Political scientists and public administration scholars have long recognized that innovation in public agencies is contingent on entrepreneurial bureaucratic executives. But unlike their commercial co
The Sword of Ambition belongs to a genre of religious polemic written for the rulers of Egypt and Syria between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Unlike most medieval Muslim polemic, the conce
Patronage, power, and competition in the Sultan’s courtThe Sword of Ambition opens a new window onto interreligious rivalry among elites in medieval Egypt. Written by the unemployed bureaucrat ?
For well over a century educational reformers have looked for a breakthrough in the sciences of psychology and pedagogy that would dramatically improve the effectiveness of schooling. This book shows why such an ambition is an illusion. Schools are institutions which attempt to balance the needs of a bureaucratic society that funds them with the personal goals, interests, hopes and ambitions of the students who enroll in them. Reform efforts attempt to realign that balance without any clear conception of how the two are related. This book offers a theoretical account of the relation between the minds of learners and the institutional structure of the school that would account both for the ways that schooling remakes minds and societies and why such institutions are resistant to change.
For well over a century educational reformers have looked for a breakthrough in the sciences of psychology and pedagogy that would dramatically improve the effectiveness of schooling. This book shows why such an ambition is an illusion. Schools are institutions which attempt to balance the needs of a bureaucratic society that funds them with the personal goals, interests, hopes and ambitions of the students who enroll in them. Reform efforts attempt to realign that balance without any clear conception of how the two are related. This book offers a theoretical account of the relation between the minds of learners and the institutional structure of the school that would account both for the ways that schooling remakes minds and societies and why such institutions are resistant to change.
The greatest ambition of any moderately successful nineteenth-century French scientist was to become a member of the Academy of Sciences. Science under Control is the first major study, in any language, of this elite institution, in a period which began with such influential figures as Laplace and Cuvier and extended to the time of Louis Pasteur and Henri Poincare. The book attempts to remove the veil of mystery and misunderstanding which has shrouded this key institution and its procedures. The French government exercised political, financial and bureaucratic control over the Academy, and the Academy in turn sat in judgement over all serious scientific production. Only with its approval could the work of French scientists win acceptance and their careers advance. The book provides a case study of carefully regulated scientific production encouraged yet constrained within a system of reports, prizes and elections.
