bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960–1368)
Authors: Birge Bettine
Published: December 2009

This book, originally published in 2002, argues that the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century precipitated a transformation of marriage and property law in China that deprived women of their property rights and reduced their legal and economic autonomy. It describes how after a period during which women's property rights were steadily improving, and laws and practices affecting marriage and property were moving away from Confucian ideals, the Mongol occupation created a new constellation of property and gender relations that persisted to the end of the imperial era. It shows how the Mongol-Yüan rule in China ironically created the conditions for radical changes in the law, which for the first time brought it into line with the goals of Learning the Way Confucians and which curtailed women's financial and personal autonomy. The book evaluates the Mongol invasion and its influence on Chinese law and society.
Socrates
Authors: Vlastos Gregory
Published: December 2009

This long-awaited study of the most enigmatic figure of Greek philosophy reclaims Socrates' ground-breaking originality. Written by a leading historian of Greek thought, it argues for a Socrates who, though long overshadowed by his successors Plato and Aristotle, marked the true turning point in Greek philosophy, religion and ethics. The quest for the historical figure focuses on the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues, setting him in sharp contrast to that other Socrates of later dialogues, where he is used as a mouthpiece for Plato's often anti-Socratic doctrine. At the heart of the book is the paradoxical nature of Socratic thought. But the paradoxes are explained, not explained away. The book highlights the tensions in the Socratic search for the answer to the question 'How should we live?' Conceived as a divine mandate, the search is carried out through elenctic argument, and dominated by an uncompromising rationalism. The magnetic quality of Socrates' personality is allowed to emerge throughout the book. Clearly and forcefully written, philosophically sophisticated but entirely accessible to non-specialists, this book will be of major importance and interest to all those studying ancient philosophy and the history of Western thought.
New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality
Authors: Smith Anna Marie
Published: December 2009

The first book in the Cultural Margins series is a 1994 study of racism and homophobia in British politics, which demonstrates the demonisation of blacks, lesbians, and gays in New Right discourse. Anna Marie Smith develops theoretical insights from literary and cultural critics, including Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Hall, and Gilroy, to produce detailed readings of two key moments in New Right discourse: the speeches of Enoch Powell on black immigration (1968–72) and the legislative campaign of the late 1980s to prohibit the promotion of homosexuality. Her analysis challenges the silence on racism and homophobia in previous studies of Thatcherism and the New Right, and shows how demonisation of lesbians and gays depends on previous demonisations of black immigrant and criminal figures. Overall, this book offers a devastating critique of racism and homophobia in late twentieth-century Britain.
Hamlet versus Lear
Authors: Foakes R. A.
Published: December 2009

This book focuses on the two plays of Shakespeare that have generally contended for the title of 'greatest' among his works. Hamlet remained a focal point of reference until about 1960, when it was displaced by King Lear, a play which at the same time ceased to be perceived as a play of redemption and became a play of despair. Foakes attempts to explain these shifts by analysing the reception of the plays since about 1800, an analysis which necessarily engages with the politics of the plays and the politics of criticism. Recent critical theorising has destabilised the texts and undermined the notion of 'greatness' or any consideration of the plays as works of art. Foakes takes issue with such theories and reconsiders textual revisions, in order to argue for the integrity of the plays as reading texts, and to recover a flexible sense of their artistry in relation to meaning. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare and to theatre-goers.
Locke, Literary Criticism, and Philosophy
Authors: Walker William
Published: December 2009

William Walker's original analysis of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding offers a challenging and provocative assessment of Locke's importance as a thinker, bridging the gap between philosophical and literary-critical discussion of his work. He presents Locke as a foundational figure who defines the epistemological and ontological ground on which eighteenth-century and Romantic literature operate and eventually diverge. He is revealed as a crucial figure for emerging modernity, less the familiar empiricist innovator and more the proto-Nietzschean thinker whose text fosters hitherto unsuspected instabilities and promotes a new kind of rhetorical force to counterbalance them. Walker's reading of Locke is at once finely attentive to the text and engagingly resourceful in placing the Essay in its broadest philosophical and historical context.
George Eliot and the Conflict of Interpretations
Authors: Carroll David
Published: December 2009

Two versions of George Eliot, both influential, have emerged from the study of her life and work. One is the radical Victorian thinker, formidably learned in a whole range of intellectual disciplines; the other is the reclusive novelist, celebrating through her fiction the communal values which were being eroded in the modern world. This chronological study of the novels brings the two together and places her within the crisis of belief and value acted out in the mid-nineteenth century. George Eliot saw this crisis as one of interpretation, in a vivid, almost apocalyptic awareness that traditional modes of interpreting the world were breaking down irrevocably. This study shows how, in response, she redefined the nature of Victorian fiction, testing to the point of destruction a variety of Victorian myths, orthodoxies and ideologies in each of her novels.
Narratives of Empire
Authors: Sullivan Zohreh T.
Published: December 2009

Writers whose work reflects the experience of empire betray the anxieties and contradictions at the heart of the imperial enterprise. Zohreh T. Sullivan's reading of Rudyard Kipling's writings about India expands our sense of colonial discourse and recovers the cultural context and recurring tropes in his early journalism and fiction, in Kim, and in his late autobiography. She charts the fragmentation of Kipling's position as child, as colonizer and as 'poet of empire', finding in his representation of childhood's loss the site of repressed and disavowed desires and fears that resurface in later work. In using Kipling's troubled intimacy with empire as the link between history and narrative, Sullivan sees in Kipling's ambivalence his negotiation between the desire for union with his golden 'best-beloved' India and the historic imperatives of separation from it.
Vision and the Emergence of Meaning
Authors: Dunlea Anne
Published: December 2009

The relationship between language and other aspects of conceptual development is one of the central issues in child language acquisition. One view holds that language is a special capacity, separate from other areas of cognition and learning. Another maintains that language is part of a larger, more general cognitive system, and is crucially dependent on other cognitive domains. Recent research has turned to blind children and their acquisition of language as a way of evaluating whether and how language development relies on the non-linguistic context. Vision and the Emergence of Meaning addresses this complex problem through a detailed empirical analysis of early language development in a group of blind, partially sighted and fully sighted children who took part in a pioneering longitudinal investigation at the University of Southern California. By exploring the strategies which blind children bring to selected aspects of the language learning task, Anne Dunlea not only identifies some important differences between blind and sighted children, but also offers new insights on semantic and pragmatic development in general. Further, the study demonstrates the role of conceptual information in language learning and, at a more fundamental level, reveals a convergence of early language and conceptual development.
Predication Theory
Authors: Napoli Donna Jo
Published: December 2009

In this study Donna Jo Napoli takes a common-sense approach to the notions of argument and predicate. Discussions of predication within Government and Binding theory have stressed the configurational properties of the phrases involved, and Napoli argues that this has led to proposals for more and more elaborate syntactic structures that nevertheless fail to provide genuinely explanatory accounts. She presents a convincing case for viewing the notion of predicate as a semantic primitive which cannot be defined by looking simply at the lexicon or simply at the syntactic structure, and offers a theory or predication where the key to the subject-predicate relationship is theta-role assignment. The book then goes on to offer principles for the coindexing of a predicate with its subject role player. These coindexing principles make use of Chomsky's 1986 notion of barriers, but instead of being sensitive to configurational notions like c-command and governing category, Napoli argues that they are sensitive to thematic structure. In the final chapter of the book Napoli extends the principles for predication coindexing to anaphor binding, by introducing the notion of argument ladders.
Social Theory and Religion
Authors: Beckford James A.
Published: December 2009

Many aspects of religion are puzzling these days. This 2003 book looks at ways of improving our understanding of religious change by strengthening the links between social theory and the social scientific study of religion. It clarifies the social processes involved in constructing religion and non-religion in public and private life. Taking illustrations of the importance of these boundaries from studies of secularisation, religious diversity, globalisation, religious movements and self-identity, Beckford reviews social scientific knowledge about religion and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of a wide range of theoretical attempts to account for religious change and continuity. The discussion goes in two directions. The first is towards identifying ways in which studies of religion would benefit from taking better account of themes in recent social theory. The second is towards identifying reasons for social theorists to pay more attention to the findings of empirical investigations of religion.
Religion in Prison
Authors: Beckford James A. , Gilliat Sophie
Published: December 2009

This was the first in-depth examination of relations between the Church of England and other faiths in the Prison Service Chaplaincy. It shows how the struggle for equal opportunities in a multi-faith society is politicising relations between the Church, the state and religious minorities. Drawing on a wealth of data, it considers the increasingly controversial role of Anglican chaplains in facilitating the religious and pastoral care of prisoners from non-Christian backgrounds, whose numbers among the prison population have been growing. Comparison with the United States underlines the closeness of the tie between the state and Christian churches in English prisons, and this book argues that it is time to reconsider the practice of keeping ethnic and religious minorities dependent on Anglican 'brokering' of their access to prison chaplaincy.
Strategies and Norms in a Changing Matrilineal Society
Authors: Holy Ladislav
Published: December 2009

The theme of this book is the analysis of the changes that have occurred in the kinship patterns of the Toka of South Zambia as a result of a shift in their form of production from hoe agriculture to ox-drawn ploughing. Dr Holy uses the rich, detailed ethnography that he provides about these changes to confront several theoretical issues of current anthropological interest, as well as to examine the basic methodological problems of anthropological enquiry. Emphasizing the distinction between the conceptual and cognitive world of the actors, and the transactions and events in which they engage, he argues that anthropological explanation has to account not only for structure, but also for the purposeful interaction between actors that generates that structure.
Spirit Possession and Personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg
Authors: Rasmussen Susan J.
Published: December 2009

Among the Tuareg people in the Air Mountain region of Niger, women are sometimes possessed by spirits called 'the people of solitude'. The evening curing rituals of the possessed, featuring drumming and song, take place before an audience of young men and women, who joke and flirt as the ritual unfolds. In her analysis of this tolerated but unofficial cult, Susan Rasmussen analyses symbolism and aesthetic values, provides case studies of possessed women, and reviews what local people think about the meaning of possession.
Bartered Brides
Authors: Tapper Nancy
Published: December 2009

Bartered Brides is a detailed study of marriage among the Maduzai, a tribal society in Afghan Turkistan. It is the first study of the area which looks in depth at both the domestic aspects of marriage and its relation to the productive and reproductive activities of women, as well as marriage as a means of managing political and economic conflict and competition. The fieldwork was carried out in the early 1970s before the 1978 coup and Soviet invasion. In this respect the book offers a unique account of a world that has disappeared. Nancy Tapper presents both male and female perspectives, detailed case studies and historical and statistical material. As an ethnographic and historical record, Bartered Brides breaks new ground in the study of Islam, the Middle East and South-west Asia. As the most detailed and extensive discussion of a Middle Eastern marriage system to date, it contributes to wider anthropological studies of marriage, politics and gender.
Stylistic Variation in Prehistoric Ceramics
Authors: Plog Stephen
Published: December 2009

Using data drawn primarily from the American Southwest, Stephen Plog shows that there are basic problems with the methods archaeologists traditionally use to classify and analyse prehistoric pottery. Archaeologists have studied the painted designs and other stylistic (that is, non-functional) characteristics on different types of prehistoric artifacts in order to infer information about prehistoric social organization and cultural change. Such studies usually argue that the degree of similarity between the designs found on ceramic vessels at different prehistoric sites were occupied or from the amount of interaction between the people who occupied them. In Stylistic Variation in Prehistoric Ceramics, the author proposes that many factors, rather than just two, cause design or stylistic variation on artifacts. He demonstrates flaws in the logic and method of previous studies and suggests that the ways in which designs have been classified and understood are often inappropriate. Employing archaeological information from the Chevelon Canyon area of east-central Arizona, he constructs his own proposal for a new analytic framework. Professor Plog's study provides a major contribution to archaeological method and theory and should be of interest to a broad range of archaeologists.
Englishness and the Study of Politics
Authors: Stapleton Julia
Published: December 2009

The definition of 'Englishness' has become the subject of considerable debate, and in this important contribution to Ideas in Context, Julia Stapleton looks at the work of one of the most wide-ranging and influential theorists of the English nation, Ernest Barker. The first holder of the Chair of Political Science at Cambridge, Barker wrote prolifically on the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, and his writings are notable for fusing three of the dominant strands of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century political thought, Whiggism, Idealism and Pluralism. Infused with a strong cultural sense of nationhood, Barker's writings influenced a broad non academic audience, and their subsequent neglect graphically demonstrates the fate of a certain vision of Liberal England in the generation after World War One. With, however, the erosion of a particular sense of Englishness, Barker's ideas have begun to assume renewed resonance.
Systems in Crisis
Authors: Doran Charles F.
Published: December 2009

Uncertainty is the watchword of contemporary world politics. Monumental changes are occurring throughout the international system and statespeople are wrestling with peaceful solutions to the transformation in relative power of the USA, Soviet Union and China, Japan and in Europe. In this book, Charles Doran proposes a managed solution to peaceful change. He presents a bold, original and wide-ranging analysis of the present balance of power, of future prospects for the international system and of the problems involved in this transformation. Professor Doran demonstrates why such change has often been accompanied by world war, providing new insights into the causes of the First World War. But, he argues, systems change can be both peaceful and secure. Developing a theory of the power cycle, the author reveals the structural bounds on statecraft and shows how the tides of history can suddenly and unexpectedly shift against the state.
Ethics in International Relations
Authors: Frost Mervyn
Published: December 2009

Most questions commonly asked about international politics are ethical ones. Should the international community intervene in Bosnia? What do we owe the starving in Somalia? What should be done about the genocide in Rwanda? Yet, Mervyn Frost argues, ethics is accorded a marginal position within the academic study of international relations. In this book he examines the reasons given for this, and finds that they do not stand up to scrutiny. He goes on to evaluate those ethical theories which do exist within the discipline - order based theories, utilitarian theories, and rights based theories - and finds them unconvincing. He elaborates his own ethical theory, constitutive theory, which is derived from Hegel, and highlights the way in which we constitute one another as moral beings through a process of reciprocal recognition within a hierarchy of institutions which include the family, civil society, the state, and the society of states.
Landlords and Property
Authors: Allen John , McDowell Linda
Published: December 2009

The issue of private landlordism in Britain touches a raw political nerve. There is no shortage of prescription as to what should be done with the rented housing market and private landlords. Yet surprisingly little is known about the structure and diversity of private landlordism and the variety of private tenants' housing needs - a prerequisite for policy intervention. This book provides an anatomy of the nature of private landlordism in the 1980s, the types of landlord in the market, the scope of their activities, and the choices and constraints that guide their actions in the market. It shows how the pattern of change in the private rented sector has been not one of straightforward decline, but one of structural unevenness shaped by a combination of three general processes - disinvestment, investment and informalization - which vary in impact from place to place. Adopting a realist methodological approach, the authors attempt to capture both the general characterisation of landlordism and the processes shaping the private rental sector and their diverse geographical form across space and through time. This approach is illustrated by an extensive investigation in two local housing markets in inner London. Finally, the authors examine the scope for change in the private rented sector and argue for a combination of public and private initiatives that is sensitive to the differences among local housing markets and that relates to the demands/needs of those groups at present dependent on private renting for accommodation.
The Horse Trade of Tudor and Stuart England
Authors: Edwards Peter
Published: December 2009

Horses played a vital role in the economy of pre-industrial England. They acted as draught animals, pulled ploughs, waggons and coaches, worked machines, and transported goods around the country. As saddle animals they enabled their riders to carry out a wide variety of tasks, and at all levels of society they were regarded as status symbols in a unique relationship with man shared by no other animal. During the Tudor and Stuart period, horses were needed in ever-growing numbers, and for a greater variety of tasks. As demand grew, improvements became necessary in the means of supply and distribution. The agents of change, the specialist dealers, were often condemned as rogues and cheats, whose actions raised prices and caused shortages. Dr Edwards argues that, far from being generally unscrupulous, the dealers were no better or worse than those amongst whom they lived and worked.
Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Authors: Luddy Maria
Published: December 2009

This book examines the role of women in philanthropy in nineteenth-century Ireland. The author focuses initially on the impact of religion on the lives of women and argues that the development of convents in the nineteenth century inhibited the involvement of lay Catholic women in charity work. She goes on to claim that sectarianism dominated women's philanthropic activity, and also analyses the work of women in areas of moral concern, such as prostitution and prison work. The book concludes that the most progressive developments in the care of the poor were brought about by non-conformist women, and a number of women involved in reformist organisations were later to become pioneers in the cause of suffrage. This study makes an important contribution both to Irish history and to our knowledge of women's lives and experiences in the nineteenth century.
Universities, Academics and the Great Schism
Authors: Swanson R. N.
Published: December 2009

The election of both Urban VI and Clement VII to the papacy in 1378, by the same body of cardinals, presented the church with an apparently insoluble constitutional difficulty. Dr Swanson examines the reaction to this situation from a hitherto unconsidered perspective: that of the universities to whom Europe turned to formulate the theories which would solve the problem. He examines the attempts by the academics to gain support for their various schemes and shows how these produced conflict at various levels: locally, between factions within individual universities; nationally, between rival universities, and between universities and their ecclesiastical and secular superiors; and internationally, as the universities adopted mutually exclusive attitudes and sometimnes clashed with their own popes. The concluding chapters show how the academics finally devised the conciliarist formula which led to the convocation of the Council of Pisa in 1409.
A Distinctive Industrialization
Authors: Thomson J. K. J.
Published: December 2009

This book, first published in 1992, is a study of the development of Barcelona's cotton industry from its origins in calico-printing in 1728 to its introduction of steampower in 1832. It thus describes the experiences of the leading industry of the city, and one which provides the only Mediterranean exception to the tendency of early industrialization to be concentrated in northern Europe. The book bridges the 'pre-industrial' and early 'industrial' periods, offering answers to such questions as: what caused 'merchant capital' to move into industrial investment? what were the links between 'pre-industrial' industrial activity and industrialization proper? is it apt to refer to the economic changes of these years as an 'industrial revolution'? should industrialization be studied on a regional or a national basis? A further purpose is to provide an interpretation of the characteristics of the Catalan economy and of its relationship to that of Spain as a whole thereby contributing to the understanding of the 'Catalan question'.
The Making of the Chinese State
Authors: Shin Leo K.
Published: December 2009

In this well-crafted 2006 study of the relationships between the state and its borderlands, Leo Shin traces the roots of China's modern ethnic configurations to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Challenging the traditional view that China's expansion was primarily an exercise of incorporation and assimilation, Shin argues that as the centre extended its reach to the wild and inaccessible south, the political interests of the state, the economic needs of the settlers, and the imaginations of the cultural elites all facilitated the demarcation and categorisation of these borderland 'non-Chinese' populations. The story told here, however, extends beyond the imperial period. Just as Ming emperors considered it essential to reinforce a sense of universal order by demarcating the 'non-Chinese', modern-day Chinese rulers also find it critical to maintain the myth of a unified multi-national state by officially recognising a total of fifty-six 'nationalities'.
Thermodynamics of Chaotic Systems
Authors: Beck Christian , Schögl Friedrich
Published: December 2009

This book deals with the various thermodynamic concepts used for the analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems. The most important invariants used to characterise chaotic systems are introduced in a way that stresses the interconnections with thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Among the subjects treated are: probabilistic aspects of chaotic dynamics; the symbolic dynamics technique; information measures, the maximum entropy principle; general thermodynamic relations; spin systems; fractals and multifractals; expansion rate and information loss; the topological pressure; transfer operator methods; and repellers and escape. The more advanced chapters deal with the thermodynamic formalism for expanding maps, the thermodynamic analysis of chaotic systems with several intensive parameters and phase transitions in nonlinear dynamics.
A History of the Theory of Structures in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Charlton T. M.
Published: December 2009

The spectacular structures of today, such as large suspension bridges, are the result of scientific principles established during the new iron age of the nineteenth century. The book is concerned with a detailed and critical account of the development and application of those principles (including statics and elasticity) by people of remarkable talent in applied mathematics and engineering. They were, of course, mainly motivated by the demands of the railway, construction boom. Among the outstanding examples chosen by the author is Robert Stephenson's use of novel principles for the design and erection of the Britannia tubular iron bridge over the Menai Straits. A History of the Theory of Structures in the Nineteenth Century is a uniquely comprehensive account of a century of the development of the theory; an account which skilfully blends the personalities and the great works and which is enlivened by little-known accounts of friendship and controversy.
Prehistoric Native Americans and Ecological Change
Authors: Delcourt Paul A. , Delcourt Hazel R.
Published: December 2009

This book shows that Holocene human ecosystems are complex adaptive systems in which humans interacted with their environment in a nested series of spatial and temporal scales. Using panarchy theory, it integrates paleoecological and archaeological research from the Eastern Woodlands of North America providing a paradigm to help resolve long-standing disagreements between ecologists and archaeologists about the importance of prehistoric Native Americans as agents for ecological change. The authors present the concept of a panarchy of complex adaptive cycles as applied to the development of increasingly complex human ecosystems through time. They explore examples of ecological interactions at the level of gene, population, community, landscape and regional hierarchical scales, emphasizing the ecological pattern and process involving the development of human ecosystems. Finally, they offer a perspective on the implications of the legacy of Native Americans as agents of change for conservation and ecological restoration efforts today.
Insect Pest Management and Ecological Research
Authors: Walter G. H.
Published: December 2009

Insect Pest Management and Ecological Research explores the ecological research required for development of strategies to manage pest insects, with particular emphasis on the scientific principles involved in the design and conduct of pest-related research. Although the connection between Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and ecology has been long appreciated, their specific relationship to one another has remained vague until now. Here, Gimme Walter develops the first general model of the entomological research requirements of IPM. He shows how to navigate through the diversity of options presented by current ecological theory, emphasising pest situations. Besides theory and principle, the book includes practical advice on understanding and investigating species, examines the ecological problems associated with polyphagous pests and beneficial species, and scrutinises ways suggested to improve insect biological control. As such, it will be an important resource for graduate students and researchers, in IPM, insect pest management, entomology, ecology and crop protection.
Lectures on the Asymptotic Theory of Ideals
Authors: Rees D.
Published: December 2009

In this book Professor Rees introduces and proves some of the main results of the asymptotic theory of ideals. The author's aim is to prove his Valuation Theorem, Strong Valuation Theorem, and Degree Formula, and to develop their consequences. The last part of the book is devoted to mixed multiplicities. Here the author develops his theory of general elements of ideals and gives a proof of a generalised degree formula. The reader is assumed to be familiar with basic commutative algebra, as covered in the standard texts, but the presentation is suitable for advanced graduate students. The work is an expansion of lectures given at Nagoya University.
Foundations of Parallel Programming
Authors: Skillicorn D. B.
Published: December 2009

The major reason for the lack of use of parallel computing is the mismatch between the complexity and variety of parallel hardware, and the software development tools to program it. The cost of developing software needs to be amortised over decades, but the platforms on which it executes change every few years, requiring complete rewrites. The evident cost-effectiveness of parallel computation has not been realized because of this mismatch. This book presents an integrated approach to parallel software development by addressing both software and performance issues together. It presents a methodology for software construction that produces architecture-independent and intellectually abstract software. The software can execute efficiently on a range of existing and potential hardware configurations. The approach is based on the construction of categorical data types, a generalization of abstract data types, and of objects. Categorical data types abstract both from the representation of a data type, and also from the detailed control flow necessary to perform operations on it. They thus impose a strong separation between the semantics, on which programs can depend, and the implementation, which is therefore free to hide the parallel machine properties that are used.
Passive Microwave Device Applications of High-Temperature Superconductors
Authors: Lancaster M. J.
Published: December 2009

This book describes the application of high-temperature superconducting materials to microwave devices and systems. It deals with the fundamentals of the interaction between microwaves and superconductors, and includes a basic description of how microwave devices can be constructed using these materials. Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductors in 1986 there has been an enormous effort worldwide to develop and characterize these materials. Work on applications has proceeded more slowly however. Nevertheless, commercial applications are now beginning to be possible, including use in passive microwave devices. The advantages of using high-temperature superconductors in these devices is carefully described by the author, enabling scientists and engineers to form a complete understanding of the subject. The rest of the book is devoted to examples of superconducting microwave filters, antennas and systems. The examples chosen relate not only to what can be achieved at present, but indicate the trends for future research and what may be expected for superconducting devices in the future.
Emerson and the Conduct of Life
Authors: Robinson David M.
Published: December 2009

'I like not the man who is thinking how to be good,' Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'but the man thinking how to accomplish his work'. The ethical emphasis on work and activity signals the shift in his thinking that is the subject of Emerson and the Conduct of Life. In this book, David M. Robinson describes Emerson's evolution from mystic to pragmatist and shows the importance of Emerson's undervalued later writing. Emerson's reputation has rested on the addresses and essays of the 1830s and 1840s, in which he propounded a version of transcendental idealism and memorably portrayed moments of mystical insight. But Emerson's later thinking suggests an increasing concern over the elusiveness of mysticism and an increasing emphasis on ethical choice and practical power. Robinson discusses each of Emerson's major later works noting their increasing orientation to a philosophy of the 'conduct of life'. These books represent Emerson's attempt to forge a philosophy based on the centrality of domestic life, vocation and social relations and they reveal Emerson as an ethical philosopher who stressed the spiritual value of human relations, work and social action.
The General Will
Authors: Levine Andrew
Published: December 2009

This bold and unabashedly utopian book advances the thesis that Marx's notion of communism is a defensible, normative ideal. However, unlike many others who have written in this area, Levine applies the tools and techniques of analytic philosophy to formulate and defend his radical, political programme. The argument proceeds by filtering the ideals and institutions of Marxism through Rousseau's notion of the 'general will'. Once Rousseau's ideas are properly understood it is possible to construct a community of equals who share some vision of a common good that can be achieved and maintained through cooperation or coordination that is at once both voluntary and authoritative. The book engages with liberal theory in order to establish its differences from Rousseauean-Marxian political theory. This provocative book will be of particular interest to political philosophers and political scientists concerned with Marxism, socialist theory and democratic theory.
Literacy, Culture and Development
Authors: Wagner Daniel A.
Published: December 2009

Literacy is thought to be one of the primary cultural transmitters of information and beliefs within any society where it exists. Yet, when considered as a social phenomenon, literacy is remarkably difficult to define, because its functions, meanings, and methods of learning vary from one cultural group to the next. This book compares and contrasts our understanding of literacy and its acquisition and retention. It addresses major debates in education policy today, such as the importance of 'mother-tongue' literacy programs, the notion of literacy 'relapse', and the concept of educational poverty. The author focuses on Moroccan children whose parents are unschooled, whose language is often different from that used in the classroom, and whose first instruction often involves rote religious teaching.
Government Survival in Parliamentary Democracies
Authors: Warwick Paul
Published: December 2009

This book describes the results of a quantitative investigation into one of the central questions of political science: what determines how long governments survive in parliamentary democracies? Government survival is important because it constitutes an essential component of the overall functioning of parliamentary democracies; it is also closely associated with the introduction to the discipline of event history analysis, a highly promising statistical methodology. The investigation utilizes this methodology on what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive data set yet assembled on governments, comprising hundreds of variables measured for governments in sixteen West European parliamentary democracies over the entire post-war period to 1989. The results fundamentally challenge the central thread of theorizing on government survival and point to an alternative conceptualization of the relationship among governments, parties and voters.
Economics and Power
Authors: Bartlett Randall
Published: December 2009

When a marketplace is considered in isolation, the implicit conclusion is that markets are a sufficient defence against the exercise of power. But market transactions do not occur in isolation: they are defined by rules, property rights, prior events and social values. This book widens the focus of traditional economic analysis to examine the ways in which people may affect each other within and around markets to give rise to real power. Using conventional neoclassical assumptions about human behaviour, the book begins by developing a workable concept of power, allowing for its presence in a variety of forms and degrees. It examines the conditions under which power would necessarily be absent from market transactions and those under which it would be possible. It considers the decision processes of potential exercisers and subjects of power to determine when the exercise and success of power would be rational.
Building Capitalism
Authors: Aslund Anders
Published: December 2009

A most comprehensive empirical analysis of the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc during the first decade after communism. It debunks many myths, seeing transition as a struggle between radical reformers and those thriving on rent seeking. People have gained from fast and comprehensive reforms, but several countries have gotten stuck in corruption. Economic decline and social hazards have been greatly exaggerated, since people have forgotten how awful communism was. Swift liberalization of prices and foreign trade, as well as rapid and profound fiscal adjustment, have been vital for growth, institutional reforms, legality and greater equity. Privatization has been beneficial, and its effects will grow over time. The main problem has been the continuation of unregulated and ubiquitous state apparatuses living on corruption, while no country has suffered from too radical reforms. Where malpractices of the elite can be checked, market reforms and democracy have proceeded together.
Gentlemen, Bourgeois, and Revolutionaries
Authors: Cruz Jesus
Published: December 2009

The traditional interpretation of the crisis of the Spanish Old Regime is to see it as a revolution carried out by an ascendant bourgeoisie. Professor Cruz challenges this viewpoint by arguing that in Spain, as in the rest of continental Europe, a national bourgeoisie did not exist before the second half of the nineteenth century. Consequently, the model of bourgeois revolution proves inadequate to explain any movement toward modernisation before 1850. Historiography based on the bourgeois revolution theory portrays Spain as an exceptional model whose main feature is the 'failure' produced by the immobility of its ruling class. This work re-examines that understanding, and relocates Spain in the mainstream for industrialisation, urbanisation and democratisation that characterise the history of modern Europe.
New Profession, Old Order
Authors: Gispen Kees
Published: December 2009

New Profession, Old Order explores the creative tension between modern technology and preindustrial Germany. It offers an explanation of why the engineering profession is so successful in transforming the physical world, did not achieve the professional power, cohesion, and prestige that its technological accomplishments would seem to have warranted. On the one hand, engineers were agents of modern instrumental rationality, specialization, practical knowledge, and entrepreneurial capitalism - forces antiasthetical to the quasi-aristocratic world of Bildung and bureaucracy that was the life blood of the preindustrial social hierarchy. On the other hand, it was this latter universe in which engineers had to survive and by whose standards they were judged for membership in the educated middle class or for access to prestigious careers. The result was an orientation that combined the old and the new in ways that were at once uniquely German and paradigmatic for modern industrial society.
Physics of the Space Environment
Authors: Gombosi Tamas I.
Published: December 2009

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the physical phenomena that result from the interaction of the sun and the planets - often termed space weather. Physics of the Space Environment explores the basic processes in the Sun, in the interplanetary medium, in the near-Earth space, and down into the atmosphere. The first part of the book summarizes fundamental elements of transport theory relevant for the atmosphere, ionosphere and the magnetosphere. This theory is then applied to physical phenomena in the space environment. The fundamental physical processes are emphasized throughout, and basic concepts and methods are derived from first principles. This book is unique in its balanced treatment of space plasma and aeronomical phenomena. Students and researchers with a basic mathematics and physics background will find this book invaluable in the study of phenomena in the space environment.
Geometric Control Theory
Authors: Jurdjevic Velimir
Published: December 2009

Geometric control theory is concerned with the evolution of systems subject to physical laws but having some degree of freedom through which motion is to be controlled. This book describes the mathematical theory inspired by the irreversible nature of time evolving events. The first part of the book deals with the issue of being able to steer the system from any point of departure to any desired destination. The second part deals with optimal control, the question of finding the best possible course. An overlap with mathematical physics is demonstrated by the Maximum principle, a fundamental principle of optimality arising from geometric control, which is applied to time-evolving systems governed by physics as well as to man-made systems governed by controls. Applications are drawn from geometry, mechanics, and control of dynamical systems. The geometric language in which the results are expressed allows clear visual interpretations and makes the book accessible to physicists and engineers as well as to mathematicians.
Harmonic Superspace
Authors: Galperin A. S. , Ivanov E. A. , Ogievetsky V. I. , Sokatchev E. S.
Published: December 2009

This is a pedagogical introduction to the harmonic superspace method in extended supersymmetry. Inspired by exciting developments in superstring theory, it provides a systematic treatment of the quantum field theories with N=2 and N=3 supersymmetry in harmonic superspace. The authors present the harmonic superspace approach as a means of providing an off-shell description of the N=2 supersymmetric theories, both at the classical and quantum levels. Furthermore, they show how it offers a unique way to construct an off-shell formulation of a theory with higher supersymmetry, namely the N=3 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Harmonic Superspace makes manifest many remarkable geometric properties of the N=2 theories, for example, the one-to-one correspondence between N=2 supersymmetric matter, and hyper-Kähler and quaternionic manifolds. This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working in the areas of supersymmetric quantum field theory, string theory and complex geometries.
Chaos and Coarse Graining in Statistical Mechanics
Authors: Castiglione Patrizia , Falcioni Massimo , Lesne Annick , Vulpiani Angelo
Published: December 2009

While statistical mechanics describe the equilibrium state of systems with many degrees of freedom, and dynamical systems explain the irregular evolution of systems with few degrees of freedom, new tools are needed to study the evolution of systems with many degrees of freedom. This book presents the basic aspects of chaotic systems, with emphasis on systems composed by huge numbers of particles. Firstly, the basic concepts of chaotic dynamics are introduced, moving on to explore the role of ergodicity and chaos for the validity of statistical laws, and ending with problems characterized by the presence of more than one significant scale. Also discussed is the relevance of many degrees of freedom, coarse graining procedure, and instability mechanisms in justifying a statistical description of macroscopic bodies. Introducing the tools to characterize the non asymptotic behaviors of chaotic systems, this text will interest researchers and graduate students in statistical mechanics and chaos.
Group Theory with Applications in Chemical Physics
Authors: Jacobs Patrick
Published: December 2009

Group Theory is an indispensable mathematical tool in many branches of chemistry and physics. This book provides a self-contained and rigorous account on the fundamentals and applications of the subject to chemical physics, assuming no prior knowledge of group theory. The first half of the book focuses on elementary topics, such as molecular and crystal symmetry, whilst the latter half is more advanced in nature. Discussions on more complex material such as space groups, projective representations, magnetic crystals and spinor bases, often omitted from introductory texts, are expertly dealt with. With the inclusion of numerous exercises and worked examples, this book will appeal to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students studying physical sciences and is an ideal text for use on a two-semester course.
Life's Solution
Authors: Conway Morris Simon
Published: December 2009

The assassin's bullet misses, the Archduke's carriage moves forward, and a catastrophic war is avoided. So too with the history of life. Re-run the tape of life, as Stephen J. Gould claimed, and the outcome must be entirely different: an alien world, without humans and maybe not even intelligence. The history of life is littered with accidents: any twist or turn may lead to a completely different world. Now this view is being challenged. Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life's almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly. Eyes, brains, tools, even culture: all are very much on the cards. So if these are all evolutionary inevitabilities, where are our counterparts across the galaxy? The tape of life can only run on a suitable planet, and it seems that such Earth-like planets may be much rarer than hoped. Inevitable humans, yes, but in a lonely Universe.