bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ancient Versions and Textual Transmission of the Old Testament
Authors: Norton Gerard J.
Published: September 2009

This article first gives a schematic outline of the history of the Hebrew text in four stages. It then presents the elements that readers will meet in modern editions of that text. These modern editions find a common focus in the great Tiberian manuscripts of about 1000 CE linked with the name of ben Asher. These manuscripts are presented in conjunction with the editions. The possibility of finding variant Hebrew traditions in manuscripts from after that date is considered, and largely rejected. The discernment of differing traditions in witnesses from before 1000 CE is discussed with reference to the ancient versions and the manuscript traditions from Qumran.
Textual Transmission and Versions of the New Testament
Authors: Birdsall J. N.
Published: September 2009

This article argues that the transmission of scripture has been the work of those who were primarily Christians, and must be seen in the context of their concern for the clear and true statement of the faith. They did their best to preserve the text, but saw the task in part as ensuring too that its message was comprehended. They could also make mistakes, and these were not always completely removed. It is the effects of the desire for absolute clarity, and especially for expressions that left no room for erroneous interpretation, considered useful in their day, which are today seen by a majority as hindrances to our perception of the pristine documents. However, many variant readings are early, some being errors, but others indicative of early tradition or exegesis. There is much valuable data latent in the critical apparatus as well as in the text of our modern critical editions.
Israel to the End of the Persian Period: History, Social, Political, and Economic background
Authors: Rogerson J. W.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the social, political, and economic background of Israel to the end of the Persian period, based upon extra-biblical texts, archaeological discoveries, and anthropological models. Where appropriate, reference will be made to Old Testament material, not in order to vindicate its historical ‘truth’ through the back door, but to suggest ways of looking at it in the light of the historical and social reconstruction. The biblical narrative is silent on all but religious happenings for the first half of both the 8th and 7th centuries, as well as much of the 6th to 4th centuries. In the case of kings such as Omri, the biblical record is virtually silent on the subject of his many military achievements. However, it should not be concluded that the historical information in the biblical records is worthless; and, to be fair to the biblical editors, they refer constantly to the books of the chronicles of the kings of Judah and Israel as sources of further information.
The Life and Teaching of Jesus and the Rise of Christianity
Authors: Evans Craig A.
Published: September 2009

This article reviews studies on the life and teaching of Jesus and the rise of Christianity. The beginning of critical research into the life of Jesus is traditionally traced to the posthumous publication of seven fragments of a lengthy manuscript on ‘reasonable religion’ by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768). In the 1960s and 1970s life of Jesus research continued, but often the emphasis was placed on Jesus as a social or political figure, rather than as one relevant for faith. Some of the studies that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, however, seem to represent a quest not governed primarily by theological or political agendas. Jewish scholars are now active participants in the discussion.
Priesthood, Temple(s), and Sacrifice
Authors: Hayward Robert
Published: September 2009

This article draws on various biblical sources and discusses the origins and identity of the priests and the Levites, their separate duties and functions, and their status in the life of Israel as a nation under the authority of the Torah. The duties and functions of the priests in Israel included determining the will of God, sometimes through oracular means (ephod, Urim and Thummim), sometimes by their exercise of specialized knowledge; the teaching of tôrāh, offering explicit instruction in the manner in which YHWH is to be served; the setting upon YHWH's altar of the blood of animal victims, and the portions allotted to the altar; the privilege of offering incense and other non-animal offerings belonging to the category of most holy things; oversight of the purity of sanctuary, sacred objects, and worshippers; and the administration of oaths and the pronouncing of blessings in YHWH's name. The traditional records suggest that these duties varied little from one age to another. What was often at issue, however, was the question who might perform which action.
Law in the Old Testament
Authors: Wenham Gordon
Published: September 2009

The English Bible reader understands ‘law’as the legal rulings and moral injunctions found within the Pentateuch, such as the Ten Commandments, the farming regulations of Exodus 22, the laws on sacrifice and purity in Leviticus, and the sermons of Deuteronomy. It is ‘law’ in this sense that is the focus of this article. The article also considers the administration of the law, whether by king, priest, or village elders.
Movements
Authors: Lieu Judith M.
Published: September 2009

Accounts of Judaism often start from Josephus's description of the three ‘schools of thought’ (haireseis, sometimes misleadingly translated as ‘sects’), or ‘philosophies’, among the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. New Testament references to the Pharisees and the Sadducees seemingly confirmed this starting point, while the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, often associated with Josephus's Essenes, apparently completed the picture, although it also did much to stimulate reconsideration of Jewish faith and practice. On the other hand, Josephus also describes the Jews as holding a remarkable unity, and the tension between these two claims sets the scene for the debates about ‘unity and diversity’ that have dominated much modern scholarship.
Apocalyptic
Authors: Davies Philip
Published: September 2009

In the Old Testament, apocalyptic literature (or simply ‘apocalyptic’, as the genre is often called) might not seem to occupy a prominent place. Only the book of Daniel falls into this category. Despite its poor representation in the Bible, apocalyptic literature is not a fringe activity; nor are its contents peripheral to an understanding of Judaism (or Christianity, for that matter). This article focuses on the book of Daniel, the main Old Testament exemplar, and the book of 1 Enoch, which contains the earliest and in many respects most important Palestinian Jewish apocalypses.
Wisdom
Authors: Dell Katharine J.
Published: September 2009

This article addresses the following questions: What is this tradition of ‘wisdom’ to which the wise men ultimately belong? How far back do its roots go, and what literature specifically contains its insights? The genre of wisdom that begins with the book of Proverbs developed in a number of different directions as the canon expanded and then closed, and as the tradition continued into the Apocrypha, the Qumran documents, and the New Testament. Whilst wisdom books appear to be in a category of their own within the canon of the Old Testament, wisdom influence on other material can easily be found, even if the exchange of influence does not appear to have been two-way, at least in the earliest material. Later, however, that changed, and the boundaries between the wisdom genre and other genres became indistinct. The theological context of wisdom became increasingly important, with a significant development in Proverbs 1–9 into the realm of cosmological Wisdom, which became very significant in apocryphal material and with important theological challenges to the wisdom world-view posed by the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes, who questioned God's justice in the world in the light of human suffering and death.
Novella
Authors: Gruen Erich
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on the Jewish ‘novella’, defined as prose fiction narrating the experiences of individuals or groups, composed for entertainment but also communicating values, ideas, or guidance. The classification encompasses works as diverse as the religious fables of the book of Daniel, the morality tale of Susanna, the historical fantasy of 3 Maccabees, and the romantic/adventure story of Joseph and Aseneth. The varieties, messages, audience, and entertainment value of these novellas are discussed.
Gospels
Authors: Burridge Richard A.
Published: September 2009

The basic question of what the gospels actually are from a literary point of view should have been one of the first things biblical scholars sorted out and agreed about. However, the history of the last century or more of critical study is one in which the pendulum has swung back and forth – from a biographical approach to the gospels to considering them to be unique, and then back to biography again. In order to answer the question of the genre of the gospels properly, it is necessary to understand two key areas: the critical theory of genre and the kinds of literature contemporary with the gospels within the Graeco-Roman and Jewish worlds around the first century. This article first looks at genre theory and then sketches a brief historical overview of scholarly approaches to the gospels. This leads to the recently developing consensus that the gospels are a form of ancient biography and some current issues of debate and future directions of research.
Letters
Authors: Lieu Judith M.
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on New Testament (NT) letters. The development and influence of the letter-form is one of the most striking characteristics of the NT: twenty-one of the NT writings are labelled letters from early in the manuscript tradition. This sets a pattern that is consciously continued in the early Church (as already by the letters of Ignatius), and which, by the networks created and by the implicit claims to and recognition of authority, can be seen as crucial to the development of what was to become early Christianity. Although there are letters embedded within books of the Hebrew Bible, there are no books that themselves take the form of letters; however, the letters which prefix 2 Maccabees and the Letter of Jeremiah in the LXX also testify to the attraction of the genre in the Hellenistic period. Study of biblical letters, therefore, belongs to and contributes to broader debates, such as how NT literary forms are related to those of the wider Jewish or Graeco-Roman world; how their distinctiveness is to be identified and explained; and the hermeneutical problem of reading, and within the Christian tradition of treating as possessing authority, texts originally written for a specific readership and situation now accessible only through them.
Textual Criticism
Authors: Van der Kooij Arie
Published: September 2009

Since, as is generally assumed, the biblical books in Hebrew (and Aramaic) go back to a period of a much earlier date – that of the seventh to the second centuries BCE – the question arises as to whether the text of the biblical books has been transmitted, through the ages up to its attestation in the early Middle Ages, accurately, or not. It is the task of textual criticism to examine the text's reliability from the perspective of the transmission history. This article discusses the following: the reasons why textual criticism is needed, text-critical research methods, the purpose of textual criticism, and how to realize the goal of textual criticism.
New Testament Theology
Authors: Dunn James D. G.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the concept of New Testament (NT) theology. NT is the primary witness to the beginnings of Christian theology, and remains a primary source for Christian theology in all ages. Indeed, it can be fairly argued that the NT writings define and provide the subject matter for Christian theology, on which all subsequent Christian theologizing is ultimately commentary. And even if some would regard that last comment as something of an overstatement, it nevertheless remains an inescapable fact that the NT writings provide the literary basis for all Christian theology.
The Bible in Ethics
Authors: Davies Eryl
Published: September 2009

This article begins with a discussion of the methodological issues faced by scholars of ethics in the Old Testament and New Testament. It then identifies the basis of Old Testament ethics in law, natural law, and the imitation of God. This is followed by a discussion of New Testament ethics covering Jesus and the law, Jesus and eschatology, the background of Paul's ethics, and Paul's Christology and eschatology.
Canon
Authors: McDonald Lee Martin
Published: September 2009

This article examines the notion of canon in antiquity and its application to the writings that eventually received canonical recognition in the Jewish and Christian communities of faith. The investigation of the Hebrew Bible and the ‘First’ or ‘Old’ Testament of the Church are shown to be inextricably bound together. The lack of agreement in antiquity on the definition of a biblical canon, as well as the books that comprise it, and the inconsistency in the use of terms to describe it and its processes make any investigation of the origins and stabilization of the Bible more difficult, but some inferences and conclusions can be drawn. The article begins with a focus on the context of canon formation, and then proceeds to what can be discerned in the ancient sources.
Historical Criticism and the Authority of the Bible
Authors: Rogerson J. W.
Published: September 2009

Fifty years ago hardly anyone in academic circles doubted that the historical-critical method was the principal, if not all-sufficient, way of studying the Bible responsibly. Today the situation is quite different, and it is possible, in Anglo-American academic circles, to hear the historical-critical method described as a product of the Enlightenment that has become as suspect as the Enlightenment project itself. This situation was brought about by the revolution in biblical studies worked by contact with developments such as liberation theology, feminist criticism, and structuralism and post-structuralism. There is also another important strand in this, which is that the historical-critical method is not a monolithic and unchanging phenomenon, but an approach which has subjected itself to the self-critical scrutiny characteristic of, and necessary to, any academic discipline. The fact that, within historical criticism, many of what used to be described as ‘assured results’ have been challenged or overturned, has looked to outsiders as though the approach itself has been discredited, which is far from the truth. This article begins by describing some of the modifications that have occurred within historical criticism. It then considers attacks upon the method that have been driven by ecclesiastical concerns, which then leads to a broader consideration of the relationship between biblical criticism and the authority of the Bible, including the understanding of the Bible as ‘scripture’.
Anomalous Monism
Authors: Yoo Julie
Published: September 2009

Anomalous monism is a view about the relationship between the mind and the body, which attempts to strike a delicate balance between the thesis of materialism, on the one hand, and the irreducibility of the mental, on the other. Its current formulation is found in Donald Davidson's landmark paper, ‘Mental Events’, and concerns only intentional states — contentful mental states, such as the belief that p, the desire that q, and other propositional attitudes. Anomalous monism consists of two theses, one concerning monism, the other concerning anomalism. The ‘monism’ part of anomalous monism is the claim that all events, including the mental ones, essentially fall under one class; namely, the class of physical events.
Idealism
Authors: Robinson Howard
Published: September 2009

Arguments specifically for and against idealism are arguments about the nature of the physical world, not about the nature of mind. This creates a problem for a would-be author of an entry on idealism, in a collection on the philosophy of mind, if he wishes to do justice both to the topic of his chapter and to the theme of the book as a whole. This article tries to resolve this conflict. Arguments for idealism usually take the form of attempted refutations of physical realism. They therefore tend to take the form of trying to prove that, in one way or another, the existence of material objects depends directly on the existence and activity of minds, other than that of the divine creator in his act of creating.
Subjectivity
Authors: Perry John
Published: September 2009

Subjectivity is to many philosophers what the frog is to many biologists: the object of fascination that first drew them to their discipline. The first part of this article discusses what we find there in our individual consciousness or subjectivity: experiences of various sorts, including thoughts and thoughts about thoughts and thoughts about other experiences. It also briefly considers what these things are doing there. The second part discusses whether Frank Jackson's ‘knowledge argument’ provides a good reason to doubt that all these things we find in our minds are events in and states of our brain.
Higher‐Order Theories of Consciousness
Authors: Rosenthal David M.
Published: September 2009

There are several phenomena that constitute what we call consciousness, each of which gives rise to special problems and puzzles. One is the condition people and other creatures are in when they are conscious, as against when they are, for example, asleep, knocked out, or anaesthetized. And there is the related question about what distinguishes people and other creatures that can be conscious in that way from things that can not, such as stones and trees. We may call these questions the problem of creature consciousness. There is also a question about what it is for a person or other creature to be conscious of something. We may call this phenomenon transitive consciousness.
Sensory Qualities, Sensible Qualities, Sensational Qualities
Authors: Byrne Alex
Published: September 2009

In theorizing about perception philosophers have often multiplied qualities. To perceptible qualities of external objects, like colours and shapes (‘sensible’ qualities), have been added qualities of experiences (‘sensory’ qualities) or of sense-data (‘sensational’ qualities). This article starts with sensory qualities. The phrase ‘sensory quality’ is not much in use these days, having lost out to ‘phenomenal character’, ‘phenomenal property’, ‘qualitative character’, or ‘quale’. But whatever sensory qualities are called, pinning them down is no easy matter.
Phenomenal Concepts
Authors: Balog Katalin
Published: September 2009

This article is about the special, subjective concepts we apply to experience. These are called ‘phenomenal concepts’ (PCs) and they are of special interest in a number of ways. First, they refer to phenomenal experiences, and the qualitative character of those experiences whose metaphysical status is hotly debated. Conscious experiences strike many philosophers as philosophically problematic and difficult to accommodate within a physicalistic metaphysics. Second, PCs are widely thought to be special and unique among concepts. The sense that there is something special about PCs is very closely tied up with features of the epistemic access they afford to qualia.
The Two‐Dimensional Argument Against Materialism
Authors: Chalmers David J.
Published: September 2009

A number of popular arguments for dualism start from a premise about an epistemic gap between physical truths and truths about consciousness, and infer an ontological gap between physical processes and consciousness. Arguments of this sort include the conceivability argument, the knowledge argument, the explanatory gap argument, and the property dualism argument. Such arguments are often resisted on the grounds that epistemic premises do not entail ontological conclusions. This article views that one can legitimately infer ontological conclusions from epistemic premises, if one is careful about how one reasons. To do so, the best way is to reason first from epistemic premises to modal conclusions (about necessity and possibility), and from there to ontological conclusions. Here the crucial issue is the link between the epistemic and modal domains.
Wide Content
Authors: Egan Frances
Published: September 2009

Wide or externalist content is individuated in part by reference to features of a subject's external surroundings, by her physical environment or the community with which she shares a language. Externalists hold that physically identical subjects might have thoughts with different, wide, contents. Internalists either deny that content is wide, claiming that all content supervenes on intrinsic physical states of the subject, and is hence narrow, or insist, at the very least, that the content that individuates a subject's thoughts in predictions and explanations of her behaviour must supervene on her intrinsic properties. This article begins by discussing the arguments for and against wide content. It then argues that genuinely explanatory content is wide.
Narrow Content
Authors: Segal Gabriel
Published: September 2009

The notion of narrow content arises from Hilary Putnam's well-known article ‘The Meaning of “Meaning” ‘. Putnam raised the question of whether the meaning of a word in a given subject's mouth is fixed by the subject's psychological states in (what he termed) ‘the narrow sense’. According to Putnam, a psychological state is narrow if a subject's being in that state does not presuppose the existence of anything outside the subject. The idea is that a narrow psychological state is intrinsic to the subject: it does not in any essential way require the subject to stand in any particular relations to anything in her environment.
Imagination
Authors: McGinn Colin
Published: September 2009

The topic of imagination is broad and multifarious: we are dealing with an extended family of interrelated concepts and capacities. Imagining covers everything from the simple mental image, to the philosophical counter-example, to the most sublime act of creation. It takes in both dreaming and logical thinking, reverie and hypothesis formation. To bring order to this range of mental phenomena it helps to make an initial distinction between what the article calls sensory and cognitive imagination — roughly, between forming a mental image and entertaining a possibility in the conceptual style.
Language and Thought
Authors: Heil John
Published: September 2009

This article aims to explore a pattern of reasoning about language and thought that seems to virtually guarantee a distortion of what precisely constitutes thinking. The guiding idea is a simple one, an idea officially embraced by many philosophers, but an idea the implications of which are too easily neglected. The article states a belief in the thesis that something functions as a representation only in so far as it is given a use by a representing agent. This thesis — that representation requires a representing agent — applies in equal measure to non-linguistic ‘pictorial’ and to linguistic representations.
Emotions: Motivating Feelings
Authors: Prinz Jesse
Published: September 2009

Historically philosophers have given considerable attention to the topic of emotions. We find important theories being proposed by Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume, among many others. In recent years, after a long hiatus, emotions have come back into vogue. Over the last few decades numerous theories of the emotions have been proposed, and there has also been a flowering of scientific research. This article does not offer a complete review of the literature. Instead, it focuses on one central debate. Roughly, it is a debate about whether emotions are thoughts or feelings. It argues that the evidence currently supports the view that emotions are feelings, and also suggests that this sheds light on the contribution that emotions make to decision making and action.
Intention and Intentional Action
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: September 2009

Intention, intentional action, and the connections between them are central topics of the philosophy of action, a branch of the philosophy of mind. One who regards the subject matter of the philosophy of mind as having at its core some aspect of what lies between environmental input to beings with minds and behavioural output may be inclined to see the philosophy of action as concerned only with the output end of things. That would be a mistake. Many intentional actions depend for their development on the processing of input — both from the environment and from the body.
Semantic Externalism and Self‐Knowledge
Authors: Brown Jessica
Published: September 2009

The distinctive claim made by semantic externalism is that a subject's thought contents are partly individuated by her environment, and do not supervene on her ‘inner states’, such as her brain states. One of the main objections to this position is the claim that it is incompatible with self-knowledge. A subject's knowledge of her own thoughts seems quite different from her knowledge of what others think. A subject uses behavioural evidence to know what others think. However, typically, a subject can know what she herself thinks without inferring this from her own behaviour, and even prior to manifesting any behaviour which could constitute grounds for such an inference.
Self‐Deception
Authors: Bach Kent
Published: September 2009

Is self-deception really a matter of deliberately getting oneself to believe something contrary to something else one already believes and, if so, how can one succeed at it? Colloquial phrases for it, like ‘fooling yourself’ and ‘lying to yourself’, evoke paradox. Although this article stresses the more recent philosophical work on the subject, most work on self-deception has focused on this paradox and sought ways to clear the air of it. The article focuses on the puzzles and questions of contemporary philosophical interest.
Business History and History
Authors: Fridenson Patrick
Published: September 2009

Business history as a specific field was not born inside the historical profession. It first appeared in the United States at Harvard Business School, in 1927. N. S. B. Gras held the first chair in business history. Today business history has indeed become universal. For quite a while, however, and in spite of the initial support from the Annales, the value and methods of business history were questioned by many historians. At the same time, the fact that business history could be taught in departments other than history, mostly business administration and economics, meant that its practitioners could come from these very disciplines and that research and teaching in business history brought them in contact with the trends at work in the historical profession. This article assesses the results of this double process for a field that is steeped in two worlds: inside history and outside history.
The Historical Alternatives Approac
Authors: Zeitlin Jonathan
Published: September 2009

The aim of this article is to present a brief conceptual overview of the “historical alternatives” approach to business history. The notion of alternatives is central to this approach in both a historical and a historiographical sense. Historically, the hallmark of the historical alternatives approach is its emphasis on the salience of alternative possibilities, contingency, and strategic choice in the development of modern industry over the past three centuries. Historiographically, it represents an alternative to mainstream currents in economic, technological, and business history: an alternative, in particular, to Chandlerian business history focused on the economic and technological efficiency of administrative coordination and learning within large, hierarchically managed enterprises. The article sets out the core elements of the historical alternatives approach in the form of ten positive theses, before going on to respond to five major misconceived objections that have recurrently arisen in the course of the ensuing debate.
Industrial Districts and Regional Clusters
Authors: Zeitlin Jonathan
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the relationship between historians and contemporary social scientists. It considers the definition and conceptualization of industrial districts, their origins and sustainability, governance mechanisms, the influence of national institutions, and the nature of current transformations. The article is concerned with several issues. The first of these issues concerns the relationship between the districts and the wider world. Arguably, the self-contained character of the districts has been overstated even for earlier periods. The second issue concerns the changing morphology of the districts and the relationship between different sizes and types of firms within them. The final issue concerns governance and coordination mechanisms within the districts, which are by no means fully understood. Beyond the role of intermediate institutions, which is attracting increasing attention from historians in Italy and elsewhere, researchers might consider the contribution of product standards and accounting techniques in the coordination of economic activity within and across districts.
Business Groups and Interfirm Networks
Authors: Fruin W. Mark
Published: September 2009

Business groups and interfirm networks, the subjects of this article, along with cartels, consortia, industrial districts, innovation clusters, joint ventures, strategic alliances, unions, industry, and professional associations, are significant examples of organized cooperation in business. Cooperation has been, and continues to be, a primary force for change in business and in nature. What distinguishes business groups and interfirm networks from other examples of organized cooperation are, first, that they are composed of legally distinct firms and, second, that they persist for long periods of time. Thus, unions and professional associations differ on the first dimension, strategic alliances and joint ventures on the second. Business groups and interfirm networks are long-lasting federations of firms. They have been relatively unsung until lately. Interest has grown of late because business groups are identified as playing crucial roles in economic development, and interfirm networks in innovation, especially when complex coordination problems overwhelm firms.
Banking and Finance
Authors: Lescure Michel
Published: September 2009

This article examines the contributions of business historians to the analysis of comparative financial systems. It begins with the responses of historical research to questions raised by economists. The article then goes on to highlight new questions raised by the work of business historians themselves. It gives a short presentation of the debates among economists. Furthermore, the article gives a detailed account of five topics in an historical perspective: the role of firms' self-financing, the role of external finance and the structure of its components, the systemic character of cross-national variations, the historical origins of national financial systems, and the consequences of these differences for economic performances. Finally, the article presents a short concluding section that considers the problem of convergence.
Design and Engineering
Authors: König Wolfgang
Published: September 2009

Design can be interpreted broadly as the whole process resulting in a marketable product. It can also be understood more narrowly as the linking of product planning with production. In this sense, designers and draftsmen transform a concept into drawings that function as production plans. “Design” in this article deals with engineering design and not with industrial design in the artistic sense. Therefore, the focus is more on technical functions than on aesthetic forms. The article focuses on a series of key questions, trying to provide preliminary answers, or at least to formulate theses to orient subsequent research. A central problem is the position of the design function within company organization, and communication between design and other departments, especially production. Another theme is the internal organization of the design department and the hierarchies and qualifications of its working staff.
Corporate Governance
Authors: Herrigel Gary
Published: September 2009

This article begins by outlining the historical evolution of corporate-governance systems in five major countries: the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan. It then examines the major causal arguments advanced to account for diachronic variations within the country cases as well as synchronic variations between them. The article also highlights some empirically significant phenomena obscured by the framework of the current debate and suggests some ways in which their reintegration may provide greater purchase on the problems of transformation and recomposition thrown up by the debate itself. It discusses some insights of an older historical literature on corporate governance. Finally, the article concludes that the entire contemporary debate could benefit from more careful archival scholarship on the development of corporate governance regimes across the major countries.
Political Socialization
Authors: Jennings M. Kent
Published: September 2009

This article discusses political socialization, focusing on the major turning points and developments in the field. It addresses the issue of the bull and bear markets of political socialization research and looks at the recent renewed interest in the dynamics of socialization. The role of the family as the main agent of socialization is examined as well. The article includes a discussion on the relevant contextual features that attend the socialization process. It concludes with several comments on a few missed opportunities to study the socialization processes and outcomes of pre-adults, as well as possible future fields of research.
Political Communication
Authors: Semetko Holli A.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses research on public opinion, political communication, and political attitudes. It looks at political communication research methods in the contexts of convergence and new media. A brief discussion of the key concepts of framing, agenda-setting, and priming, and the state of comparative political communication research is covered in this article as well. The micro-level effects of media use, the macro-level consequences of changes in media environments, and the future opportunities for political communication research are discussed in the latter portion of this article.
Perspectives on Mass Belief Systems and Communication
Authors: Converse Philip E.
Published: September 2009

This article studies perspectives on mass belief systems and communication. It observes belief systems and political attitudes before discussing political communication. The article concludes with a few remarks on the evolution of the belief systems in modern electorates.
Political Intolerance in the Context of Democratic Theory
Authors: Gibson James L.
Published: September 2009

This article first provides an overview of democratic theory in order to provide a better understanding of the meaning of political intolerance. The concept of tolerance is clearly explained to avoid any confusion with other terms such as permissiveness. The article identifies the role of tolerance in democratic theory and attempts to determine why some citizens are more tolerant than others. It also pinpoints the consequences of mass political intolerance.
Citizen Opinion on Foreign Policy and World Politics
Authors: Eichenberg Richard C.
Published: September 2009

This article provides a review of scholarly literature on several questions about public and citizen opinion. It presents data from various public opinion surveys in order to illustrate the discussion. A detailed discussion of why the answers to an individual survey question can be considered meaningless is found in one section. The article shows that an analysis of many questions on policy issues can be combined to measure the ‘mood’ of the public on policy choices. The article ends with a discussion of how opinion moods change in response to government policies and an examination of the questions of how ‘rational’ these opinions are.
Norms of Citizenship
Authors: van Deth Jan W.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the normative aspects of citizenship or the support for the ‘norms of citizenship’. The norms discussed in the article refer to the image of a ‘good citizen’, which is characterized by the acceptance of such norms being active in politics and public life. The definition of a good citizen is provided, and the norms of citizenship are enumerated and discussed.
Democratic Values
Authors: Thomassen Jacques
Published: September 2009

This article looks at an assessment of the extent to which people all over the world support democracy as a form of government. It presents the argument that such an assessment cannot provide enough information as long as the people's definition of democracy remains uncertain. It then discusses the main connotations that people associate with democracy with the main democratic values discerned in normative democratic theory. Finally, the article assesses the extent people uphold the more specific values of democracy, if they are asked to apply them in particular instances.
An Institutional Theory of Political Choice
Authors: Sniderman Paul M. , Levendusky Matthew S.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the emergence of a perspective that views rational choice and psychological concerns as allies: the institutional theory of political choice. It lays out a theoretical framework that could be used to integrate the internal and external explanatory mechanisms of a theory of political choice. It discusses behavioural economics as a model, followed by the properties of political choice sets. The number, labeling, and polarization of alternatives are examined. The article also looks at the concept of envoi.
The Decline of Social Class?
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the various aspects of the class cleavage. An outline of Karl Marx's and Max Weber's conceptions of social class is provided. The class cleavage is placed within the context of political behaviour in the well-known Lipset and Rokkan model for political cleavages in industrial societies. The article discusses the different phases in the study of class voting, and gives an outline of a possible new trend in class-voting analysis. Class schemas, statistical measurements, and explanations of cross-national differences in class-voting and systematic empirical tests are then summarized. Finally, the article reviews the important debates in the studies of class voting.
Economic Models of Voting
Authors: Lewis-Beck Michael S. , Stegmaier Mary
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the economic models of voting and the most studied cases of economic voting. It shows how the studies presented in the article were selected. The next section then identifies the most studied cases in the United States, Great Britain, and France. After discussing single-country studies, the article then turns to studies that examine multiple countries.
New Dimensions of Political Cleavage
Authors: Deegan‐Krause Kevin
Published: September 2009

This article presents a survey of political cleavage. The survey presented in the article asks what scholars mean when they talk about cleavages; the revelations of recent studies about the contours of new cleavages, their origins, and their consequences are included. The model of difference, divide, and cleavage is illustrated in the article. The article lists the new typologies of cleavage, and the new explanations for cleavage are also provided.
Social Capital
Authors: Stolle Dietlind
Published: September 2009

This article provides an assessment of the current state of research within these debates on social capital. A discussion of the various roots, conceptions, and measurements of social capital can be found in the first section of the article. It examines the different consequences and benefits of social capital, and the main theoretical frameworks, competing ideas, and evidence on sources of social capital are observed as well. It tries to determine why some countries, regions, villages, or individuals possess more social capital than others. Finally, the article gives an overview of future issues in social capital research.
Civil Society and Democratization
Authors: Wnuk-Lipiński Edmund
Published: September 2009

This article discusses democratization and civil society. An explanation of the concept of civil society is provided, followed by the various functions of civil society. It reveals that the concept of civil society was largely ignored by researchers for most of the twentieth century. Democratization and the transition to democracy and emergence of a civil society are discussed. The latter portion of the article is mostly concerned with political culture and the quality of civil society.
Social Movements
Authors: Koopmans Ruud
Published: September 2009

This article looks at social movements and democracy. It examines the theoretical perspectives on social movements, such as resource mobilization and the political opportunity structure. The current challenges of social movements are discussed in the second section of the article. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of the place of social movements in political science.
New Feminist Challenges to the Study of Political Engagement
Authors: Norris Pippa
Published: September 2009

This article examines some of the key research questions and the recent theoretical advances that seek to explain the activism gap. It focuses on the feminist challenges to the conventional study of political behaviour. The article is divided into five main sections. The first and second sections look at the reasons for scholarship growth on gender studies in recent decades and at the documentation of the extent of a contemporary ‘activism gap’ among men and women as citizens and politicians. The distinguishing features and theoretical assumptions of rival frameworks that aim to explain the activism gap are studied in the third section. The fourth section centres on some studies on the role of cultural attitudes and resources that illustrate supply-side explanations. Finally, the fifth section discusses a summary of alternative demand-side perspectives on the root causes of women and men's political activism.
E‐Government and Democracy
Authors: Margolis Michael
Published: September 2009

This article discusses e-government and democracy. The first section looks at the proximate intellectual roots of cyber-democracy, specifically the ‘New Left’ and the ‘counter-culture’ movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. It also studies the difficulties in implementing direct democracy, despite the increased powers the internet provides to each citizen. The article ends by questioning the advantages of the citizens' judging the results of the public policies. The advantages and dangers of democratic participation that emphasizes the output side of politics are also discussed.
Mind, Will, and Choice
Authors: Druckman James N. , Lupia Arthur
Published: September 2009

This article probes the role of mind, will, and choice in the domain of contextual political science. It argues that many questions about how context affects choice are better answered by focusing on the brain instead of the mind and explains that incorporating insights about brains and preferences into context-oriented research designs can provide greater clarity about how, when, and why factors such as time, place, language, and culture affect political choices. It also shows that non-cooperative game theory can be used very effectively to identify key causal attributes of important contextual variables relevant to political analysis.
Theory, Fact, and Logic
Authors: Aya Rod
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the relevance of theory, fact, and logic in contextual political analysis. It discusses the endless argument in the social and physical sciences where theory explains fact and fact tests theory by way of logic, which connects them as premise to a conclusion. It explains that fact tests theory by observation compared with prediction and if observation confirms prediction then what is observed confirms theory. It suggests that if postmodern antinomianism is correct, then the hypothetico-deductive ‘consistency and responsibility to fact’ view of rational inquiry is vanity.
Why and How Psychology Matters
Authors: McGraw Kathleen M.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the relevance of psychology in contextual political analysis. It outlines a general theoretical perspective that proposes that human behaviour is a function of both individual and situational forces and describes how both individual differences and situational forces have illuminated our understanding of the contextual determinants of political phenomena. It comments on social scientist Kurt Lewin's work on the person-situation controversy and offers some thoughts on the potential tension between a focus on contextual effects and theory development.
Motivation and Emotion
Authors: Jasper James M.
Published: September 2009

This article considers the use of emotion and motivation as analytic tools for understanding politics. It outlines the distinction among different categories of feelings that have been often lumped together in order to discourage conceptual overextension. These include urges, reflexes, affective allegiances, moods, and moral sentiments. This article compares internal and external motives and discusses political analysts' efforts to find ways to make unconscious system imperatives or false consciousness into conscious ones which can be resisted.
Frames and Their Consequences
Authors: Polletta Francesca , Ho M. Kai
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the relevance of the so-called frames in political analysis. It explains that frames matter and it can be seen in the ways in which political actors package their messages to affect their ability to recruit adherents, gain favorable media coverage, demobilize antagonists, and win political victories. The article traces the emergence of the concepts of frame and framing in the sociology of social movements in the 1980s and discusses the pioneering works of William Gamson and David Snow. Gamson and Snow adopted Erving Goffman's interactive perspective that frames are jointly and continuously constructed and reconstructed by movement actors and their audiences. This article also highlights the role of familiar relationships, routine practices, and institutionalized rules, both in spawning frames and in limiting their reach.
How Ideas Affect Actions
Authors: Hochschild Jennifer L.
Published: September 2009

This article examines how ideas influence actions. It explains that writers of the past have asserted that ideas affect actions and provides epigraphs that provide more than eloquent testimony for that assertion. Sophocles suggested that ideas can override interest and change how a person acts, Julius Caesar believed that ideas can justify interests and can reinforce a person's preferences for action, and Robert Musil said that ideas can shape a person's understanding of his or her interests and can therefore create a new set of preferred actions.