The Magnificent Spruce

2021 ◽  
pp. 425-441
Author(s):  
Carl Wennerlind

After its success in the Thirty Years’ War, Sweden harbored ambitions to establish an empire. To sustain its efforts, statesmen realized the need to generate more domestic wealth. The ensuing debates gave rise to an improvement discourse, centered on the harnessing of Sweden’s abundant natural resources. While most improvement writers were patronized by the state and offered state-centered analyses, the protagonist of this essay, Anders Kempe (1622–1689), was a staunch critic of Sweden’s warmongering state. In his mind, the state had become an obstacle to true human flourishing, which recent scientific development had put within humanity’s grasp. Free from wars, predatory taxation, and miseducation, the Swedish people would be in a position to create a society of abundance and righteousness. Kempe’s main recipe for progress was to use recent advancements in natural philosophy to transform nature into useable wealth. In his most famous publication, The Anatomized Spruce (1675), Kempe elaborated on the economic and medicinal benefits that a proper understanding of the spruce tree, its bark, branches, sap, roots, and needles might yield. In sharing the focus on the transformation of nature with other Swedish Cameralist writers, but wholeheartedly rejecting the state, Kempe can be categorized as an anarcho-Cameralist.

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
BJÖRN SUNDMARK

Recently past its centenary, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–7), by Selma Lagerlöf, has remained an international children's classic, famous for its charm and magical elements. This article returns to read the book in its original contexts, and sets out to demonstrate that it was also published as a work of instruction, a work of geography, calculated to build character and nation. Arguing that it represents the vested interests of the state school system, and the national ideology of modern Sweden, the article analyses Nils's journey as the production of a Swedish ‘space’. With a focus on representations of power and nationhood in the text, it points to the way Lagerlöf takes stock of the nation's natural resources, characterises its inhabitants, draws upon legends and history, and ultimately constructs a ‘folkhem’, where social classes, ethnic groups and linguistic differences are all made to contribute to a sense of Swedish belonging and destiny.


2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-83
Author(s):  
Pascal Schneider ◽  
Jean-Pierre Sorg

In and around the state-owned forest of Farako in the region of Sikasso, Mali, a large-scale study focused on finding a compromise allowing the existential and legitimate needs of the population to be met and at the same time conserving the forest resources in the long term. The first step in research was to sketch out the rural socio-economic context and determine the needs for natural resources for autoconsumption and commercial use as well as the demand for non-material forest services. Simultaneously, the environmental context of the forest and the resources available were evaluated by means of inventories with regard to quality and quantity. According to an in-depth comparison between demand and potential, there is a differentiated view of the suitability of the forest to meet the needs of the people living nearby. Propositions for a multipurpose management of the forest were drawn up. This contribution deals with some basic elements of research methodology as well as with results of the study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-205
Author(s):  
N. V. Firov

A comparative analysis of the prices of raw materials, fuel, electricity in Russia and Western countries, the dynamics of their growth and impact on the national economy. It is shown that in the interests of the country's economic development and improving the welfare of the population, it is necessary to use its natural resources more effectively, to pursue a more stringent and at the same time balanced policy to curb the growth of prices, taking into account the interests of the state and business.


Author(s):  
Anna Stilz

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. PRI.S3693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hang Fai Kwok ◽  
Craig Ivanyi ◽  
Andrew Morris ◽  
Chris Shaw

Traditionally man has looked to nature to provide cures for diseases. This approach still exists today in the form of ‘bio-prospecting’ for therapeutically-active compounds in venoms. For example, the venoms of many reptiles offer a spectacular laboratory of bioactive molecules, including peptides and proteins. In the last 10–15 years, there have been a number of major proteomic and genomic research breakthroughs on lizard venoms. In this current review, the key findings from these proteomic and genomic studies will be critically discussed and suggestions will be offered for future focused investigations. It is our intention that this article will not only provide a comprehensive picture of the state of current knowledge of the components of lizard venoms, but also engender awareness in readers of the need to protect and conserve such uniquely precious natural resources for several reasons, including the potential benefit of humankind.


2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat

AbstractMacIntyre’s theory of practices, institutions, and their respective kinds of goods, has revived and enriched the ethical critique of market economies, and his view of politics as centrally concerned with common goods and human flourishing presents a major challenge to neutralist liberal theorists’ attempts to exclude distinctively ethical considerations from political deliberation. However, the rejection of neutrality does not entail the rejection of liberalism tout court: questions of human flourishing may be accorded a legitimate role in political decisions-including those about economic systems - provided that the powers of the state remain subject to certain recognizably liberal constraints. Further, although neutralist liberals often defend market economies on the mistaken grounds that they alone are consistent with the principle of ethical neutrality, a non-neutralist defence of them should not be ruled out, especially if the substantive theory of goods used to evaluate them is somewhat less restrictive than MacIntyre’s.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Fuhuo Li

We try to pave a smooth road to a proper understanding of control problems in terms of mathematical disciplines, and partially show how to number-theorize some practical problems. Our primary concern is linear systems from the point of view of our principle of visualization of the state, an interface between the past and the present. We view all the systems as embedded in the state equation, thus visualizing the state. Then we go on to treat the chain-scattering representation of the plant of Kimura 1997, which includes the feedback connection in a natural way, and we consider theH∞-control problem in this framework. We may view in particular the unit feedback system as accommodated in the chain-scattering representation, giving a better insight into the structure of the system. Its homographic transformation works as the action of the symplectic group on the Siegel upper half-space in the case of constant matrices. Both ofH∞- and PID-controllers are applied successfully in the EV control by J.-Y. Cao and B.-G. Cao 2006 and Cao et al. 2007, which we may unify in our framework. Finally, we mention some similarities between control theory and zeta-functions.


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