Antipodes to Terra Australis

The idea of an imaginary southern continent persisted in European discourse for two millennia in an unbroken chain of scholarship stretching from antiquity to the cusp of modern times. The unavoidable question is what drove belief, and what compelled people to persist with the notion of a southern continent even when faced with falsifying evidence? In addressing this question I attempt to draw the historical traces together in a way that not only illuminates what people thought and what actions came from those beliefs, but also suggests how belief, desire and expectation structured the interpretation and reception of geographical data. Misconceptions about the role that theories of hemispheric balance played in the discourse of a southern continent have long obscured the more complicated interplay of geographical lore and empirical discovery with the imperial and commercial milieus of early modern Europe. To say that people believed and held onto their belief in a southern continent because they wanted it to exist is to answer the basic question addressed to all imaginative geographies – why did people believe in something that does not exist? Where I attempt to go further is in showing exactly how desire and expectation structured the entire discourse as it evolved across the centuries

Scandinavian town planning from 1900 to 1930 and the contribution of Camillo Sitte.

Following the recent planning debate there has been a tendency to re¬evaluate the tradition of European town planning. In this context a historical study of the Scandinavian planning experience between 1900¬1930 is not only timely but can also reveal a number of ideologies surrounding the "city versus suburb" debate of our century. The first part of the study touches on two areas which contributed to the emergence of Sittesque Scandinavian planning, namely (a) the economic, political and cultural history of Scandinavia in the 19th century, and (b) European town planning models around the late 19th century. Section (a) focuses on the passage from an agrarian to an industrial economy in Scandinavia and outlines the new political role played by industrial capital and the attendant reevaluation of traditional ideas. It also discusses the importance played by "nationals' sentiment in the formulation of the cultural attitudes of each of the Scandinavian countries. Section (b) presents the gridiron and German scientific planning models, contrasting them with Sitte's theory of artistic city building. Particular attention is paid to identifying the primary categories of physical design of Sitte's model, as well as, the economic and ideological presuppositions on which it was founded and became operative in Scandinavia. The second part of the thesis comprises the central body of the rcomrch. It deals with documentation of planning activity between 1900 and 1930 in the major Scandinavian urban centres. This entails data collection on realised projects, competition entries, planning and building legislation urban housing policies, etc. The discussion that follows reveals the ideological and politico-economic reasons which allowed the Sittesque model to flotrish in Scandinavia between 1900-1930

Becoming Artifacts: Medieval Seals, Passports and the Future of Digital Identity

What does a digital identity token have to do with medieval seals? Is the history of passports of any use for enabling the discovery of Internet users\u27 identity when crossing virtual domain boundaries during their digital browsing and transactions? The agility of the Internet architecture and its simplicity of use have been the engines of its growth and success with the users worldwide. As it turns out, there lies also its crux. In effect, Internet industry participants have argued that the critical problem business is faced with on the Internet is the absence of an identity layer from the core protocols of its logical infrastructure. As a result, the cyberspace parallels a global territory without any identification mechanism that is reliable, consistent and interoperable across domains. This dissertation is an investigation of the steps being taken by Internet stakeholders in order to resolve its identity problems, through the lenses of historical instances where similar challenges were tackled by social actors. Social science research addressing the Internet identity issues is barely nascent. Research on identification systems in general is either characterized by a paucity of historical perspective, or scantily references digital technology and online identification processes. This research is designed to bridge that gap. The general question at its core is: How do social actors, events or processes enable the historical emergence of authoritative identity credentials for the public at large? This work is guided by that line of inquiry through three broad historical case studies: first, the medieval experience with seals used as identity tokens in the signing of deeds that resulted in transfers of rights, particularly estate rights; second, comes the modern, national state with its claim to the right to know all individuals on its territory through credentials such as the passport or the national identity card; and finally, viewed from the United States, the case of ongoing efforts to build an online digital identity infrastructure. Following a process-tracing approach to historical case study, this inquiry presents enlightening connections between the three identity frameworks while further characterizing each. We understand how the medieval doctrines of the Trinity and the Eucharist developed by schoolmen within the Church accommodated seals as markers of identity, and we understand how the modern state seized on the term `nationality\u27 - which emerged as late as in the 19th century - to make it into a legal fiction that was critical for its identification project. Furthermore, this investigation brings analytical insights which enable us to locate the dynamics driving the emergence of those identity systems. An ordering of the contributing factors in sequential categories is proposed in a sociohistorical approach to explain the causal mechanisms at work across these large phenomena. Finally this research also proposes historically informed projections of scenarios as possible pathways to the realization of authoritative digital identity. But that is the beginning of yet another story of identity