Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these adva
Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these adva
This book systematically investigates the past accomplishments and future agendas of contemporary comparative-historical analysis. Its core essays explore three major issues: the accumulation of knowledge in the field over the past three decades, the analytic tools used to study temporal process and historical patterns, and the methodologies available for making inferences and for building theories. The introductory and concluding essays situate the field as a whole by comparing it to alternative approaches within the social sciences. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars in the field, and it will represent a challenge to many other social scientists - especially those who have raised skeptical concerns about comparative-historical analysis in the past.
A love letter to Harvard from Harvard University Press, this book looks at the development of the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, history and philosophy of science) in the mid-twentieth cent
When Social Media and the Semantic Web became popular a few years ago it was a simple co-existence between the two, but in the meantime they have increasingly melted making it impossible to think of k
"Reinventing Evidence in Social Inquiry throws serious grit into the knowledge-making machinery of much modern sociology. It is an invitation to sociologists to stop and pause, to take a closer look a
Harrison offers a new, critical approach to understanding the formation of Taiwan’s identity. It applies contemporary social theory and historiography to a wealth of detail on Taiwanese politics, cult
This book is about the social life of monkeys, apes and humans. Its central theme is the importance of social information and knowledge to a full understanding of primate social behaviour and organisation. Using this perspective, the authors seek to demonstrate a continuity between human and non-human society that is often not recognised elsewhere in the literature. Topics covered include: an overview of the contexts of behaviour; a comparison of blind strategies and tactical decision-making; social cognition; a review of intentionalist interpretations of behaviour; kinship; language and its social implications; and the constraints of culture. Primate Behaviour will be of interest to senior undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to researchers in the fields of biological and social anthropology, primatology, psychology, behavioural science and evolutionary biology.
Race in the Making provides a new understanding of how people conceptualize social categories and shows why this knowledge is so readily recruited to create and maintain systems of unequal power. Hir
The Religions of Canadians is a book about religions and the making of Canada. Drawing on the expert knowledge and personal insights of scholars in history, the social sciences, and the phenomenology
This book addresses the important but understudied question of how social scientific knowledge is entangled in the process of European integration. More specifically, it provides the first systematic
This historical study transforms our understanding of modern Egyptian national culture by applying social theory to the history of Egypt's first teacher-training school. It focuses on Dar al-Ulum, which trained students from religious schools to teach in Egypt's new civil schools from 1872. During the first four decades of British occupation (1882-1922), Egyptian nationalists strove to emulate Europe yet insisted that Arabic and Islamic knowledge be reformed and integrated into Egyptian national culture despite opposition from British officials. This reinforced the authority of the alumni of the Dar al-Ulum, the daramiyya, as arbiters of how to be modern and authentic, a position that graduates Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood would use to resist westernisation and create new modes of Islamic leadership in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Establishing a 130-year history for tensions over the place of Islamic ideas and practices within modernized public spaces, tensions w
Latin and especially Greek texts of the imperial period contain a wealth of references to 'India'. Professor Parker offers a survey of such texts, read against a wide range of other sources, both archaeological and documentary. He emphasises the social processes whereby the notion of India gained its exotic features, including the role of the Persian empire and of Alexander's expedition. Three kinds of social context receive special attention: the trade in luxury commodities; the political discourse of empire and its limits; and India's status as a place of special knowledge, embodied in 'naked philosophers'. Roman ideas about India ranged from the specific and concrete to the wildly fantastic and the book attempts to account for such variety. It ends by considering the afterlife of such ideas into late antiquity and beyond.
Latin and especially Greek texts of the imperial period contain a wealth of references to 'India'. Professor Parker offers a survey of such texts, read against a wide range of other sources, both archaeological and documentary. He emphasises the social processes whereby the notion of India gained its exotic features, including the role of the Persian empire and of Alexander's expedition. Three kinds of social context receive special attention: the trade in luxury commodities; the political discourse of empire and its limits; and India's status as a place of special knowledge, embodied in 'naked philosophers'. Roman ideas about India ranged from the specific and concrete to the wildly fantastic and the book attempts to account for such variety. It ends by considering the afterlife of such ideas into late antiquity and beyond.
With a broad chronological sweep, this book provides an historical account of Roman law and legal institutions which explains how they were created and modified in relation to political developments and changes in power relations. It underlines the constant tension between two central aspects of Roman politics: the aristocratic nature of the system of government, and the drive for increased popular participation in decision-making and the exercise of power. The traditional balance of power underwent a radical transformation under Augustus, with new processes of integration and social mobility brought into play. Professor Capogrossi Colognesi brings into sharp relief the deeply political nature of the role of Roman juridical science as an expression of aristocratic politics and discusses the imperial jurists' fundamental contribution to the production of an outline theory of sovereignty and legality which would constitute, together with Justinian's gathering of Roman legal knowledge, th
With a broad chronological sweep, this book provides an historical account of Roman law and legal institutions which explains how they were created and modified in relation to political developments and changes in power relations. It underlines the constant tension between two central aspects of Roman politics: the aristocratic nature of the system of government, and the drive for increased popular participation in decision-making and the exercise of power. The traditional balance of power underwent a radical transformation under Augustus, with new processes of integration and social mobility brought into play. Professor Capogrossi Colognesi brings into sharp relief the deeply political nature of the role of Roman juridical science as an expression of aristocratic politics and discusses the imperial jurists' fundamental contribution to the production of an outline theory of sovereignty and legality which would constitute, together with Justinian's gathering of Roman legal knowledge, th
The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governa
The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governa
