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For several reasons, a Comparative Psychology course has been absent from our curriculum since 2005, so students have had very little exposure to how and why psychologists study animals, and the place of animal research in the history of psychology. In the fall of 2015, out of necessity, five faculty in our department team-taught a History and Systems of Psychology course, which was our capstone at that time. My module focused on the study of animals in psychology, including Comparative Psychology. One purpose was to highlight this side of Psychology, but also to show how the study of animals has led to current interest in Evolutionary Psychology. The content of this module is described here, as is a comparison of several journals that publish animal research, using number of pages published as a dependent variable to illustrate trends. It is intended that the information presented here might be of use to others seeking a way to incorporate more about animal research into their respective curricula in the absence of a course specifically about animal behavior research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Born in Italy at the beginning of the 1920s, the concept of totalitarianism experienced an uninterrupted succession of metamorphoses and changes throughout the twentieth century, until its last rebirth after September 11, 2001, when it was remobilized in the struggle against Islamic terrorism. It is an astonishingly plastic, resilient, and inevitably ambiguous concept, insofar as it merges both politics and scholarship, and belongs, with a different meaning, to almost all currents of thought. Born in the political struggle, it shifted successfully to political theory in which, beyond their discrepancies, most of its interpreters defined it as a new form of power that exceeds the classical categories of political theory running from Aristotle to Max Weber-despotism, tyranny, dictatorship-and grounded in a combination of ideology and terror. The migration of this concept to the field of historical studies, however, was much more controversial. Useful in defining the nature and forms of political regimes, and eventually to establish their typology, 'totalitarianism' becomes a problematic, limited, not to say useless concept for analyzing their origins, developments, and fall. On the one hand, it favors a selective historical comparison between different political regimes; on the other hand, it simply juxtaposes them, stressing some analogies but neglecting other fundamental dimensions of historical investigation (origins, duration, ideologies, and social basis). This article is a plea for critical use of this category, which implies both a rejection of its recurrent ideological uses and its integration with the achievements of social and cultural history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanatory typologies have recently experienced a renaissance as a research strategy for constructing and assessing causal explanations. However, both the new methodological works on explanatory typologies and the way such typologies have been used in practice have been affected by two shortcomings. First, no elaborate procedures for assessing the general explanatory power of a typological theory on the cross-case level have been devised. Second, rigorous selection procedures for within-case analysis are lacking. Against this background, we introduce a systematic measure that helps researchers assess the explanatory power on the cross-case level, first, within the scope set by a particular typological theory and, second, by investigating the transferability of the theory beyond these scope conditions via an increase in the number of cases. Drawing on recent methodological works on nested analysis, we show how researchers can identify key cases for process tracing based on the cross-case explanatory fit of the typological theory. We illustrate the purchase of our procedures by revisiting seminal studies from the field of comparative historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, theorizing on incremental institutional change has made inroads in comparative historical analysis. In particular, the ideas, concepts, and theory introduced by Kathleen Thelen and her collaborators have been widely adopted by scholars. These scholars are not, however, univocally positive about the theory. Three main critiques have been plaguing the theory since its early days: the concepts it builds on lack clarity, the model of agency it uses is too static, and the theory lacks analytical power overall. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis method, this article presents a meta-analysis of the peer-reviewed empirical literature from 2005 to 2015 that applies this theory. It seeks to better understand the reach of the critiques expressed, as this may provide a starting point for improvement. It finds considerable quantitative support for the critiques, and uncovers an additional problematic issue: the tendency for concept stretching and concept proliferation by scholars seeking to overcome the shortcomings of the theory. Paradoxically, concept stretching and proliferation only further reduce the analytical power of the theory. The article concludes with suggestions for improvement of the development and application of the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both England and Japan, art education was viewed as having nothing to do with self-expression, but was considered to be an efficient means for industrial development. In England, it was designed to train the eyes and hands of artisans. The art critic Ruskin has often been referred to in the context of the transition to self-expression in the history of art education. This article shows, however, that Ruskin was not an advocate of self-expression. In Japan, drawing was introduced into the general education curriculum at the beginning of the Meiji era, and the aim of that instruction was to train the students' eyes and hands. In response to this trend, the Free Drawing Movement was introduced by Kanae Yamamoto. He attempted to introduce the methods of creation used by professional artists into general education. But this aspect was neglected by both his supporters and opponents, and Yamamoto has been presented instead as an advocate of self-expression. Drawing on the genealogical approach, as developed by Foucault, this paper re-examines this well-known history of art education. By replacing Ruskin and Yamamoto in the historical context of the transition of art education in two respective countries, the genealogy of self-expression will be revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a comparative cultural history of Zionism and Irish nationalism, focusing on themes of race, gender and identity. It seeks to highlight the strong similarities of both nationalist projects: to show how Zionists and Irish nationalists were both heavily invested in state-building projects that would disprove European racist stereotypes about their respective nations and yet, paradoxically, were also part of the general history of European nationalism. Both Zionism and Irish nationalism sought to create idealised images of the past and claimed to be rebuilding a glorious ancient society in the future as a means of escaping a degraded present. Both movements saw language revival as a key means of carrying out this ‘return to history’. And both emphasised martyrdom as a way to build up prideful ideals of devotion to the nation and used sport, militaries and agriculture as forms of nationalist social engineering. Despite their claims to the contrary, neither national movement was truly unique. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contributing to recent scholarship on the governance of algorithms, this article explores the role of dignity in data protection law addressing automated decision-making. Delving into the historical roots of contemporary disputes between information societies, notably European Union and Council of Europe countries and the United States, reveals that the regulation of algorithms has a rich, culturally entrenched, politically relevant backstory. The article compares the making of law concerning data protection and privacy, focusing on the role automation has played in the two regimes. By situating diverse policy treatments within the cultural contexts from which they emerged, the article uncovers and examines two different legal constructions of automated data processing, one that has furnished a right to a human in the loop that is intended to protect the dignity of the data subject and the other that promotes and fosters full automation to establish and celebrate the fairness and objectivity of computers. The existence of a subtle right across European countries and its absence in the US will no doubt continue to be relevant to international technology policy as smart technologies are introduced in more and more areas of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ayer: Revista de Historia Contemporánea is the property of Asociacion de Historia Contemporanea and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

ABSTRACT Global history looms large in current historiography, yet its heuristic design and political functions remain ill-reflected. My article seeks to uncover the historical origins of the assumption that the 'world' has one common history and that it is feasible and desirable to write it. I analyze the epistemic infrastructure underlying this assumption and argue that global history as practiced today is predicated on a specific mode of world-making that provides its basic template: Global history both grew out of and intellectually sustains the conception of an increasingly connected world. The type of connectedness thereby implied and reinscribed was established by what I call the 'world-historical process,' a cognitive framework that co-emerged with the early modern and modern European conquest of the world through expansion, discovery, commerce, and culture. The article investigates how this process-template emerged out of the crisis of universal history that could no longer integrate and reconcile the multiple pasts of the world. The format of the world-historical process was central to Enlightenment historians' assertion of the secular and scientific prestige of their craft, as much as to its ability to discern global epochs, in particular the modern and the premodern. My article traces the fortunes of this template through historicism up to present-day global history. Current global history remains structured around the growing connectedness of previously distinct parts of the planet whose pasts are transformed into relevant world history by the very process that makes them increasingly interrelated. Global history may be too much a product of the process of globalization it studies to develop epistemologically and politically tenable alternatives to 'connectivity.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses efforts to develop a U.S. history survey course within a globalized, or internationalized, context, including through referencing the textbook "Global Americans: A History of the United States," edited by Maria Montoya. The teaching of comparative history in the aforementioned course is discussed.

This Article shows that, far from being a defunct political tool, the plebiscite is still a very "fashionable" instrument that can be found not only in authoritarian regimes, but also in democratic countries. To make this case, this Article relies on comparative constitutional history, which is essential to clarify a current dispute--that is, the distinction between the plebiscite and other forms of popular participation, notably the referendum. While many constitutions shy away from using the term plebiscite, this analysis shows that numerous modern consultations may really be categorized as plebiscites. Its formal absence from legal texts does not mean that the plebiscite no longer exists; rather, it continues to play a prominent role in today's societies even if called by a different name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raymond Grew once observed that, "for many professional historians comparative study evokes the ambivalence of a good bourgeois toward the best wines: to appreciate them is a sign of good taste, but indulgence seems a little loose and wasteful" This reluctance, Grew continued, stemmed from some of the "admirable if modest qualities" of professional historians--"caution, accuracy, unpretentiousness, and respect for the integrity of documents and for the particular." But it also "reflectfedj doubt not so much about comparison as a mode of analysis as about what it is that historians [ought to] compare". Almost forty years later, some of these doubts have receded. In many fields, comparative history has flourished; in some, failure to compare has become a significant demerit. It is a good time, it would seem, for constitutional lawyers to catch the wave. But comparative history continues to have critics and questioners. In particular, the question of what to compare, and how, remains open and contested. Perhaps it always will. Even so, it seems prudent, at this early stage in our collective effort to historicize the study of comparative constitutionalism, to reflect on how historians have wrestled with methodological questions over the past half century and more and to offer some preliminary thoughts on how the "lessons of comparative history" might apply to comparative studies of constitutional history. Part II of this Article offers a brief history of comparative history--its practitioners, its detractors, its latter-day defenders and admonishers. Part III proposes three possible approaches to the comparative study of constitutional history--what I call perspectival histories, thematic histories, and relational histories. Perspectival histories focus on a single jurisdiction; what makes them comparative is the author's own perspective and intended audience. Thematic histories focus on a single theme across jurisdictions without regard to chronological unity. The theme might be doctrinal, institutional, procedural, or theoretical. Relational histories examine multiple jurisdictions within a single chronological frame. They attempt not merely to compare the jurisdictions with one another, but also to identify mutual influences, both reciprocal and external. I believe that some of the best work in our field will be relational; but relational histories, when they are written, will have to build on the foundation of previous perspectival and thematic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Human Evolution, we re-evaluate the fossil record for early Homo (principally Homo erectus , Homo habilis , and Homo rudolfensis) from early diversification and dispersal in the Early Pleistocene to the ultimate demise of H. erectus in the early Middle Pleistocene. The mid-1990s marked an important historical turning point in our understanding of early Homo with the redating of key H. erectus localities, the discovery of small H. erectus in Asia, and the recovery of an even earlier presence of early Homo in Africa. As such, we compare our understanding of early Homo before and after this time and discuss how the order of fossil discovery and a focus on anchor specimens has shaped, and in many ways biased, our interpretations of early Homo species and the fossils allocated to them. Fragmentary specimens may counter conventional wisdom but are often overlooked in broad narratives. We recognize at least three different cranial and two or three pelvic morphotypes of early Homo. Just one postcranial morph aligns with any certainty to a cranial species, highlighting the importance of explicitly identifying how we link specimens together and to species; we offer two ways of visualizing these connections. Chronologically and morphologically H. erectus is a member of early Homo , not a temporally more recent species necessarily evolved from either H. habilis or H. rudolfensis. Nonetheless, an ancestral–descendant notion of their evolution influences expectations around the anatomy of missing elements, especially the foot. Weak support for long-held notions of postcranial modernity in H. erectus raises the possibility of alternative drivers of dispersal. New observations suggest that the dearth of faces in later H. erectus may mask taxonomic diversity in Asia and suggest various later mid-Pleistocene populations could derive from either Asia or Africa. Future advances will rest on the development of nuanced ways to affiliate fossils, greater transparency of implicit assumptions, and attention to detailed life history information for comparative collections; all critical pursuits for future research given the great potential they have to enrich our evolutionary reconstructions for the next fifty years and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the article "Cross-domain comparison and the politics of difference" by Rogers Brubaker and Matías Fernández that was published within the issue. It mentions comparative historical and ethnicity and nationalism scholars and period of ‘unsettled identities' to call on comparative scholars to question predefined entities of analysis such as gender and race. It also mentions calls for transgenderism and transracialism have emerged.

This reveals, first, that the book was prompted by Jan Wallander, CEO and later chairman of Handelsbanken (a bank which, it is claimed, was "hailed as the safest bank in the world several times" [p. ix]. There are then accounts of the failures of individual banks; the Medici bank, the Fugger bank, and a group of banks in Seville. It is a pity that the effort that plainly went into writing this book had not rather gone into a series of case studies, the author's specialism, of good and bad banks. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents a comparative analysis of the port systems of the Portuguese and British Empires in the Atlantic during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is based on the study of four insular ports under the sovereignty of these two imperial polities: Angra in the Azores, Funchal in Madeira, Bridgetown in Barbados, and Port Royal in Jamaica. The aim of the analysis is to compare the main factors that led to the choice of these sites as key places in the structure of the respective Portuguese and British imperial models, how they developed to satisfy trade needs and their most significant problems, as well as the extent to which the development of these colonies conformed to what was ‘expected’ of each imperial project, taking into account the geographical, economic and social factors of the respective port cities. The methodological approach to the study of these Atlantic insular ports brings together data from landscape archaeology, nautical and underwater archaeology, together with historical documentation and cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Bulletin of Medical History is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author of this article has been committed for several years to the study of a comparative history which focuses on the presence and influence of illegal networks in the working-class neighbourhoods of twentieth-century cities. From this analysis has emerged the necessity to explore the characteristics of, and the reasons for, the alternation of conflictual and sympathetic behaviours among ‘working-class cultures’ and those expressed by marginal social strata. More specifically, this study is being carried out by comparing the cases of the three cities of Barcelona, Milan and Marseille in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Starting from this comparative study, then, this article will suggest a series of readings while showing three important themes in the bibliographical panorama: the “ultimate causes” of criminality; what is and what is not “organised criminality”; the quantitative theme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article serves as an introduction to the new journal Endowment Studies (ends). Besides laying out the scope and goals of the periodical, it also charts the broader arc of historical scholarship on endowments. More specifically, the development of the research on foundations is summarized in four fields, namely Medieval Studies, Byzantine Studies, Islamic Studies and Indology. Furthermore, a general vocabulary for the core features of foundations is also proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the reference of historical actors in textual tradition. Topics discussed include historic texts on genealogy, historical laws implied on sociological projects, historical studies from 1970s, methodology of comparative history writing and transfers between European nations.

Copyright of Prohistoria is the property of Prohistoria Ediciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of controlled comparisons pervades comparative historical analysis. Heated debates have surrounded the methodological purchase of such comparisons. However, the quality and validity of the conceptual building blocks on which the comparisons are based have largely been ignored. This article discusses a particular problem pertaining to these issues, that is, the danger of creating false historical analogies that do not serve to control for relevant explanatory factors. It is argued that this danger increases when we use composite (thick) concepts that are aggregated via a (loose) family resemblance logic. It is demonstrated that this problem seriously affects the way the concept of feudalism has entered comparative historical analysis. On this basis, an alternative conceptual strategy—centered on teasing out the core attributes of thick and loose concepts—is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung is the property of Leipziger Universitaetsverlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Author-supplied Abstracts.)

This article examines centre–periphery relations in post-colonial India and Pakistan, providing a specific comparative history of autonomy movements in Nagaland (1947–63) and Baluchistan (1973–7). It highlights the key role played by the central government – particularly by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – in quelling both insurgencies and in taking further steps to integrate these regions. It argues that a shared colonial history of political autonomy shaped local actors’ resistance to integration into the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. This article also reveals that Indian and Pakistani officials used their shared colonial past in very different ways to mould their borderlands policies. India's central government under Nehru agreed to a modified Naga State within the Indian Union that allowed the Nagas a large degree of autonomy, continuing a colonial method of semi-integration. In contrast, Bhutto's government actively sought to abandon long-standing Baluch political and social structures to reaffirm the sovereignty of the Pakistani state. The article explains this divergence in terms of the different governing exigencies facing each country at the time of the insurgencies. It ultimately calls for an expansion in local histories and subnational comparisons to extend understanding of post-1947 South Asia, and the decolonizing world more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ayer: Revista de Historia Contemporánea is the property of Asociacion de Historia Contemporanea and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Following a period of openness to foreign direct investment and the integration of arbitration agreements into relationships with foreign investors through international treaties and investment contracts, the last decade has witnessed the resurgence of resistance by Latin American nations to the investor-state arbitration system. What has fomented this recent resistance? While the literature has proffered a set of that primarily focus on country-level ideological positions and structural economic issues, these theories are largely disjointed and empirically limited in their explanatory power. This Note introduces principles from leading sector analysis to develop a singular theoretical framework that explains the empirical puzzle of Latin American resistance to investor-state arbitration. Specifically, this Note asserts that the market structure of the sector that is the target of investment plays a critical role in its capacity for collective action and causally affects the extent to which the sector can influence the host state in its stance vis-à-vis the investor-state arbitration system. Using a comparative historical analysis of Argentina and Venezuela, this Note finds strong qualitative evidence to support a sectoral approach to understanding Latin America's tumultuous relationship with the investor-state arbitration system while controlling for existing explanations. Ultimately, this Note provides important theoretical and empirical contributions to one of the most salient issues facing the investor-state arbitration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By using Neutrosophy and Quad-stage Method, the expansions of comparative literature include: comparative social sciences clusters, comparative natural sciences clusters, comparative interdisciplinary sciences clusters, and so on. Among them, comparative social sciences clusters include: comparative literature, comparative history, comparative philosophy, and so on; comparative natural sciences clusters include: comparative mathematics, comparative physics, comparative chemistry, comparative medicine, comparative biology, and so on. In addition, comparative literature itself can also be expanded. Under the two main categories of research and practice, comparative literature can be expanded into: comparative literature research, comparative literature practice (including comparative essay, comparative fiction, comparative poetry, comparative drama, and so on), comparative literature research and practice, and so on. This paper discusses the applications of comparative method in comparative sciences clusters and their various branches. Point out that in the existing fields of social sciences and natural sciences, many sprouts of comparative sciences clusters can be found, but a wide range of the achievements of comparative sciences clusters, still are the virgin lands to be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a template for understanding and analyzing racialization as a paradigm. Further, this template is applied to the North American case – an important one because it has endured and spread across the globe despite the enormous weight of scientific evidence against it. The fallacy of race (and in particular the North American Anglo-origin variant) endures for two reasons. First, social agents seeking to gain or maintain power and control over paradigm-relevant resources benefit from reinvesting in pseudoscientific racial paradigms. Second, new science proving the fallacy of race is ignored because ignoring new paradigmatic science is in fact the way normal science operates. Thus, a paradigmatic analysis of race may help to explain why current social science approaches to the demise of racial thought may be ineffective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rancière tells the story of the French École des Annales as a new historical school suddenly emerging in the early 1920s. However, this story has to be checked. Since the 18th century, modern European historical studies have always been manifold. In particular, at least two paradigms have competed for acceptance: on the one hand, 'truly' telling a story about heroes and outstanding events, and on the other hand, explaining and narrating 'universal' comparative histories of countries, economies, empires and regions, of communications, and of the people. Some examples of the latter are outlined, such as the eighteenth-century 'Göttingen School', the nineteenth-century 'Leipzig School' and the 'Bielefeld School' from the mid-1970s onwards, all of which show strong similarities to the École des Annales. Each group was ground-breaking in its own way and exercised a strong influence on other historians. Hence, the École des Annales was not a unique event, but just one of various western 'hot-spots' in a long-lasting epistemological process. Furthermore, the assumption that the longue durée (Braudel) expelled the single event and the human being from history is also put into question. Since then, Rancière argues, historians have become social scientists, unable to grasp history, the uniqueness of the event, and the unforeseeable potential of human passion. They tend to overestimate historical processes and the determination of an event by its surrounding circumstances. The article counters these arguments. First, the uniqueness of the event was never denied. Rather, since Michelet in France or Max Weber in Germany historians have tried to abstract constitutive elements from the unique event or case in order to explain it. A special type of explanation fits in with all historical studies: the narrative explanation. Second, the notions of durée and longue durée do not place in jeopardy the single event. Neither do they devalue human action, belief, passion, or confession; all of them remain constitutive components of the historical past. Braudel's layered 'historical times' (durées) were a brilliant att-empt to place time and space in mutual interaction. Third, human beings have never been expelled from history. Since the 1970s, the subject has been re-constructed more carefully as a de-centered, imperfect actor, but also as the co-creator of its own life-world (Lebenswelt) in the sense of social constructivism. This co-creator, however, is unable to view and understand fully material, cultural, religious, political powers which create the limits and restraints of his life-world. What biographical knowledge and experience tell us is not sufficient for writing history, but there is no historical writing without analysing properly everyday knowledge and human experience. The historical social and cultural sciences - which Rancière criticized so much - are needed to go beyond pure 'structures' and beyond what human beings are able to tell about their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The apostle Paul is included under discussion of early church fathers, which is an unusual categorization. For the early period, these thinkers include the apostle Paul and some well-known church fathers, such as Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine, to name just some in view. In comparison, modern Catholic thinkers Massignon and Rahner move the discussion from church-based to Christ-based salvation. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Philostrato is the property of Epiarte, S.L. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

ABSTRACT 'The Rules of the Game,' expounded in ten remarkably bold theses, can easily be read as a synthetic retrospective or introduction to the formidable oeuvre of Arnaldo Momigliano. Indeed, this piece served as the opening chapter to his Introduzione bibliografica alla storia greca fino a Socrate (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975), and its subsequent reprints as an independent essay in several Italian journals and anthologies signal its importance for Momigliano. In this provocative and occasionally brilliantly witty essay, Momigliano sets forth his programmatic views on the ethos of the historian, as well as on the historical method and its applications in the study of ancient history. Here, as elsewhere, Momigliano is interested in detailing the link between ancient documents and their historical interpretations in later millennia. Ancient sources, he cautions, do not capture ancient realities transparently or completely, but are mediated documents whose historical value hinges, within certain limits, on the historian's analytical questions, inflected as they inevitably are by different ideological commitments. For this reason, he places special emphasis on the comparative method, stressing difference rather than similarity, and advises that historians with various areas of expertise collaborate, a point underscored throughout the essay. What is more, the essay contains the salutary reminder that the historian ought to attend not only to the surviving documents but also to the conspicuous silences and lacunae in the evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how local middle class Europeans in certain areas were responsible for writing and maintaining local, personal chronicles from the late middle ages until the nineteenth century in locales including Bristol, England, Augsburg, Germany, and Barcelona, Spain. It presents a comparative study of such accounts of both local and persoanl news written between 1500 and 1800 in Western and Central Europe. It reports how accounts were copied and shared in various urban centers, generally among men, which encouraged others to write their own accounts.

Contrary to the long-standing idea of a scientific failure in early modern China as compared to Europe, some recent work has emphasized the existence of a tradition of ‘evidential’ research in the natural sciences, antiquarianism, and geography, especially during the Sung, Ming, and Qing periods. This article seeks to develop this new perspective by offering a comparative history of the genres of travel writing and ethnography in early modern Europe and Ming/early Qing China. We argue that there were qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the way that these genres functioned in each cultural area. Even when we find apparent similarities, we note different chronological rhythms and a different position of these genres of travel writing within a wider cultural field—what we might term their ‘cultural relevance’. The specific nature of Chinese state imperialism—or, conversely, the particular nature of European overseas colonialism—played a role in determining the type of ethnographic approach that came to predominate in each cultural area. These parallels and differences suggest a fresh perspective on the cultural origins of the ‘great divergence’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to contribute to a comparative history of creativity and invention techniques in the 20th century, especially after the end of World War II during the post-war period. In this history TRIZ plays a significant role, although it is hardly acknowledged because of the predominance of western creativity stereotypes within current scientific discourses. This paper has a strongly explorative character. It emphasizes neither the practical functionality nor the scientific validity of TRIZ but rather chooses for a comparative cultural-historical perspective. The more general contribution of this historical approach for the field of engineering and technological development can be seen in its corrective and self-reflexive potential. Recent discussions on TRIZ methodology might be differentiated and sharpen with regard to broader historical constellations, as well as future developments might be stimulated by innovative insights from the transnational post-war history of creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues for understanding and investigating the history of production, not primarily as a quantifiable economic phenomenon, but as a history of practice that involves the human senses, culture, governance, and material engagement. The vehicle it uses to make its case focuses on a brief examination of production cycles involving salts in various parts of Eurasia during the century that runs from approximately 1750 to 1850. The essay's approach suggests a history of production in Eurasia that was both locally variegated and transregionally networked. It further involved the interaction between people and their sociomaterial environments, the latter understood as the evolving outcome of interplay between material elements and processes; culturally rooted tastes and values; and variously organized efforts to stimulate, manage, and pursue cycles of production and use. This essay further reflects on how contemporary commentators and present-day historians have (re)configured the geography of these practices in a way that emphasizes divergence between Europe and Asia. Part of this reflection involves looking at what can happen when the historical investigation of production is based on economic analysis. So too does it involve thinking about the potential pitfalls of framing comparative histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates cities and their political cultures in Italy and the Near East in the later Middle Ages. Cities in these two regions have traditionally been viewed in diverging ways. European cities have been understood as unitary entities which stood out on account of their urban governments and the political order of which foreshadowed the rise of modern states. The absence of comparable institutions has meant that Near Eastern cities have often been seen as very unlike their European counterparts. Focusing on the political cultures of Damascus and Bologna in the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, this article suggests that a different understanding of cities is necessary. Partly as a result of demographic growth and the breakdown of larger political structures in earlier centuries, these cities can be understood as polycentric arenas in which public life took place around multiple units of political organisation which ranged from neighbourhoods to parties. Conflicts, including civil war and revolt, were an ordinary part of their political cultures: they were expressive of fragmentation, but equally of a shared public arena in which contending groups were stake-holders. As arenas, cities on either side of the Mediterranean world gave rise to a distinctive form of political order. They did not foreshadow forms of order associated with the modern state and, particularly in the Mediterranean regions under analysis here, often remained among its greatest obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While both the sciences and the humanities, as currently defined, may be too heterogeneous to be encompassed within a unified historical framework, there is good reason to believe that the history of science and the history of philologies both have much to gain by joining forces. This collaboration has already yielded striking results in the case of the history of science and humanist learning in early modern Europe. This essay argues that first, philology and at least some of the sciences (e.g., astronomy) remained intertwined in consequential ways well into the modem period in Western cultures; and second, widening the scope of inquiry to include other philological traditions in non-Western cultures offers rich possibilities for a comparative history of learned practices. The focus on practices is key; by shifting the emphasis from what is studied to how it is studied, deep commonalities emerge among disciplines--and intellectual traditions--now classified as disparate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the humanities and the sciences have a closely connected history, there are no general histories that bring the two fields together on an equal footing. This paper argues that there is a level at which some humanistic and scientific disciplines can be brought under a common denominator and compared. This is at the level of underlying methods, especially at the level of formalisms and rule systems used by different disciplines. The essay formally compares linguistics and computer science by noting that the same grammar formalism was used in the 1950s for describing both human and programming languages. Additionally, it examines the influence of philology on molecular biology, and vice versa, by recognizing that the tree-formalism and rule system used for text reconstruction was also employed in DNA genetics. It also shows that rule systems for source criticism in history are used in forensic science, evidence-based medicine, and jurisprudence. This paper thus opens up a new comparative approach within which the histories of the humanities and the sciences can be examined on a common level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the role of the armed forces in the Arab Spring uprisings, comparing the cases of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria. It notes that the ability and willingness of the military to use force to defend the incumbent regime is a critical factor in the outcome of popular uprisings such as those of the Arab Spring. It analyses why the outcomes in the three cases differed, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remaining in power while Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Zein al-Abidin Ben Ali were overthrown. It focuses on the actions and structures each regime had created in order to prevent military coups d'etat, called coup-proofing, as well as on the relationship between the top layer of military officers and the junior and mid-ranking officers.

One of the effects of the 'Six-Day War' on the German Left was a fundamental questioning of the State of Israel. Alongside the emergence of the student movement we can observe tendencies to relativise the Jewish catastophe through comparisons. The dialogue between Paul Celan and the German student Gisela Dischner reflects these developments and can provide the political context and a deeper understanding of the poetry Celan wrote between early 1967 and late 1969. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]