The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States

The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States
Author: Renate Bridenthal
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2017-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785335189

Renowned historical sociologist Charles Tilly wrote many years ago that “banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war-making all belong on the same continuum.” This volume pursues the idea by revealing how lawbreakers and lawmakers have related to one another on the shadowy terrains of power over wide stretches of time and space. Illicit activities and forces have been more important in state building and state maintenance than conventional histories have acknowledged. Covering vast chronological and global terrain, this book traces the contested and often overlapping boundaries between these practices in such very different polities as the pre-modern city-states of Europe, the modern nation-states of France and Japan, the imperial power of Britain in India and North America, Africa’s and Southeast Asia’s postcolonial states, and the emerging postmodern regional entity of the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, the contemporary explosion of transnational crime raises the question of whether or not the relationship of illicit to licit practices may be mutating once more, leading to new political forms beyond the nation-state.

Social Support Systems in Rural Italy

Social Support Systems in Rural Italy
Author: Giovanni Gregorini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2023-05-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 303124303X

This book examines the development of social support systems in the Modern age in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the role occupied concretely by welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural Northern Italy; secondly, it verifies to what extent the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. The book brings together perspectives from different fields of research ranging from economic and political history to the study of the history of ecclesiastical institutions, as well as integrating recent research on the anthropological value of welfare actions and the use of multiple historical sources. It considers how the retreat of the welfare activity of the State, associated with a depopulation of the rural areas of the peninsula and a steady increase of poverty into social fringes that were previously not affected by economic problems, pushes us to investigate more carefully the dynamics that in the Ancien Régime gave shape to the support activities against indigence and poverty. This book will be of interest to academics and students working in economic history and social history.

Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500-1700

Writing the Lives of People and Things, AD 500-1700
Author: Robert F.W. Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134809158

Historical biography has a mixed reputation: at its best it can reveal much not only about an individual, but the wider context of their life and society; at worst it can result in a narrowly focused work of hagiography or condemnation. Yet in spite of its sometimes inferior status amongst academics, biography has remained a popular genre, and in recent years has developed into new and intriguing areas. As the essays in this volume reveal, scholars from an array of different disciplines have embraced what biography can offer them, expanding the remit of biography from people to things, tracing the 'life' of their chosen object from creation to use to disposal to rediscovery. The increasing concern with the physicality of manuscripts and books has also meant an awareness of and interest in the 'lives' of these forms of material culture. Historians have also become increasingly interested in groups of individuals resulting in prosopographical studies. A book on the diversity of biography is therefore very timely, exploring the multi-disciplinary application of historical biography in the period 500-1700. It presents fourteen case studies offering new approaches to historical biography, written by early-career researchers from backgrounds in archaeology, English, art, architectural history and history, demonstrating different approaches and techniques. Overall, the collection is a strong and united statement by a group of early-career researchers who insist on the vitality of biography as a central concern of historians across the disciplines of the humanities. Contributors believe that the 'life' is a fundamental medium of study for the medieval and early modern periods, and thus . bolsters the move back towards biography as a primary tool of medieval and early modern scholars, as well as a tool for future research for humanities scholars interested in biography.

Similarity in Difference

Similarity in Difference
Author: Christer Lundh
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 539
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262027941

A study of marriage in preindustrial Europe and Asia that goes beyond the Malthusian East–West dichotomy to find variation within regions and commonality across regions. Since Malthus, an East–West dichotomy has been used to characterize marriage behavior in Asia and Europe. Marriages in Asia were said to be early and universal, in Europe late and non-universal. In Europe, marriages were supposed to be the result of individual choices but, in Asia, decided by families and communities. This book challenges this binary taxonomy of marriage patterns and family systems. Drawing on richer and more nuanced data, the authors compare the interpretations based on aggregate demographic patterns with studies of individual actions in local populations. Doing so, they are able to analyze simultaneously the influence on marriage decisions of individual demographic features, socioeconomic status and composition of the household, and local conditions, and the interactions of these variables. They find differences between East and West but also variation within regions and commonality across regions. The book studies local populations in Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and China. Rather than a simple comparison of aggregate marriage patterns, it examines marriage outcomes and determinants of local populations in different countries using similar data and methods. The authors first present the results of comparative analyses of first marriage and remarriage and then offer chapters each of which is devoted to the results from a specific country. Similarity in Difference is the third in a prizewinning series on the demographic history of Eurasia, following Life under Pressure (2004) and Prudence and Pressure (2009), both published by the MIT Press.

Split and Splice

Split and Splice
Author: Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2023-04-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226825329

"Esteemed historian and philosopher of science Hans-Jörg Rheinberger explores the incredible diversity of scientific experimentation in his new book, which extends his ground-breaking epistemological studies of the life sciences and the experimental practices that have made them so productive. Rheinberger explores the materiality of experiment, of its objects and instruments, the construction of models, and myriad ways of making things visible. The first part of the book is devoted to the circumstances and conditions that give the process of experimentation its structural cachet and make it a device from which novelty can emerge. Then, in the second part, Rheinberger focuses on the relations that experimental systems develop among each other, specifically their characteristic temporal, spatial, and narrative dimensions. The concepts that guide his investigation emerge through accessible examples, most of which are drawn from molecular biology, including from the author's own laboratory notebooks from his years researching ribosomes. This is a tour de force by one of today's most influential theorists of scientific practice"--

Threads and Traces

Threads and Traces
Author: Carlo Ginzburg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2012-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520949846

Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.

What is Microhistory?

What is Microhistory?
Author: Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2013-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135047065

This unique and detailed analysis provides the first accessible and comprehensive introduction to the origins, development, methodology of microhistory – one of the most significant innovations in historical scholarship to have emerged in the last few decades. The introduction guides the reader through the best-known example of microstoria, The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, and explains the benefits of studying an event, place or person in microscopic detail. In Part I, István M. Szijártó examines the historiography of microhistory in the Italian, French, Germanic and the Anglo-Saxon traditions, shedding light on the roots of microhistory and asking where it is headed. In Part II, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon uses a carefully selected case study to show the important difference between the disciplines of macro- and microhistory and to offer practical instructions for those historians wishing to undertake micro-level analysis. These parts are tied together by a Postscript in which the status of microhistory within contemporary historiography is examined and its possibilities for the future evaluated. What is Microhistory? surveys the significant characteristics shared by large groups of microhistorians, and how these have now established an acknowledged place within any general discussion of the theory and methodology of history as an academic discipline.

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c.1410-1800

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World c.1410-1800
Author: Tracey A. Sowerby
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351736906

Practices of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World offers a new contribution to the ongoing reassessment of early modern international relations and diplomatic history. Divided into three parts, it provides an examination of diplomatic culture from the Renaissance into the eighteenth century and presents the development of diplomatic practices as more complex, multifarious and globally interconnected than the traditional state-focussed, national paradigm allows. The volume addresses three central and intertwined themes within early modern diplomacy: who and what could claim diplomatic agency and in what circumstances; the social and cultural contexts in which diplomacy was practised; and the role of material culture in diplomatic exchange. Together the chapters provide a broad geographical and chronological presentation of the development of diplomatic practices and, through a strong focus on the processes and significance of cultural exchanges between polities, demonstrate how it was possible for diplomats to negotiate the cultural codes of the courts to which they were sent. This exciting collection brings together new and established scholars of diplomacy from different academic traditions. It will be essential reading for all students of diplomatic history.

The Scene of the Mass Crime

The Scene of the Mass Crime
Author: Christian Delage
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2013-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136330666

The Scene of the Mass Crime takes up the unwritten history of the peculiar yet highly visible form of war crimes trials. These trials are the first and continuing site of the interface of law, history and film. From Nuremberg to the contemporary trials in Cambodia, film, in particular, has been crucial both as evidence of atrocity and as the means of publicizing the proceedings. But what does film bring to justice? Can law successfully address war crimes, atrocities, genocide? What do the trials actually show? What form of justice is done, and how does it relate to ordinary courts and proceedings? What lessons can be drawn from this history for the very topical political issue of filming civil and criminal trials? This book takes up the diversity and complexity of these idiosyncratic and, in strict terms, generally extra-legal medial situations. Drawing on a fascinating diversity of public trials and filmic responses, from the Trial of the Gang of Four to the Gacaca local courts of Rwanda to the filmic symbolism of 9-11, from Soviet era show trials to Nazi People's Courts leading international scholars address the theatrical, political, filmic and symbolic importance of show trials in making history, legitimating regimes and, most surprising of all, in attempting to heal trauma through law and through film. These essays will be of considerable interest to those working on international criminal law, transitional justice, genocide studies, and the relationship between law and film.

What’s Left of Marxism

What’s Left of Marxism
Author: Benjamin Zachariah
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110677741

Have Marxian ideas been relevant or influential in the writing and interpretation of history? What are the Marxist legacies that are now re-emerging in present-day histories? This volume is an attempt at relearning what the “discipline” of history once knew – whether one considered oneself a Marxist, a non-Marxist or an anti-Marxist.