and of the remaining Scandinavian countries on the other. The proper dividing line should intersect the kingdom of Sweden, since farmers in Norrland and Finland were peasant-proprietors at the opening of the modern age while elsewhere in Scandinavia they were generally tenants. Much of the land not owned by peasants belonged to the Crown or the churchy but neither of them practised large-scale farming save in exceptional instances. Thus it is of crucial importance to establish at the outset the extent of landownership by the nobility and by other ‘persons of standing’ (stõndspersoner) about 1600 and how this changed during the century. In Sweden noble landownership is defined to include even land held by feudal right (donationer) and freehold or crown land for which a noble has bought or been given the right to levy taxes (frälseköp). Its status as noble property is not affected by whatever proportion of it may be held as virtual peasant freehold with hereditary rights of use (bördsrätt) and security against eviction and incorporation into the tax-exempt demesne farm (säteri) of the feudal property; such a holding is called skattefräise hemman.     

领导决策科学化——构建和谐社会领导力,稳操胜算的深层理念

在现代社会中,决策贯穿于一切领导和管理工作的始终,并直接影响着领导和管理的绩效.只有深刻的理解并遵循领导决策的理论及原则,才能使领导决策科学化.随着领导决策实践的发展,对领导决策科学化的方法论基础的研究也将日益深化.怎样实现决策科学化就是当前我们需要解决的主要问题.     

Geographical mobility of population in pre-industrial times

Abstract

Since 1821, the starting-point for Rosenberg's study, more or less complete series of information about migrants have been preserved in the parishes of the county of Uusimaa (Nyland), in the form of lists of persons moving out of or into the parish or change-of-domicile certificates filed by the migrants in the registry office of the parish to which they moved. It ends at roughly the time when publication of official migration statistics began in Finland (1878). The later years of the period coincide with the industrial take-off, so that the study deals almost exclusively with the pre-industrial period. Very little attention has been paid in previous research to the migratory movement of that period, one reason being the illusion that the migratory movement was caused by industrialisation and, accordingly, that the scale of migration was very small before the take-off. The main reason, however, must surely be the absence of accessible statistics. The primary material is dispersed in hundreds of church archives from which the researcher must himself select the emigrants and immigrants case by case. This is tedious, but it has the advantage of enabling him to classify the migrants in the manner best suited to his study without limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

Ethnographic Heritage as a Branding Strategy: A Case Study of Yogurt in Bulgaria and Japan

Abstract

This article explores the various ways in which ethnographic images are deployed in branding strategies by Bulgarian and Japanese companies to frame industrial food as cultural heritage. Examining the history and marketing strategies of yogurt in Japan, I demonstrate how international marketing and cooperation has influenced the definitions, meanings and values of yogurt. In Japan, companies turn to ethnographic images of Bulgaria to sell their products, emphasizing visions of rural life over Bulgarian yogurt-making technology. At the same time, the fact that Bulgarian yogurt has turned into a symbol of health and wellbeing in one of the world’s economic powers is a source of national pride for consumers in post-socialist Bulgaria. The branding strategies of yogurt show how companies transform foods into culturally meaningful products, thereby doing much more than making profitable commodities of them. In educating and offering consumers new lifestyles, they change established systems of consumption and influence people’s imaginations.     

Land ownership in the nordic countries

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between the Norwegian State and international cartels and trusts in the interwar years. In this period, Norway was at the forefront with regard to implementing legislation regulating cartels, yet the legislation was not an antitrust legislation in the modern sense. It was aimed not only at protecting consumer interests, but more importantly at defending domestic businesses against foreign monopolies and cartels. In the article we examine how the Norwegian authorities interacted with international cartels and trusts in seven different cases in the interwar period. The study shows that although there was a deep seated scepticism towards concentration of market power in Norway, cartels received support from the Norwegian government when they were deemed to be beneficial to Norwegian economic interests. The legislation was used to foster the development of domestic cartels, while at the same time it was employed as a tool to limit the operations of foreign cartels and trusts.     

The role of corrosive internalisation and denial of responsibility in stabilising inequality in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how capabilities inequality is stabilised through its consequences on those at both ends of the distribution. It outlines the development of the balance model, which is argued to help highlight these consequences. Specifically, how adverse environments associated with lack of access to resources and poor treatment can lead to internal consequences which further corrode capabilities. At the same time, denial of this corrosion or its importance is critical for those who benefit from the inequality. To avoid moral constraints being triggered it is important, necessary even, for them to see those who suffer as outside of their moral universe, or their suffering to be in no way associated with their advantage. Corrosion and denial work to stabilise the system. For those in the middle of the distribution, they may work to do so in combination. Appreciating these internalised consequences is key to addressing inequality in South Africa.     

Homelessness in Pretoria: Exploring the survival challenges of the homeless and their right to the city

ABSTRACT

This article documents the biographies of 60 homeless people from a range of different backgrounds in South Africa’s capital city of Pretoria. The article focuses on their right to the city and how the lack thereof affects their daily lives. It explores the challenges they face on a daily basis and the different strategies they implement in mitigating these challenges.     

Land measurement and land valuation in medieval Denmark

Abstract

The art of surveying is old in Denmark. In prehistoric times man already knew how to survey arable land and knew that a piece of land of known measurements could be sown with a certain amount of seed. When one considers the mathematical accuracy with which the recently excavated fortifications from the Viking Age at Trelleborg in Zealand and Aggersborg and Fyrkat in Jutland were constructed. with all measurements in Roman feet. there is nothing surprising in the fact that the farmers of the time could measure the sowing areas of their fields with great accuracy.     

Slavery and agricultural bondage in South India in the nineteenth century

Abstract

A vast amount of important source material is available to the student of Indian economic history, and, for the period from about 1860 onwards, it is almost always possible to see how the information available in the government records and the official reports came to be acquired. The government officers who took part in the inquiries made into the social and economic structure of India were generally eloquent about the methods by which they had collected their information, the rules laid down for the incorporation of the facts in later reports, and the purposes for which the inquiries had actually been undertaken. All this is very useful for the research student who will not, as a result, experience too many difficulties in judging the value and the limitation of the facts presented. But when we move further back, and try to explore the economic history of India in the first century of British rule, matters become more complicated. Few of the officials took the trouble to explain how they had arrived at their knowledge. As a result we find that the few historians who have tried to cope with the early period can be divided into two groups: those who accept the information provided in the official records without further inquiry, and those who discard it altogether on the assumption that it was probably collected in the traditional Indian way by minor civil servants who were not particularly interested in elucidating the truth.     

Which Method Should the Central Bank Choose to Estimate the Model Economy? A Korean Monetary Policy Example

Abstract

To understand how the macro economy evolves, the central bank has two options in choosing how to estimate the economic model against actual data: one is to estimate each sector of the model piece-by-piece, and the other is to estimate the whole model altogether. This paper demonstrates the advantage for the central bank of estimating the whole model in terms of the estimation accuracy and the robustness of the resulting policy recommendations. For that aim, we construct a macro model for the monetary policy analysis of the Korean economy and estimate the model via the system approach and single-equation approach. We evaluate the data fits of the two estimation results and show that the fit of the system approach is far better than the other and comparable to other methods such as vector autoregressions. It is also shown that, if the two estimated models are equally likely, conducting the policy tailored for the model estimated by the system approach delivers better stabilization results for the Korean economy.     

The growth of population in Norway 1735–1855

Abstract

The rapid growth of population in many underdeveloped countries during recent years has caused widespread concern. It has, not surprisingly, also helped to focus the attention of demographic historians upon the processes of population growth in western societies, during their pre-industrial and early industrial stages. Scandinavia has occupied a central place in the discussion; chiefly, because here, by a happy accident, the industrial revolution was preceded by an administrative revolution. As a result of this we have an unparalleled set of population statistics dating from the mid- eighteenth century. Sweden, in particular, has become something of a Mecca for demographic historians. Of all the nordic countries her statistics are the most comprehensive and through such studies as those of Swaine Thomas¹ Gille,² Heckscher³ and Utterström,⁴ the most thoroughly explored. Although less well known, the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic material is also of a very high order. Perhaps in the past some of it, in Norway at least, has been accepted too uncritically. Nevertheless, despite the one or two startling errors in the present Norwegian population statistics (they are discussed in the first part of this paper), Norway remains one of the few countries where it is possible to analyse pre-industrial population movements on a statistical basis.     

Reconstructing Scandinavian farms 1660–1860: Sources in Denmark,Iceland, Norway and Sweden

Abstract

The great economic and cultural variations to be found in the preindustrial peasant societies of nearly all European countries does not mean that any attempt to make generalizations about them must be abandoned. It does, however, imply that such generalizations as are made can be meaningful only if they are based on a large number of local case studies over as broad a spectrum as possible. In Scandinavia there is a powerful tradition, reaching back to the eighteenth century, of the writing of provincial, parish and village histories, although the scholarly standards achieved in these have been very variable, and some areas have been much better covered than others in this way. And individual farms have been looked at in detail in only exceptional cases.     

论税费制度改革后农田水利工作的开展

跨国经营企业内部的文化差异主要表现在价值文化、制度文化和劳动人事政策三个方面。文化差异对跨国经营管理有着双重影响 ,它能成为跨国经营管理的阻抗力 ,更能成为跨国经营管理的推动力 ,所以跨国经营企业应该正确认识文化差异 ,充分发挥文化差异所具有的潜能和优势 ,从而创     

Short-distance migration,circles and flows: Movement to and from Ullensaker according to the population census lists of 1865

Abstract

This article arose from the ‘Ullensaker research project’ of the Institute of History of the University of Oslo (supported by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities), which has as one of its objectives the application of micro-historical methods and electronic data processing techniques to social history. The article examines how far it is possible to reconstruct the migration patterns of a local population by detailed study of place-of-birth data in a nominative population census, and discusses some aspects of short-distance migration as a historical, sociological and socio-psychological phenomenon.     

Fluctuat nec mergitur: Economic history in Sweden at the turn of the century 2000

Abstract

Economic history as a subject is customarily likened on formal occasions to a landbridge uniting two scholarly continents: the economic and the historical. It can also be said that the subject is marked by two peculiarities. For more than a century it has stood outside mainstream economics, been an alternative, a subterranean current. In the same way it has always had to struggle in a subordinate relation to the subject of pure history, whether the latter called itself political history or purported to be capable of covering the entire field of history by itself. With this background in mind, it is above all interesting to ask oneself how the subject of economic history has been able to establish so strong and independent a position in Sweden.¹     

Why Are There Rich and Poor Countries? Symmetry-Breaking in the World Economy

To explain cross-country differences in economic performance, the economics of coordination failures typically portrays each country in a closed economy model with multiple equilibria and then argues that the Poor countries are in equilibria inferior to those achieved by the Rich. This approach cannot tell us anything about the degree of inequality in the world economy. A more satisfactory approach would be to build a world economy model and show why it has to be separated into the Rich and the Poor regions, i.e., to demonstrate the coexistence of the Rich and Poor as an inevitable aspect of the world trading system. In the present model, the symmetry-breaking of the world economy into the Rich and the Poor occurs because international trade causes agglomeration of different economic activities in different regions of the world. International trade thus creates a kind of pecking order among nations, and as in a game of musical chairs, some countries must be excluded from being Rich.J. Japan. Int. Econ., December 1996,10(4), pp. 419–439. Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208     

Select bibliography of contributions to economic and social history appearing in scandinavian books,periodicals and year-books, 1990

Abstract

No doubt any historian — and I do not claim to be one myself — would say that it is a mistake to suppose that giants belong only to some past golden age. Yet how trippingly those names dance off the tongue — Arpi, Attman, Boethius, Friis, Glamann, Hammarström, Hildebrand, Jutikkala, Montgomery, Oden, Utterstrom and of course Ernst Söderlund, first chief editor of this journal and the moving spirit in its foundation! I pass over the point that one or two of these individuals could justifiably repudiate the status of grand old man (person?) on the ground of being still professionally active today. Be that as it may, I realised even at the time that to be entrusted with translating articles written by such figures was something of a privilege. I am still more conscious of it now, for suddenly the years have flown and I have to fight, not entirely successfully, against the temptation to feel that merely to have known them from the sidelines, as it were, in those great days possibly invests me also with a touch of grand-old-man(person)hood.     

Connecting capabilities in highly unequal developing countries: The case of the Square Kilometre Array telescope in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Innovation and skills development require interactive capabilities to function effectively. Interactive capabilities mediate between skills supply and skills demand actors in an innovation system, and in the knowledge economy more broadly. This article investigates such interactive capabilities, and the manner in which they facilitate labour market alignment. Within a case-study focus on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope in South Africa, we investigate how organisational capabilities, structures, and mechanisms facilitate or constrain interaction between the SKA and its network partners, including universities, firms, intermediaries, and a technical college. This illustrates how pockets of excellence within an unequal South African skills and innovation landscape were effectively connected in order to build a critical mass of skills and technologies that were highly competitive on the international stage. This shows how, in highly unequal developing countries, interactive capabilities form a lever for access to the global science and technology frontier.