Suchergebnisse

Historians dislike nomads. This feeling is perhaps understandable, since our sedentary habits keep us from a full comprehension of people whose prosperity depended so much on continual movement and opportunistic raiding. The primary historical sources reinforce this dislike with their universally pejorative attitude: their authors were sedentary beings also who saw nomads as predators and described them from a safe distance. Why should we impeach these witnesses in the absence of an alternative body of sources containing the nomadic perspective? It is ironic that the very practices which led to the nomads' success have doomed them to ignominy in our modern eyes. Why should mounted archers have preserved archives? Paper, always heavy, would restrict mobility, range, and speed of horses. In short, travelling light gave military advantages to the nomads, but it also gave their history into the hands of their settled prey.

John Keep, Emancipation by the axe? Peasant revolts in Russian thought and literature.
Contrary to widespread opinion, a continuous thread runs from the 17th- and 18th-century Russian peasant revolts to the agrarian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, manifested in the survival of social Utopian myths. The Razin legendary cycle, distorting Christian teaching, presents the "liberator" as an avenging apostle. Russian writers from Pushkin onward, and later social theorists, took up the theme of agrarian violence but were shocked by the brutal events of 1917-1918. Early Soviet writers (e.g. L. Leonov) offered a critical portrait of the peasant revolutionaries, but subsequently this theme has been neglected. A comparison of two novels on the Razin revolt (A. P. Chapygin, 1927; S. Zlobin, 1951) illustrates changes in the official ideology and Soviet literary taste; popular mythology is today manipulated for mundane political ends.

This paper analyzes a case study of conflict among groups of differing power in a community, drawing upon two distinct traditions of conflict theory: integrative and adversarial. The paper examines the evolution of organization within and among groups over a two-year period and the impacts of that evolution on conflict among them. Essentially, a new organization, composed of representatives of the groups in conflict, was created, and mechanisms for regulating information exchange and for handling differences were evolved that reduced the conflict among them. The evolution of the Committee on Residential Lending (CORL) as an institution is examined from the vantage points of level of organization and balancing unequal power relations, and implications for joint use of integrative and adversarial conflict traditions are considered. Three propositions for guiding the joint use of the two traditions are articulated and illustrated.

The market for joint stock shares in eighteenth-century England is often portrayed as an underdeveloped and flawed mechanism for resource allocation, which in turn is cited to explain the paucity of shares actually traded. This article questions that interpretation, both by inquiring whether the requisite institutions for a functional market were present, and by constructing a new time series of eighteenth-century share prices and exposing them to a test of the efficient markets hypothesis. Because the stock exchange is found to exhibit most of the conventionally defined characteristics of an effective market, the article concludes by outlining the case for skepticism with respect to a common theme in economic history: the idea that the purported superiority of market resource allocation over alternative non-market forms (in the absence of rigidities due to underdevelopment or government interference) is an unambiguous conclusion in every historical context.

Role play with toys was modeled to develop communicative language function in 14 multiply handicapped individuals ranging in age from 8 to 26 whose speech was characterized by echolalic and stereotypic responses. Even subjects who spoke in complete sentences asked few questions and did not use narrative speech to any significant degree. As they learned to role play, however, their communicative functioning improved and they shared referents (play themes and toy props) and cooperative social routines (role play). Play themes that were of personal interest elicited the greatest participation. Nonverbal subjects did not develop symbolic play, but they did establish communicative responses as they began to anticipate and express their preferences. No changes were noted in the verbal subjects' syntax or vocabulary. Verbal expression increased and narrative and question forms appeared. Language behavior became more communicative and meaningful as social interaction increased.

Every historian studying the emigration of Europeans to the United States discovers during such research that there was not only a crossing of the Atlantic westward, but a return movement from the United States to Europe as well. In 1842 Charles Dickens in his American Notes wrote about his experiences on a ship traveling from America to England: "We carried in the steerage nearly a hundred passengers: a little world of poverty. … Some of them had been in America but three days, some but three months, and some had gone out in the last voyage of that very ship in which they were now returning home. Others had sold their clothes to raise the passage-money, and had hardly rags to cover them; others had no food, and lived upon the charity of the rest. … They were coming back, even poorer than they went."

A review of the important role played by limited-distribution bulletins in informing the Polish leadership about domestic and foreign affairs. These bulletins include translations of international wire service reports, transcripts of Western radio broadcasts into Poland, and reprints of articles censored from the mass media. Controls on what is published in these bulletins are looser and more indirect than those on the mass media; the leadership generally uses them for its own information but does not decide what should appear in them. While bulletins are not the only source of unpublished information in Poland, they do have a significant impact on policymaking and the thinking of political leaders. This study is a portion of a broad study of Polish media, summarized in R-2627. Other parts of the study are reported in N-1514/1, N-1514/2, N-1514/3, N-1514/5, and N-1514/6.

While all human beings spend much of their time working, many of them do not have a concept of work as such. Such concepts, however, are now being introduced in many societies. In addition, the concept of exchange may have a meaning in non-Western societies differing from its accepted Western meanings. This is illustrated by field data from the Orokaiva, a people of Papua New Guinea. Four basic attitudes toward work are possible: it may be seen as creation or either use or exchange values, & in terms of identification or alienation between self & product. The introduction of exchange-value concepts of work into many societies in the nineteenth & twentieth centuries has invariably given rise to difficulties for the groups adopting them, as illustrated by data from societies presented by Sandra Wallman (in Social Anthropology of Work, London: Academic Press, 1979). W. H. Stoddard.

It is necessary, first of all, to define what is understood here by the expression "reuniting of families".In this article, the term is used in a narrow sense. It refers to the humanitarian protection given, on an international plane, for the reuniting of the members of one and the same family, who have been separated from each other against their will, as a result of external events—international wars, civil wars, internal disturbances, grave political tension—and who have ended up in different countries on either side of a frontier which they find impossible to cross. In most cases, the difficulties involved for such persons to obtain permits allowing them to leave a particular country and enter another are practically insurmountable. It is such persons who are referred to here and it is to them that the ICRC endeavours to bring its assistance.

The apparent vigor of Mexico's native crafts industry in the twentieth century suggests one of two possible explanations: (1) that crafts continue to have a viable function within the culture that produces & consumes them; or (2) that the techniques have existed only for commercial aesthetic reasons, crafts no longer serving the culture that originally produced them. The Mexican government has recognized the drastic changes that have taken place in the crafts industry & has tried to stimulate & preserve it. However, the emphasis on variety has been at the expense of quality; industrial competition has caused the closing of many markets, & there is widespread substitution of synthetic for genuine materials. The process of commercialization has taken much authenticity out of the crafts industry; unless the economic factors accompanying cultural change are controlled, the crafts will be changed beyond recognition, or disappear completely. S. Karganovic.

Marie-Claude Maurel, Women in the Soviet rural society.
In spite of their numerical superiority and their active participation in the social production, several elements contribute to put women of the Soviet Union in a situation of comparative material and cultural inferiority, especially in the countryside. The majority are often poorly qualified and are therefore consigned to domains of poorly paid manual labour, with no great prestige, whereas access to responsible positions, especially in agriculture seems rather narrow. The professional promotion of women is hindered by the numerous functions which are incumbent to them within the family group. The material subjection of women is all the heavier as the tasks traditionally assigned to them — besides the domestic ones and the educative responsibilities — comprise also the maintenance of the auxiliary economy. In spite of the real change in social relations, many facts go to prove the inertia of traditional attitudes towards women.

In 1975, the eighth volume appeared in the series of publications of the committee 1900–1942 (CBNI) (of the Dutch historical association) for the publication of sources on the history of the N.E.I. The earlier publications of this series, which is now nearing completion, were arranged around the following themes: government policy on education, the People's Council and constitutional development, the nationalist movement till 1917 and the economic and financial policies of the NEI government. It was the job of drs. R.C.Kwantes (like dr. Van der Wai and mr. Creutzberg, a former official of the NEI government) to collect Dutch archival sources on the nationalist movement since 1917. With his first book he has brought his subject up to the middle of 1923. Two more volumes will be needed to cover the period till 1942. One of them may be expected in the course of 1978.

In 1977, Congress authorized the expenditure of one million dollars for "the preparation of a comprehensive analysis of development needs of southern Africa to enable the Congress to determine what contribution United States foreign assistance can make." AID was instructed to present specific proposals on how to spend this one million dollars. AID seems to have approached several groups of scholars heretofore critical of U.S. policy in southern Africa on the possibility of serving as "consultants" to draft this analysis. AID in late November approached the four of us as scholars in contact with persons knowledgeable about the region (and not ostensibly because of our links to the Association of Concerned African Scholars) to meet with them to discuss what kind of work ought to be done, could be done, and might be done by us. We agreed to meet with them in December in Washington.