Comparative-Historical Methods

The contents of this volume are drawn from the seventh International Symposium in Economic Theory and Econometrics, and represent recent advances in the development of concepts and methods in political economy. Contributors include leading practitioners working on formal, applied, and historical approaches to the subject. The collection will interest scholars in the fields of political science and political sociology no less than economics. Part I outlines relevant concepts in political economy, including implementation, community, ideology, and institutions. Part II covers theory and applications of the spatial model of voting. Part III considers the different characteristics that govern the behaviour of institutions, while Part IV analyses competition between political representatives. Part V is concerned with the way in which government acquires information held by voters or advisors, and Part VI addresses government choice on monetary policy and taxation.

A comparative analysis of two 1937 textbooks, Personality by Gordon W. Allport and Psychology of Personality by Ross Stagner. Contributors discuss the historical and personal background of the two

This is an up-to-date and integrated introduction to model theory, designed to be used for graduate courses (for students who are familiar with first-order logic), and as a reference for more experienced logicians and mathematicians. Model theory is concerned with the notions of definition, interpretation and structure in a very general setting, and is applied to a wide variety of other areas such as set theory, geometry, algebra (in particular group theory), and computer science (e.g. logic programming and specification). Professor Hodges emphasises definability and methods of construction, and introduces the reader to advanced topics such as stability. He also provides the reader with much historical information and a full bibliography, enhancing the book's use as a reference.

This book is an ambitious attempt to develop a cognitive approach to religion. Focusing particularly on ritual action, it borrows analytical methods from linguistics and other cognitive sciences. The authors, a philosopher of science and a scholar of comparative religion, provide a lucid critical review of established approaches to religion, and make a strong plea for the combination of interpretation and explanation. Often represented as competitive approaches, they are rather, complementary, equally vital to the study of symbolic systems.

Historical Linguistics provides a comprehensive and clearly written introduction to historical linguistic theory and methods. Since its first publication in 1962 the book has established itself as cor

Historically, naturalists who proposed theories of evolution, including Darwin and Wallace, did so in order to explain the apparent relationship of natural classification. This book begins by exploring the intimate historical relationship between patterns of classification and patterns of phylogeny. However, it is a circular argument to use the data for classification. Alec Panchen presents other evidence for evolution in the form of a historically based but rigorously logical argument. This is followed by a history of methods of classification and phylogeny reconstruction including current mathematical and molecular techniques. The author makes the important claim that if the hierarchical pattern of classification is a real phenomenon, then biology is unique as a science in making taxonomic statements. This conclusion is reached by way of historical reviews of theories of evolutionary mechanism and the philosophy of science as applied to biology. The book is addressed to biologists, p

This uniquely comprehensive historical study analyses and explains how international societies function. The author examines ancient city states and then looks in more detail at European society and w

This uniquely comprehensive historical study analyses and explains how international societies function. The author examines ancient city states and then looks in more detail at European society and w

An introductory reference guide to the growing body of literature on the history of the American family. The contributors approach the subject from both historical and comparative perspectives. The fa

The dynamics of physical, chemical, biological or fluid systems generally must be described by nonlinear models, whose detailed mathematical solutions are not obtainable. To understand some aspects of such dynamics, various complementary methods and viewpoints are of crucial importance. In this book and its companion volume, Perspectives of nonlinear dynamics, volume 1, the perspectives generated by analytical, topological and computational methods, and interplays between them, are developed in a variety of contexts. The presentation and style is intended to stimulate the reader's imagination to apply these methods to a host of problems and situations. The text is complemented by copious references, extensive historical and bibliographical notes, exercises and examples, and appendices giving more details of some mathematical ideas. Each chapter includes an extensive section commentary on the exercises and their solution. Graduate students and research workers in physics, applied mathem

Encapsulating as it does research that has been undertaken on the sociological, anthropological and political aspects of the history of ancient Israel, this important book is designed to follow in the tradition of works in the series sponsored by The Society for Old Testament Study which began with the publication of The People and the Book in 1925. The World of Ancient Israel is especially concerned to explore in greater depth than comparable studies the areas and degrees of overlap between approaches to the subject of Old Testament research adopted by scholars and students of theology and the social sciences. Increasing numbers of scholars have recognised the valuable insights that can be gained from a cross-disciplinary approach, and it is becoming clear that the early biblical traditions about the formation of the Israelite state must be examined in the light of comparative anthropology if useful historical conclusions are to be drawn from them.

The various approaches to pest control are reviewed with emphasis on their history, advantages, disadvantages and future potential. The book discusses how far chemical control has created problems and how far these may be solved by further chemical control or by alternative methods. The reasons why insects are pest problems are discussed so that the ecological merits and demerits of the various control methods can be assessed. Stress is laid on both the biotic and economic environments in which pest control has to operate. • Presents a balanced case concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the chemical control of pests in historical context. • A wide variety of examples are cited and an up-to-date guide to original sources is presented. • Thoroughly revised and updated edition of a highly successful concise textbook.

The problems, purposes and methods of history writing have been the subject of varied debate for almost three millennia. This book is a collection of views on a range of fundamental historical questio

Cardinal Richelieu is one of the best known and most studied statesmen in European history; his Spanish contemporary and rival, the Count-Duke of Olivares, one of the least known. The contrasting historical fortunes of the two men reflect the outcome of the great struggle in seventeenth-century Europe between France and Spain: the triumph of France assured the fame of Richelieu, while Spain's failure condemned Olivares to historical neglect. This fascinating book by the distinguished historian J. H. Elliott argues that contemporaries, for whom Olivares was at least as important as Richelieu, shared none of posterity's certainty about the inevitability of that outcome. His absorbing comparative portrait of the two men, as personalities and as statesmen, through their policies and their mutual struggle, offers unique insights into seventeenth-century Europe and the nature of power and statesmanship.

Modern social sciences have been committed to the improvement of public policy. However, doubts have arisen about the possibility and desirability of a policy-oriented social science. In this book, leading specialists in the field analyse both the development and failings of policy-oriented social science. In contrast to other writings on the subject, this volume presents a distinctively historical and comparative approach. By looking at earlier periods, the contributors demonstrate how policy orientation has been central to the emergence and evolution of the social sciences as a form of professional activity. Case studies of rarely examined societies such as Poland, Brazil and Japan further demonstrate the various ways in which intellectual developments have been shaped by the societal contexts in which they have emerged and how they have taken part in the shaping of these societies.

This book analyzes, with unprecedented breadth and coverage, the development, maturation, growth, and sudden decline of a distinctive, regional urban economic system that developed along the upper Mississippi River north of St. Louis during the middle third of the nineteenth century. Between 1820 and the Civil War the upper Mississippi River valley was at the center of national and international attention. At the edge of the northern frontier, this area, known as 'The Great West,' was the destination of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the East and from northern Europe. To many, its rich lands, temperate climate, and vast rivers offered an opportunity to establish a better life, as well as a chance to enter, if desired, the mainstream of American life. Drawing from a variety of methods used in historical geography, economic history, systems analysis, and social and urban history, Timothy Mahoney analyzes how early settlement patterns were affected by experience, climate, and ge

This 1990 study in historical sociology explores the relationship between educational development and religious change in Norwegian society during a period of significant social and economic transition. John Flint traces the processes whereby the laity radically reduced clerical control over religious institutions. He examines census materials, reports to the Ministries of the Church and Education, and information from organizational histories, using historical role analysis to describe the changing relationships among state church pastors, parish school teachers, pupils, parents, and lay preachers. In his examination of the movement toward mass literacy, John Flint draws on and contributes to the sociology of comparative education development. His findings from this Norwegian study have wider theoretical and methodological implications, and will be of interest to historians and sociologists studying religion and education.

David Halliburton's book is a richly textured study of the complete writings of Stephen Crane, including Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, The Red Badge of Courage, and the less well-known fiction, newswriting, and poetry. Offering close readings of the works within a broad framework, Halliburton sets out to explore the imaginative world Crane created in his total œuvre of fiction, poetry and reportage. Comparative and interdisciplinary methods, combined with insights from historians such as Toynbee and Hofsteader, enable Halliburton to shed light on a number of issues. These include Crane's interest in musicality, the importance of his poetry and journalism to his other writings, the phenomenology of his social structures, his mastery of prosody, and the relation of his writings to the ideas of thinkers such as William James, Santayana, Weber and Sartre. This ambitious and comprehensive book sets a standard by which to measure all future interpretations of Crane.

The concern of these studies is with how the exercise of critical methods can be reconciled with the assumption that the Hebrew Bible is a Christian book. With Andrew of St Victor this concern is expressed as a robust, human and historical interest. William Fulke, influenced by Renaissance linguistic science, asserted that the quality of a translation from Hebrew into English is determined entirely by scholarly competence and integrity. Gregory Martin accepted the idea of an English translation with the greatest reluctance; he even rejected Fulke's demand for a return to the 'original' languages of Hebrew and Greek, and translated from the Latin Vulgate. McKane thus reviews the shifts in the Church's understanding of the nature and authority of its scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, and shows how the beginnings of the critical scholarship of modern times is connected with, and has grown out of, that change in understanding.

Although the complexity and capability of flight simulators have matched the growth of aerospace technology, there has until now been no textbook dealing specifically with the design and construction of flight simulators. This is a primary purpose of Flight Simulation. Written in collaboration with a number of internationally known specialists, the book considers the subject in three sections. Firstly it introduces the concept of simulation in order to identify the essential elements which make up the modern flight simulator. The development of these elements is also traced through the historical evolution of flight simulation. The main section of the book commences with an exposition of the mathematical models into dynamic physical devices capable of representing the response of a specific aircraft and its systems. The simulation of the flight environment is also covered in relation to cockpit motion systems and methods of representing the external visual scene. Another important aspe

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

In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the frontier in American historical writing, Hal Barron employs a range of sources to reconstruct the social and economic history of a nineteenth-century rural community - Chelsea, Vermont -which was profoundly affected by population loss and economic stagnation at a time when most of the country was experiencing geographical expansion and economic growth. The author's lucid, accessible account explores the hard choices faced by the people of Chelsea as the economic vitality drained out of their community and shows how they dealt with these choices. Using new methods of social history to place Chelsea in the larger context of nineteenth-century American culture and society, this book provides an innovative contribution to the history of rural America.

'Why still read it? Why should scholars consult it and undergraduates study it? The plan answer is that still after ninety years remains the greatest single book on English medieval history': thus J. C. Holt in his foreword to this new impression of one of the classic historical texts in any language. In three extended essays Maitland exploits the information in Domesday to analyse and reconstruct the society, law, government, economy and even something of the mental and imaginative world of early medieval England. Essay I examines the nature of English society in 1066 and how, by 1086, this had changed. The second essay explores pre-Conquest England, stretching back through the Anglo-Saxon law codes and land-books to the English settlement, its social structure and administrative geography. Essay III uses an exhaustive discussion of the hide (that 'dreary old question') to look again at methods of assessment and measurement, and their relationship to the wealth and resources of Englan

The first comprehensive and comparative analysis of urban growth in the American South and West defines the historical growth of the Sunbelt. Abbott examines the economic base of southern and western

This study examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a three hundred year period in Bahia, a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on little-used archival sources, plantations accounts, and notarial records, Professor Schwartz has examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods the various groups that made up plantation society. While he devotes much attention to masters and slaves, he views slavery ultimately as part of a larger structure of social and economic relations. The peculiarities of sugar-making and the nature of plantation labour are used throughout the book as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed, so that studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis, while at many points direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are also made.

In this volume, the author covers the mathematical methods appropriate to both linear-systems theory and signal processing. The text deals with a number of topics usually found in introductory linear-systems courses, such as complex numbers and Laplace transforms, and addresses additional topics such as complex variable theory and Fourier series and transforms. Although the discussion is mathematically self-contained, it assumes that the reader has a firm background in calculus and differential equations. Each chapter contains a number of worked examples plus exercises designed to allow the student to put concepts into practice. The author writes in a mathematically elegant yet relaxed and readable style, and provides interesting historical notes along the way. Undergraduate students of electrical engineering, applied mathematics, and related disciplines - and their teachers - will welcome this book.

Until recently, dominant theoretical paradigms in the comparative social sciences did not highlight states as organizational structures or as potentially autonomous actors. Indeed, the term 'state' was rarely used. Current work, however, increasingly views the state as an agent which, although influenced by the society that surrounds it, also shapes social and political processes. The contributors to this volume, which includes some of the best recent interdisciplinary scholarship on states in relation to social structures, make use of theoretically engaged comparative and historical investigations to provide improved conceptualizations of states and how they operate. Each of the book's major parts presents a related set of analytical issues about modern states, which are explored in the context of a wide range of times and places, both contemporary and historical, and in developing and advanced-industrial nations. The first part examines state strategies in newly developing countries.

Over the past thirty years Paul Feyerabend has developed an extremely distinctive and influentical approach to problems in the philosophy of science. The most important and seminal of his published essays are collected here in two volumes, with new introductions to provide an overview and historical perspective on the discussions of each part. Volume 1 presents papers on the interpretation of scientific theories, together with papers applying the views developed to particular problems in philosophy and physics. The essays in volume 2 examine the origin and history of an abstract rationalism, as well as its consequences for the philosophy of science and methods of scientific research. Professor Feyerabend argues with great force and imagination for a comprehensive and opportunistic pluralism. In doing so he draws on extensive knowledge of scientific history and practice, and he is alert always to the wider philosophical, practical and political implications of conflicting views. These t

Over the past thirty years Paul Feyerabend has developed an extremely distinctive and influentical approach to problems in the philosophy of science. The most important and seminal of his published essays are collected here in two volumes, with new introductions to provide an overview and historical perspective on the discussions of each part. Volume 1 presents papers on the interpretation of scientific theories, together with papers applying the views developed to particular problems in philosophy and physics. The essays in volume 2 examine the origin and history of an abstract rationalism, as well as its consequences for the philosophy of science and methods of scientific research. Professor Feyerabend argues with great force and imagination for a comprehensive and opportunistic pluralism. In doing so he draws on extensive knowledge of scientific history and practice, and he is alert always to the wider philosophical, practical and political implications of conflicting views. These t

Some of the most important questions of the social sciences in the twentieth century have been posed by scholars working at the intersections of social theory and history viewed on a grand scale. The core essays of this book focus on the careers and contributions of nine of these scholars: Marc Bloch, Karl Polanyi, S. N. Eisenstadt, Reinhard Bendix, Perry Anderson, E. P. Thompson, Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Barrington Moore, Jr. The essays convey a vivid sense of the vision and values each of these major scholars brings (or bought) to his work and analyze and evaluate the research designs and methods each used in his most important works. The introduction and conclusion discuss the long-running tradition of historically grounded research in sociology, while the conclusion also provides a detailed discussion and comparison of three recurrent strategies for bringing historical evidence and theoretical ideas to bear upon one another. informative, thought-provoking, and unusu

Work and Politics develops a historical and comparative sociology of workplace relations in industrial capitalist societies. Professor Sabel argues that the system of mass production using specialized machines and mostly unskilled workers was the result of the distribution of power and wealth in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain and the United States, not of an inexorable logic of technological advance. Once in place, this system created the need for workers with systematically different ideas about the acquisition of skill and the desirability of long-term employment. Professor Sabel shows how capitalists have played on naturally existing division in the workforce in order to match workers with diverse ambitions to jobs in different parts of the labor market. But he also demonstrates the limits, different from work group to work group, of these forms of collaboration.

This volume contains the 1983 second edition of Textbook of Contraceptive Practice. The second edition represented a comprehensive reappraisal of the subject, taking account of the great expansion in information on all aspects of family planning that had occurred since the first edition was published in 1969. It emphasized the historical, social and political, and clinical perspectives of the subject. Advances in oral contraception, in the use of intra-uterine devices and in surgical methods of family planning were considered in relation to consumer choice and their overall risks and benefits. All techniques of contraception, from folk methods to methods of abortion and sterilization, were discussed in detail and evaluated.

Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660 is a comparative historical study of revolution in the greatest royal states of Western Europe during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. Revolution as a general problem and the causes and character of revolution in early modern Europe have been among the most widely discussed and debated topics in history and the social sciences since the 1940s. Although the subject of social and political unrest and revolution in the early modern period has received much attention, and despite the existence of a very large literature devoted to particular revolutions of the time, no one has attempted the broad comparative synthesis that is given by Professor Zarogin in this study. Volume I of Rebels and Rulers presents a critical discussion of different concepts and interpretations of revolution, including Marxism. It reviews previous attempts to deal with early modern revolutions and suggests a typology appropriate to the latter. It then provid

Intended for use in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, this text presents a wide survey of methodological procedures and theoretical positions.

The preparation, serving and eating of food are common features of all human societies, and have been the focus of study for numerous anthropologists - from Sir James Frazer onwards - from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is in the context of this previous anthropological work that Jack Goody sets his own observations on cooking in West Africa. He criticises those approaches which overlook the comparative historical dimension of culinary, and other, cultural differences that emerge in class societies, both of which elements he particularly emphasises in this book. The central question that Professor Goody addresses here is why a differentiated 'haute cuisine' has not emerged in Africa, as it has in other parts of the world. His account of cooking in West Africa is followed by a survey of the culinary practices of the major Eurasian societies throughout history - ranging from Ancient Egypt, Imperial Rome and medieval China to early modern Europe - in which he rela

The division of the world into rich and poor nations, and the division within poor nations between a minority of rich people and a majority of poor people living at a minimum subsistence level, has been obvious to careful observers for a long time. This book gives an overview of the problems of underdevelopment confronting third-world countries, making use of both Marxist and neo-Keynesian methods of analysis. It makes clear the historical origins of these contemporary problems, particularly with reference to the major countries of Asia and Latin America, and discusses the ways in which inequalities, both within and between countries, are propaged and perpetuated. Other problems analysed are the typical patterns of fluctuating growth faced by third-world countries; the social structures in both rural and urban areas and their influence on the behaviour of governments and private investors in these countries; and environmental control and population planning issues faced by these countr

This introduction to mathematical methods that are useful for studying population phenomena is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and will be accessible to scientists who do not have a strong mathematics background. The material is graded in mathematical difficulty. The earlier parts of the book involve elementary diference equations while later chapters present topics that require more mathematical preparation. Models of total population and population age structure are first derived and studied, and then models of random population events are presented in terms of Markov chains. The last two chapters deal with mathematical methods used to uncover qualitative behaviour of more complicated difference equations. Each chapter begins with a simple model, usually of some historical interest, that defines the primary goals of the chapter. Exercises, for which solutions are provided, illustrate material in the text and also deal with models more advanced than those de

Ecologists are making increasing use of computer methods in analyzing ecological data on plant and animal communities. Ecological problems naturally involve numerous variables and numerous individuals or samples. Multivariate techniques permit the summary of large, complex sets of data and provide the means to tackle many problems that cannot be investigated experimentally because of practical restraints. Ecologists are thus enabled to group similar species and similar sample sites together, and to generate hypotheses about environmental and historical factors that affect the communities. This timely book presents a full critical description of three methodologies - direct gradient analysis, ordination, and classification - from both theoretical and practical viewpoints. Both traditional and new methods are presented. Using a wide range of illustrative examples, Hugh Gauch provides an up-to-date synthesis of this field, which will be of interest to advanced students and ecologists. The

Originally published in Italian in 1976, this book describes the methods scientists use to investigate the physical world. It is ideal for students and teachers of science and the philosophy of science. It is both a high-level popularization and a critical appraisal of these methods, describing important advances in physics and analyzing the historical development, value, reliability and philosophical implications of the way physicists approach the problems confronting them. The introductory chapter on the meaning of physical theories and the mathematical tools used to develop them is followed by a general discussion on the foundations of physics under four major headings: the physics of the reversible, the physics of the irreversible, microphysics, and cosmology. Throughout, the subject matter of physical theories is linked to discussion of the attendant philosophical and epistemological implications, such as the validity of the theories, inductive inference, causal explanation, proba

The enormous size of the Roman empire and the length of time it endured call for an understanding of the institutions which sustained it. In this book, Keith Hopkins, who is both classicist and sociologist, uses various sociological concepts and methods to gain new insights into how traditional Roman institutions changed as the Romans acquired their empire. He examines the chain reactions resulting from increased wealth; various aspects of slavery, especially manumission and the cost of freedom; the curious phenomenon of the political power wielded by eunuchs at court; and in the final chapter he discusses the Roman emperor's divinity and the circulation of untrue stories, which were a currency of the political system. Professor Hopkins has developed an exciting approach to social questions in antiquity and his book should be of interest to all students of ancient history and of historical sociology.