Comparative Historical Analysis

While the canonical literature on oil wealth suggests that hydrocarbon windfalls encourage repressive despotism, Kuwait provides a case of an oil-rich autocracy governing instead through popular rentierism-that is, through a broad coalition of social forces, one that furnishes enduring loyalty from below while constraining abuses of state power from above. This paper provides a theoretically guided explanation for this exceptional outcome. I argue that the Kuwaiti regime's coalitional bargains originated in the pre-oil era, when domestic opposition and geopolitical constrictions compelled it to forge new social alliances at the dawn of modern statehood. This inclusionary strategy mediated the subsequent effect of oil rents, which the regime used to institutionalize its mass base with costly material and symbolic side payments. Such popular incorporation bound large constituent classes to the regime's survival, precluding the need for widespread repression. After 50 years, these coalitional bargains have also proven remarkably resilient, as social actors have continued to endorse the autocratic leadership despite economic crisis and wartime defeat.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

Graphical user interfaces design in software development process focuses on maximizing usability and the user's experience, in order to make the interaction for users easy, flexible and efficient. In this paper, we propose an approach for evaluating the usability satisfaction degree of a web-based system. The proposed method has been accomplished in two phases and implemented on an airlines website as a case study. In the first phase, a website usability test is implemented by a number of users, and then the results obtained are translated into charts for a final web-based system evaluation in the second phase. The results achieved were satisfactory, since the places where the weaknesses and gaps in the website are identified and recommended solutions to avoid them are drawn. The authenticity of the results have been confirmed by comparing them with user opinions acquired from a questionnaire, which proves the precision in which the website is rated.

At the foundation of every scientific study must lie a clear definition of what is being studied. Such a definition of key concepts is reached through the process of conceptualization, to which there exist two main approaches: the classical (or first principles thinking) approach and the prototype (or analogical thinking) approach. Through the example of finding an adequate definition for the concept of 'democracy', both approaches to conceptualization are demonstrated in practice. This article compares the effectiveness of both approaches before proposing a model for the more rigorous and reliable first principles thinking approach.

Significant variation in the institutions and efficiency of public bureaucracies across countries and regions are observed. These differences could be partially responsible for divergence in the effectiveness of policy implementation, corruption levels, and economic development. Do imperial legacies contribute to the observed variation in the organization of public administrations? Historical foreign rule and colonization have been shown to have lasting effects on legal systems, political institutions, and trade in former controlled territories. Imperial legacies could also explain variations in the performance of public administrations. The author uses the case of Poland to investigate the long-term effects of foreign rule on bureaucratic systems. Historically, Poland was split between three imperial powers with very different public administrations: Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Statistical analyses of original data collected through a survey of more than 650 Polish public administrations suggest that some present-day differences in the organization and efficiency of bureaucracies are due to imperial legacies.

N. Wouters Mayoral Collaboration under Nazi Occupation in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, 1938-46

This book explores the role of mayors in navigating the realities of living and governing under Nazi occupation. In Western Europe under Nazi occupation, mayors of villages and cities were forced into strategic cooperation with the occupier. Mayors had to provide good governance, mediate between occupier and populations, maintain personal legitimacy, and build local consensus. However, as national systems underwent authoritarian reform and collaborationists infiltrated administrations, local governments were gradually turned into instruments of Nazi control and repression. Nico Wouters uses rich new archival data to compare the realities of local government in three countries. Looking at topics such as food supply, public order and safety, forced labour, the repression of resistance, the persecution of the Jews and postwar purges, this book redefines our knowledge of collaboration, resistance and accommodation during Nazi occupation.

This is Chapter 1 of the New Handbook of Political Sociology. Andy Clarno and I envision the piece as a three-fold intervention to the theory of power in political sociology. First, as a preliminary point, we document the general drift of the canonical literature from coercion to consent. Second, we argue that this development rests upon the assumption that power under liberal democracy does not operate on exclusion, suppression, and violence. Thus, it becomes necessary to explain how and why we participate in our own subordination, especially the ways in which we internalize dominant discourses and then act against our own interests.  Finally, we challenge this assumption by drawing on theorists who emphasize the violent and exclusionary underpinnings of liberal democracy, especially Critical Race Theorists, post-colonial scholars, and theorists of elimination, death, exploitation, and disposability.

This paper adds a different dimension to the educational borrowing, lending, and transfer literature by examining the consequences of educational reforms that are implemented under dictatorships and their lasting impacts. In using Tunisia as an example, we assess the effects of the 2008 Licence-Maitrise-Doctorat ([LMD] Bachelor-Master-PhD) reform under Tunisia's former dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (from 1987 to 2011). The use of coercive transfer and subsequent implementation of LMD reforms by Ben Ali's government were in response to the creation of the European Higher Education Area in 1999 under the Bologna Declaration, which was adopted by twenty-nine European countries. The justification for the indirect coercive transfer of the Bologna model was to ensure the quality of higher education, to encourage student and teacher mobility, to facilitate both the equivalence of diplomas and young people's integration into the labor market. In what follows, we seek to construct a typology of the consequence of wholesaling adopting a reform without tailoring it to the local needs. In this typology, we account for the processes of policy mobilization, local articulation and ownership, structural factors, and path dependency by discussing the power relations through which indirect coercive transfer occur. In doing this, methodologically, we use a comparative-historical approach to Tunisia's higher education policy discourse. Theoretically, we seek to advance the literature of indirect coercive transfer by concluding as to the different factors that should be considered in North-South policy borrowing and transfer.

[published in Routledge's "Philosophy and Method in the Social Sciences" series]

This study starts from a simple premise:  human practices are a fundamental constituent — arguably “the” fundamental constituent — of social reality.  It then poses the following question:  What would social scientists’ research look like if they took this insight quite seriously?

That, of course, would depend on what practices are in fact like:  what their generic features are, how they are constituted, how they might be identified and characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts, how they might change across time and space.  These are the kinds of questions that this book tries to tackle, insisting that their answers hold important implications for the effective practice of social science.

The book thus attempts to build a philosophical infrastructure for the empirical study of practices in the social sciences and humanities.  At the same time, it also tries to explore the implications of this ontology of human practices for issues in social theory and in the philosophy of the social sciences.  The book thus stands at the intersection of the philosophy of social science, social theory, and the social sciences.

Are large landowners, especially those engaged in labor-dependent agriculture, detrimental to democratization and subsequent democratic survival? This assumption is at the heart of both canonical and recent influential work on regime transition and durability. Using an original panel dataset on the extent of labor-dependent agriculture in countries across the world since 1930, I find that labor-dependent agriculture was historically bad for democratic stability and stunted suffrage extension, parliamentary independence, and free and fair elections. However, the negative influence of labor-dependent agriculture on democracy started to turn positive around the time of democracy's Third Wave. The dual threats of land reform and costly domestic insurgencies in that period – often with more potent consequences under dictators – plausibly prompted landowners to push for democracy with strong horizontal constraints and favorable institutions that could protect their property over the long term with more reliability than dictatorship. The shift in support for democracy by labor-dependent landowners is a major untold story of democracy's Third Wave, and helps explain the persistent democratic deficit in many new democracies.

A non-invasive blood glucose monitoring system with six laser diodes is used to obtain a total of 290 NIR spectra from the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) experiment with the participation of a healthy volunteer over 4 days. Each laser diode operates at the discrete wavelengths between 1500nm and 1800nm with the power of 6mW each. A comparative analysis using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) model and the Neural Network (NN) model is studied. The study shows that the NN model performs better than the PLS model due to the presence of nonlinearity in the collected data. The presence of the nonlinearity is tested by using the Durbin-Watson test. ©2009 IEEE.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5384079

This paper proposes and illustrates a framework for analysis of the recent events in Middle Eastern and North African countries (the so-called Arab Spring) by bringing into dialogue recent theoretical advances in democratization theory with the comparative-historical literature on the political development of the MENA region. We advocate two analytical shifts from conventional approaches in the analysis of the Arab Spring: first, reconsider the temporalities of democratization processes; second, focus on struggles over specific institutional arenas rather than over the regime as a whole. The former recommendation draws attention both to the strategies used by key actors in the political, economic, and civil society spheres, and to the historical legacies that built the influence and resources of these actors over time. The latter allows us to consider the institutional safeguards for old elites that are likely to be included in the post-authoritarian regimes emerging in the region. Even though some of these safeguards are clearly anti-democratic, historical examples show that they do not necessarily preclude democratization. Indeed, in some cases, their introduction might be necessary to achieve democratic openings in other arenas. We illustrate these theoretical points with reference to the case of Egypt.

INTRODUCTION: In dominant Western public discourses, ‘female circumcision’ and ‘genital cosmetic surgery’ (FGCS) are considered very different types of bodily practices. However, only a few studies have tried to assess the validity of this prevailing conventional wisdom. This research project examined one of the most sensitive questions in the debate over FGCS: Is FGCS identified as, or even conflated with, ‘female circumcision’.

METHODS: Based on a review of both the literature and historical archives, this paper traces the spatiotemporal evolution of FGCS and examines the reasons given for the practice.

RESULTS: The review shows that FGCS is not a new phenomenon but is part of a continuity of bodily practices that have their roots in the classical period. Furthermore, there are sociohistorical connections between ‘female circumcision’ and FGCS and clear references to the former by European physicians performing several types of female genital modification throughout the centuries well into the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, the review reveals that ‘female circumcision’ and FGCS have had and still have a similar capacity to modify female genitalia according to social norms of aesthetics and sexuality.

CONCLUSION: The assertion of a radical distinction between ‘female circumcision’ and FGCS is not sustainable based on the sociohistorical evidence.

This article takes a closer look at the internal evolution of the North Korean political system and how it has been subjugated to the personalist regime of the Kim family. The author argues that North Korea should no longer be perceived as a totalitarian regime since it is now a fully entrenched personal regime in the first place. The author investigates how this process of personalization took place in the institutional, ideological and mobilizational dimensions of the DPRK as well as the influence on its international relations (gatekeeping). Based on these insights the author provides some scenarios for endogenous transitions from this regime type and how hereditary succession and personalism affect its survival strategies..

This volume presents the first systematic comparative analysis of national traditions of local democracy across the developed world, as well as their origins and evolution. It reveals how inclusive local institutions that integrate national and local governance make democracy work better. Across most of the developed world, early forms of the national state entrenched the local power of elites. In Anglo-American and Swiss democracies, state formation imposed enduring tensions with local civic governance. In contrast, inclusive, integrative local institutions in Northern Europe enabled close links with central government around common local and national agendas, producing better governance and fuller democracy to the present day. Through comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how institutions for local governance and the participation of civil society differ widely among developed democracies, and how local democracy relates to national democracy. The resulting insights fundamentally recast our understanding of how to build and maintain more effective democracies.

History's epistemological dilemma equally applies to sociology: how can we make claims about persons, events, and processes on the basis of archival records? This article develops a framework called Life on File that combines sociological strengths in qualitative methodologies and an interest in how states shape populations, with library and information sciences' attention to documentary production and anthropological and historical insights into the intersections of archives, knowledge, and power. The framework has three components: the act of recovery of life, processes, and events; the turning of life into a record; and the movement of a file from collection to preservation and use. The result is a methodologically rigorous and globally mobile theory. Empirically, the piece draws on comparative historical fieldwork on state-led racial classification and naturalization practices preserved in Japanese and German archives. While the framework is grounded in research on state archives, its utility extends across types of archives and records. In addition, it provides sociologists with a roadmap on how to use archives in single case as well as comparative and transnational research. The archive is like a raw material, which is not the same as saying that it is an originary material or an unworked-upon material; rather it is what has been made available, what has been thus presented to us, a kind of gift, which is to say also-for future constituencies, future publics-a kind of debt. (Osborne 1999, 57) Cast in the image of the humans who create them, archives are mortals with aspirations to immortality. (Daston 2017, 329)

Quali istituzioni politiche hanno accompagnato - e in parte determinato - la straordinaria vicenda storica di Roma antica? Cosa conosciamo del loro funzionamento e della loro evoluzione? Quali sono stati i principali interrogativi della lunghissima tradizione esegetica della quale siamo debitori? In base a quali suggestioni, invece, per secoli si è reinterpretato, attualizzato e, non da ultimo, strumentalizzato il vincente – e avvincente – “modello romano” nelle sue varie declinazioni? Per quali ragioni la comprensione di concetti politici d’indubbia attualità non può prescindere dallo studio di Roma antica? Tenendo presenti questi interrogativi di fondo, l’autore propone una guida sintetica al complesso sistema politico-istituzionale romano: un sistema che, sebbene lontano, offre ancora molti spunti di riflessione

No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none
thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book, he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition."
—Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University

Annexation and the Unhappy Valley: The Historical Anthropology of Sindh’s Colonization addresses the nineteenth century expansion and consolidation of British colonial power in the Sindh region of South Asia. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach and employs a fine-grained, nuanced and situated reading of multiple agents and their actions. It explores how the political and administrative incorporation of territory (i.e., annexation) by East India Company informs the conversion of intra-cultural distinctions into socio-historical conflicts among the colonized and colonizers. The book focuses on colonial direct rule, rather than the more commonly studied indirect rule, of South Asia. It socio-culturally explores how agents, perspectives and intentions vary—both within and across regions—to impact the actions and structures of colonial governance.

In historical institutional analysis, critical junctures are rare moments in the development of an institution or a policy. Due to endogenous or exogenous disruptions, during critical junctures there is a substantial increase in the possibility that powerful political actors –be these individuals or organizations-- can, in a relatively short span of time, influence decisively the creation of new enduring, path-dependent institutions or the significant reform of existing ones. Pre-existing social, economic, and cultural conditions typically influence actors’ decisions, strategies, and interactions during the critical juncture --e.g. by limiting the range of plausible institutional options available, empowering or disempowering certain actors, offering different arenas for interactions-- but they do not predetermine its outcome. Hence, the defining trait of critical junctures is contingency: during a critical juncture, more than one option for institutional innovation must be available to actors, and must be plausibly attainable ex ante. The chapter conceptualizes and illustrates several situations in which the relexation of contraints on agency offers the opportunity for the establishment of new path-dependent institutions. In some cases, this opportunity is not seized: structural preconditions may be broadly favorable to the creation of certain institutions, but the failure to effectively mobilize supportive groups may fail to produce institutional innovation, or institutional innovation may be possible and attempted but may be narrowly missed. In other cases, against similar background conditions, short-term political imperatives may lead to the formation of different political coalitions that then support different institutional reforms. In other situations, even though the preferences of key actors are linked to pre-existing structural conditions, the institutional outcome that emerges from the juncture may not correspond to the actors’ individual or combined preferences (“out-of-winset” outcomes). In addition, the chapter pays particular attention to the importance of the politics of ideas during critical junctures, in which politically influential actors may seek to establish the legitimacy of new institutional arrangements. Looking at the politics of institutional formation during critical junctures through these theoretical lenses can inform comparative analysis and yield fresh findings, thus furthering the scholarly conversation on institutional change. The conclusion of the chapter locates critical juncture and path dependency analysis in the broader context of theories of institutional change, identifying the potential limitations of such theories and pointing to avenues of further theorization.

Recent research shows that colonialism reversed levels of development in much of the non-European world. To explain this reversal , analysts focus on conditions within the colonized areas. By contrast, drawing on evidence from Spanish and British colonialism, the authors show that the economic models of the colonizing nations also affected the reversals of fortune. Mercantilist Spain tended to colonize most extensively precolonial regions that were populous and highly developed; in turn, extensive Spanish colonization had negative consequences for postcolonial development. In comparison, liberal Britain tended to colonize most extensively precolonial regions that were sparsely populated and underdeveloped; in turn, extensive British colonialism had comparatively positive effects. Thus, both Spain and Britain reversed the fortunes of precolonial regions, but in largely opposite ways.

This contribution interprets the east-central European post-liberal governments’
recent anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and anti-human-rights hysteria in the context of the increasing dependence of the region’s societies for livelihood on employment in the western EU, the widespread racialization of east European labor in the western EU, and the refusal of east European political elites and societies at large to consider possible “Left” critiques of the EU. Given those circumstances, and laboring under related anxieties, post-state-socialist political elites and societies have assumed a fundamentalist-racialist posture. They redirect their repressed anger toward incoming refugees, claim an ahistorical, essential kind of Whiteness and contribute to rigidifying European discussions of “race.”

To access the article, please follow the link to the publisher https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/unbearable-whiteness-of-the-polish-plumber-and-the-hungarian-peacock-dance-around-race/59244B15CB295020E51DF252BDA76604.

If the above link does not work, please look up Slavic Review in your own institution's library website and download the paper from there.

If that fails, please contact the authors at jborocz@rutgers.edu or jborocz@gmail.com or msarkar@binghamton.edu and they will be happy to provide a copy. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Alexander Barder (International Relations, Florida International University) interviews Richard Steigmann-Gall (History, Kent State) about the utility of Fascism as a category of analysis for the field of International Relations; of how religion serves to deepen comparative perspectives on the history of social movements; and how global history can help deprovincialize American historiography.

An introduction of a forthcoming volume on comparative metaethics. The chapters in the volume offer lessons for contemporary metaethics drawn from thinkers ranging from ancient Egypt to Susan Sontag. In this introduction, I summarize the chapters, consider the question of why comparative metaethics is a relatively unexplored field (hint: it's Kant's fault), and consider some of the particular challenges comparative metaethics faces.

From amazon.com:
""Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time.

Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda.

In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again.

Ulrich Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading."

While acknowledging the many forms and contributions of multi-method research (MMR), we examine the costs of treating it as best practice and as a means to neutralize method-specific weaknesses and increase external validity for findings. Focusing on MMR that combines some type of qualitative analysis with statistical or formal approaches, we demonstrate that error-reduction and cross-validation are not feasible where methods are not sufficiently similar in their basic ontologies and their conceptions of causality. In such cases, MMR may still yield important benefits (such as uncovering related insights or improving the coding of variables) but these can be readily obtained through collaboration among scholars specializing in single-method research (SMR). Such scholars often set the standards for the application of particular methods and produce distinctive insights that can elude researchers concerned about competently deploying different methods and producing coherent findings. Thus, the unchecked proliferation of multi-method skill sets risks forefeiting the benefits of SMR and marginalizing idiographically-oriented qualitative research that fits less well with formal or quantitative approaches. This would effectively subvert the pluralism that once gave impetus to MMR unless disciplinary expectations and professional rewards are predicated on a more balanced and nuanced understanding of what various forms of SMR and MMR bring to the table.

Η προσχολική αγωγή διεθνώς: σταθμοί, πολιτικές, διακυβεύματα Η ιστορία της προσχολικής αγωγής στην Ελλάδα όπως και σε πολλές δυτικές χώρες είναι ένα διαρκές μπρος-πίσω με τεράστιες, συχνά γρήγορα ξεχασμένες, προσδοκίες. Ο στόχος του παρόντος κειμένου είναι τριπλός: να δώσουμε εικόνα της ιστορικής εξέλιξης του θεσμού στην Ελλάδα και διεθνώς, να δούμε πώς έχει σήμερα στην Ευρώπη και, τέλος, να αποτιμήσουμε με βάση τις σχετικές μελέτες τις επιπτώσεις της προσχολικής αγωγής στη γνωστική και κοινωνική ανάπτυξη του παιδιού. Απαρχές, διάχυση, παιδαγωγική θεμελίωση Η προσχολική αγωγή ως θεσμός είναι παράγωγο τριών αλληλένδετων δεδομένων τα οποία διαμορφώνονται προοδευτικά και συνυπάρχουν χρονικά στα τέλη του 18 ου και στις αρχές του 19 ου αιώνα: μία νέα εικόνα για το παιδί, μία νέα αντίληψη για την αγωγή του, και μία αβεβαιό τητα ως προ ς τη ζωή το υ σ' ένα περιβάλλον σημαδεμένο από τις απαρχές της βιομηχανικής επανάστασης και την ένταξη όλο και περισσότερο γονέων και παιδιών στην αφορά εργασίας. Είναι, πρώτα απ' όλα, παράγωγο μιας νέας, όπως έδειξε ο Φιλίπ Αριές, αντίληψης για το παιδί το οποίο από μικρογραφία ενήλικα (homunculus), αναπαρίσταται και αντιμετωπίζεται από τους «μεγάλους» ως διακριτό ον με ιδιαιτερότητες, ευαισθησίες και δυνατότητες. «Η διάρκεια της παιδικής ηλικίας», γράφει ο Αριές, «περιοριζόταν στην πιο ευάλωτη περίοδό της, σ΄ αυτήν που το μικρό του ανθρώπου δεν ήταν σε θέση να ικανοποιήσει τις ανάγκες του (…). Από μικρό παιδί γινόταν αμέσως νέος άνδρας (…). ''Εντούτοις, υπήρχε ένα επιφανειακό αίσθημα για το παιδί που το ονόμασα «κανάκεμα»-αλλά αφορούσε αποκλειστικά τα πρώτα χρόνια, όταν το παιδί ήταν ακόμα ένα μικρό αστείο πραγματάκι. Διασκέδαζαν μαζί του, όπως μ' ένα ζώο, μ' ένα ξεδιάντροπο πιθηκάκι. Αν τύχαινε να πεθάνει τότε, όπως συνέβαινε συχνά, μπορεί μερικοί να στεναχωριόνταν, όμως κατά κανόνα δεν

''India, Modernity and the Great Divergence is an original and pioneering book about India’s transition towards modernity and the rise of the West. The work examines global entanglements alongside the internal dynamics of 17th to 19th century Mysore and Gujarat in comparison to other regions of Afro-Eurasia. It is an interdisciplinary survey that enriches our historical understanding of South Asia, ranging across the fascinating and intertwined worlds of modernizing rulers, wealthy merchants, curious scholars, utopian poets, industrious peasants and skilled artisans. Bringing together socio-economic and political structures, warfare, techno-scientific innovations, knowledge production and transfer of ideas, this book forces us to rethink the reasons behind the emergence of the modern world.''

Four-centuries-long encounters between the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy/Russian Empire point to complex relations that have been triggered and defined mostly by territorial, trade disputes, and wars, and maintained by diplomatic rivalry and occasional military alliances. Starting as friendly encounters during Sultan Bayezid II reign at the beginning of the 16th century, these relations, essentially and persistently asymmetrical, reveal an initial and long Ottoman dominance over the Muscovy/Russian side; one that lasted from the early 16th to the late 18th century—whereby the two sides shared no direct borders, traded and did not fight each other until the late 17th century—followed by a late 18th-century and mid-19th-century Russian ascendency. This ascendency was achieved largely thanks to the military reform that Tsar/Emperor Peter the Great undertook, namely, the establishment of a standing and professional army and consequentially due to the many wars that Russia won throughout the 19th century; the decisive ones being those fought during the reign of Empress Catherine the Great. The mid-19th century and the early 20th century—which witnessed the implosion of the Russian Empire due to the Bolshevik Revolution and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France—was a long period that saw few and brief military alliances, contested trade relations and yet continued wars. It was ultimately marred by an Ottoman drive to counterbalance Russia’s dominance, while the latter sought to preserve it, by involving other European powers (British and French)—the most crucial moment being the British, French, and Ottoman armies defeating the Russian one in the Crimean War (1853–1856)—transforming their bilateral interactions into multilateral but unsustainable relations

На Меѓународната научна конференција „Климентовото дело“ којашто се одржа на 23 и 24 јуни 2016 година во Штип во организација на Филолошкиот факултет и Факултетот за образовни науки при Универзитетот „Гоце Делчев“ во Штип професорите Толе Белчев и Ранко Младеноски учествуваа со секциско предавање на тема „Контекстот св. Климент vs Прличев во македонската културна меморија“. Во текот на секциското предавање беше истакнато дека темата со наслов „Контекстот св. Климент vs Прличев во македонската културна меморија“ подразбира елаборација на воспоставените релации во македонската колективна културна меморија меѓу двајца мошне значајни дејци од македонската книжевна и, воопшто, културна историја ‒ св. Климент Охридски од 9 век и Григор Прличев од 19 век. Имено, при ова секциско предавање се интерпретираа неколку народни легенди и преданија во кои македонската фолклорна традиција ги поставува св. Климент и Прличев во идентичен хронотопски контекст, како и суштинските особености на „Словото за св. Климент“ (Слово за Климента) од Григор Прличев одржано во Охрид во 60-тите години на 19 век, но и на „Автобиографијата“ од Прличев. Во заклучокот од излагањето беа сублимирани резултатите од истражувањето во врска со потенцијалните причини, но и мотиви за ваквото поврзување на св. Климент и Прличев чии животи ги дели време од безмалку десет века.

Why did cycling become professional as early as the late nineteenth century, while other sports (such as rugby) and other sport events (such as the Olympic Games) remained amateur until the 1980s? Why are the organizers of the most important bicycle races private companies, while in other sports such as soccer the main event organizer is a nonprofit organization? To what extent have bicycle races changed since the late nineteenth century? And how does cycling reflect long-term economic changes? The history of professional road cycling helps answer these questions and understand many related phenomena. This chapter provides a long-term, historical perspective on (1) professional road cycling’s economic agents, i.e., the public, race organizers, team sponsors and riders, and the relationships amongst them; (2) cycling’s governing body, the International Cycling Union; and (3) professional cycling’s final product, i.e., the show of bicycle races. More precisely, the chapter mostly focuses on the history of male professional road cycling in Western Europe since the late nineteenth century. It is founded on both an analysis of quantitative time series on the Grand Tours (and, to some extent, the classics) and a review of the existing literature on the history of professional cycling, whether economic history, institutional history, cultural history, or sport history.

Entre los siglos XV y XVIII, aproximadamente 50.000 personas fueron ejecutadas en Europa tras ser culpadas del crimen de brujería. Entre los actos por los que fueron castigadas se incluían la utilización de magia nociva, el establecimiento de un pacto con Satán, haber mantenido relaciones sexuales con demonios o formar parte de un complot multitudinario y clandestino para la destrucción de la cristiandad. Lo que en la actualidad puede parecer, a primera vista, el resultado de un pasado irracional y oscurantista, en verdad era la expresión –brutal, ciertamente– de una forma de entender la naturaleza, la historia, la teología y la política distinta a la contemporánea, pero perfectamente racional, coherente con el universo cultural, intelectual y conceptual en el cual se desarrolló. Se hacía necesario un análisis de los fundamentos intelectuales de la caza de brujas, el conjunto de ideas y representaciones que permitió llevar a cabo y justificar la represión de un delito inexistente, a través de los tratados demonológicos publicados por miembros de la elite cultural (ministros religiosos, teólogos, médicos) en Inglaterra entre el siglo XVI y el XVII. Partiendo de la historia cultural e intelectual, se accede a la forma en que los autores caracterizaban las relaciones entre lo humano, lo divino y lo diabólico en un contexto histórico permeado por las profundas transformaciones producidas por la Reforma protestante

L’ancien royaume Kongo a non seulement donné son nom au fleuve et aux deux pays modernes dont ce cours d’eau constitue une frontière naturelle, mais aussi à la langue bantoue qui fut et est toujours parlée sur son territoire. Ce qui est généralement appelé le kikongo renvoie en fait à un ensemble de plusieurs langues étroitement apparentées, plutôt qu’à un seul et unique parler.