This article provides an historical account and analysis of the repurposing of Ny-Ålesund from Arctic coalmining settlement to Norwegian-administered international research base in Svalbard. Three levels of analysis are employed to explain the settlement’s transformation and its rising geopolitical significance, focusing primarily on the period of rapid internationalisation and expansion of scientific activities starting in the late 1980s. The local level examines Norway’s efforts to maintain effective occupation of greater Kongsfjorden by promoting research, underpinned by the economisation of the area’s near-pristine natural environment as a non-extractive resource for science; the global level applies the concept of telecoupling to consider the role of events and processes at larger spatial scales that facilitated Ny-Ålesund’s transformation; and the “glocal” level explains how the interaction of Norwegian and global actors in the locality of Ny-Ålesund have collectively shaped the community’s institutions over some 30 years. The article also reflects on recent policy changes signalling more assertive Norwegian administration and greater coordination of research in Ny-Ålesund.

This article discusses some of the ways in which ideas about the city influenced the thinking of British Christians from 1840 to the early twentieth century. First, it explores nonconformist conceptions of the city, suggesting that, although the urban environment offered favourable circumstances for nonconformist growth, a desire to return to, or incorporate elements of, rural life was rarely far away. It explores why, when the garden city movement began, it found such fertile soil among Christian thinkers. Secondly, it considers some of the biblical paradigms that shaped late Victorian thinking about the city. Preachers and writers moved seamlessly from their well-stocked religious imaginations to contemplating the practicalities of the city, and back again. It is argued that the Christian evocation of medieval cities, biblical cities and garden cities shaped in important ways the conceptualizations of the urban world.

This study argues that collective memory is a relevant concept that can be used to analyse how the outlooks on industrial futures are shaped in remote northern locations. The case in question is the Sydvaranger iron mine in Kirkenes in the north-easternmost part of Norway. By drawing attention to the long periods of time often involved in forming collective memory, this study questions the viability of top-down processes of forming opinions aiming to set local minds on the track towards either “place-renewal” into an unknown post-industrial future or towards attaining a “social licence to operate” for any new or continued raw material producing industry. This exploration includes a discussion of memory studies, an overview of the industrial history of Kirkenes as part of a Euroarctic borderland and a study of the manifestations of collective memory in the contemporary local media. Revealing insights were obtained in Kirkenes through informal conversations and participant observation.

This article considers the opportunities available to, and the constraints to be negotiated by, female litigants at the court of Star Chamber during the reigns of the early Tudor kings. Star Chamber was a prerogative court and grew in popularity following the transformation and clarification of its judicial functions under Thomas Wolsey in the early sixteenth century. While it has suffered losses to its records, around five thousand cases still survive from the early Tudor period, including nearly one thousand cases involving female litigants. Unlike those in other Westminster courts, such as Common Pleas, Chancery, or the Court of Requests, Star Chamber cases have yet to be fully examined for what they can tell us about women's access to justice and their experience of legal process. This article begins by surveying the number of cases involving female litigants, showing that far more women came to the court as plaintiffs than as defendants. The numbers were significant—in line with Chancery—but still show women as a minority. Drawing on a wide range of examples, the paper explores the major factors determining, and limiting, women's active roles as litigants, taking into consideration cultural expectations, legal practice (including the operation of coverture), and, where detected, individual decision-making.

The use of anthropology and sociology for dispute resolution, law-making, and governance has been frequent throughout the history of law and anthropology. Anthropological expertise in the form of expert witnessing or expert information, has been one among the significant activities of applied anthropology. However, no concept such the one of cultural expertise was formulated to theorise the engagement of anthropologists and sociologists with law. This paper adopts an historical approach in order to understand why socio-legal studies have not developed a conceptualisation that encompasses the variety of the types of engagement of social scientists, and anthropologists in particular. It investigates the connection between law and culture in the history of anthropology of law since social evolutionism, and focuses in particular on legal pluralism. This paper suggests that the reasons for the late conceptualisation of cultural expertise lies on the one hand in the difficulty to define the dynamics between law and culture, and on the other hand in the specific development of legal pluralism vis-à-vis the state. This paper concludes with a reformulation of the concept of cultural expertise as an umbrella concept that encompasses the existing array of socio-legal instruments that use cultural knowledge for conflict resolution.

Underground mining in Potosí was a male sphere. Nevertheless, women were actively involved in the early stages of silver mining in Potosí, when traditional technologies were still in use. They also played an important role in the local ore market. After the introduction of new technology and the reorganization of the labour force, the process of refining ore was much more complicated. Women then participated in some stages of the process: in selecting the ores and sieving. This implies that mining is a complex process with a labour and gender division that has been underrated and underestimated. More importantly, women became owners of rudimentary mills (trapiches) where the ore was processed, selling different amounts of silver to the Spanish authorities, making their living in this way.