Comparative-Historical Methods

What role did the parish play in people's lives in England and Wales between 1700 and the mid-twentieth century? By comparison with globalisation and its dislocating effects, the book stresses how important parochial belonging once was. Professor Snell discusses themes such as settlement law and practice, marriage patterns, cultures of local xenophobia, the continuance of out-door relief in people's own parishes under the new poor law, the many new parishes of the period and their effects upon people's local attachments. The book highlights the continuing vitality of the parish as a unit in people's lives, and the administration associated with it. It employs a variety of historical methods, and makes important contributions to the history of welfare, community identity and belonging. It is highly relevant to the modern themes of globalisation, de-localisation, and the decline of community, helping to set such changes and their consequences into local historical perspective.

This collection of essays is a major contribution to the study of oral composition and ritual communication, and in particular to the use of 'parallelism' (the poetic ordering of words and phrases in alternative, duplicate form). The introduction by James J. Fox sets the topic in historical perspective, beginning with Robert Lowth's introduction of the term 'parallelism' in 1753 in his study of biblical language, demonstrating that what was once viewed as a form of composition unique to Ancient Hebrew is a feature common to many literatures around the world. The volume thus presents a remarkable picture of life in eastern Indonesia, which is both valuable in itself and useful for comparative analysis. All of the essays contain original texts with translations, together with detailed commentaries on their content and the context of their performance. The study of parallelism and its use in situations of formal communication has been receiving increasing attention from anthropologists, l

This collection addresses key issues in the historical struggle for civil rights, political rights and social rights in the United States and Germany from the late nineteenth century to the present. Using a cross-national comparative approach, this book presents national case studies that explore the similarities and differences of conceptualizing rights on both sides of the Atlantic. This book analyses the struggle for these rights by individuals and groups and how this struggle became an essential feature not only in political discourse but also in social and political practice and culture in both Germany and the United States. More specifically, the book examines the different ways rights have been denied due to race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Considerable attention is given to the impact of Nazism and the struggle for social rights during and after World War II.

Shakespeare and Social Dialogue deals with Shakespeare's language and the rhetoric of Elizabethan letters. Moving beyond claims about the language of individual Shakespearean characters, Magnusson analyses dialogue, conversation, sonnets and particularly letters of the period, which are normally read as historical documents, as the verbal negotiation of specific social and power relations. Thus, the rhetoric of service or friendship is explored in texts as diverse as Sidney family letters, Shakespearean sonnets and Burghley's state letters. The book draws on ideas from discourse analysis and linguistic pragmatics, especially 'politeness theory', relating these to key ideas in epistolary handbooks of the period, including those by Erasmus and Angel Day and demonstrates that Shakespeare's language is rooted in the everyday language of Elizabethan culture. Magnusson creates a way of reading both literary texts and historical documents which bridges the gap between the methods of new histo

One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, refe

One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, refe

This comparative and historical study focuses on religious aspects of disease etiologies among five, systematically selected, African peoples: the San, Maasai, Sukuma, Kongo and Yoruba. Westerlund (hi

Demography in Archaeology, first published in 2006, is a review of current theory and method in the reconstruction of populations from archaeological data. Starting with a summary of demographic concepts and methods, the book examines historical and ethnographic sources of demographic evidence before addressing the methods by which reliable demographic estimates can be made from skeletal remains, settlement evidence and modern and ancient biomolecules. Recent debates in palaeodemography are evaluated, new statistical methods for palaeodemographic reconstruction are explained, and the notion that past demographic structures and processes were substantially different from those pertaining today is critiqued. The book covers a wide span of evidence, from the evolutionary background of human demography to the influence of natural and human-induced catastrophes on population growth and survival. This is essential reading for any archaeologist or anthropologist with an interest in relating t

A Linguistic History of Arabic presents a reconstruction of proto-Arabic by the methods of historical-comparative linguistics. It challenges the traditional conceptualization of an old, classical lang

Demography in Archaeology, first published in 2006, is a review of current theory and method in the reconstruction of populations from archaeological data. Starting with a summary of demographic concepts and methods, the book examines historical and ethnographic sources of demographic evidence before addressing the methods by which reliable demographic estimates can be made from skeletal remains, settlement evidence and modern and ancient biomolecules. Recent debates in palaeodemography are evaluated, new statistical methods for palaeodemographic reconstruction are explained, and the notion that past demographic structures and processes were substantially different from those pertaining today is critiqued. The book covers a wide span of evidence, from the evolutionary background of human demography to the influence of natural and human-induced catastrophes on population growth and survival. This is essential reading for any archaeologist or anthropologist with an interest in relating t

Some studies of ancient Roman masculinities have concentrated on the private aspects of the subject, particularly sexuality, and have drawn conclusions from a narrow field of reference, usually rhetorical practice. In contrast, this 2006 book examines the public and the most important aspect of Roman masculinity: manliness as represented by the concept of virtus. Using traditional historical, philological, and archaeological analyses, together with the methods of socio-linguistics and gender studies, it presents a comprehensive picture of how Roman manliness developed from the middle to the late Republic. Arguing that virtus was not, in essence, a moral concept, Myles McDonnell shows how the semantic range of the word, together with the manly ideal that it embodied, were altered by Greek cultural ideas; and how Roman manliness was contested in the religion, culture, and politics of the late Republic.

Herodotus' Histories is the first major surviving prose work from antiquity. Its range of interests is immense, covering the whole of the known world and much beyond, and it culminates in a detailed account of the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC. Moreover, research has shown that Herodotus is a sophisticated and at times even ironic narrator, and a pioneer and serious practitioner of historical research at a time when the Greeks' traditions about their past were still the fluid transmissions and memories of a largely oral society. This Companion provides a series of accessible chapters, written by distinguished scholars, illuminating many aspects of Herodotus' work: his skill in language and his narrative art; his intellectual preconceptions; his working methods and techniques; his attitude towards nature and the gods; his attitude towards foreign cultures and peoples; and his view of human life and human history.

This second volume of Brahms studies contains twelve contributions by leading international authorities on various music. Like the preceding volume of the same title (edited by Robert Pascall), Michael Musgrave's volume aims to provide original scholarly material on different facets of a major composer still inadequately discussed in book form and employs more precise methods of analysis and more critical approaches to materials then generally available in writings on Brahms in English. Half of the volume takes the music itself as focus, though from very different vantage points. There are two studies of a single opus (the two String Quartets Op. 51 Nos, 1 and 2), discussions of the Fourth Symphony and the motet 'Warum', and a view of Brahms's harmony. The underlying historical theme emerges more openly in an account of Brahms's interest in German Renaissance music. The remaining essays give details of the state of Brahms's unpublished compositions and arrangements at his death and the

Herodotus' Histories is the first major surviving prose work from antiquity. Its range of interests is immense, covering the whole of the known world and much beyond, and it culminates in a detailed account of the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC. Moreover, research has shown that Herodotus is a sophisticated and at times even ironic narrator, and a pioneer and serious practitioner of historical research at a time when the Greeks' traditions about their past were still the fluid transmissions and memories of a largely oral society. This Companion provides a series of accessible chapters, written by distinguished scholars, illuminating many aspects of Herodotus' work: his skill in language and his narrative art; his intellectual preconceptions; his working methods and techniques; his attitude towards nature and the gods; his attitude towards foreign cultures and peoples; and his view of human life and human history.

Just as each person develops from infancy to adulthood, all interpersonal relationships have a life history that encompasses the changes in how people communicate with each other. This book is about how a relationship transforms itself from one pattern of communication to another. The authors present a unique research method called 'relational-historical research', based on advances in dynamic systems theory in developmental psychology, and qualitative methods in life history research. It rests on three premises: that the developing relationship (not the individual) is the unit of analysis; that change emerges from, but is not entirely constrained by, the patterns of the past; and that the developmental process is best revealed by making frequent observations within a particular case before, during, and after a key developmental transition. Looking specifically at the mother–infant relationship, this is a compelling piece of research that will appeal to an international audience of int

The Ngwa region lies in the heart of the Nigerian palm belt. Palm oil is one of the oldest foodstuffs of the region and has also been an export crop, produced mainly by women, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. This 1988 book describes the rise and fall of the oil palm export industry. In contrast to the views of both dependency and vent-for-surplus theorists, it is shown that patterns of export growth and capital investment were heavily influenced by locally inspired changes in food production methods, gender and intergenerational relationships. The processes of change within the domestic and export economies became increasingly closely intertwined after 1924, when African coastal middlemen began to settle further inland and to spread the knowledge of cassava and Christianity. This book draws upon a wide range of economic, botanical, anthropological and historical studies as well as on colonial archives, but its heart lies in the oral evidence and life histories gen

The assessment of risks posed by natural hazards such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis or cyclones is often based on short-term historical records that may not reflect the full range or magnitude of events possible. As human populations grow, especially in hazard-prone areas, methods for accurately assessing natural hazard risks are becoming increasingly important. In Extreme Events Jonathan Nott describes the many methods used to reconstruct such hazards from natural long-term records. He demonstrates how long-term (multi-century to millennial) records are essential in gaining a realistic understanding of the variability of natural hazards, and how short-term historical records can often misrepresent the likely risks associated with natural hazards. This book will form a useful resource for students taking courses covering natural hazards and risk assessment. It will also be valuable for urban planners, policy makers and non-specialists as a guide to understanding and recons

A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, wh

This book explores the long-term forces shaping business attitudes in the British and American cotton industries from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Mary Rose traces social, political and developmental differences from the early stages of industrialization. She demonstrates how firms become embedded in networks, and evolve according to business values and strategies. The book examines local and regional networks, the changing competitive environment, community characteristics and national differences. Rose's findings challenge traditional views with new evidence that the character and achievements of each industry uniquely reflect local circumstances and historical experience. This is a critical synthesis of the multidisciplinary literature on the cotton textile industries of two major industrial nations and a study of the changing forces influencing decision making. An important contribution to comparative business history, this book will be of interest to graduates and scho

Athapaskan languages are well known for their intricate morphology, in particular the complexity of their verbs. The significance of these languages for linguistic theory is widely acknowledged. In this book, Keren Rice offers a rich typological survey of morpheme ordering in Athapaskan verbs, with implications for both synchronic grammar and language change. She shows that verb structure is in fact widely predictable across Athapaskan languages if appropriate syntactic factors and an overarching principle of semantic scope are taken into account. The presentation also includes a detailed study of argument and aspectual systems. This landmark volume was the first major comparative study of its type for the Athapaskan language family, combining descriptive depth with a contemporary theoretical perspective. Clear and insightful, it will interest Athapaskanists, typologists, historical and theoretical linguists alike.

Clear text and hundreds of anatomical drawings are accompanied by a series of text boxes, which discuss anatomical methods and ocular surgery, as well as historical 'vignettes', which illustrate how w

This volume is a continuation of the catalogue compiled by Colin F. Baker and Meira Polliack, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Arabic Old Series (T-S Ar. 1a-54) published in 2001, and covers the manuscripts in the New Series. The volume describes almost 9,500 Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic fragments of the Cairo Genizah. The manuscripts include Bible translations and commentaries, philosophical, medical and historical texts, as well as business and private letters. They will be of interest to scholars from a broad range of fields including theology, history of the Middle East, Jewish studies, Middle Arabic, comparative Semitic studies, medicine, mathematics and geography. These manuscripts offer a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of the Jews living in Arab lands in the medieval period.

Schwartz (humanities, Bar-Ilan U.) employs historical and cultural methods and manuscript material to present new perspectives and insight into the dynamics of philosophical speculation, particularly

Fossil fuels are a finite resource, and their continued use as the world's dominant energy supply is damaging the environment. Future use of alternative methods of energy supply is inescapable, and this book explores the historical origins, technical features, marketability, and environmental impacts of the complete range of sustainable energy technologies: solar, biomass, wind, hydropower, geothermal power, ocean-energy sources, solar-derived hydrogen fuel, and energy storage. The aim is to inform policy analysts and decision makers of the options available for sustainable energy production. The book is therefore written so as to be accessible to an audience from a broad range of backgrounds and scientific training. It will also be a valuable supplementary text for advanced courses in environmental studies, energy economics and policy, and engineering.

What came before 'postmodernism' in historical studies? By thinking through the assumptions, methods and cast of mind of English historians writing between about 1870 and 1970, this book reveals the intellectual world of the modernists and offers a full analysis of English historiography in this crucial period. Modernist historiography set itself the objective of going beyond the colourful narratives of 'whigs' and 'popularizers' in order to establish history as the queen of the humanities and as a rival to the sciences as a vehicle of knowledge. Professor Bentley does not follow those who deride modernism as 'positivist' or 'empiricist' but instead shows how it set in train brilliant new styles of investigation that transformed how historians understood the English past. But he shows how these strengths were eventually outweighed by inherent confusions and misapprehensions that threatened to kill the very subject that the modernists had intended to sustain.

What came before 'postmodernism' in historical studies? By thinking through the assumptions, methods and cast of mind of English historians writing between about 1870 and 1970, this book reveals the intellectual world of the modernists and offers a full analysis of English historiography in this crucial period. Modernist historiography set itself the objective of going beyond the colourful narratives of 'whigs' and 'popularizers' in order to establish history as the queen of the humanities and as a rival to the sciences as a vehicle of knowledge. Professor Bentley does not follow those who deride modernism as 'positivist' or 'empiricist' but instead shows how it set in train brilliant new styles of investigation that transformed how historians understood the English past. But he shows how these strengths were eventually outweighed by inherent confusions and misapprehensions that threatened to kill the very subject that the modernists had intended to sustain.

This book introduces students to the chief disciplines, methods and sources employed in 'doing' ancient history, as opposed to 'reading' it. The book:Encourages readers to engage with historical sourc

This book introduces students to the chief disciplines, methods and sources employed in 'doing' ancient history, as opposed to 'reading' it. The book:Encourages readers to engage with historical sourc

This book analyzes the triumphs and failures of the Castro regime in the area of race relations. It places the Cuban revolution in a comparative and international framework and challenges arguments that the regime eliminated racial inequality or that it was profoundly racist. Through interviews, historical materials, and survey research, it provides a balanced view. The book maintains that Cuba has not been a racial democracy as some have argued. However, it also argues that Cuba has done more than any other society to eliminate racial inequality. The contemporary outlook of the book demonstrates how much of Cuban racial ideology was unchanged by the revolution. Thus, the current implementation of market reforms and in particular tourism has exacerbated racial inequalities. Finally, it holds that despite these shortcomings, the regime remains popular among blacks because they perceive their alternatives of the US and the Miami Exile community to be far worse.

This book analyzes the triumphs and failures of the Castro regime in the area of race relations. It places the Cuban revolution in a comparative and international framework and challenges arguments that the regime eliminated racial inequality or that it was profoundly racist. Through interviews, historical materials, and survey research, it provides a balanced view. The book maintains that Cuba has not been a racial democracy as some have argued. However, it also argues that Cuba has done more than any other society to eliminate racial inequality. The contemporary outlook of the book demonstrates how much of Cuban racial ideology was unchanged by the revolution. Thus, the current implementation of market reforms and in particular tourism has exacerbated racial inequalities. Finally, it holds that despite these shortcomings, the regime remains popular among blacks because they perceive their alternatives of the US and the Miami Exile community to be far worse.

For the first time textbooks and other educational writings published in England and America in the three centuries before the 'modern' phase of English teaching (about 1700 volumes in all) have been subject to a detailed and scholarly examination. Most of the American material will be new to readers outside the United States and much of it is little known there. The writings vividly demonstrate the development of English as a teaching subject: when its varied components were first taught, by what kinds of teachers, with what intentions and by what methods. Ian Michael has made a major contribution to the history of education and of literacy, and of English in particular. Not only academic educationalists interested in the history of the curriculum, but teachers - from primary schools to university - who want to investigate the historical background of their subject and discover how their forerunners taught - will find this book of compelling interest.

This book focuses on the 'after-life' of historical texts in the period between the arrival of printing in England and the early eighteenth century. Whereas previous studies of historical writing during this period have focused on their authors and on their style or methodology, this work examines the history book from a number of other perspectives. The intent is to situate the study of history books within the current literature on the history of the book and the history of print culture. After discussing the process whereby the inheritance of the medieval chronicle was broken down into a variety of different historical genres during the sixteenth century, the author turns to the questions of how and why history books were read, who owned them, the borrowing and lending of them, their production and printing, and methods for marketing and distributing them.

Recent critiques of neoevolutionary formulations that focus primarily on the development of powerful hierarchies have called for broadening the empirical base for complex society studies. Redressing the neglect of sub-Saharan examples in comparative discussions on complex society, this book considers how case material from the region can enhance our understanding of the nature, origins and development of complexity. The archaeological, historical and anthropological case materials are relevant to a number of recent concerns, revealing how complexity has emerged and developed in a variety of ways. Contributors engage important theoretical issues, including the continuing influence of deeply embedded evolutionary notions in archaeological concepts of complexity, the importance of alternative modes of complex organization such as flexible hierarchies, multiple overlapping hierarchies, and horizontal differentiation, and the significance of different forms of power. The distinguished list

Originally published in 1966. The main purpose of this book is not philosophical speculation, but to draw the obvious conclusions from political and historical facts about the prospects and methods of

This book is a comparative macrosociological study of the interaction between religious virtuosi and society in two civilizations: traditional Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism. Merging Weberian sociology with the Maussian tradition of gift-analysis, and criticizing the neglect of meaning in current comparative historical sociology, the author also argues the need for a multidimensional approach capable of addressing the part played by religious orientations in shaping the institutional strength and ideological power of religious elites in the historical framework of the Great Traditions.

This book traces the historical development of major language teaching methods in terms of theoretical principles and classroom procedures, and provides a critical evaluation of each. Drawing from se

Describes the branch of astronomy in which processes in the universe are investigated with experimental methods employed in particle-physics experiments. After a historical introduction the basics of

This wide-ranging book is the first to examine one of the most significant and characteristic features of modern medicine - specialization - in historical and comparative context. Based on research in

Aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and related disciplines, this book presents the concepts and results underlying the Bayesian, frequentist and Fisherian approaches, with particular emphasis on the contrasts between them. Computational ideas are explained, as well as basic mathematical theory. Written in a lucid and informal style, this concise text provides both basic material on the main approaches to inference, as well as more advanced material on developments in statistical theory, including: material on Bayesian computation, such as MCMC, higher-order likelihood theory, predictive inference, bootstrap methods and conditional inference. It contains numerous extended examples of the application of formal inference techniques to real data, as well as historical commentary on the development of the subject. Throughout, the text concentrates on concepts, rather than mathematical detail, while maintaining appropriate levels of formality. Each chapter

The main objective of this 2002 book is to show that behind the bewildering diversity of historical speculative episodes it is possible to find hidden regularities, thus preparing the way for a unified theory of market speculation. Speculative bubbles require the study of various episodes in order for a comparative perspective to be obtained and the analysis developed in this book follows a few simple but unconventional ideas. Investors are assumed to exhibit the same basic behavior during speculative episodes whether they trade stocks, real estate, or postage stamps. The author demonstrates how some of the basic concepts of dynamical system theory, such as the notions of impulse response, reaction times and frequency analysis, play an instrumental role in describing and predicting speculative behavior. This book will serve as a useful introduction for students of econophysics, and readers with a general interest in economics as seen from the perspective of physics.