Suchergebnisse

Middelaar, Luuk van, De passage naar Europa. Geschiedenis van een begin (Dissertatie Universiteit van Amsterdam 2009; Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2009, 531 blz., ISBN 978 90 6554 236 6).In his De passage naar Europa. Geschiedenis van een begin [The Passage to Europe: History of a Beginning], Luuk van Middelaar makes European integration intelligible by applying a distinction between three spheres – the states, the community and the intermediate sphere of the Member States – to various events that have proven crucial in 'the making of'. These events form passages that have made Europe what it is today; as well as what it is not. Van Middelaar's writing is sensitive and inspired; his perspective is open-minded; the cases are well-documented (but not always adequate); and his book is innovative, as he introduces political/theoretical terminology into history, combined with insights from political science. He could even have gone further in narrowing the disciplines gap, however, and he has not always avoided the traps of history writing. In any case, he succeeds brilliantly in his ambition 'to tell another story about the birth of political Europe' (9; author's own italics).

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE TYPICALLY GENERATE COMPLEX AND SUBTLE THEORETICAL CONFLICT. STUDENTS FREQUENTLY HAVE DIFFICULTY ACQUIRING A USEFULLY FIRM GRASP OF THE OFTEN ESOTERIC ISSUES INVOLVED IN SUCH DEBATES WHILE SCHOLARSHIP IS NEVER PAINLESS, STUDENTS' PROGRESS TOWARD CONCEPTUAL SOPHISTICATION CAN BE FACILITATED THROUGH USE OF PREPARED DIALOGS BETWEEN PROPONENTS OF CONFLICTING VIEWS. A CAREFULLY PREPARED DIALOG PROVIDES A GUIDED INTRODUCTION TO READING AND DISCUSSION, AND PRECLUDES TRIVIALIZATION OF ONE PERSPECTIVE IN FAVOR OF ANOTHER. WE INCLUDE A FULLY DEVELOPED ILLUSTRATIVE DIALOG BETWEEN A MODERNITY THEORIST AND A PROPONENT OF DEPENDENCY THEORY.

What is the status of rational choice theory in contemporary European political science? Compared with a quarter-century ago, the rational choice approach is still far from being the paradigm of work in the discipline, but looking at both anecdotal evidence and information derived from journal citations and textbook contents, it seems that the number of political scientists working wholly or partly within the approach has grown markedly, and that its contribution to the mainstream of the field is strong.

The purpose of the single case life history study was to understand a female science teacher's conceptions of the nature of science as explicit in her practice. While this paper highlights these understandings, an additional purpose is to give a detailed account of the process of creating a life history account through more than 13 in-depth interviews. It includes a discussion of what the author calls composite observations where the observations of the teacher and the researcher are presented as a single unified story. Also discussed are ethical issues specific to life history created due to the intimacy created by such a study that required the development of a great deal of trust and rapport.

Two integrative approaches to the study of Western political theory are briefly described. The first, deriving from comparative philology & historical anthropology, is commended for providing an overview of political philosophy in the Indo-European cultures; the importance of treaties on statecraft in this tradition is underscored. The second perspective focuses on the cultural & anthropological bases of Western political writings; a comparative mythology comprising both substantive & conceptual aspects of these writings is advanced to explain both the coherence & internal differentiation of this tradition. Applications of a genetic model in the second approach are also considered. L. Whittemore.

This paper examines racial science and its political uses in Southeast Asia. It follows several anthropologists who travelled to east Nusa Tenggara (the Timor Archipelago, including the islands of Timor, Flores and Sumba), where Alfred Russel Wallace had drawn a dividing line between the races of the east and the west of the archipelago. These medically trained anthropologists aimed to find out if the Wallace Line could be more precisely defined with measurements of the human body. The paper shows how anthropologists failed to find definite markers to quantify the difference between Malay and Papuan/Melanesian. This, however, did not diminish the conceptual power of the Wallace Line, as the idea of a boundary between Malays and Papuans was taken up in the political arena during the West New Guinea dispute and was employed as a political tool by all parties involved. It shows how colonial and racial concepts can be appropriated by local actors and dismissed or emphasised depending on political perspectives.

Introduction: writing the transnational history of science and technology / John Krige -- The US regulatory state