Shoes and shoemakers in late medieval Bergen and Stockholm

The purpose of this article is to analyse the differences between shoemakers in late medieval Bergen and Stockholm on one hand, and the differences between the archaeological finds of shoes in the two towns on the other hand. The relations between those differences and the possible reasons for disparities will be discussed.To judge from the written sources, the ethnic background, the political situation and the inner organization of the shoemakers were quite different in Bergen and in Stockholm. In Bergen there was a strong influence of the Hanseatic League, Liibeck in particular, on the shoemakers, and this might have had implications for the shoe production. In Stockholm, there was more room for varied influences. The questions to be discussed in the following are thus firstly if there are discrepancies between the Stockholm and Bergen shoemakers and if so the background for such discrepancies. Secondly, if differences between the shoes found in the two towns might be explained as a result of differences between the way the shoemakers were organized in the two towns. This will be seen in a European context, as well as in the context of the influence ofLiibeck on the shoemakers in Bergen

Chapter Maritime Networks and Premodern Conflict Management on Multiple Levels. The Example of Danzig and the Giese Family

This article argues that a novel way to analyse maritime networks in premodern northern Europe is to trace the activities of people involved in conflict management. These people were traders, magistrates, judges, urban diplomats: sometimes all comprised in one person or a family. Specifically, if we take the Hanseatic city of Danzig and the Giese family as an example, it becomes apparent that these ‘conflict managers’ operated on various levels: the city, the region, the state, the Hanse and on the level of politics and economic policy between states and cities. Economic interests and conflicts were intertwined with political, social and cultural matters, and should be investigated together

cohesion and conflict in transnational merchant families

How do people negotiate the diversity of positionalities within kin groups? Through a diachronic approach, I investigate how Ali and Jalal, two merchants with Azeri and Gilaki ethnic identifications who came to Hamburg in the 1930s, mobilized kin to generate capital along the lines of generation, gender, and age. The reader simultaneously learns about the local history of Iranian immigration. Building on literature about historical merchant networks, the social organization of the Iranian marketplace (bazaar), the anthropology of kinship and transnational families, I question the social cohesion on which Aihwa Ong's study of flexible capital creation relies. The material suggests that the experience of family relations influences agents' positioning in the local Iranian social field