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Should we systematically see a connection between movement and a general weakening of the position of the nation-state? Should we be thinking in terms of a further consequence of European regional integration? To what extent is this a case of a new social construction of places in the Balkan region or the Mediterranean? Answers to these questions can be found in this chapter showing the creation of the phenomena of convergence and standardisation of lifestyles, which paradoxically fosters a discourse of identification that makes these small groups stand out. In this chapter, Pierre Sintès explores the territorial impact of the transformation in the ways of inhabiting place, the mobilisation of memory and the scales of globalisation in the Balkans.

This chapter describes the compilation of a new digital resource for historical dialectology: The Dunfermline Corpus, from the Late Middle Scots period (c. 1550–1700), recently relabelled as “Transition Scots” (Kopaczyk 2013). Transition Scots is the outcome of a contact situation of two written varieties – Scots and Southern English – that are both on the verge of standardisation. A diachronic analysis of five linguistic variables in The Dunfermline Corpus that are known to be distinctive features of Older Scots as opposed to Southern English usage confirm that Anglicisation proceeded at a faster page at supralocal levels than at local levels. Using a sociolinguistic, paleographic micro-approach, the author reconstructs the “community of practice” of town clerks that produced the local records. The findings suggest that the town clerks were slow to adopt Southern English forms because many clerks and scribes were trained by their own fathers, almost as if the clerkship was a family-run business. It is only when the transmission of the orthographic idiolect of this community was disrupted by a new clerk from outside the immediate scribal network that we see bursts of change towards the English forms.

We focus on transactions and their costs: how the where and who of ‘doing deals’ shapes choices about which business locations are more or less desirable. It unpicks the nature of the choices firms are making: what sort of transactions; what this imposes in terms of search costs; and how ICT is shifting the boundaries of these choices. Yet face-to-face interactions can still make or break a deal, and the informational advantages from being in central places and being able to meet a wide range of collaborators and competitors, can outweigh high urban costs. It looks at how distinguishing between co-location, agglomeration, and clustering can help us to understand the ‘stickiness’ of some locations and the vulnerability of others; and what drives firms’ choices along the axis of centralisation versus dispersal - where it seems that even in a digital age, many of them still can’t, or daren’t, operate without face-to-face contact.

This chapter describes the standardisation of the English style of ballroom dance and the professionalisation of the dance community, showing that these processes were inextricably connected. The catalyst to the dance profession’s consolidation was a series of conferences convened in the 1920s by prominent teachers who sought to standardise the steps of new ballroom dances arriving in Britain from the United States and continental Europe. From these events emerged the rudimentary English style, which the profession then passed on to the dancing public via dancing schools, exhibition dancing, dance competitions and print culture. However, the chapter argues that the success – and even the steps and figures – of a dance were not determined entirely by this top-down process. Not only did a significant segment of the dancing public eschew instruction, and remain largely oblivious to professional activities, but the two groups were not always aligned in their dancing preferences. The result was that questions about which dances would be danced in Britain, how they would be performed, and what the gradually evolving national style would look like, were continually negotiated between producers and consumers of popular dance.

This chapter examines the evolution of the dance hall industry – one of the major cultural producers that shaped the commercialisation and experience of popular dance in Britain during the interwar and wartime periods. The new purpose-built dancing spaces that began to emerge after the war were affordable to Britons of almost every class, and many adopted a standard layout and format, providing an increasing uniformity of experience throughout the nation. A standard dancing experience was in fact a major objective of figures like Carl L. Heimann, managing director of Mecca, Britain’s largest chain of dance halls. However, despite this commercial might and cultural authority, the chapter shows that patrons entered into ongoing negotiations with the dance hall industry. A great disparity remained in terms of the access to and quality of public dancing spaces for Britons of different regions and classes, but most significantly, the dancing public made important choices as to where, how, and why they consumed dancing. This served to individualise their experience and kept going to the palais from becoming a wholly homogenised experience.