In this paper, I argue that Johann Christoph Sturm’s eclectic scientific method reveals an unexpected indebtedness to Francis Bacon’s thought. Sturm’s reception of Bacon is particularly surprising given that the German academic context in the second half of the seventeenth century was still largely Aristotelian. Sturm is indebted to Bacon in the following respects: (1) the critique of the current state of knowledge, (2) eclecticism, (3) a fluid transition from natural history to natural philosophy, (4) the conception of science as hypothetical and dynamic and (5) experimental philosophy and the use of instruments. Given that Sturm mentions Francis Bacon in important places in his work, these respects should not easily be dismissed as commonplace. Bacon is one of Sturm’s salient sources and they are both deeply concerned with a thoroughgoing reform of existing scientific practices.

Differences between models of industrialization are increasingly recognized as an important element of global economic history, and the quality of jobs is receiving new interest as a better indicator of living standards than income alone. This paper considers the implications of historical development models for job quality using the spinning section of textile manufacture in the early United States as a case study. The three factory systems that originated in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and around Philadelphia varied in technical choice, management practices, and establishment size, and exhibited heterogeneity in components of job quality. The paper uses quantitative evidence, including more than 2000 observations of early industrial workers’ wages, qualitative material from government investigations, worker letters, and company correspondence, and the Historical Job Quality Indicators to analyse work quality for spinning workers and to explore variation between the three industrial models. Workers in the more competitive Philadelphia model had lower real earnings, less job security, and higher work intensity than employees of the paternalistic Massachusetts mills. The paper highlights the importance of considering variation by location when evaluating historical living standards and the implications of industrialization strategies for quality of life.

The Optimal Currency Area (OCA) theory is utilized to evaluate if Brexit is supported in the context of economic integration. In brief, the greater the conformity to the criteria motivated by the OCA model, the greater the feasibility of a monetary integration between the UK and the EU. Logically, if conditions are conducive for a monetary integration, Brexit – which is a disintegration – is thus unsupported. On the other hand, if circumstances are unfavourable for monetary integration, further economic integration with the current customs union of the EU is not indicated, hence Brexit is not contradicted.

On the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, archaeologists encounter evidence that challenges conventional understandings of early state formation as a transition from ‘small-scale, egalitarian’ to ‘large-scale, stratified’ societies. One such location is the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Başur Höyük, which presents evidence of grand funerary rituals—including ‘retainer burials’ and spectacular deposits of metallic wealth—in an otherwise small-scale, egalitarian setting. A further, puzzling feature of this cemetery is the preponderance of teenagers in the richest tombs. Here we describe the combined results of archaeological and anthropological analysis at Başur Höyük, including ancient DNA, and consider the challenges they pose to traditional accounts of early state formation.

This paper examines the song Riziki1 (2005), composed and performed by Ja-Mnazi Afrika, which theorizes night work. Written and performed by the Kenyan musician Michael Otieno Ooko a.k.a Awillo Mike Ja’mnazi, the song appropriates the Swahili word “Riziki” which refers to a livelihood to complicate the idea and value of work, and particularly work by night. This way, the song’s Swahili lyrics muse upon and animate the work process to an East African audience. The song narrates night work dynamics, with a temporal sensibility, and proffers dignity to work-by-night subcultures. Borrowing from performance analysis and close listening analytical approaches, this paper argues that the song communicates the stress and pressures of night work while simultaneously emphasizing how imperative the continued work is to secure people’s livelihoods. Furthermore, the choice of language, for the most part, of the song in Kiswahili, an African language, and a language of trade in Eastern Africa is perhaps aware of the diversity of people and occupations included in night work. This way, the song complicates the cultural dynamic of night work to move beyond its association with the pleasure economy to locate work by night within capitalist work cultures.

This article analyses the depictions of immunity and immunological functions employed in proprietary medical advertising in British newspapers between 1890 and 1940. Using marketing copy to gain insights into the ways immunity was presented to the public and normalised outside of medical institutions and publications, I offer four main areas of discussion. First, I present an analysis of the ways advertisements evoked both natural and artificial immunity in their marketing copy, thereby affording us insights into the ways immunity was made palatable both to those supportive of and opposed to vaccinations. I then unpack the ways in which this advertising copy often emphasised immunity rather than the immunological, that is, presented immunity as resistance to infection achieved by purchasing particular brands, rather than as part of a defensive process taking place at a cellular level. Third, I examine the ways in which advertisements engaged with futurity and drew on a narrative of social exclusion that pitted created communities of the immune against the non-immune. Finally, I analyse the ways in which immunity was used to connect the biological and the psychological, looking particularly at the ways immunity against worry was sold to the public.