As a result of the partial privatization and public listing of two large state-owned enterprises in 2001, the Norwegian state became the largest owner at the Oslo stock exchange. A new mode of corporate governance was developed, through which retainment of the corporate headquarters (HQ) of hybrid state-owned enterprises became the sole political goal of continued state ownership in these corporations. This article explores the perceived benefits to the national economy of these company HQ through an investigation of public documents and interviews with key stakeholders. The article argues that the main function of the goal of HQ retainment was to portray national interests and political goals as mere (positive) externalities of HQ location, and that this goal was formalized due to a perceived need to depoliticize the corporate governance of hybrid state-owned enterprises.

In 1976, the Committee of Safety of Medicines (CSM) in Britain authorized the contraceptive injectable Depo-Provera (DP) for short-term use and for two main reasons only: if a woman had received a rubella vaccine or if her partner had just undergone a vasectomy. Although officially authorized on restricted grounds only, the drug appears to have been widely prescribed by doctors of the Domiciliary Family Planning Services (DFPS). This article takes the prescription of DP in the DFPS of Haringey, a multiracial neighbourhood in London, and Glasgow as a comparative case-study to explore the intersections of medical authority, race, and class. Drawing on the archives of the Wellcome Collection, London, and the NHS Archives of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, we show that the DFPS offered the ideal setting to test and prescribe Depo-Provera widely. In the hands of the medical profession, the drug at times became a tool of violence towards women from disadvantaged backgrounds. In doing so, we contribute to the wider, global history of DP, and illustrate how racist, classist, and ableist prejudices could shape family planning services in the British context.

How do invocations of history inform speculative discourses in Western astrology? This article examines how events from the recorded past factor into predictive forecasts among professional astrologers for whom celestial patterns are indicative of shifting and evolving world-historical trends. Drawing on examples from prominent voices in the North American astrology community, across a range of commercial and social media platforms, I outline the parameters of what I call “astrological historicity,” a temporal orientation guided by archetypal principles closely associated with New Age metaphysics and psychodynamic theories of the self. I argue that while such sensibilities reinforce an ethos of therapeutic spirituality, they are not so narrowly individualistic as to preclude social and political considerations. Astrological historicity is at times a vehicle for culturally resonant expressions of historical consciousness, including critical awareness of historical legacies of racial and social injustice that directly link the past to the present and foreseeable future. Furthermore, while astrological accounts of history emulate aspects of modern historicism, including its orientation toward linear temporality and developmental themes, they rely on a nonlinear framework predicated on recurring cycles, correspondences, and synchronicities, bringing a complex heterotemporality to bear on world-historical circumstances. In seeking to understand the moral and political entailments of this area of occult knowledge production, this article aims to shed light on astrology’s cultural appeal not just as popular entertainment, spirituality, or therapy, but as an intellectual and cultural resource for many people searching for ways to express their frustration and disillusionment with reigning political-economic systems and authorities.

Scholars of various backgrounds have noted how societies across the globe have come to rely on more and more policing and incarceration since the late 1970s. To date, however, detailed analyses of the causes and consequences of this “punitive turn” have been limited to the Global North, with the vast majority of studies focused on the expansion of states’ capacity for violence. This article offers a corrective to the global study of the punitive turn by tracing the rise of South Africa’s private security industry from its inception in the late apartheid period to its current position as one of the largest of its kind in the world. Using newspaper reports, archival material from the apartheid state’s security apparatus, and ethnographic interviews of former and current members of the security industry, it shows how counterinsurgency doctrine, civil war, and deindustrialization shaped South Africa’s punitive turn, precipitating a process where violence was devolved from the state to private actors, including local militias, vigilante groups, and private security firms. This process, it is argued, is far from anomalous, and should be seen as a paradigm for the way the post-1970s punitive turn has unfolded in the majority of the world.

Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, the National Negro Business League (NNBL) sought to unite Black business owners, promote entrepreneurship, and develop economic power. Despite its prominence in the early twentieth century, the group declined after Washington’s death in 1915. As a result, little is known about its organizational development. This study uses data on state and local Negro Business Leagues (NBLs), along with active and life members of the NNBL, to better understand the group’s first fifteen years. Analyses reveal that the NNBL’s development reflected closely the social and economic context of early twentieth century Black America. Generally speaking, the NNBL was stronger in states with larger urban Black populations and where the value of Black-owned farms was higher, consistent with the importance of agriculture to Black business during this era. These results both shed light on the NNBL’s early success and suggest avenues for future research on its decline.

This article is about the seminar held at Luiss University in Rome on 17 June 2024. The seminar focused on ‘The End of Christian Democracy: A New Direction for Research’ and was the first milestone and official launch of the PRIN research project ‘The End of Christian Democracy: The Collapse of a Political Dream – Voices from the Margins’, led by a consortium of four universities: Luiss, Roma Tre, Bologna and Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.

This short contribution presents an enigmatic clay mould recovered from a tile kiln in Vindolanda's North Field. This complete mould contains an impression of Apollo in bust form, but its exact use is unclear. This paper presents the mould and discusses its potential use for the manufacture of ceramic figurines. Found in an industrial area of the site, its discovery also provides valuable evidence for craft production along this frontier and hints at a largely unknown provincial industry.