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Books > History > Theory & methods > General
The book is going through its biggest revolution since Gutenberg.
Thanks to computer tools and electronic publication, the concept
and realisation of critical editions are being rethought. As so
often in the history of scholarship, editors of the New Testament
are making a vital contribution to these changes.
The Cold War continues to shape international relations almost twenty years after being acknowledged as the central event of the last half of the twentieth century. Interpretations of how it ended thus remain crucial to an accurate understanding of global events and foreign policy. The reasons for the Cold War s conclusion, and the timing of its ending, are disputed to this day.In this concise introduction to the Cold War and its enduring legacy, John Prados recognizes the debate between those who argue the United States was the key player in bringing it to a close and those who maintain that American actions were secondary factors. Like a crime scene investigator meticulously dissecting evidence, he applies a succession of different methods of historical analysis to illuminate the key cataclysmic events of the 1980s and early 1990s from a range of perspectives. He also incorporates evidence from European and Soviet intelligence sources into the study. The result is a stunning narrative that redefines the era, embraces debate, and deconstructs history, providing a coherent explanation for the upheavals that ended the conflict."How the Cold War Ended" also provides an in-depth guide to conducting historical inquiries: how to choose a subject, how to frame a narrative, and how to conduct research and draw conclusions. Prados does this for a variety of methods of historical analysis, furnishing a how-to guide for doing history even as it explores a crucialcase study.
By power of thought alone, Albert Einstein gave us a fresh conception of the universe. He showed us that space and time are elastic - shrinking or expanding, speeding up or slowing down, depending on your movement. Beginning with an inspiring foreword by eminent Professor of Mathematics Sir Roger Penrose, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a concise overview of Einstein's life, achievements, personal loves and public controversies; and a Q&A dialogue based on rigorous research and incorporating Einstein's actual spoken or written words whenever possible. Research physicist Carlos Calle brings Einstein to life through meticulously researched biographical interpretations of Einstein's revolutionary mathematical work. Relax and chat with this genius as he tells you about his work on relativity, his quest for a grand unifying theory of the cosmos, and personal matters - from the pleasures of sailing and music to his anxieties about the nuclear bomb he had helped unleash.
With this work, Hegel introduced a scientific approach to the study of the history of philosophy. The author himself regarded this book as a popular introduction to his entire philosophy, and it ranks among his most readable and accessible writings. Hegel develops the concept of history as a rational proceeding, rather than a series of random events. His doctrine of the historical process -- governed according to the laws of evolution and embodying the spirit of freedom -- exercised an enormous and enduring influence.
"Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man" is a new philosophy of history. This volume outlines how sustainable history is propelled by good governance, which balances the tension between the attributes of human nature - emotionality, amorality and egoisms - and human dignity needs, such as reason, security, human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation and inclusiveness. The author proposes minimum criteria for good governance that are sensitive to local cultures and histories but meet certain common global values to ensure maximum and sustainable moral and political cooperation. Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan is a Senior Scholar in Geostrategy and Director of the Programme on the Geopolitical Implications of Globalisation and Transnational Security at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Historical film studies is a burgeoning field, with a large and ever growing number of publications from across the globe. The History on Film Reader distils this mass of work, offering readers an introduction to just under thirty of the most critical and representative writings on the relationship between film and history. Films discussed include: Gladiator, Forrest Gump, Pan's Labyrinth, Titanic and Life is Beautiful. Thematically structured, this Reader offers an overview of the varying ways scholars see film as contributing to our understanding of history, from their relationship with written histories, to their particular characteristics and their role in education, indoctrination and entertainment. It draws together the contributions of scholars from a variety of fields, such as Pierre Sorlin, Natalie Zemon Davis, Robert Rosenstone, Marcia Landy, Hayden White, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Philip Rosen, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen. Together, these writings represent a novel combination of insights from film theory, cultural studies, historiography, the history of cinema and film promotion and reception. Including an introduction which describes the field of historical film studies, section introductions which contextualize the chapters and a filmography, this is an essential collection for all those interested in the relationship between history and film.
For Greg Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and personal existence. Throughout this text the author shows his awareness that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable. He asserts all histories to be culturally crafted artifacts, commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making sense of what has and continues to happen, creating for us a sense of our cultural and individual selves.
In the past decade, Jeffrey Olick has established himself as one of the world's pre-eminent sociologists of memory (and, related to this, both cultural sociology and social theory). His recent book on memory in postwar Germany, In the House of the Hangman (University of Chicago Press, 2005) has garnered a great deal of acclaim. This book collects his best essays on a range of memory related issues and adds a couple of new ones. It is more conceptually expansive than his other work and will serve as a great introduction to this important theorist. In the past quarter century, the issue of memory has not only become an increasingly important analytical category for historians, sociologists and cultural theorists, it has become pervasive in popular culture as well. Part of this is a function of the enhanced role of both narrative and representation - the building blocks of memory, so to speak - across the social sciences and humanities. Just as importantly, though, there has also been an increasing acceptance of the notion that the past is no longer the province of professional historians alone. Additionally, acknowledging the importance of social memory has not only provided agency to ordinary people when it comes to understanding the past, it has made conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the past more fraught, particularly in light of the terrible events of the twentieth century. Olick looks at how catastrophic, terrible pasts - Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa - are remembered, but he is particularly concerned with the role that memory plays in social structures. Memory can foster any number of things - social solidarity, nostalgia, civil war - but it always dependson both the nature of the past and the cultures doing the remembering. Prior to his studies of individual episodes, he fully develops his theory of memory and society, working through Bergson, Halbwachs, Elias, Bakhtin, and Bourdieu.
Did modernity arrive in South Asia with British colonialism? Or was South Asia already modern by then? What might have that modernity looked like? The Early Modern in South Asia engages with these questions. It brings together ten chapters, which collectively trace the contours of South Asia's early modernity between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. They do this by examining the nature of historical change in various domains, including philosophy, warfare, law, environment, politics, violence, religion, and society. The chapters argue that in all these fields, there were noticeable developments during this period, marking a shift from the medieval to the early modern. The introductory chapter contextualizes this by analysing the politics of periodization in history-writing across the world. It discusses the meanings of the relatively new concept of early modernity and the implications of its use for how we understand historical change and continuity in South Asia.
What histories do objects like coins or gems help us to trace? How can we read photographs and paintings? How do fictional tales, imaginative biographies, basic lexicons, or accounts of Sufi masters code intellectual worlds and reveal cultural and religious shifts? What range of sources is available to the historian of medieval and early modern India? How can textual sources illuminate material objects, sites, and practices, and vice versa? What historical methods do the different sources and material objects require? Drawing on the rich scholarship of Simon E. Digby (1932-2010) on South Asian medieval history and culture, the essays in this volume offer method lessons in a wide range of historical fields.
This interdisciplinary volume explores the relationship between history and a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: economics, political science, political theory, international relations, sociology, philosophy, law, literature and anthropology. The relevance of historical approaches within these disciplines has shifted over the centuries. Many of them, like law and economics, originally depended on self-consciously historical procedures. These included the marshalling of evidence from past experience, philological techniques and source criticism. Between the late nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, the influence of new methods of research, many indebted to models favoured by the natural sciences, such as statistical, analytical or empirical approaches, secured an expanding intellectual authority while the hegemony of historical methods declined in relative terms. In the aftermath of this change, the essays collected in History in the Humanities and Social Sciences reflect from a variety of angles on the relevance of historical concerns to representative disciplines as they are configured today.
In her brilliant new opening essay, Banerjee says of Berdyaev "he was never more than a curious but unwelcome guest in history. He fearlessly engaged it on the level of ideas while remaining alien to its means and ends, gifted with an incurable longing for transcendence." Witness to two world wars, Berdyaev observed the destruction of established cultures in the traumatic birth of new systems. Arrested on political suspicion-by Czarist and then by Bolshevik police--he died in exile in France in 1948, carrying forth his intellectual work until the end. Berdyaev considered the philosophy of history as a field that laid the foundations of the Russian national consciousness. Its disputes were centered on distinctions between Slavophiles and Westerners, East and West. "The Meaning of History "was an early effort, following World War I, that attempted to revive this perspective. With the removal of Communism as a ruling system in Russia, that nation returned to an elaboration of a religious philosophy of history as the specific mission of Russian thought. This volume thus has contemporary significance. Its sense of the apocalypse, which distinguishes Russian from Western thought, gives the book its specifically religious character. In order to grasp and oppose the complex phenomenon of social and cultural disintegration, Berdyaev shows that human beings must rely upon some internal dialectic. After the debacle of the war, the moment arrived to integrate Russian historical experiences into those of a Europe, which, although torn by schism, still claimed to be the descendant of Christendom. The book is remarkable for its powerful stylistic grace, and astonishingly contemporary feeling.
Throughout its history as a social science, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying social problems. As a result, demographers tend to analyse population issues scientifically through sets of fixed social categories that are divorced from dynamic relationships and local contexts and processes. This volume questions these fixed categories in two ways. First, it examines the historical and political circumstances in which such categories had their provenance, and, second, it reassesses their uncritical applications over space and time in a diverse range of empirical case studies, encouraging throughout a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue involving anthropologists, demographers, historians, and sociologists. This volume seeks to examine the political complexities that lie at the heart of population studies by focusing on category formation, category use, and category critique. It shows that this takes the form of a dialectic between the needs for clarity of scientific and administrative analysis and the recalcitrant diversity of the social contexts and human processes that generate population change. The critical reflections of each chapter are enriched by meticulous ethnographic fieldwork and historical research drawn from every continent. This volume, therefore, exemplifies a new methodology for research in population studies, one that does not simply accept and re-use the established categories of population science but seeks critically and reflexively to explore, test, and re-evaluate their meanings in diverse contexts. It shows that for demography to realise its full potential it must urgently re-examine and contextualize the social categories used today in population research.
Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. Academia has never been immune to corporate culture, and despite the persistent association of medievalism with escapism, perhaps never has that been more obvious than at the present moment. The six essays that open the volume explore precisely how financial institutions have promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the middle ages. In the second part of the book, contributors explore medievalism in a variety of areas, juxtaposing specific case studies with broader investigations of the discipline's motives and methods; they include Charles Kingsley's racial Anglo-Saxonism, Jessie L. Weston's Sir Gawain and the treatment of womenin medievalist film. The book also includes a spirited response to previous Studies in Medievalism volumes on the topic neomedievalism. Contributors: Harry Brown, Henrik Aubert, Helen Brookman, Pamela Clements, KellyAnnFitzpatrick, Jil Hanifan, Michael R. Kightley, Felice Lifshitz, Lauren S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, E. L. Risden, Carol L. Robinson, M. J. Toswell, J. Ruben Valdes Miyares
Historians constantly wrestle with uncertainty, never more so than when attempting quantification, yet the field has given little attention to the nature of uncertainty and strategies for managing it. This volume proposes a powerful new approach to uncertainty in ancient history, drawing on techniques widely used in the social and natural sciences. It shows how probability-based techniques used to manage uncertainty about the future or the present can be applied to uncertainty about the past. A substantial introduction explains the use of probability to represent uncertainty. The chapters that follow showcase how the technique can offer leverage on a wide range of problems in ancient history, from the incidence of expropriation in the Classical Greek world to the money supply of the Roman empire.
The study of intellectual history might be second only to the novel in the number of mournful obituaries it has received over the years. But--if the vibrancy on display in Thinking in the Past Tense is any indication--reports of the death of intellectual history have been greatly exaggerated. This collection of interviews with leading American and European scholars from such diverse fields as the history of science, classical studies, global philology, and the study of books and material culture positively brims with insights on historical scholarship of the early modern period (ca. 1400-1800). The lively conversations collected here don't simply reveal these scholars' depth and breadth of thought--they also disclose the kind of trade secrets that historians rarely elucidate in print. Thinking in the Past Tense offers students and professionals alike a rare tactile understanding of the practice of intellectual history.
The idea of progress is a product of historical thinking. It is a bold interpretation of history that combines understandings of the past, perceptions of the present and expectations of the future. This Element examines the shifting scale of this past, present and future configuration from antiquity to the present day. It develops five categories that reveal the conceptual features of progress together with the philosophies of history in which they have been enmeshed, from temporal outlooks that held no notion of progress to universal histories that viewed progress as a law of nature, from speculation on the meaning and direction of history to the total rejection of all historical constructions. Global in scope and conversant with present-day debates in the theory and philosophy of history, the argument throughout is that the scale on which we conceive history plays a determining role in how we think about progress.
Modernity is a troubling concept, not only for scholars but for the
general public, for it seems to represent a choice between
oppressive traditions and empty, rootless freedom. Seeking a
broader understanding of modernity, Kolb first considers the views
of Weber and then discusses in detail the pivotal writings of Hegel
and Heidegger. He uses the novel strategy of presenting Heidegger's
critique of Hegel and then suggesting the critique of Heidegger
that Hegel might have made.
Evil is sometimes thought to be incomprehensible and abnormal, falling outside of familiar historical and human processes. And yet the twentieth century was replete with instances of cruelty on a massive scale, including systematic torture, murder, and enslavement of ordinary, innocent human beings. These overwhelming atrocities included genocide, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the Holodomor. This Element underlines the importance of careful, truthful historical investigation of the complicated realities of dark periods in human history; the importance of understanding these events in terms that give attention to the human experience of the people who were subject to them and those who perpetrated them; the question of whether the idea of 'evil' helps us to confront these periods honestly; and the possibility of improving our civilization's resilience in the face of the impulses towards cruelty to other human beings that have so often emerged.
In these essays, about a quarter of them previously unpublished, Eric Hobsbawm reflects upon the theory, practice and development of history and its relevance to the modern world. These wide-ranging papers reflect Professor Hobsbawm's lifelong concern with the relations between past, present and future. They deal, among many other subjects, with the problems of writing history, its abuses and the historian's responsibilities; with the history of society and 'history from below'; with Marx and current historical trends or fashions; with Europe, the Russian Revolution and the descent into a world-wide barbarism that, increasing for most of the twentieth century, threatens to destroy the civilisation we have inherited from the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.
with contributions from Neil Bettridge, Jean Cameron, Paul Cavill and Teresa Webber. The White Book of Southwell derives its name from its white vellum cover. Compiled between c.1350 and 1460, with a few later additions, its 500 pages record 620 individual documents from c.1100 onwards. They range widely from papal bulls and royal charters, quo warranto inquiries, privileges granted by many archbishops of York to the Chapter at Southwell,individual canons (or prebendaries) and the parishes where the Minster held lands or controlled livings. The majority date from c.1200-1460 and concern properties which the Chapter owned and administered through its courts, for which some rare proceedings are preserved. Because of their variety, the documents it contains are important not simply for ecclesiastical history but for broader social and economic trends in medieval Nottinghamshire either side of the Black Death. The volume also furnishes a remarkable amount of little-studied onomastic and linguistic evidence in medieval Latin, Anglo-Norman French and Middle English as well as strong traces of earlier Anglo-Scandinavianinfluences on Nottinghamshire. First brought to attention by the pioneering county historian Robert Thoroton (d. 1677), the White Book has been consulted in all subsequent generations. However, while some of its contents havebeen published in their original language or in translation, this is the first systematic, complete scholarly edition. A substantial introduction sets the White Book in context, describing its structure and content. Extensive commentary helps to date many undated individual documents and identify persons and places named, a detailed Fasti provides details on the personnel of the Minster and its appendant churches, while detailed indexes assist consultation.
Key Issues in Historical Theory is a fresh, clear and well-grounded introduction to this vibrant field of inquiry, incorporating many examples from novels, paintings, music, and political debates. The book expertly engages the reader in discussions of what history is, how people relate to the past and how they are formed by the past. Over 11 thematically-based chapters, Herman Paul discusses subjects such as: history, memory and trauma historical experience and narrative moral and political dimensions of history historical reasoning and explanation truth, plausibility and objectivity. Key Issues in Historical Theory convincingly shows that historical theory is not limited to reflection on professional historical studies, but offers valuable tools for understanding autobiographical writing, cultural heritage and political controversies about the past. With textboxes providing additional focus on a range of key topics, this is an attractive, accessible and up-to-date guide to the field of historical theory.
Hegel and the Representative Constitution provides the first comprehensive historical discussion of the institutional dimension of G. W. F. Hegel's political thought. Elias Buchetmann traces this much-neglected aspect in unprecedented contextual detail and makes the case for reading the Philosophy of Right from 1820 as a contribution to the lively and widespread public debate on the constitutional question in contemporary Central Europe. Drawing on a broad range of primary source material, this volume illuminates the wider political discourse in post-Napoleonic Germany, carefully locates Hegel's institutional commitments within their immediate cultural and political context, and reveals him as something closer to a public intellectual. By exploring this indispensable thinker's demand for the constitutional protection of popular participation in government, it contributes beyond Hegel scholarship to shed new light on the history of democratic theory in early nineteenth-century Europe and encourages critical reflection on questions of representation today.
This is the first biography of the last and greatest British idealist philosopher, R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), a man who both thought and lived at full pitch. Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of human passion. In this vivid and swiftly paced narrative, Fred Inglis tells the dramatic story of a remarkable life, from Collingwood's happy Lakeland childhood to his successes at Oxford, his archaeological digs as a renowned authority on Roman Britain, his solo sailing adventures in the English Channel, his long struggle with illness, and his sometimes turbulent romantic life. In a manner unheard of today, Collingwood attempted to gather all aspects of human thought into a single theory of practical experience, and he wrote sweeping accounts of history, art, science, politics, metaphysics, and archaeology, as well as a highly regarded autobiography. Above all, he dedicated his life to arguing that history--not science--is the only source of moral and political wisdom and self-knowledge. Linking the intellectual and personal sides of Collingwood's life, and providing a rich history of his milieu, "History Man" also assesses Collingwood's influence on generations of scholars after his death and the renewed recognition of his importance and interest today.
Surveying the history, latest developments and potential future directions of contemporary analytic philosophy, this is an essential one-volume reference guide for all those working in the field. The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy brings together a team of internationally renowned scholars to explore all the major areas of inquiry, key concepts and most important thinkers in the analytic tradition. Topics covered include: * The history of analytic philosophy, from Frege, Moore and Russell to Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle and beyond * Philosophy of mind and language from early developments to the most recent advances * Perspectives in moral and political philosophy * Contemporary metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science and mathematics * The latest thinking on perception, free will and personal identity The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Philosophy also includes a historical chronology and a full guide to further reading and available resources, making this an invaluable library or desktop reference guide for anyone working in the discipline today. |
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