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Cet article discute dans un premier temps l'histoire intellectuelle telle qu'elle se pratique notamment dans le monde anglophone, tout en soulignant les résistances que rencontre en France cette branche des études historiques. On y examine les travaux ce qu'on appelle « l'école de Cambridge » (notamment Q. Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock, D. Forbes), mais également ceux d'une gamme plus large d'historiens, y compris ceux associés à l'Université de Sussex (notamment J. Burrow, D. Winch et S. Collini). Les différentes façons de théoriser ou de présenter cette approche sont comparées, ainsi que le rapport entre l'histoire intellectuelle et l'histoire des idées. On aborde également la question des liens et interactions entre l'histoire intellectuelle et d'autres domaines de la recherche historique : l'histoire de la pensée politique (à laquelle elle est souvent identifiée), l'histoire culturelle, l'histoire du livre, l'histoire des sciences... Après avoir évoqué la récente polémique autour des écrits de Jonathan Israel et notamment sa défense d'une certaine « histoire intellectuelle », critiquée par de nombreux historiens intellectuels comme un retour à l'étude anhistorique des idées, l'auteure aborde sa propre pratique de l'histoire intellectuelle. L'intérêt de l'étude des controverses est illustré à travers son dernier ouvrage : Bodies of Thought (2008). Une présentation rapide du sujet du livre et de son approche permet de faire comprendre la spécificité de sa conception de la discipline.

It is generally believed that sub-Saharan Africa was largely unknown to eighteenth-century Europeans except as the source of slaves, and it is largely absent from philosophical history. However, eighteenth-century writings about Africa provided many histories of nations with different types of government, which belie the view of one undifferentiated mass peopled by savages with no history. But abolitionist writings represented Africans primarily as innocent children of nature, the victims of European traders who provoked wars by their Machiavellian maneuvers. This made it impossible to place them in a coherent historical narrative or to accord them a political history of their own, and as Africans could not be assigned a clear place in the stadial scheme of history, they were generally excluded from historical thinking. They became childlike victims to be enslaved or, increasingly, converted and civilized by the Europeans. Thinking about the Africans was increasingly confined to the field of natural history and anthropology and to their place in the racial hierarchy.

The concept and practice of civic service is deeply rooted in America's past, present, and future, and has been a featured component of recent presidential agendas. Yet despite ongoing debates about the methods and values of civic service, no recent book has systematically analyzed the effectiveness and outcomes of service programs in America. Civic Service: What Difference Does It Make? presents a thorough, research-based evaluation of public service programs in the United States. Divided into four key parts, this groundbreaking volume presents original information not found anywhere else

Social science research contains a wealth of knowledge for people seeking to understand collaboration processes. The authors argue that public managers should look inside the "black box" of collaboration processes. Inside, they will find a complex construct of five variable dimensions: governance, administration, organizational autonomy, mutuality, and norms. Public managers must know these five dimensions and manage them intentionally in order to collaborate effectively.

One of the most ambitious and simultaneously most controversial programs of Bill Clinton's presidency is AmeriCorps, the national service program authorized in 1993 by the National and Community Service Trust Act. This article presents findings from an examination of the community-building effects of the AmeriCorps program in five communities. We focus our attention on AmeiCorps' impact on local community-based organizations by examining change in the capacity of the organizations in which AmeriCorps members work and in the degree to which AmeriCorps has fostered interorganizational cooperation to achieve community goals. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and ways to enhance AmeriCorps' community-building potential.