Suchergebnisse

The design of an efficient sampling scheme for the study of population and space in the nineteenth century is a challenging problem for historians. To examine the relationship of social life to the general form of the city, the sample must cover the whole territory. Working on that scale however, a researcher ordinarily sacrifices detail to achieve coverage. But to examine the constraints and the routine which are part of everyday experience, the sample must provide that very detail- intensive observations of small areal sub-populations. When the researcher has that detail, he/she ordinarily sacrifices the attempt to achieve uniform coverage of the city as a whole. The two goals have seemed mutually exclusive in any single sampling design. Thus the historical study of the American city has often followed two distinct lines of approach: either gross patterns in urban land use have been investigated to understand aspects of the city's change, its dynamics of growth, and the development of suburbanization, for example; or intensive studies of the experience of neighborhoods or single ethnic or social groups have been conducted.

So much has been done in the name of nuclear deterrence, so much destructive power built by ourselves and the Russians that it may seem rather late in the day, not to say absurd, to wonder whether or not mutual deterrence really occurs and ask what evidence can be adduced to prove it. Yet such a question may be essential to an understanding of international nuclear politics. The problems thus posed are difficult, however, and cannot be solved by direct means. What one needs to do is to establish empirically whether the conditions necessary for deterrence to be taking place are present. A brief review of the reasons why this should be so ought to, on the other hand, give us some clues as to alternate paths we would need to take in seeking our answers.