Erilaistumattomien kantasolujen erityispiirteitä ovat lähes rajaton jakautumiskyky sekä kyky erilaistua moniksi erilaistuneiksi solutyypeiksi. Näiden erityispiirteiden ansiosta kantasoluja voidaan hyödyntää sekä tutkimuksessa että regeneratiivisessa lääketieteessä. Pluripotentit kantasolut, kuten ihmisen alkion kantasolut ja indusoidut pluripotentit kantasolut, pystyvät erilaistumaan ainakin teoriassa miksi tahansa aikuisen yksilön solutyypiksi kun taas monikykyisillä aikuisen kantasoluilla on rajallinen jakaantumis- ja erilaistumiskyky, jolloin ne voivat muodostaa erilaisia solutyyppejä tietyn solulinjan sisällä. Aikojen kuluessa kantasoluja on viljelty monissa erilaisissa olosuhteissa. Tällä hetkellä yleisesti käytössä olevissa kantasolujen johtamis-, viljely-, ja erilaistamistekniikoissa käytetään eläinperäisiä ainesosia. Kliinisessä käytössä eläinperäiset ainesosat voivat aiheuttaa vakavan immunivasteen, viruksien ja bakteerien aiheuttamia infektioita, prionitauteja sekä toistaiseksi tunnistamattomia eläintauteja. Tässä työssä tutkittiin automatisoidun viljely-, kuvantamis- ja analyysimenetelmän soveltuvuutta erilaisissa viljelyolosuhteissa kasvatettujen erilaistumattomien ihmisen alkion kantasolujen kasvudynamiikan evaluoimiseksi. Lisäksi työssä tutkittiin alhaisen happipitoisuuden vaikutuksia ihmisen alkion kantasolujen uusiutumis- ja erilaistumiskykyyn sekä niihin vaikuttavia molekyylitason mekanismeja. Edelleen koostumukseltaan tunnettuja ja eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämättömiä kantasolujen viljelyolosuhteita evaluoitiin, kehitettiin ja optimoitiin täyttämään Euroopan Unionin direktiivien asettamat viranomaisvaatimukset kantasolujen kliinisistä sovelluksista. Työssä evaluoitiin koostumukseltaan tunnetun, eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämättömän viljelyliuoksen soveltuvuutta ihmisen alkion kantasolujen perustamisessa ja viljelyssä sekä indusoitujen kantasolujen ja aikuisen kantasolujen viljelyssä. Tämän työn tulokset osoittavat, että automatisoitu viljely-, kuvantamis- ja analysointimenetelmä mahdollisti erilaisissa viljelyolosuhteissa kasvatettujen erilaistumattomien ihmisen alkion kantasolujen kasvudynamiikan analysoinnin luotettavasti, tuottaen enemmän informaatiota kuin perinteinen mikroskooppinen tarkastelu. Alhainen happipitoisuus esti ihmisen alkion kantasolujen spontaania erilaistumista, tuki uusiutumiskykyä ja lisäsi merkittävästi jakaantumista. Alhaisessa happipitoisuudessa olennaisia eroja esiintyi alhaisen happipitoisuuden, kalsium ja PKC ja retinolihapon signaalireiteille keskeisten geenien ilmentymisessä erilaisissa viljelyolosuhteissa. Yhtä uusiutumiskyvylle merkittävää transkriptiotekijää Oct-4:sta ilmentyi merkittävästi enemmän alhaisessa happipitoisuudessa, osoittaen mahdollisen mekanismin alhaisen happipitoisuuden indusoimalle uusiutumiskyvyn lisääntymiselle ja spontaanin erilaistumisen estämiselle. Tämän työn tulokset osoittavat, että useat eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältävät viljelyliuokset eivät pystyneet ylläpitämään ihmisen alkion kantasolujen erilaistumatonta kasvua. Osa ihmisen alkion kantasoluista kuitenkin kykeni adaptoitumaan ihmisen seerumia sisältävään viljelyolosuhteeseen. Tässä työssä kehitetty koostumukseltaan tunnettu ja eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämätön viljelyliuos RegES mahdollisti ihmisen alkion kantasolulinjojen perustamisen. Lisäksi RegES viljelyliuos mahdollisti ihmisen alkion, indusoitujen ja aikuisen kantasolujen pitkäaikaisen viljelyn, kantasolujen tehokkaan jakautumisnopeuden sekä ylläpiti kantasolujen erityispiirteitä ja erilaistumiskykyä. Parhaillaan kantasoluja hyödyntäviä kliinisiä soluterapiakokeita on jo käynnissä, mikä edellyttää keskittymistä erityisesti laboratorio-olosuhteissa lisättyjen solusiirteiden turvallisuuteen ja laatuun. Käyttämällä koostumukseltaan tunnettuja eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämättömiä tuotteita voidaan solutuotteiden turvallisuutta ja laatua parantaa merkittävästi. Koostumukseltaan tunnettujen olosuhteiden käyttö mahdollistaa kantasolujen säätelyn ja erilaistumisen syvempää ymmärtämistä sekä lisää tulosten toistettavuutta ja luotettavuutta. Viljelyolosuhteilla voi olla huomattavia vaikutuksia solujen erityispiirteisiin, jonka vuoksi solujen asianmukainen karakterisointi tarkoin määritellyillä analyysimenetelmillä on ensiarvoisen tärkeää. Tulevaisuudessa pitäisi keskittyä eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämättömien viljelyolosuhteiden validoimiseen ja osoittaa, että ne mahdollistavat solujen pitkäaikaisen viljelyn, ylläpitävät uusiutumiskyvyn erityispiirteitä, erilaistumiskykyä ja geneettistä stabiiliutta, mahdollistavat uusien kantasolulinjojen perustamisen, uudelleenohjelmoinnin ja eristämisen, sekä tuotannon lisäyksen. Täydentäviä prekliinisiä turvallisuus- ja tehokkuustutkimuksia tarvitaan vielä ennen kuin eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämättömien tuotteiden kaikki hyödyntämismahdollisuudet voidaan toteuttaa. Tämä työ osoittaa, että eläinperäisiä ainesosia sisältämätön viljelyliuos RegES soveltuu erilaisten kantasolujen perustamisen, viljelyn ja erilaistamisen jatkokehitykseen ja voi tulevaisuudessa toimia perustana kliinisten monikykyisten ja pluripotenttien kantasolujen sekä näiden johdannaisten turvallisessa tuotannossa kliinisiä soluterapiahoitoja varten. ; The hallmark of all undifferentiated stem cells is their nearly unlimited self-renewal capacity and their potential to differentiate into a diverse range of specialised cell types. These unique properties of stem cells make them invaluable research tools and can potentially serve as a source of cells for regenerative therapies. Pluripotent stem cells such as human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) are capable of producing almost any cell type in the human body, whereas multipotent adult stem cells exhibit limited self-renewal and a differentiation capacity that is restricted to the cell types of a particular lineage or a closely related family of cells. Since the discovery of stem cells, diverse culture conditions have been evaluated for different types of stem cells. In current standard in vitro cell culture techniques, xenogeneic reagents are used in the establishment, cultivation, and differentiation procedures. For the clinical a! pplications of stem cells, however, xenogeneic reagents pose the risk of a severe immune response, and the transmission of viral or bacterial infections, prions, and unidentified zoonoses. In this study, we assessed the applicability of an automated cell culturing, imaging, and analysis system to evaluate undifferentiated growth dynamics of hESCs maintained in different culture media. The molecular mechanisms regulating self-renewal and pluripotency of hESCs under hypoxic conditions were also elucidated. Furthermore, defined and xeno-free culture conditions for the expansion of stem cells were evaluated, developed, and optimised to meet the regulatory standards set by the directives of the European Union for the clinical application of stem cells. The applicability of a defined xeno-free medium for the derivation and maintenance of hESCs as well as for the expansion of iPS cells and adipose stem cells (ASCs) was evaluated. The results indicated that the automated cell culturing, imaging, and analysis system enables reliable analysis of the undifferentiated growth dynamics of hESCs in different culture conditions, and revealed more information than does conventional microscopic observation. Exposure to hypoxic conditions prevented spontaneous differentiation, supported self-renewal, and significantly increased the hESC proliferation. Fundamental differences in genes that are central to hypoxia signalling, calcium and PKC pathway, and the retinoic acid pathway were detected in different culture conditions under hypoxia. A key transcription factor for self-renewal, Oct-4, was significantly upregulated under hypoxic conditions, indicating a possible mechanism for hypoxia-induced self-renewal and prevention of spontaneous differentiation. The results of these studies suggest that although a population of hESCs was able to adapt to human serum-containing culture conditions, several of the xeno-free culture media evaluated were unable to maintain hESC self-renewal. Here we developed a xeno-free medium formulation, RegES, that allowed for the derivation of pluripotent hESC lines. Furthermore, hESCs, iPS cells, and ASCs can be propagated in the RegES medium for a prolonged period of time with a reasonable proliferation rate while maintaining their characteristics and differentiation potential. Clinical stem cell therapy trials are ongoing, which calls for a strong focus on the safety and quality of in vitro expanded stem cell transplants. By replacing xenogeneic products with a defined xeno-free medium, the safety and quality of the cells with therapeutic potential may be enhanced significantly. The use of completely defined conditions will allow for a better understanding of stem cell regulation and differentiation as well as provide more reproducible and reliable results. Culture conditions may have significant impact on the cell characteristics, thus proper characterization of cells with specific analyzing methods is necessary. Future studies should focus on validating the xeno-free culture conditions to demonstrate the ability for long-term culture, maintenance of key features of self-renewal, differentiation potency, and genetic stability, as well as derivation, reprogramming, or isolation of new stem cell lines as a full proof-of-principle, and to provide for scale-up to a manufacturing level. Additional pre-clinical safety and efficacy studies are needed before the promise of the xeno-free products can be fully realised. The results of the present study indicate that the xeno-free RegES medium is applicable for further optimization of xeno-free establishment, culture, and differentiation of various stem cell types and can ultimately serve as a platform for the production of clinical-grade multi- and pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives for safer clinical cell-based therapy.
In: Stewart , R M M 2019 , Integration of Sustainability Approaches in Companies: an Exploration of Narratives and Internal Organizational Functioning .
Intensivt diskuteret på den internationale scene, som illustreret ved Verdensmålene for bæredygtig udvikling, som De Forenede Nationer har lanceret, har bæredygtig udvikling og bæredygtighed været veletablerede som centrale emner for vores samfund. Det nylige videnskabelige arbejde opfordrer indtrængende til at reducere det miljømæssige bæredygtighedstryk, således at jordens livsstøttende funktioner kan opretholdes, og økonomier og samfund, der er indeholdt i jordsystemet, kan forblive intakte. Virksomhedernes rolle i at understøtte overgangen til bæredygtige samfund er blevet understreget af forskere, beslutningstagere og virksomheder selv. I denne sammenhæng udvikler virksomhederne i stigende grad deres egne bæredygtighedstilgange. Bæredygtighedstilgange kan tage forskellige former såsom miljøledelse, bæredygtig forsyningskædeforvaltning og renere produktion. I dette ph.d.-projekt blev der taget et produkt livscyklusperspektiv, som betragter virksomheder som de vigtigste udbydere af varer og tjenesteydelser (i det følgende omtalt som "produkter") med deres indlejrede livscykluser i vores økonomier. Beslutningerne i produktudviklingsaktiviteterne er typisk betragtet som at bestemme en stor del af produkternes miljømæssige bæredygtighedseffekter over deres livscyklus. Derfor har virksomhederne en central rolle at spille gennem udvikling og levering af produkter, som er fokus for forskning indenfor miljøvenlig produktudvikling (ecodesign). Bæredygtighedsstrategier kan undersøges i forskellige lag, lige fra intern organisatorisk funktion, over operativ bæredygtighed og virksomhedernes fortællinger, til fungeren af det overordnede erhvervsmæssige økosystem. I dette ph.d.-projekt blev bæredygtighedstilgange i et produkt-livscyklusperspektiv undersøgt baseret på to forskellige lag af bæredygtighedstilgange, nemlig virksomhedsfortællinger og intern organisatorisk fungeren. For det første, selv om livscyklus-tænkning er blevet drevet af forskellige industri- og politiske initiativer og blev anset for at udgøre et fælles verdensbillede af miljøforvaltning, er det uklart, i hvilket omfang den aktivt anvendes i industrien til at lede bæredygtighedstilgange. Dette ph.d.-projekt har til formål at undersøge dette spørgsmål baseret på firmafortællinger og, mere præcist, baseret på virksomhedernes bæredygtighedsrapporter. Disse rapporter (Corporate sustainability reports) giver indsigt i, hvordan virksomheder mener at deres bæredygtighedsindsats bør være fremlagt bedst muligt, og dermed indeholder de begreber og ræsonnementslinjer, der anses for kritiske af virksomhederne selv for deres officielle kommunikation. I denne sammenhæng er det første forskningsspørgsmål (RQ1), der behandles i dette ph.d.-projekt: "I hvilken grad er livscyklus-tænkning til stede i virksomhedsfortællinger om deres bæredygtighedsstrategier, der fremgår af virksomhedernes bæredygtighedsrapporter?" For det andet peger seneste udviklinger inden for litteratur omkring integrering af miljøveling produktudvikling på en dybere inddragelse af både formelle aspekter (f.eks. organisatoriske enheder, processer og mål) og uformelle aspekter (f.eks. individuelle aspirationer, rutiner og magtforhold) af organisatorisk fungeren. Et rammeværk fra den generelle ledelseslitteratur, nemlig "organisationers fire-linse-perspektiv", blev identificeret som en mulig konceptuel ramme for at imødegå formelle og uformelle aspekter af organisatorisk fungeren. I denne sammenhæng er det andet forskningsspørgsmål (RQ2), der behandles i dette ph.d.-projekt: "I hvilket omfang kan organisationernes fire-linse-perspektiv hjælpe med at undersøge og understøtte integration af ecodesign i virksomhedernes formelle og uformelle organisatoriske fungeren?" Tilstedeværelsen af livscyklus-tænkning i virksomhedernes fortællinger, som præsenteret i virksomhedernes bæredygtighedsrapporter, blev undersøgt ved hjælp af tre forskellige indikatorer: (i) referencer til livscyklusbaserede metoder; ii) omfanget af, hvilke rapporterede miljømæssige bæredygtighedstiltag der dækker de forskellige livscyklusfaser og (iii) tilstedeværelse af elementer af livscyklus-tænkning i virksomhedernes fortællinger (konkret: produkt-livscyklus-system, hotspots i livscyklussen, trade-offs i livscyklussen eller på tværs af miljøproblemer, og produkt-miljø-bæredygtigheds budget relateret til ideen om økologiske grænser). De vigtigste resultater er: 1. Idéen om produktets livscyklus blev fundet værende til stede i virksomhedernes bæredygtighedsrapporter som et koncept eller gennem operativ praksis, der tager sigte på de forskellige livscyklusfaser. 2. Livscyklusvurderingsmetoden i sig selv blev fundet med en ret svag tilstedeværelse i virksomhedernes bæredygtighedsrapporter globalt, men i mindre, målrettede prøver af virksomheders bæredygtighedsrapporter blev forekomsten af livscyklusbaserede metoder fundet hyppigere. 3. Livscyklus-tænkning blev kun fundet i begrænset omfng til kritisk at analysere og reflektere over miljømæssige bæredygtighedsproblemer i forbindelse med produktets livscyklus. Et antal litteratur- og empiriske undersøgelser blev gennemført for at besvare RQ2 og bestod i alt af (i) kortlægning af tiltag omkring integration af ecodesign der støtter fire-linse-perspektivet og (ii) afdækning af tvær-linse-effekter, dvs. interaktioner mellem linser og (iii) efterfølgende anvendelser af fire-linse-perspektivet i ecodesign-integrationsaktiviteter. De vigtigste resultater er: 1. Linse-dominans blev identificeret blandt tiltag, der støtter ecodesign-integration i litteratur og empiriske data, selvom der også blev fundet tiltag svarende til alle linser. 2. Indikationer af tvær-linse-effekter, dvs. indikationer om, at mål svarende til en given linse forøger faktorer i kernen af andre linser, blev fundet i litteraturen og i de empiriske data. 3. Tre mulige anvendelser af fire-linse-perspektivet i ecodesign-integrationsaktiviteter blev udviklet, herunder løbende forbedring, problemløsning og uddannelse eller rekruttering af medarbejdere. Sammen har de to spor i dette ph.d.-projekt til fælles at muliggøre at "komme tættere på virksomheder" - til virksomhedernes forståelse for, hvordan de bedst kan præsentere deres bæredygtighedsindsats og til virksomhedernes interne organisatoriske fungeren. Denne ph.d.-forskning giver komplementær indsigt i, hvordan man kan styrke integrationen af bæredygtighedstilgange i industrien, ud fra et produkts livscyklusperspektiv. Det første spor identificerede behovet for øget brug af livscyklus-tænkning i virksomhedernes fortællinger om centrale analyser og refleksioner omkring eksisterende produktlivscyklusystemer og de miljømæssige bæredygtighedsudfordringer, de er forbundet med. Det andet spor banede vejen for yderligere afprøvning af den analytiske og praktiske værdi af organisationernes fire-linse-perspektiv for at undersøge og støtte ecodesign-integration i virksomheder med en bred horisont af, hvad intern organisatorisk fungeren indebærer. Disse to spor blev fulgt i stor udstrækning uafhængigt af hinanden, og mulighederne for deres kombination er skitseret for fremtidig forskning. ; Intensively discussed in the international scene, as illustrated with the Sustainable Development Goals launched by the United Nations, sustainable development and sustainability have been well established as central topics for our societies. Recent scientific work urges to reduce environmental sustainability pressures so that Earth's life-supporting functions can be maintained, and economies and societies nested in the Earth system can keep thriving. The role of companies in supporting the transition towards sustainable societies has been emphasized by researchers, policy-makers and companies themselves. In this context, companies increasingly develop their own sustainability approaches. Sustainability approaches can take various forms such as environmental management, sustainable supply chain management, and cleaner production. In this PhD project, a product life cycle perspective was taken, which relates to viewing companies as the major providers of goods and services (hereafter referred to as "products"), with their embedded life cycles, in our economies. The decisions made during the product development activities have typically been considered to determine a large share of products' environmental sustainability impacts along their life cycle. Hence, companies have a key role to play through the development and delivery of products, which is the focus of ecodesign research. Sustainability approaches can be researched on different layers, ranging from internal organizational functioning, over operational sustainability practices and companies' narratives, to functioning of the overall business ecosystem. In this PhD project, sustainability approaches from a product life cycle perspective were researched based on two different layers of sustainability approaches, namely company narratives and internal organizational functioning. First, although life cycle thinking has been driven by various industry and policy-making initiatives, and been considered to constitute a shared worldview of environmental management, the extent to which it is actively used in industry to guide sustainability approaches remains unclear. This PhD project set out to research this question based on company narratives, and more precisely based on corporate sustainability reports. Corporate sustainability reports deliver insights on how companies understand that their sustainability efforts should be best presented, and, hence, contain concepts and reasoning lines considered critical by the companies' themselves for their official communications. In this context, the first research question (RQ1) addressed in this PhD project is: "To what extent is life cycle thinking present in company narratives of their sustainability approaches provided in corporate sustainability reports?" Second, recent developments in ecodesign integration literature have called for a deeper embracement of both formal aspects (e.g. organizational units, processes and targets) and informal aspects (e.g. individual aspiration, routines, and power relationships) of organizational functioning. A framework from general management literature, the four-lens view of organizations, was identified as a candidate conceptual framework to address formal and informal aspects of organizational functioning. In this context, the second research question (RQ2) addressed in this PhD project is: "To what extent can the four-lens view of organizations help investigating and supporting ecodesign integration in formal and informal organizational functioning of companies?" The presence of life cycle thinking in companies' narratives provided in corporate sustainability reports was explored using three different indicators: (i) references to life cycle-based methodologies; (ii) extent to which reported environmental sustainability operational practices covered the different life cycle stages; and (iii) presence of life cycle thinking elements in companies' narratives (product life cycle system, hotspots in the life cycle, tradeoffs in the life cycle or across environmental problems, and product environmental sustainability budget related to the idea of ecological limits). The main findings are: 1. The idea of product life cycle was found present in corporate sustainability reports as a concept or through operational practices addressing the different life cycle stages. 2. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology in itself was found with a rather weak presence in corporate sustainability reports globally; yet, in smaller and targeted samples, presence of life cycle-based methodologies was found more frequent; 3. Life cycle thinking was found only limitedly used to critically analyze and reflect about environmental sustainability problems associated with product life cycles. A set of literature and empirical studies were undertaken to answer RQ2, and overall consisted of (i) mapping measures in favor of ecodesign integration in the four-lens view framework; (ii) uncovering cross-lens effects, i.e. interactions between lenses, and (iii) deriving applications of the four-lens view in ecodesign integration activities. The main findings are: 1. Lens dominance was revealed among measures in favor of ecodesign integration in literature and empirical data, although measures corresponding to all lenses were found. 2. Indications of cross-lens effects, i.e. indications that measures corresponding to a given lens enhance factors at the core of other lenses, were found in the literature and in the empirical data. 3. Three hypothesized applications of the four-lens view in ecodesign integration activities were derived including continuous improvement, problem solving and training or recruitment of employees. Together, the two tracks of this PhD project had in common to allow "getting closer to companies"- to the companies' understanding of how to best present their sustainability efforts, and to the companies' internal organizational functioning, respectively. This PhD research provides complementary insights on how to strengthen the integration of sustainability approaches in industry, from a product life cycle perspective. The first track identified the need for an increased use of life cycle thinking in companies' narratives for critical analyses and reflections about existing product life cycle systems, and the environmental sustainability challenges they are associated with. The second track paved the way for further testing of the analytical and practical value of the four-lens view of organizations to investigate and support ecodesign integration in companies, with a broad horizon of what internal organizational functioning entails. These two tracks were conducted independently to a great extent, and opportunities for their cross-linking are outlined for future research.
The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the ill effects of neoliberal ideology on labor and education in the United States since the defeat of Keynesian economics in the United by the 1980s (Aronwitz, 2001; Robertson, 2007; Winfield, 2012). That is, neoliberal policy bears significant responsibility in the decline of labor and public schooling in the United States. Concurrently, over the past few decades there has been a significant transfer of wealth from poor and middle-class Americans to the very top of the income distribution (Piketty, 2014). While the wealthiest Americans have benefited from much lower taxes on their wealth in the past few decades, there has been a concurrent hollowing of the middle class due largely to automation and less to offshoring (Autor, 2010). Moreover, Congress and state legislatures have reduced appropriations to K-12 and higher education considerably (Leachman & Mai, 2014; Giroux, 2014; Mitchell, Palacios, & Leachman, 2014). 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Käsityöläisten yrittäjäkulttuuri Itämeren alueen kaupungeissa 1350-1620 Väitöskirjassani tutkin käsityöläisten yrittäjäkulttuuria Itämeren alueen kaupungeissa myöhäiskeskiajalla ja uuden ajan alussa. Käsityötuotanto tapahtui kodin yhteydessä olevassa verstaassa ja se oli yleensä perheen yhteinen bisnes. Käsityöläiset olivat järjestäytyneet ammattialoittain ammattikuntiin, joilla jokaisella oli omat sääntönsä. Käsityöläisammattikunnat läpäisivät elämän jokaisen osa-alueen: ne hallitsivat työmarkkinoita, järjestivät ammatillista koulutusta, osallistuivat kaupungin sotilaalliseen puolustukseen, huolehtivat osaltaan oikeudenhoidosta ja monista hallinnollisista asioista, ylläpitivät kaupunkirauhaa, järjestivät köyhäinhoitoa, tarjosivat jäsenilleen sosiaalista yhdessäoloa sekä jopa mahdollisuuden uskonnollisen hartauden osoittamiseen pitämällä yllä alttareita kirkoissa. Ammattikuntien merkitys jokapäiväiselle elämälle oli kiistaton. Tutkimuksessa selvitän, mitkä olivat yrittäjäkulttuurin keskeisimmät elementit, arvot ja toimintatavat. Yrittäjäkulttuuria tarkastelen käsityöläisleskien kautta: mitkä olivat käsityöläisleskien mahdollisuudet jatkaa ammatissaan miehensä kuoltua ja käyttivätkö he näitä mahdollisuuksia hyödykseen. Tutkimus keskittyy Tukholman, Tallinnan, Riian ja Lyypekin kaupunkeihin noin vuosina 1350−1620. Aiemmassa tutkimuksessa tuon ajan yrittäjäkulttuuri ja ammattikuntalaitosjärjestelmä on nähty staattisena rakennelmana, joka ei pystynyt sopeutumaan muutoksiin ja joka vahvisti patriarkaalista yhteiskuntajärjestystä sekä pyrki rajoittamaan naisten työntekoa. Tutkimukseni haastaa tämän näkemyksen ja tarjoaa uudenlaisen tulkinnan. Sen mukaan ammattikunnat tarjosivat leskille useita mahdollisuuksia jatkaa perheyrityksen pyörittämistä miesmestarin kuoltua. Yleisin ammattikunnan tarjoamista mahdollisuuksista oli vuoden ja päivän aikaraja, jonka umpeuduttua lesken olisi luovuttava ammatistaan tai siirrettävä mestarinoikeudet pojalleen tai uudelle aviomiehelle. Monet lesket jatkoivat kuitenkin ammatissaan vuosia piittaamatta virallisista säädöksistä. Tämä todistaa, että lesket olivat kiinteä osa tuon ajan kaupunkien yrittäjäkulttuuria, eikä naisjohtoisia käsityöläisverstaita pidetty mitenkään outoina. Tutkimukseni myös paljasti, että oman edun tavoittelu meni usein ammattikunnan edun edelle, vaikka aikakausi on mielletty kollektiivisuuden ajaksi. Käsityöläisten yrittäjäkulttuuri olikin täynnä ristiriitoja: toisaalta pyrittiin takaamaan samat edut ja ammatinharjoittamisen edellytykset kaikille ammattikunnan jäsenille, mutta silti sosiaaliset erot ammattikunnan sisällä saattoivat olla suuret. Ammattikunnat harjoittivat myös voimakasta suojelupolitiikkaa, protektionismia, turvatakseen yhteiset edut. Toisaalta ne loivat hyvin joustavia käytäntöjä ja sääntöjä, jotka tarjosivat pelivaraa ja mahdollistivat kilpailun ammattikunnan sisällä. Kaikki nämä toimet tähtäsivät tuotannon jatkuvuuteen; mestarin sukupuoli oli toissijaista. Tutkimukseni tuo ilmi, että näinkin kaukainen yrittäjäkulttuuri piti sisällään paljon sellaisia elementtejä, jotka yleensä yhdistetään nykypäivän markkinatalousyhteiskuntiin eikä myöhäiskeskiajan ja uuden ajan alun talousjärjestelmiin. Väitöskirjani tarjoaa ensimmäistä kertaa laajan vertailevan tutkimuksen Itämeren alueen kaupunkien käsityöläiskulttuurista ja lesken asemasta. Lisäksi se yhdistää eri näkökulmia uudella tavalla, sillä hansakaupunkien käsityöläisiä ei aiemmin ole tarkasteltu yrittäjyyden, taloushistorian ja sukupuolihistorian näkökulmista. Tutkimukseni tarjoaa täysin uuden lähestymistavan hansa-alueen kaupunkihistoriaan, sillä aiempi hansatutkimus on keskittynyt lähinnä tarkastelemaan hansaliittoa taloudellisena ja poliittisena mahtina tai käsitellyt kauppiaita ja heidän verkostojaan. ; In this dissertation I study craft trade culture in late medieval and early modern cities bordering the Baltic Sea. Research focuses on four urban communities, namely on Stockholm, Tallinn, Riga, and Lübeck. In all these cities craftsfolk formed one fourth of the inhabitants as well as the so-called middle class of the citizens. Additionally, craft organizations penetrated all spehers of life in urban settlements: they dominated labour market, influenced town topography, organized military troops, took care of juridical and administrative tasks, organized professional training, and together with merchants governed the economic sector. In addition, crafts organized poor relief, free time, and some crafts even took care of religious and devotional activities. In this research craft trade is studied from economic and gender history viewpoints. Special emphasis is on the possibilities of artisan widows to continue their trade after their husband had died. This study provides for the first time an extensive comparison of craft trade culture in four Baltic Sea cities. Furthermore, it combines two perspectives, rarely applied together in the field of craft and guild studies. In addition, the study covers the time period of circa 1350−1620, hence transcending the usual boundaries between medieval and early modern era in historical research. The essential elements of craft trade culture are traced from three different angles. Firstly, the various urban organizations are examined, differentiated, and categorized. My hypothesis is that the possibilities of widows to carry on depended on the organization type. In previous research the various urban organizations, guilds, crafts, and devotional guilds or confraternities have not always been differentiated, which has led to misinterpretations about the position of women within these organizations. The categorization is based on my own innovation called tripartite classification. The tripartite classification is both a method of the study as well as a result of a wide-range comparison of the ordinances and statutes of the three organization types. Secondly, the opportunities of artisan widows and the meaning of widowhood in the context of craft trade are examined. Here the viewpoint changes from the organizations to the point of view of the craftsfolk and particularly of artisan widows. By adopting different roles, as mothers and managers of household workshops, widows challenged traditional gender roles. Thus, the widow perspective is fruitful because it helps us to examine how gender relationships were constructed in craft trade culture and what role gender played in it. The normative side is discussed by studying craft ordinances: what options and possibilities did craft ordinances give to widows to continue their trade. In previous research widows' rights articles have been seen as mere restrictions against women's work. I challenge previous research by arguing that widows' rights articles must be seen as opportunities, and hence widows' rights articles ensured legal protection for widows. Thirdly, craft trade culture is studied by taking a closer look at Lübeck. The everyday practice of craftsfolk is examined, with the help of narrative source material. In particular I ask how widows' right articles were applied in practice and what dispute situations can be observed. In addition, the work identity of craftswomen and craftsmen is examined. It is my hypothesis that in previous research gender hierarchies and the masculinity of artisanal world has been overemphasized. Using Lübeck as a case study I shall also examine the interaction between the city council, the crafts, and individual craft members. This is significant because it helps us to detect the dynamics within craft trade culture and how various actors negotiated on norms, rules, values, and their goals. In this study I use both normative source material, craft ordinances and records of the city council, as well as narrative sources, Lübeck petition letters. I have analysed all the preserved craft ordinances from the four cities which stem from the time period of 1350−1620. These 178 craft ordinances built the core of the study, thus they set the framework within which the narrative letters are analysed. The detailed Appendices at the end of the study list all the used craft ordinances, their editions, repository places, and archival signums. This combination of sources offers a good basis to study widows' opportunities in principle and in practice. Moreover, craft ordinances build the context in which the petition letters are analysed. Furthermore, the letters enable a deeper study of contemporary values and mentalities than the craft ordinances. Throughout the study quantitative, qualitative, and linguistic methods are used together with comparison, a case study, and tripartite classification mentioned above. The concept of craft trade culture is understood broadly meaning the system how handicraft production was organized; how various artisans within the same profession were organized into crafts; how craft ordinances regulated various aspects of production and the everyday life of the artisans. In addition, I consider craft trade culture to include a set of norms, values, and practices that guided individual craft members. Gender is understood as a cultural and social construction, which encompasses more than just the physical differences between biological sexes. Biological differences form the base but cultural and social norms and practices that define female and male work, duties, rights, and obligations are more important. An essential element of this social gender is that its definitions vary and change according to time and space. What is feminine and what is masculine can be defined differently in various geographical areas, cultures, social contexts, and religious confessions as well as in various times. Masculinities and femininities also vary according to other categories and attributes such as profession, social status, age, personal character, and marital status, and so forth. Work and particularly work conditions were one of the factors that created, enforced, or diminished gender roles. This study finds that craft trade culture in late medieval and early modern cities bordering the Baltic Sea was flexible and aimed for the continuation of production at several different levels. At the same time craft trade culture was a strongly protectionist culture. Furthermore, within this protectionism there existed elements, which are often used to characterize modern market economies – individual profit seeking and competition. Hence, the study reveals that craft trade culture was full of contradictions. Additionally, within craft trade culture other categories and aims outweighed the gender aspect. It was more important to ensure the continuation of production than fret over the gender of the master. Consequently, widows' rights articles in the craft ordinances were not means to restrict widows' and respectively women's work. Instead, widows' rights articles strove to secure the continuity of production and to protect craft trade production which was based on household workshops. Moreover, as we must abandon the bipolar notion of gender, we must also reject the dichotomy of comparing 'traditional societies' to societies with (free) market economy. The investigation conducted here reveals that craft trade culture was at the same time affected by the aims of the crafts to ensure equal premises and resources for all their members and a common well-being of its members as well as by the competition between craft members and self-interest. The majority of gender and economic historians have underlined the inflexibility of craft organizations arguing that this rigid system hindered the development of market and dynamic economy. However, the current study proves that craft trade culture was a flexible system that adapted to changing conditions and left room for negotiation. In this study I introduce a new approach and classification to urban organization called tripartite classification. According to it, three different organization types existed in late medieval and early modern towns bordering the Baltic Sea: professional crafts, composite artisan guilds and merchant guilds, and devotional organizations, which I call devotional guilds. The analysis in this study demonstrates that the organization type clearly affected not only female membership and widows' possibilities but other questions like political participation, military, and defence as well as religious participation. Craft ordinances granted widows five different possibilities to continue their trade. In previous research particularly the supporters of subordination theory have considered these widows' rights as restrictions. However, the findings of the current study do not support these notions. Widows took advantage of these possibilities and were aware of the rights granted to them in the craft ordinances. Despite the questions that widowhood raised among contemporaries, widows could run their workshops independently and/or with the help of their children and/or hired workforce. Some crafts considered widows capable of training apprentices and at least in some crafts widows participated in craft assemblies and festivities. Furthermore, the analysis of Lübeck petition letters exposes that some widows exceeded the customary time limit granted to them in craft ordinances and continued their trade for several years, even 19. This demonstrates that widows were an integral part of craft trade culture. Moreover, the main aim of craft organizations was not to restrict women's work but to ensure the continuity of craft production and economic welfare of its members.
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Jordan Branch on Google Maps, State Formation, and the International Politics of Cartography
The territorial underpinnings of international politics are as familiar as they are contested within the discipline of International Relations. While the presumed 'territorial trap' of the discipline has been attacked from many sides (see, for instance, Theory Talk #4), Jordan Branch is more interested in turning the question around.
His work has carefully addressed the historical constitutive effects of mapping practices and technologies on the subsequent transformation of practices of, and ideas about, rule and the international system. In this fascinating Talk, Branch, amongst others, discusses the significance of cartography for international politics, explores the effects that contemporary digital mapping might have on political spaces, and illustrates how innovations in mapping impacted on rule with the historical example of France.
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
What is according to your view the most important challenge facing global politics and what is/should be the central debate in the discipline of International Relations (IR)?
While there are many different debates going on at the same time within the discipline, the one that has interested me most is the relationship between ideas and practical or material factors. There is a very simplistic version of this dichotomy that has been debated to death in the constructivist versus rationalists debates, particularly in the American field of IR—an over-drawn distinction, as many have pointed out. I am more interested in actual explanations for the process, outcome, or phenomenon we're looking at. Rather than separating them out, I am interested in how the ideational and material relate to one another, how they fit together.
This relationship poses questions for my specific interest in technological change. We are experiencing fast-paced technological changes—for example, the information technology revolution—which can yield a natural yet incorrect assumption, namely, that this change will inevitably have some kind of major effect on, or interaction with, politics and, specifically, with international relations. This may be true, but it is too often assumed. Indeed, this raises another problem. Even if there is such an effect, is it something we'll be able to observe, let alone predict or explain, as it is happening? From my historical work on the role of maps in state formation, for example, it is quite evident that for people at the time, there was no way to see the impact maps had on the political/spatial/ideational constitution of the state.
The information technology (IT) revolution is the most obvious current example of dramatic technological change. Although it has been playing out for the last 20 or 30 years, it only continues to accelerate. Over the past couple of years, a lot of discussion has focused on 'big data' and what it implies for business, financial analysis, and the like. Of course, it also presents possibilities as a new tool for social science. But there is a danger here. There is a tendency of seeing new technological phenomena only in their material contexts, specifically focusing on possibilities for measurement, for example, thereby neglecting to think about the ideational. How do ideas about collecting and using data actually play into the collection and analysis itself? So while they are in practice always entangled, analytically, I find the distinction between the ideational and the material a very fruitful one, not so much as a debate between opposing fields, but as way to think about technological change.
How did you arrive where you currently are in your thinking about these issues?
It is funny—people often ask this sort of question, and I did not necessarily see a natural trajectory for my thinking or work until I began to look and think back. This interest in connecting technological and political change goes as far back as my undergraduate time at Stanford University, where I initially majored in mechanical engineering, and later switched to International Relations. While technology remained an important preoccupation, I became more interested in politics, history, and theory. So the interest formed into questions about the political implications of phenomena like technology. But this didn't happen instantly. Just before beginning my PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, I was planning to do comparative work on regime change and democratization. Then my older brother (Adam Branch), who is also a political scientist, gave me a copy of Hendrik Spruyt's The Sovereign State and its Competitors (1994), and he said: 'Hey you might like this!' So, I literally read that on a beach the summer before starting grad school—which may sound funny, but I sat down, read it, and found it fascinating. Yet I didn't immediately start thinking about these questions then. It took a year or two, when I started really thinking about what I wanted to work on. I came back to this work and realised these were the kind of questions I was interested in: the origins of the territorial state and its characteristics.
The interest in the state as a concept had been with me for slightly longer. As an undergrad my first introductory course to IR was taught by Stephen Krasner (Theory Talk #21). Krasner has strong views, and the class was very rigorous. A lot of his work focuses on the state and I think his framings influenced me early on. I don't entirely agree with some of Krasner's arguments about sovereignty, but these disagreements are more about the specifics of salient time periods or cases. Other work which influenced me early on was that of John Ruggie on territoriality. Indeed his approach became central as I was developing these questions myself. I also discovered a host of literature in political geography that turned out to be very interesting and useful.
So, one could say that my trajectory was really more focused on understanding the historical outcome of the territorial state than on what role technology, specifically maps, played in this process. The focus on technology, while existent from my engineering days, really began to materialize as a link missing from existing explanations of state formation. I was thinking about how we might be able to find some additional traction on these questions by including technology more prominently. It has certainly been part of some scholarship on state formation, as in Charles Tilly's work or William McNeill's on technological change and warfare. Surely, technology has always been in there, but the discussion has been centered on war fighting technology and maybe on transport, and only to a lesser degree on communication technology in the broader sense.
Another piece of work which triggered my focus on the relationship between the ideational and the material was Ron Deibert's book Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia (1997, read the 1995 PhD thesis that became the book here, pdf). He talks about internet communication technology but also about the printing press and the impact it has on the global distribution of power. Yet, only when I read this book for the second or third time just as I was finishing up my dissertation did I realize how much his framing had shaped how I formulated my thesis. He does touch on the role of mapping, but it is his elaboration on the way in which media informs how people think about the world which was spot on for me. For me, maps as a medium very importantly framed how people thought about and imagined the world in the past—but of course these questions about technology and its role in constituting the international political system, states, territorial boundaries, and so on are still relevant today.
What would a student need to become a specialist in global studies or understand the world in a global way?
I think it is important to be really excited and interested in your topic and what you want to do. The key thing is to enter a grad program that fits you in terms of your interests and to be willing to do whatever methodological training ends up being needed for your research project.
I think there's a tendency to look for a 'one size fits all' graduate training model, which does make sense at the initial level. Everyone should get a certain amount of background in a variety of methods, whether they'll end up using those or not. For example, I have not used quantitative methods in my own research, but I'm glad that I had to take classes on those methods in grad school. They give you the ability to understand work which may connect to your own but comes at it from a different angle. And you should always be open to a variety of methods. The key is to be able to understand a broad array of approaches, otherwise you won't be able to engage in broad conversations.
I also feel I gained a lot from exploring, and reading widely, from other disciplines such as history and sociology. I already mentioned political geography, which is really not too distant but, nonetheless, in the U.S. it sits in a different department. You might think that some work is 'on the other side of the fence' but it is important to be able to bring that work into your thinking.
The final thing is to be open and ready to change your mind, whether it is about the answer you're expecting to get to your question, or even changing the question itself. Obviously there is a certain point when you're almost done with a project where that might not be a good idea…. but if it is early on and it works and you can do it logistically, I think it is important to be willing to do that. Five years later you're going to be a lot better off.
So far, your work has been mainly historical. Can you explain the importance of 'looking back' for understanding contemporary international relations?
I think it is extraordinarily important and useful. A lot of us in this and other fields do see strong connections between today's politics and past events, institutions, and ideas. There is an important notion that we cannot engage meaningfully with the present if we do not understand its genealogy. That is certainly a driver for me in thinking about the origins of the state and territorial boundaries. It may help us to observe patterns we might see replicated or appear in some kind of altered yet recognizable form today. Indeed, it can help us think about where were might be headed.
Although I also hesitate here slightly: always looking to the past for the answers can be problematic. History can help us to observe patterns, dynamics, and maybe relationships that might tell us something about other periods or about contemporary international relations. But we should never do so thinking that the patterns are definitely going to be the same or are deterministic. I think one can look for patterns or relationships without automatically assuming that they have to apply everywhere.
Historical analysis can be problematic in its own right, because there is no way to discover or absorb the past 'as it really was.' All history is some kind of construction, whether it is based on contemporary or historical sources. Additionally, in the social sciences we often have to rely on secondary sources. That is not inherently a problem; this fact just introduces more variables to think about. Pure narrative purporting to capture 'what really happened' can be very problematic.
Given these disclaimers, it is useful to consider the past. I think what should be emphasized is that, specifically at the grad school level, students should be encouraged to dig a little deeper historically. They shouldn't hesitate to do that excavation work.
IR, it has been argued, rests firmly on a spatial or territorial understanding of politics. What constitutive role does territorial space play in IR and is that role based on historical fact or is it myth?
I like that question. I think it is actually both—sort of a myth and sort of a fact. In one sense, territory informs at least the state ideal (i.e., states as we think of them): it informs what the state is, the interests of states, and of course how we distinguish one state from another. And yet, while this is all inherently territorial, we also know that this is far from an accurate description of a lot of regions and places in the world. There are many different spatial ideas, practices, and organizations with political agency that are non-state or non-territorial.
But regarding the myth of state territoriality: I think it is important to point out there is a lot of detail in the 'conventional narrative' of the state, such as timing of when territoriality came about as pinpointed in Westphalia, that has been quite effectively debunked by a number of scholars in the last 10 or 20 years (scholars like Andreas Osiander or Benno Teschke, from different theoretical perspectives). This is a strongly supported finding. But it really hasn't penetrated the mainstream narrative very well. While we can gradually see a little more nuanced discussion in IR textbooks in the U.S., they more often than not will still start with 1648 and Westphalia.
We can now confidently say that states—states as we think of them now—did not appear in 1648, let alone earlier. This is especially true if we look at the specifically territorial or spatial aspects of statehood, which again are so central to how we think about the state internationally. The focus on defending cleanly demarcated linear boundaries and the idea of asserting absolute sovereign authority within those lines; this is really not consolidated until at least the 19th century. So, part of the myth is the timing and the how and why we have states.
But there still is a factual quality to territoriality in this story we tell ourselves about the foundation of the international system and the supposed creation of sovereign states. In a certain setting and for a certain period I think this describes the ideas and practices of international politics quite well. The most obvious example of this is 19th century Europe. While there are still ways in which it diverges from the ideals of the typical state system, in a lot of ways it actually did fit that. This happened at the same time as the development of modern Western historiography, and it was the setting for some of the traditional foundation of political science and IR. So we can see how one shaped the other: history-making and state-making. The singular territorial ideal of statehood from the 19th century has subsequently been applied to other issues, actors, and areas. Even if it does not fit exactly, it is applied today still and it is made to fit retrospectively much earlier periods, where it applied less well.
Ultimately, it is a powerful myth which has informed how we think about international relations to such a degree that we shouldn't just throw it out. Instead, we should think about exactly how it actually informs the way that international relations is understood and practiced. Practitioners and officials don't exactly read IR journals and base their decision-making on our knowledge production, but the basic ideas of states, boundaries, and territory which inform the practice of international relations—as well as the study of it—should be our concern.
You have looked specifically at how mapping has contributed to imagining and formation of the modern state system. Could you elaborate more on how something as technical as cartography matters for international politics?
I've argued in my recent work that early modern mapping technologies were really essential to the consolidation of the territorial state, particularly the specific territorial features of states today. Maps, which have been a popular medium over the past few centuries, really do shape how people understand the world and their place in it. This gets us back to the connection between the material and the ideational.
In early modern Europe a revolution took place, first in mapmaking technologies and, slightly later, in the ideas and practices of political rule, especially as it relates to territory. I argue this was really not a coincidence. How rulers and subjects conceived of rule and how rulers conceived of their realms was really altered as they increasingly used maps that depicted the world in this one particular way. The key characteristics of modern statehood – at least of the ideal of modern statehood – such as linear boundaries between homogenous territorial claims, really appeared first in maps and only subsequently in political practices on the ground. Of course, there were existing authority structures, but these were not particularly spatial or were not spatial in this linear demarcated way. Subsequently, however, these authority structures were ignored or sometimes even actively renounced in favor of the kind of authority which could be literally shown and drawn on a map.
It is interesting because initially, maps were not predominantly produced by rulers, states, or officials. They were certainly involved in sponsoring some mapping projects, buying maps, and using them, but mapmaking was more of a commercial private scientific enterprise, if we can apply the label 'scientific' in the 16th and 17th centuries. These map-makers certainly didn't have any articulated goal of changing politics, at least not on this broad level. They were really concerned with making money, maybe creating art, and advancing what they thought was a growing science of cartography.
We can however see that the map, as a technological artifact—maps as actual things—had an impact on the practices of rule both between rulers and between rulers and their subjects. I argue that this process occurred quite broadly across the European development of the international system at that time. And you can see this sequence really clearly in a case like France.
Let me illustrate that. Here are three maps of 'France' ranging from the 1400s to the 1700s—the quotation marks are necessary because the notion of there being one entity called France across this whole period is more a matter of us labeling it as such rather than it being one recognizable entity.
The first map is from a 15th century manuscript about royal and noble genealogy in France. The image is purported to represent 'all the realm of France' and shows the country as a collection of what I would call places rather than a single linearly demarcated space. You do have the notion of spatial boundaries here, in terms of rivers as means for demarcation. Yet, very clearly, the visual language of this map focuses on towns. And this is how rule was practiced and operationalized as well: negotiations would be over places, or maybe collections of people based on identity, jurisdiction, or where they were allowed to reside, but not in term of linear demarcations between claims.
Now look at the second map, which is just from about 150 years later, from the 1590s. It is from an atlas by a follower of Mercator, and its label Gallia is the Roman designation for France. From our modern perspective we can recognize something that looks a lot like a modern map of France. Maybe even a state, although the boundaries are not exactly like we would expect them to be. But this is the visual language of mapping that we are familiar with: longitude, latitude, spatial expanses colored in, homogenous territorial claims—there is something about the space depicted that argues that it is all the same, that is all France.
And despite this familiarity, it was actually far from an accurate depiction of French rule. Not just in the actual placement of the boundaries, which are contestable, but in the discrete nature of the boundaries themselves. Along these frontiers, so clearly demarcated on this image, the claims of the French king were often unclear and overlapped with those of other rulers. This was even true for the interior of France during this period.
The third map is another 150 years later, from the 1740s. This is from a map showing the triangulation of the realm, undertaken by a group of geographers, known as the Cassini survey, as several generations of the Cassini family headed up this effort. The realm is being mapped explicitly using geometric tools with the important emphasis that the image is actually meant to represent reality. It is understood that way: it's supposed to measure reality, in order to enable the French king to better understand what he rules. Moreover, this mapping took place at the same time that rule was being implemented in practice on the ground in terms of spatial expanses as we think of them, in the form of demarcating boundaries with neighbors which had previously been unclear, overlapping jurisdictions.
Although maps of the second generation (i.e., the map from the 1590s) were 'inaccurate,' they were extremely influential. They were widely distributed and purchased by the elite, both inside and outside of government. Using these maps provided rulers with this particularly new territorial meaning to their centralizing and bureaucratizing efforts. As a consequence, the use of these maps as material tools of governing and negotiation really changed the language of rule. Rule becomes cartographic, at least in part. When two opposing sides come to the negotiation table, for example, they at the very least have already agreed, implicitly, that the division should be a linear boundary—it is just a question of where.
By the time the third map is produced, the government is much more directly involved in map production using accurate geometrical measurement. Yet the very desire for this mapping was shaped by the earlier use of those commercial maps that built up the visual grammar of geometric space. The French case is useful because it is very well documented, but we do see the same sort of process repeated either simultaneously or later throughout Europe and also elsewhere. In fact, there is a lot of interesting scholarship on the introduction of mapping and modern geographic thinking into regions outside the West. Siam Mapped (1994), a book by Thongchai Winichakul, is a fantastic study that I found really useful for my thinking about Europe, even though it deals with Siam (Thailand) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This is my story about mapping and territory, but I think there is a broader frame to your question: do we want to bring in these sort of technical factors into explanations in International Relations? And while we don't want to be technologically determinist, there is some useful thinking around technology and its effects we should consider. The impact of maps has been so strong, and yet they are such common artifacts that they are largely conceived of as 'unremarkable' outside of geographic-oriented disciplines.
So can we juxtapose this insight that mapping practices precede the practice of rule and state formation to the anthropological present, that is, what do the contemporary, some say radical, shifts in mapping techniques entail for international politics?
Absolutely. When I initially present my work, there is often an assumption that I use GIS in my study. Instead, my work focuses on analyzing mapping itself—maps as historical artifacts, their effects and their interaction with political identities, interests, and organizations. But I think the ways in which methodology and the subject of study overlap on subjects like technology could potentially contribute to stretching the boundaries of IR. The big data question is both a question of studying what big data means for politics but also how we can use big data to study politics. The way in which new technologies can simultaneously play into our methods and into our answers or questions is a pressing and fascinating issue.
For instance, there has been a lot of back and forth on the question of whether more open-access mapping techniques entail some sort of democratization. While I think we have seen that more participatory forms of mapping are possible, we shouldn't think that this type of mapping is completely open, as no technological system is completely open to anyone and everyone at all times. But, indeed, there is a democratization of mapping under way. Authorship in a whole host of domains, including mapping, is opening up where there used to be a single authoritative voice or at least a single type of authoritative voice. So maps are an example of this opening up and collective authorship. At the same time, accommodating more voices also means that a lot of information is being shared without authority or attribution or what we think of as a legitimate source… When you open a map from Rand McNally or National Geographic, you know that specific cartographers thought this was accurate and you can blame or praise them. But when you open up a layer of Google Earth that has been crowd-sourced you don't know who put that pin there, and you don't know why.
It's really interesting to explore a bit further how this is different from the recent past. In the 19th and first half of the 20th century, mapmaking was essentially state-led. The U.S. geological survey, the Ordnance Survey in Britain, or large mapmaking geographical institutions such as National Geographic represented the owners and producers. Mapping was so technical, so obviously technical that the everyday person would not be able to make a map to Rand McNally's standards. This has changed, and quite importantly so. Not only do we have the technology to do this, people are aware that they can use it as easily as opening a smartphone app, thereby incorporating more points of view. This is not necessarily good or bad. Politically, it does open up new possibilities. Maps have always been political, both implicitly and explicitly. It certainly opens up the possibility of some kind of broader shift in ideas about territory. Let me illustrate with an example. I haven't necessarily come across specific maps that present some completely novel visual grammar potentially reshaping the way we think about the world. But, an interesting example I like to bring to my students: there was a September 2011blog post on Google's Lat-Long blog (which is the company's blog about Google Maps and Google Earth). Its headline read: 'South Sudan is now official on Google Maps,' and it displayed a screenshot of the new boundary.
They changed their base layer by adding a boundary between South Sudan and Sudan. This of course followed the referendum and the UN's recognition, and all the traditional precursors to official statehood. South Sudan became a recognizable entity on that blog. Google Earth, a non-governmental actor, indeed a huge corporate actor—and thus not necessarily democratizing—becomes part of the discourse of declaring South Sudan's official existence.
This is an example of how things might be going. Interestingly, the whole enterprise of mapping today actually resembles more closely that of the 16th and early 17th centuries then that of the 19th or early 20th century, not technologically but organizationally. The state-centric view of the world was enforced by the state-authored mappings of the 19th and 20th centuries. Now, by contrast, there is a kind of shared or unclear authorship, there is crowdsourcing, there are multiple sources of conflicting and quite openly unreliable or uncertain information. This environment of rapidly increasing distribution and use also describes the creation of the early atlases in the late 16th century and early 17th centuries, which involved the collation of all kinds of information from multiple sources.
And of course it was in the 16th and 17th century when this sort of non-state-controlled mapping presented innovative images of the world—those images that ended up shaping and consolidating the state form of territory. And so it was these new tools for understanding and acting on the world which gave the state its territorial shape. As key information-producing activities are being opened up, some forms of power are being redistributed. This certainly means that we need to widen our scope in terms of whom we consider to be a stakeholder or what sort of actors we want to study. We know that the dichotomy of state versus non-state is not sufficient. We need to be subtler in our inquiries. In IR, of course, the stereotypical over-emphasis on states is being questioned, and this is really just one more sign that a piece of the power of the state, in this case map-production and distribution, is shifting elsewhere.
I recently had a conversation with students in my undergrad seminar on technology and international politics. I went into it saying: 'Hey, all this mobile mapping and GPS and Google Earth is totally revolutionary. This may change how we think about the world.' And they were all completely unconvinced, since they use these technologies all the time—to a bunch of twenty-year-olds these tools seem unremarkable. And maybe that is actually a more accurate analysis. But it is interesting how it is such a different analysis from that of my generation and anyone older, all of us who have spent a lot of time, for example, driving around without GPS. It is partly this perception and the 'unthinking usage' which make the relationship between technologies and social and political outcomes so difficult to observe. Our ideas may be changed, and especially the ideas of younger generations may be changed, without anyone particularly noticing how dramatic the changes might be. This also means that the connections, because they are 'unthinking,' can be quite foundational to people's ideas of social identities or political practices. They are tacit and embodied. That makes it both hard to observe but also an interesting puzzle. But it is worthwhile mentioning that the images presented by Google Maps and other digital mapping tools, particularly satellite imagery, might carry a greater legitimacy in terms of depicting 'the truth'. It looks like a picture of the world and therefore whatever is on it, even layered on data (like a new international boundary), must be true. It represents another apex of the scientific trajectory of mapping.
If it is just about adding a data layer on a base map that remains the same, does that then mean that ontologically this kind of mapping technology actually doesn't challenge territoriality?
That gets to an interesting point, which entangles with a lot of the more careful discussions of globalization and the state. One version of that is that the state is not dying, is not being destroyed. It is just that other things are being layered on top of it, and the state and its boundaries still remain and still matter for certain things. In this case, maps are perfectly capable of showing state boundaries—they look very fixed, very strong—but one can layer on top other types of information, maybe transactional flows or particular places that are connected in different ways.
I think that could be an interesting argument: these new mapping tools can really show so much, and it is matter of selecting what you want to show and unselecting things you don't want to show. Thus they don't do anything to undermine one particular view of the world. Now that is not necessarily a good or bad thing. If we look at the history of mapping and the origins of state territoriality, a key part of that was that it was really hard to depict medieval jurisdictional and personal notions of rule on early modern maps. Printing technology and mapping tools prescribed depiction in a certain way—drawing lines and coloring in spaces. Maps made it harder to show and thus think about the other forms of rule. If digital maps are still perfectly capable of showing states and their boundaries, they may do very little to undermine that notion of territory.
Finally, if we are interested in the politics of maps, to what extent do we need to study not only the maps as political artifacts but the mapmakers as political actors as well?
I think it is extremely useful to do both, and obviously if we study mapping today, we can do both. In terms of historical work, we can only rely on very limited sources, such as what mapmakers themselves wrote about what they were doing. We don't know a lot about their goals or ideas about politics. I would have loved to have been able to read exhaustive memoirs by mapmakers such as Ortelius and Mercator. Of course, they might not have said anything about the questions we are interested in. On the other hand, a lot of map-makers today are involved in mapping for explicit political reasons: for example, Ushahidi-type collaborative mapping (www.ushahidi.com), or humanitarian and relief mapping. Here we can dig into the question of how the maps produced relate to specific objectives. That is a great way to get more analytical leverage on a lot of these questions.
Jordan Branch joined the Political Science department at Brown as an Assistant Professor in summer 2012. He received his PhD in Political Science at UC-Berkeley in 2011, and spent 2011-2012 as the Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. His interests include international relations theory, the history of the sovereign state system, contemporary challenges to statehood, and the intersection of technological and political change. In 2014, Cambridge University Press published his book, The Cartographic State: Maps, Territory, and the Origins of Sovereignty. His research has also appeared in International Organization and the European Journal of International Relations.
Related links
Faculty profile at Brown University Read Branch's Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change (International Organization 2011) here (pdf) Read Branch's Colonial Reflection' and Territoriality: The Peripheral Origins of Sovereign Statehood (European Journal of International Relations, 2012) here (pdf)
Print version of this Talk (pdf)
0 0 1 5331 30391 School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg 253 71 35651 14.0
