You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In this book, Michael F. Palo explains how a historical and theoretical examination of Belgian neutrality, 1839-1940, can help readers understand the behaviour of small/weak democracies in the international system.
"Though Einstein is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of modern science, he was in many respects marginal. Despite being one of the creators of quantum theory, he remained skeptical of it, and his major research program while in Princeton--the quest for a unified field--ultimately failed. In this book, Michael Gordin explores this paradox in Einstein's life by concentrating on a brief and often overlooked interlude: his tenure as professor of physics in Prague, from April of 1911 to the summer of 1912. Though often dismissed by biographers and scholars, it was a crucial year for Einstein both personally and scientifically: his marriage deteriorated, he began thinki...
Johann Gottfried Herder initiated the modern disciplines of philosophical anthropology and cultural history, including the study of popular culture. He is also remembered as a sharp critic of colonialism and imperialism. But what types of social, economic and political arrangements did Herder envision for modern European societies? Herder and Enlightenment Politics provides a radically new interpretation of Herder's political thought, situating his ideas in Enlightenment debates on modern patriotism, commerce and peace. By reconstructing Herder's engagement with Rousseau, Montesquieu, Abbt, Ferguson, Möser, Kant and many other contemporary authors, Eva Piirimäe shows that Herder was deeply interested in the potential for cultural, moral and political reform in Russia, Germany and Europe. Herder probed the foundations of modern liberty, community and peace, developing a distinctive understanding of human self-determination, natural sociability and modern patriotism as well as advocating a vision of Europe as a commercially and culturally interconnected community of peoples.
During the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise and novel challenges for ecological advocacy groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). This book reveals how, despite their vast scientific knowledge and their attempts to incorporate socially relevant themes, IUCN experts inevitably struggled to make global schemes for nature conservation a central concern for UNESCO, UNEP and other intergovernmental organizations.
Ideas in History is the result of collaborative efforts among nearly a dozen universities and colleges throughout the Nordic countries. The purpose of these initiatives is to further awareness of research, resources, and activities in the field of intellectual history in the Nordic countries as well as internationally. The journals introduces Nordic and international readerships to some of the finest work in intellectual history by Nordic-based scholars as well as international authors. The purpose of the journal is to create a meeting ground for the study of ideas in historical context across disciplinary, geographical and institutional boundaries. Ideas in History welcomes interdisciplinary approaches to intellectual history at the same time it acknowledges specific traditions in the field. Ideas in History seeks a pluralism of methodological approaches to intellectual history: reflections on the field, historical contexts studied, subject matter for intellectual-historical investigation, critical understandings of relations between the intellectual past and present as well as the comprehension of culturally, politically and geographically diverse intellectual traditions.
This collection examines theoretical and practical issues concerning the relationship between freedom of religion or belief and other fundamental rights, in the context of secular States, from the perspective of human dignity. As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made clear, human dignity constitutes the foundation of human rights, among which freedom of thought, conscience, and religion occupies a prominent place. As a consequence of the inter-cultural debate that is ongoing in contemporary Western societies, which are increasingly pluralistic, the concept of human dignity faces important challenges in terms of what it requires. The five chapters included in the first part of this b...
Book culture has emerged as an extremely dynamic and border-crossing field of research, internationally and in Finland. The editors and most of the writers of this book were members of the organizing and program committees of the 18th Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), Book Culture from Below, that took place in Helsinki in 2010. This book provides, for the first time in English, an overview of an important epoch in Finnish book and reading history. Besides depicting book culture at the periphery of Europe, it contributes to our understanding of the power of the urbanized European literary world of the 1700s. The new reading cultur...
This issue of Ideas in History encompasses a special issue on the history of economic thought, plus a provocative paper taking on issues of text, historiography and deconstructive thought in cultural history.
Conviviality has lately become a catchword not only in academia but also among political activists. This open access book discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. The urgency of today’s global predicament is not only an argument for the revival of all three concepts, but also a reason to bring them into dialogue. Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of ‘autonomous individuals and primary groups’ (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of ‘convivialism’. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be ‘at ease’ in contexts of diversity...
The essays in this volume discuss both the culture of technology that we live in today, and culture as technology. Within the chapters of the book cultures of technology and cultural technologies are discussed, focussing on a variety of examples, from varied national contexts. The book brings together internationally recognised scholars from the social sciences and humanities, covering diverse themes such as intellectual property, server farms and search engines, cultural technologies and epistemology, virtual embassies, surveillance, peer-to-peer file-sharing, sound media and nostalgia and much more. It contains both historical and contemporary analyses of technological phenomena as well as epistemological discussions on the uses of technology.