bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Fairness in Selection and Recruitment: A Stigma Theory Perspective
Authors: Ryan Ann Marie , Wessel Jennifer
Published: September 2009

This article explores how concepts from research on stigmatization can inform and enhance the understanding of applicant reactions to selection procedures. It is important to emphasize that the article is not about what might lead an organization's representatives to engage in discriminatory practices or about the adverse impact of different selection tools; it is about the perceptions and behaviors of those applicants who are members of stigmatized groups. It begins with a very brief, general review of the literature on applicant perceptions, where it discusses the importance of studying, in particular, the reactions of individuals who might be considered members of stigmatized groups in any given society. Next, the article introduces some core concepts from the literature on stigmatization. Finally, it discusses how these concepts might inform understanding of how individuals react to recruitment and selection processes beyond what has been established in the literature on applicant reactions.
Ancient Near Eastern Studies: Mesopotamia
Authors: Lambert W. G.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the impact of ancient Near Eastern studies on biblical scholarship, focusing on written remains of all kinds. Ancient Mesopotamia has yielded tens of thousands of clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions, apart from monumental stone inscriptions and inscriptions on other media. Palestine and Syria, by contrast, have yielded comparatively little inscriptional material, partly because much was written on papyrus and leather, which has not survived, partly because they were less rich than their Mesopotamian neighbours and so produced less written material.
Language, Translation, Versions, and Text of the Apocrypha
Authors: Knibb Michael A.
Published: September 2009

The meaning of the term ‘Apocrypha’ is ambiguous in both early Christian and modern usage. This article covers the apocryphal and deutero-canonical books included in the NRSV, and the term ‘Apocrypha’ is used with this specific meaning. Reference is also made to the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) because it, like the Book of Jubilees, is regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Church. The writings of the Apocrypha have in common the fact that although none belong in the Hebrew Bible, they all, with the exception of 2 Esdras, are included in manuscripts of the Greek Bible.
Introduction: General Problems of Studying the Text of the Bible in order to Reconstruct History and Social Background
Authors: Whitelam Keith W.
Published: September 2009

Many scholars share the view that the Hebrew Bible offers the best, or the only, avenue through which to access Israel's past. Yet our standard histories of ancient Israel are a curious mixture of part prolegomena, part commentary on the biblical text, and part historical reconstruction. They are not narrative histories – synthetic treatments describing, analysing, and explaining the historical process. This article discusses the problems in reconstructing Israelite history, focusing on debates over how to evaluate the biblical traditions as historical sources, the lack of evidence and the falsification principle, and the impact of archaeological investigations.
Israel from the Rise of Hellenisim to 70 ce
Authors: Grabbe Lester L.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses Jewish history from the rise of Hellenism to 70 CE. The Hellenistic and Roman periods belong to what is often referred to as the ‘Second Temple period’ – a self-contained historical era marked off by the Exile at one end and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE at the other. The Jews of the Second Temple period neither inhabited the world of the Israelite and Judean monarchies nor practised the religion of the rabbis. The Second Temple period began with the Persian Empire (c.539–331 BCE), which ended with the conquest of Alexander. It is often assumed that a major break came about in Judaism with the coming of the Greeks, but recent study shows that the situation is more complex than that. First, many of the innovations that characterized Second Temple Judaism had their origins in the Persian period (though often continuing to develop in the Greek and Roman periods). Second, the Greeks added a new element to the culture, but the native cultures continued to flourish.
Scribes and Synagogues
Authors: Grabbe Lester L.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses scribes and synagogues. Scribes were the backbone of administration in the ancient and Hellenistic Near East. As those able to read and write, and trained in record keeping and document drafting, they were necessary in every society. When literacy and the production of writings are discussed in scholarly writings on the Bible, the place and importance of professional scribes is not always recognized. Synagogues first arose in the Diaspora to meet the needs of communities without easy access to the temple. This was probably about the third century BCE. They served as places of prayer and/or study, but would easily develop into some sort of central community institution. Only gradually did they filter into Palestine itself, where the temple was reasonably accessible.
The Growth of the Old Testament
Authors: Kratz Reinhard G.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the growth of the Old Testament, which presupposes the Israelite-Judaean scribal culture. From it the biblical tradition took over the practices, knowledge, and literary remains of the scribes. At the same time they pioneered with what they took over, or produced independently on the basis of it, a very particular way that was also unique in the whole of the ancient Near East. The genre and the content of the biblical books burst the limits of the usual praxis of the scribes. From the scribes developed the scribal scholars, and from the Israelite-Judaean scribal culture they developed the Jewish tradition in the Old Testament.
Authors, Books, and Readers in the Ancient World
Authors: Millard Alan
Published: September 2009

This article discusses authorship, books, and readers in Old Testament and New Testament times. In the Old Testament world, authorship is necessarily admitted in letters, and related to letters are prophetic communications. The usual physical form of the book in Babylonia was the clay tablet, normally of a size convenient to hold in the left hand while the right impressed the cuneiform signs with a reed stylus. The complexity of the cuneiform script meant that reading was a skill confined to those trained in scribal schools, some of whom may have progressed from the scribal profession to take other offices in temples and royal courts. The New Testament writings follow the traditional patterns. The letters declare their senders' identities, although not always by name, with the exception of Hebrews, and the single prophetic work makes its author clear. The roll of papyrus or leather remained the standard form of book throughout the Hellenistic period and well into Roman times. Jewish tradition required males to be able to read the Torah, and there were schools throughout Palestine from the first century BCE according to rabbinic sources, borne out by Josephus. The early Christian communities similarly included members able to read, as demonstrated by the despatch of letters to them by Paul and others.
Social, Political, and Ideological Criticism
Authors: Rowland Christopher
Published: September 2009

This article explores ways in which ideological criticism may contribute to biblical studies. The discussion is rooted in the central role that the critique of ideology has within the Marxist tradition and the ways in which that rich tradition of discussion can serve biblical exegesis and theology. It gives two specific examples of the way in which there has been a challenge to dominant ideologies. First of all, the emergence of liberationist hermeneutics (linked as it is with both feminist and ‘Black’ theologies) has posed questions to a dominant, ‘First World’ biblical hermeneutics and its idealist presuppositions, in which the history of ideas has taken precedence over their relationship to their social formation. Second, throughout the history of Christianity there have been alternative patterns of biblical interpretation, with different priorities and with the interests of readers, from below other than the élites of the day. The article concludes with some consideration of the historical dimension of ideological criticism in which different doctrinal and practical priorities have emerged in readings of the Bible apart from the dominant ideological contexts.
Old Testament Theology
Authors: Brueggemann Walter
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the discipline and practice of Old Testament theology. It covers the modern preoccupation with history; the break with historical relativism; a fresh beginning beyond historicism; the move away from a single, dominant perspective that resulted in a much more diverse, pluralistic, and variegated field of study; the emergence of new accents in the field in the 1970s; and future developments in Old Testament theology.
The Causal Closure of the Physical and Naturalism
Authors: Papineau David
Published: September 2009

Over the latter half of the last century English-speaking philosophy became increasingly committed to naturalistic doctrines. Much of this naturalistic turn can be attributed to the widespread acceptance of the thesis that the physical realm is causally closed. This article contains four sections. The first section offers an initial formulation of the thesis that physics is causally closed and explains its immediate implications. The second section then discusses the evidence for the thesis from a historical perspective. The third section considers ways of making the thesis properly precise. Finally, the fourth section explores the connections between the thesis and the more general issue of naturalism.
Functionalism
Authors: Van Gulick Robert
Published: September 2009

Functionalism at its core is the thesis that minds and mental kinds are to be understood in terms of the roles or functions that specific states and processes play within suitably organized systems. From a functionalist perspective, minds differ from non-minds not in any distinctive substance or fundamental substrate, but in their systemic organization and the roles played by their parts and sub-parts within it. A minded system is simply one that is organized in the right sort of way, though just which ways those are is a difficult and disputed matter. Functionalists classify states or processes largely, if not solely, in terms of the relevant roles or functions that they play in some such system.
Panpsychism
Authors: Seager William
Published: September 2009

Panpsychism endorses the co-fundamental status of matter and mind in so far as it allows there are features of the world which are non-mental. Panpsychism is also not generally a view in which mentality is taken as ‘substantial’. It is more natural to regard panpsychism as expressing the view that, roughly speaking, everything exemplifies certain mental properties. However, it is an important and distinctive claim of many panpsychists that the ‘object/property’ metaphysics we take for granted is fundamentally mistaken and must be replaced with another metaphysical vision of the basic structure of reality.
The Explanatory Gap
Authors: Levine Joseph
Published: September 2009

This article outlines the strategy for reconciling materialism and the explanatory gap. As one might imagine, there are a number of complex issues that must be sorted out concerning the alleged special nature of phenomenal concepts, and their alleged incommensurability with non-phenomenal concepts, before one can determine whether or not the strategy works in the end. In particular, it is unclear whether materialists can deliver an explanation of the special cognitive access afforded by phenomenal concepts which is itself consistent with its precepts.
Information‐Theoretic Semantics
Authors: Dretske Fred
Published: September 2009

Informational semantics takes the primary — at least the original — home of meaning to be the mind: meaning as the content of thought, desire, and intention. The meaning of beliefs, desires, and intentions is what it is we believe, desire, and intend. The sounds and marks of natural language derive their meaning from the communicative intentions of the agents who deploy them. As a result, the information of chief importance to informational semantics is that occurring in the transactions between animals and their environments. So for informational semantics the very existence of thought and, thus, the possibility of language depends on the capacity of (some) living systems to transform information (normally supplied by perception) into meaningful (contentful) inner states like thought, intention, and purpose.
Biosemantics
Authors: Millikan Ruth Garrett
Published: September 2009

The term ‘biosemantics’ has usually been applied only to the theory of mental representation. This article first characterizes a more general class of theories called ‘teleological theories of mental content’ of which biosemantics is an example. Then it discusses the details that distinguish biosemantics from other naturalistic teleological theories. Naturalistic theories of mental representation attempt to explain, in terms designed to fit within the natural sciences, what it is about a mental representation that makes it represent something. Frequently these theories have been classified as either picture theories, causal or covariation theories, information theories, functionalist or causal-role theories, or teleological theories, the assumption being that these various categories are side by side with one another.
Concepts and Possession Conditions
Authors: Peacocke Christopher
Published: September 2009

The first virtue of the rough characterization of concepts in terms of ways of thinking of objects and properties, and their role in that-clauses, is that it highlights the relation between concepts and reference. The second virtue of the initial characterization is that it establishes the prima facie relevance of what has come to be called Frege's Principle in the individuation of concepts. A third virtue of the initial characterization is that it brings out a phenomenon whose significance is insufficiently appreciated. There is a phenomenon of productivity for thought about mental states that is just as striking as the original phenomenon of the productivity of conceptual thought about the non-mental world.
Intentionalism
Authors: Crane Tim
Published: September 2009

In recent years there has been considerable debate over whether all mental states are intentional; in particular, over whether all conscious mental states are intentional or entirely intentional. This article uses the term intentionalism for the general thesis that the nature of a conscious mental state is determined by its intentionality. (Intentionalism is sometimes called representationalism; the difference is purely terminological.) There are a number of ways of developing this general thesis; this article examines two of them. One is the view that the conscious character of a state of mind is determined by its intentional or representational content. The other is the view that the conscious character of a state of mind is determined by (what the article calls) its entire intentional nature. The article argues for the superiority of the second view over the first.
The Content of Perceptual Experience
Authors: Montague Michelle
Published: September 2009

Our waking life involves a constant stream of perceptual experience. But what is it, exactly? What is the content of perceptual experience? This is a very difficult question to answer satisfactorily, and it has been made a great deal more difficult by the fact that almost all the key terms in the debate have been used in different ways, and sometimes in mutually incompatible ways. This article begins by establishing some basic points and terms of discussion, and asking readers to pay careful attention to the use the article gives to terms, which may not be the same as their own preferred use. It treats the notion of perceptual experience as non-factive, unlike the notion of perception, and lacking the causal implication of the notion of perception.
Unity of Consciousness
Authors: Raymont Paul , Brook Andrew
Published: September 2009

When one focuses on words on a monitor and, say, feels a twinge of pain, one is not conscious of the words and, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the words and the pain together, as aspects of a single experience. At least since Kant, this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness. A variety of approaches to characterizing unified consciousness have been tried by different theorists. Some start from the idea that a unified conscious experience is a composite of other experiences. Others assert or assume that, while a unified conscious experience will have a complex object or content, it has no experiential parts. This article returns to this disagreement. The first two ways of characterizing the unity of consciousness that are examined here are within the experiential-parts approach.
Personal Identity and Metaphysics
Authors: Gendler Tamar Szabó
Published: September 2009

This article tries to situate the recent discussions of personal identity in their historical context. It begins with a brief discussion of Locke's account of identity as such, turning then to a more detailed account of his views on personal identity in particular. It then discusses a pair of problems that arise for any sort of neo-Lockean account, and surveys the sorts of responses that have been offered to them. Finally the article briefly presents three recent accounts, each of which can be seen as relying on a subtle re-characterization of the traditional problem of personal identity.
Consciousness and Reference
Authors: Campbell John
Published: September 2009

Russell was the first to articulate the connection between consciousness and a recognizably modern conception of reference, using his notion of acquaintance. The idea of ‘acquaintance’ is the idea of a kind of epistemic contact with a thing or property. Many theorists would agree that reference to something requires a particular kind of epistemic contact with it. Yet you might agree that the notion of ‘epistemic contact with a particular’ is needed to characterize reference, while arguing that epistemic contact is to be explained as possession of a body of propositional knowledge.
Folk Psychology
Authors: Morton Adam
Published: September 2009

We describe people in terms of their beliefs, desires, emotions, and personalities, and we attempt to explain their actions in terms of these and other such states. These are folk-psychological concepts; they are the ones we use when we think of people in terms of their minds. By ‘folk psychology’ it is meant whatever serves this linking role for folk-psychological concepts. Much philosophical writing about concepts would suggest that the linking must be done primarily by beliefs or theories; a central question is whether this is so for folk-psychological concepts.
Big Business
Authors: Cassis Youssef
Published: September 2009

Big business has been at the heart of business history from its very beginnings, whether as a mere literary genre; or, more seriously in the last half century, as an academic discipline. The Chandlerian paradigm has considerably reinforced this trend, with other approaches to the subject being largely marginalized. Interest in big business has not waned with the advent of the post-Chandler era and is unlikely to do so, given its crucial role in economic development; but this role has been put in proper perspective and alternative forms of business organization reappraised as part of modern societies rather than mere archaisms. This article concentrates on defining the notion of big business; on comparing the various stages and the specific context of its development, especially in the United States, the major economies of Western Europe, and Japan; and on briefly discussing the socio-political dimension of the phenomenon.
Family Business
Authors: Colli Andrea , Rose Mary
Published: September 2009

Business history is naturally multidisciplinary and this article tracks the relationships between history, organizational and network theory, entrepreneurship, and family dynamics that underpin current research on family business. It surveys and assesses the existing historiography and analyses the way understanding of family firms has developed since the 1960s. By surveying the business-history literature alongside management and sociological approaches to family firms, the article highlights the shifting nature of family capitalism and the changes in the economic contribution and management of family firms through time and space. It shows that business historians have a proud tradition of recognizing that families and firms are inseparable. Yet this analysis can be taken further by combining historical and postmodern social-science methodologies to explore the pivotal and changing role of women in different firms, sectors, and societies.
Entrepreneurship
Authors: Jones Geoffrey , Wadhwani R. Daniel
Published: September 2009

Since the 1980s, entrepreneurship has emerged as a topic of growing interest among management scholars and social scientists. The subject has grown in legitimacy, particularly in business schools. This scholarly interest has been spurred by a set of recent developments in the United States. This article begins by providing a brief introduction to the origins and evolution of historical research on entrepreneurship. It then turns to explore a series of different streams of business-history research that deal with issues of entrepreneurship and historical change. The article highlights the ways in which historical context shaped the structure of entrepreneurial activity, and reveals the wide variation in organizational form and entrepreneurial behavior that historians have found. It concludes by discussing the main contributions of business history to the study of entrepreneurship, and proposes a renewed research agenda.
Business And The State
Authors: Millward Robert
Published: September 2009

Although there is a huge literature relevant to the history of relations between the state and business, this article's emphasis on international comparisons (Western Europe, Japan, and the United States) allows a distinct focus to be given to the analysis. The article draws attention to business as an instrument of the geopolitical strategy of governments and of internal social and political unification, as well as to more traditional ideological differences between countries. As a framework for analysis, geopolitical settings and political structures, as a supplement to ideological issues, shed considerable light on international differences in business–state relations. The article looks at two large land masses, the United States and continental Europe, plus two high-income island economies, Japan and Britain.
Skill Formation And Training
Authors: Thelen Kathleen
Published: September 2009

This article surveys the literature on skill formation and training, presenting arguments about the significance of skills and the historical sources of variation in training regimes. It considers briefly a range of arguments by economists and political scientists on the implications of different, nationally specific models of skill formation. The article presents an overview of the various typologies that have been devised to characterize cross-national differences in training systems, and links these to recent claims about how vocational education and training systems fit into broader national political-economic models. It turns to the question of the origins of cross-national differences in training and skill-formation systems. Most of the historical literature is organized around the analysis of single country cases, and only a few works are explicitly comparative.
Business Culture
Authors: Lipartito Kenneth
Published: September 2009

Scholarship has been moving toward the reintegration of business and cultural history, in ways that offer payoffs for both. The best of this work avoids much of the determinism and teleology of older approaches, finding that business can be practiced, quite successfully, in many different ways in different cultural settings. The new scholarship challenges business historians to recognize the more expressive aspects of business culture, beyond what culture may contribute instrumentally to firm growth. Modern cultural theory offers a way to rethink the relationship between business and culture. Treating culture as constitutive turns familiar business issues of strategy, structure, and technology into objects of meaning and interpretation, “artifacts” of values and practice rather than hard, settled facts. Such an approach argues for giving business ideas, practices, and expressions equal footing with material matters of production and profit.
Elite Beliefs and the Theory of Democratic Elitism
Authors: Peffley Mark , Rohrschneider Robert
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the empirical evidence of four of the more controversial pillars of the democratic elitism thesis that has been defined by early studies. The review in this article further supports the survey studies that compare the elite and mass opinions in cross-national contexts. An assessment of the elitists' claims is conducted; the empirical evidence from three bodies of research is carefully evaluated.
Information, Persuasion, and Political Communication Networks
Authors: Huckfeldt Robert
Published: September 2009

This article presents a survey and interpretation of the contributions made by network theories on the study of citizens and democratic policies. The article serves as an overview of the topic. It begins by locating the network research within the rich substantive and theoretical tradition of individually and group-based studies of electoral politics and public opinion. It addresses some methodological issues in the study of political information networks. The article ends with the discussion of theoretical and substantive insights that were generated in several studies, such as the study of communication and persuasion among citizens.
The Political Culture Paradigm
Authors: Fuchs Dieter
Published: September 2009

This article gives an analysis that tries to explain the core elements of the concept of political culture. It attempts to specify and differentiate the concept by considering important points of criticism, new problems, and perspectives. The analysis presented is conducted in four steps. The first step determines the paradigmatic core of political culture, and the second step suggests incorporating the civic community or the political community into the concept of political culture. The third step studies the problems of aggregation and causality. The fourth and final step provides summary conclusions and some considerations for the perspectives of future research.
Left–Right Orientations
Authors: Mair Peter
Published: September 2009

This article discusses left–right orientations; the left–right dimension has been described as a ‘shorthand’ device that helps facilitate comparisons through space and time. It first examines the acceptability of left and right and the referents of left and right. The last two sections of the article focus on the blurring and the resilience of left and right. It is noted that the left–right schema was able to offer something in structure and substance that helped facilitate efficient communication and orientation.
Postmaterialist Values and the Shift from Survival to Self‐Expression Values
Authors: Inglehart Ronald
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the postmaterialist values, as well as the shift from survival to self-expression. It looks at controversies over the value change thesis and discusses changing political arguments. One section covers intergenerational value change in economically advanced and low-income societies. This article concludes that intergenerational value changes actually reflect historic changes in a society's existential conditions. Although these changes are far from universal, they can be found only in societies where the younger generations have experienced rather different formative conditions from those that had shaped the older generations.
Political Values
Authors: Halman Loek
Published: September 2009

This article discusses political values. The first section provides a working definition of the terms values and political values. This is followed by a discussion of old and new political values. The article also examines modernization and political value changes. The article ends with a section on critical and discontented citizens.
Social and Political Trust
Authors: Newton Kenneth
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the nature and importance of the relationship between social and political trust. The first section contains an account of the problems that define trust and a list of its main types. An outline of how trust is measured in empirical research is and how reliable and valid these measurements are can be found in the next section. The article ends with a list of the main theories of trust and the empirical evidence for these theories.
The Effects of Religion and Religiosity on Voting Behavior
Authors: Esmer Yilmaz , Pettersson Thorleif
Published: September 2009

This article attempts to define the extent to which religion influences political and voting behaviour in the contemporary world. It also tries to identify the major factors behind this influence. The article starts by looking at the secularization theory, which asserts that modernization decreases the need for and the significance of religion on both the macro and micro levels. ‘Supply-side’ theories and religion in politics are examined next.
The Interaction of Structures and Voter Behavior
Authors: Anderson Christopher J.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses and reviews the growing literature on the nexus of macro-level structures and individual behaviour that some studies are a part of. It looks at the effects that macro-level institutions and contexts have on citizen behaviour, along with how political institutions and the environment where citizens form opinions and act, help in moderating the effects of individual-level factors on citizen behaviour. The modelling structures and behaviour, effects of structures on voter behaviour, and the interactions of structures and behaviour in research on economic voting are some of the topics covered in the article.
The Relationship between Public Opinion and Policy
Authors: Wlezien Christopher , Soroka Stuart N.
Published: September 2009

This article provides a review of the empirical literature testing a general model where policy is considered as a function of public preferences. It considers the mechanics by which the preferences are converted to policy along with the extensions of the basic model. In this article, public opinion is used as an independent variable, and is considered as an important driver of public policy change. Opinion is reconsidered as a dependent variable, especially its responsiveness to policy change.
Political Elites
Authors: Blondel Jean , Müller-Rommel Ferdinand
Published: September 2009

This article examines the various forms that political elite theory took, from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1960s and 1970s. The career patterns, forms of recruitment, and duration and turnover among the political elite are studied. The article also discusses the role of the political elite. It is concluded that the use of the concept of the political elite can help in the understanding of political life, as long as it is treated as a flexible tool that takes into account the immense complexities of the power relationships between human beings.
Perspectives on Representation: Asking the Right Questions and Getting the Right Answers
Authors: Stimson James
Published: September 2009

This article provides some perspectives on representation. It first studies the normative issues that can be found in representation literature, before discussing design issues and the question of why cross-sectional studies of representation have not been particularly fruitful. Longitudinal studies, thinking about politics as a system, and cross-polity analyses are discussed in the final portion of the article.
Comparative Opinion Surveys
Authors: Curtice John
Published: September 2009

This article discusses comparative opinion surveys and comparative survey research. It first identifies the problems of comparative surveys and how these problems can be solved or overcome. It then tries to determine whether these surveys should include more or fewer countries during the research process. The last two sections discuss the need for data on the countries included in the survey or data set and the how the comparative survey data is analyzed.
Methods of Elite Research
Authors: Hoffmann‐Lange Ursula
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the different methods of elite research. Elite research studies the characteristics of politicians and other holders of leadership positions in powerful public institutions and private organizations. These individuals are distinguished by their regular participation in (political) decision making. The fields of elite research are discussed, which are composed of four main areas. The methods of elite identification and the methods of data collection are also studied.
Why and How Philosophy Matters
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: September 2009

This article examines the importance of philosophy in politics and political analysis. It discusses the nature of philosophy and the prospect for a philosophy of politics and explains that philosophy is an attempt to think explicitly and rationally about matters on which one cannot help but have implicit commitments. It outlines the six domains of inquiry consistent with the general view of philosophical reasoning. These include the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of value, and the philosophy of society.
Detecting Ideas and Their Effects
Authors: Price Richard
Published: September 2009

This article considers methods for the detection and identification of ideas and norms and evaluates their effects on politics. It discusses some methods for detecting ideas including the drawing of causal inferences from statistical correlations and regressions, experimental designs, psychological studies, counterfactual reasoning, and process-tracing which might involve archival research and interviews. It also investigates whether ideas move politics and evaluates whether they can maintain to do so from the local level to the systemic level of world politics.
The Present as History
Authors: Jackson Patrick Thaddeus
Published: September 2009

This article considers the consideration of present political events as history. It discusses the speech given by former Vermont Governor Howard Dean after the 204 Iowa Caucuses and suggests that Dean's post-Caucus speech and the rapid production of its meaning illustrates that the issues of historical interpretation, well-known to historians, are by no means unique to occurrences taking place in the distant past. It argues that analyzing the cultural politics of eventing requires a detailed tracing of how historical and political mechanisms interact and concatenate to generate a specific outcome.
Detecting the Significance of Place
Authors: Wong R. Bin
Published: September 2009

This article examines how place can be detected or identified and evaluates its importance in politics. It reviews some of the challenges faced in defining place and offers a few examples of the significance some analysts have assigned to place. It suggests how an attention to place can help us explain variations in political outcomes when many features of the situations would lead us to expect the same kinds and discusses the conception of place as a geographical location, as a human project and political object, and as a type of bargaining and control strategy.
Spaces and Places as Sites and Objects of Politics
Authors: Auyero Javier
Published: September 2009

This article examines the concept of places and spaces as objects and sites of politics. It describes the global scenes of contentious politics in and over space and place and explores the importance of space in the study of politics. It discusses the conception of space as built environment and as a depository of social relations and political actions. It highlights the agreement among geographers and social scientists that contentious politics should be seen both geographically structured and geographically structuring collective practices which means that contention takes place in extant geographies and creates new ones.
Why and How Population Matters
Authors: Levine David
Published: September 2009

This article describes the importance of population in politics. It describes some events to show the political relevance of population. These include the Black Death and the end of feudalism in England, the plague and the rise of the Florentine City-state, and the re-creation of religious identities because of pestilential fury and cultural despair. This article concludes that population matters to political processes not as an exogenous force but as a constitutive element of social life. It explains that anyone who treats fluctuations in fertility, mortality, nuptiality, morbidity, or migration as if they occurred outside of politics or prior to politics misses one of demography's great contributions to social analysis which is the demonstration that even subtle alterations in social arrangements translate immediately into demographic effects that reshape human capacities and opportunities for political action.
Politics and Mass Immigration
Authors: Freeman Gary P.
Published: September 2009

This article analyses the political relevance of mass immigration focusing on migration into Western democracies in the last forty years. It discusses the issues of immigration control and immigration incorporation and argues that liberal states are torn in their approach to immigration and this indecision is reflected in policies that are an incoherent mix of aggressive restriction and active and passive acceptance. It suggests that ostentatious efforts by governments to control unwanted migration, however ineffective they may be, are necessary to raise public willingness to go along with the renewed recruitment of skilled migrants and reformulated programs to integrate existing immigrant communities.
Population Change, Urbanization, and Political Consolidation
Authors: Herbst Jeffrey
Published: September 2009

This article looks into the political implications of population change and urbanization for state consolidation of the historically unprecedented situation that most populations everywhere will be located primarily in urban areas. It discusses the opportunities and challenges that urbanization poses for two critical aspects of state consolidation: building the coercive apparatus of the state itself and the popular control of public coercion through the establishment of democracy. The movement of people to the cities in developing countries presents opportunities as well as dangers to states. But no matter how disorganized and chaotic major cities in the poorer parts of the developing world appear to outsiders, these areas are actually amongst the easiest for a state to control and could be the vanguards for democratization.
Military Technologies and Politics
Authors: Smit Wim A.
Published: September 2009

This article considers military technological change and its relation with both politics and political analysis. It shows that this relation actually represents an entwined evolution of military technology, politics, and political analysis by conducting an in-depth analysis of military technological innovation since the Second World War. It describes several ways by which weapons development interacted with politics and political analysis. These include the transformation of national and international security issues in relation to the technological arms race and weapons proliferation and political control of weapons innovation.
Epigraphy
Authors: Tabbernee William
Published: September 2009

The academic discipline of epigraphy includes the search for and discovery of hitherto unknown inscriptions, the publication of accurate editions and translations of and commentaries on inscriptions, and the scholarly discussion and dissemination of the data provided by inscriptions. The governments of most countries now have stringent controls in place regarding who can have access to archaeological sites and how these sites are to be excavated under government supervision. Archaeological teams normally include epigraphers who measure, photograph, take squeezes, and make transcriptions, provisional restorations, and translations of the texts of any inscriptions found on the site. The historical data provided by the huge number of early Christian inscriptions are indispensable to the non-specialist as well as the specialist student of early Christianity. Understanding and interpreting such data correctly demands at least a rudimentary knowledge of the methodology, resources, and results of the academic discipline called epigraphy.
Jews and Christians
Authors: Jacobs Andrew S.
Published: September 2009

A concise narrative of the split between ancient Judaism and Christianity persists in modern scholarship. This narrative has its roots in a theologically conditioned, supersessionist reading of the New Testament, in which the messianic salvation rejected by the Jews was taken up by Gentile believers and became the distinct religion of ‘the Christians’. The ‘parting of the ways’ is a clear yet benign metaphor which allows each religion to maintain a robust history and a common genealogy, just connected enough to justify ongoing, friendly relations, but not so connected that the distinctive tradition of each religion becomes too blurred. The present challenge for the historian of early Jewish–Christian relations is to juggle the rhetorical bias of the sources with the academic desire for an unbiased analysis of history.
Manichaeism
Authors: Lieu Samuel N. C.
Published: September 2009

Of all the heresies that threatened the unity of the early church, the followers of Mani occupied an exceptional position, as they were devotees not of Jesus but first and foremost of a prophet from Mesopotamia who claimed to be a latter-day ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’ and possessor of ‘the seal of the prophet’. Mani, the founder of the sect, gave a more gnostic interpretation to the rituals, but his views were held to be dangerous by the elders of the sect, who subsequently expelled him. It was probably in India that Mani encountered Buddhist asceticism and monasticism as well as the doctrine of metempsychosis. On his return to Mesopotamia, he converted the Shah of Mesene to his teaching, and through him Mani was able to have an audience with Shapur I, the second Shahanshah of the new Sasanian dynasty, which had replaced Parthian rule in the Near East.
Monasticism
Authors: Harmless William
Published: September 2009

Christianity had ascetic commitments from its very foundation, in the words and deeds both of Jesus and of Paul. When it surfaced into legitimacy in the 310s, Christianity's deep-seated ascetic impulses surfaced as well. The movement called monasticism left an indelible impression upon Christian faith and practice in the medieval West, the Byzantine East, and beyond. Two classic forms of monasticism emerged early: the anchoritic, or solitary life of the hermit; and the cenobitic, or life within a structured community. Monastic life required, from the outset, stark renunciations: of family, property, marriage, and career. Early monks typically joined ascetical disciplines – fasting, vigils, poverty, lifelong celibacy – with a life of manual labour. This article surveys the classic figures and classic texts, since these provide the point of departure for contemporary research, both the deconstruction of received views and the reconstructions opened up by new discoveries and new methods.
Poetry and Hymnography (1): Christian Latin Poetry
Authors: Roberts Michael J.
Published: September 2009

Christian Latin poetry began in all probability with the unmetrical quasi-hexameters of Commodian, now generally dated to the mid-third century CE. The last important figure still writing in the late Roman tradition is Venantius Fortunatus, most of whose works date to the late 560s and to the 570s. Many poems survive from the intervening years, though not all periods were equally productive. Because of considerations of length, this article focuses on certain particularly important authors and periods: the beginnings of Christian poetry with Juvencus (early fourth century); the late fourth-century coming of age of Christian poetry with Paulinus of Nola, Prudentius, and, in hymnody, Ambrose; and the fifth- and sixth-century traditions of biblical narrative poetry. These are the periods and authors that have received the most attention in the scholarship.
Martyrdom and the Cult of the Saints
Authors: Price Richard
Published: September 2009

It is a mistake to suppose that the scientific history of the Christian church, worthy of continuing use, started only a few decades ago. Arguably, the best work with which to begin a study of the Roman persecutions is article 16 of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in 1776. The earliest literary evidence for the cult of martyrs dates to the mid-second century, and relates to the place of burial of the martyred Polycarp of Smyrna. This article also discusses the witness of the martyrs; saints and Christian living; a religion of Sundays or of saints' days; miracles; archaeology and art; and the cult of the Virgin Mary.
Doctrine of God
Authors: Ayres Lewis , Radde‐Gallwitz Andrew
Published: September 2009

This article describes the shape of modern scholarship; polemic and development; the fourth-century controversies; Gnosticism; Judaism and Christianity; the influence of post-classical philosophical traditions; the shape of Trinitarian orthodoxy; negative theology and mysticism; feminist scholarship; and divine suffering. Adolf von Harnack and Walter Bauer profoundly shaped the scholarly study of the early Christian doctrine of God, even though their views no longer carry the day. The trends in recent scholarship outlined here represent in broad strokes the current state of the question; but just as the pro-Nicene figures believed that one never stops growing in knowledge of God, so too will scholarship on their contributions in this area continue to evolve. Current scholarship on the early Christian doctrine of God occurs in a context in which many older narratives about the development of doctrine have come under significant question.
Early Christian Ethics
Authors: Cardman Francine
Published: September 2009

This survey of early Christian ethics as an emerging field of study with multiple investigators, interests, methodologies, and subjects has pointed out significant developments that are shaping the field and suggested some of the directions that future study might take. As scholars launch new explorations of this old terrain, perspectives broaden, lost features or forgotten routes of interconnection are rediscovered, familiar landmarks no longer loom as large as they once did, and boundaries begin to fade. In this process, the necessity of self-conscious reflection on the ethics of studying early Christian ethics becomes manifest. The decentring of Christian theology as the orienting point for this field demands a new kind of scholarly, personal, and communal accountability on the part of its students, whatever their relationship to Christianity. In the end, the rhetoric and practice of studying early Christian ethics must themselves be ethical.