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‘Amsterdam is standing on Norway’– this was a popular saying in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. There was more than one inflection to the phrase. Amsterdam was, in the first instance, built atop a subterranean forest of Norwegian origin. But southern Norway was also a vital resource zone, subordinated to Amsterdam-based capital. This paper follows the movement of strategic commodity frontiers within early modern Europe from the standpoint of capitalism as world-ecology, joining in dialectical unity the production of capital and the production of nature. Our geographical focus is trained upon the emergence of the Global North Atlantic, that zone providing the strategic raw materials and food supplies indispensable to the consolidation of capitalism – timber, naval stores, metals, cereals, fish and whales. I argue for a broader geographical perspective on these movements, one capable of revealing the dialectical interplay of frontiers on all sides of the Atlantic. From its command posts in Amsterdam, Dutch capital deployed American silver in the creation of successive frontiers within Europe, transforming Scandinavian and Baltic regions. The frontier character of these transformations was decisive, premised on drawing readily exploitable supplies of land and labour power into the orbit of capital. We see in northern Europe precisely what we see in the Americas – a pattern of commodity-centred environmental transformation, and thence relative ecological exhaustion, from which the only escape was renewed global conquest and ever-wider cycles of combined and uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss inclusiveness of identification among farmers in Galicia (Spain) and The Netherlands. Identification with three nested categories—farmers in the local community, farmers in the country, and farmers in Europe was assessed among 167 Dutch and 248 Galician farmers at three points in time: winter of 1993/94, winter 1995 and fall 1995. Our findings suggest that inclusiveness reduces the level of identification. However, the observed patterns of identification were more complex than inclusiveness per se can account for. Borrowing from the common ingroup-identity model, functional and socialization models of identity formation, and a model of politicized collective identity we formulated hypotheses about patterns of identification that were to be expected. On the whole our findings supported our theoretical reasoning. Galician farmers appear to identify much less with farmers in their country and Europe than Dutch farmers do. Inclusiveness of identification appears to be linked to experience with national and supranational political institutions. More political knowledge and involvement appear to generate more inclusive patterns of identification. Among Galician farmers evaluation of the agricultural policy of the European Union is negatively related to identification with farmers in Europe, among Dutch farmers the two are positively related. Finally, more inclusive identities seem to be more politicized. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refutes Stark and lannaccone's recent argument about secularization in Europe as applied to the Netherlands. Relevant Dutch evidence shows that both organized religion and subjective religiosity have declined in the Netherlands since the 1950s. Any deregulation and increases in pluralism that occurred in that period did not have the theoretically expected effects. The anomalous Dutch case casts further doubt on the explanatory power of "supply-side" theories in the sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]