The introduction outlines the volume’s main impetus: to encourage historians, global and not, to reflect on ‘their daily task’, as Marc Bloch put it – on their methods, craftsmanship, and conceptual basics. It is an invitation to rethink the field’s forms of inquiry and argumentation and the tacit assumptions underlying its practice, at a time when the ground under global historians’ feet – with globalisation in crisis – is moving fast.

Global history and other relational approaches to history, the introduction holds, have methodological implications and require theoretical reflection: because many of the classic analytical instruments commonly employed by historians require some reduction of complexity – to explain, to periodise, or to compare – a task naturally more difficult when scholars deal with an unusual abundance of factors; because the field’s assault on Eurocentrism requires reflection on the matter of perspective and authorial vantage point; or, indeed, because of the field’s inherent teleology, with its understanding of history inseparable from the telos of continuously increasing global integration.

The introduction presents the methodology used in the book and offers a brief outline of Rwanda's pre-mid-nineteenth century history.

The introduction articulates the topic of the book, explains the book’s methodology and interdisciplinary approach, and introduces the chapter contents.

The chapter deals with segmental and suprasegmental features of English spoken by residents of England without a recent migration history – though two major new varieties, British Asian English and Multicultural London English, are briefly discussed. While the emphasis is on the period since the turn of the twenty-first century, the chapter also deals with changes since the 1960s. The chapter begins with a presentation of recent technological advances, such as magnetic resonance imaging and innovative quantitative cartographic techniques. This is followed by a discussion of consonants, vowels, rhythm, stress, intonation and voice quality. The chapter goes on to show how some features are involved in levelling at the national or regional level, while other local and regional features are maintained. Using older dialectological sources as well as contemporary sociolinguistic methods, four regions are discussed, those centred on London, Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester. The evidence shows similarities (a general reduction in variation) and differences (maintenance of differences between neighbouring cities). Levelling in the South East involves a shift of vowels towards Received Pronunciation-like variants, while consonants do not take part in this change; the exception is the rapid loss of traditional h-dropping. Finally, the influence of standardisation is discussed.

Whatever their private religious convictions, nearly all contemporary psychologists of religion – when they act in professional roles – agree to operate in accordance with scientific rules. Recognition of the imperfections of individual methodologies has led to an emphasis on testing theories and verifying “facts” in multiple studies. Most of this chapter explores the pros and cons associated with various research methods, including experimentation, observation, and survey research. Although the logic of experimentation is undeniable and psychologists in various subfields frequently deem it the method of choice, many questions that we most want to answer in the psychology of religion cannot be addressed through experiments that are feasible, ethical, and convincing. Thus, the psychology of religion has always relied heavily on quantitative and qualitative survey research studies. Good surveys must strive to avoid biases rooted in question wording, question order, mode of data collection, social desirability, attitude-behavior discrepancies, and the tendency to overreport religious behavior. Fortunately, many existing measures of religious attitudes and behaviors have good psychometric qualities.

This chapter introduces students to the range of theoretical issues that have animated the study of international relations through the years. First, it explains why theoretical reflection is indispensable to explaining and understanding international relations. Second, it addresses unavoidable ontological and epistemological issues in the quest for theoretical understanding. Third, it traces the growth of mainstream International Relations theory up to the present conflict in Ukraine. Finally, it touches on some of the diverse critical approaches to the study of international relations.

This chapter presents the outlines of a constructivist understanding of world politics. We begin with a discussion of state identity and explore how identity defines and bounds state actions. To illustrate this concept, we address issues central to the study of world politics: change, governance and security. Overall, our goal is to present a textured, layered understanding of the international realm based on a notion taken for granted in much of IR theory, meaning. Constructivism is the newest but perhaps the most dynamic of the main theories of international relations. Unlike liberalism and realism (see Chapters 2 and 3), which have taken their bearings from developments in economic and political theory, constructivism – like Critical Theory (see Chapter 4) – is rooted in insights from social theory (e.g. Berger and Luckmann 1967; Giddens 1984) and the philosophy of knowledge (Golinski 2005; Hacking 1999; Searle 1995).

How would our understanding of the history of literary theory change if we focused on the seminal essays, rather than the monumental books and monographs? It would surely seem more variegated and provisional, less finished and definitive, more of a process of trying out ideas and defending interests, more motley, confusing, and elusive, a bit like the essay form itself. This chapter examines the rise and fall of theory in the UK inside and outside the academy, beginning with its origins in the British New Left, which looked to continental Europe for intellectual sustenance. It traces the institutional influences and pressures exerted on the essay form as it migrates across the Channel, arguing that while critique could be amenable to the norms of tough-minded knowledge acquisition, the more oblique and personal voice that we associate with essayism has, until recently, often been eschewed in universities.

An introduction to the modern corporate governance project. Using the track record of our efforts to control executive compensation, we see that notwithstanding decades of failure, and considerable evidence that our interventions have been making things worse, modern corporate governance remains fixated on agency cost theory as a normative program of reform. This is a matter of growing concern as corporate governance is gradually adopted as a tool to obtain important environmental and social outcomes. The themes of the book and its methodological approach are summarized. Children’s cartoons are referenced more than you would expect.

This chapter lays out an argument for why a new approach to understanding children’s development in school is necessary. It first reviews the limitations of research with young children in Head Start programs and elementary schools serving large percentages of children in poverty within the US. These approaches are critiqued in light of findings that challenge the validity and reliability of teacher report and other commonly used measures. Issues of bias and cultural relevance in ways of defining the development of children placed at risk are discussed. Promising insights from research using alternative frames and units of analysis are then contrasted with those of large-scale studies. Finally, the rationale for focusing on collaborative competence as a key driver of development throughout childhood is elaborated. The potential of a developmental sequence of collaboration beginning with preschooler free play and leading into more complex collaborations during elementary school is proposed. Summaries of each chapter and how it contributes to this argument is provided.

This introductory chapter first defines what is meant by popular culture, with a discussion of different scholarly and theoretical approaches. Next discussion homes in on specifically ancient popular culture, making particular use of relevant comparative material from Pompeii and Aphrodisias. Then the particular geographical and chronological focus of the book – southern Gaul in late antiquity – is introduced, with a discussion of the region’s political and social history in the period. This is followed by an introduction to the dominant figure of Caesarius, bishop of Arles from 502 to 542. The chapter ends with a discussion of sources and guiding methodological principles.

In Chapter 1, I frame the book. First, I identify the questions that motivate my book. For example, to whom do we have obligations? On what terms? And why? Second, I rehearse scriptural sources that may guide religious ethicists when thinking about our obligations to severely poor people. Third, given the various intradisciplinary debates in religious ethics about definitions and distinctions, I lead the reader through important definitions in contemporary normative and practical ethics, for example, doing and allowing, agent-neutrality and agent-relativity, and institutionalism and interpersonalism. And fourth, I comment on my methodology, highlighting my commitments to contractualist deontology and the use of thought experiments in ethics.

The method proposed in the Tractatus is to find a perspicuous logic of our language. It thus seems to conform to Russell’s ideal of a scientific method in philosophy. Language, though, is for Wittgenstein essentially the language of the first person. This means that the central issues in the Tractatus, such as ‘What is a sentence?’ and ‘What is a judgement?’, have to be approached by means of a first-person method. Perhaps surprisingly, this method is less vulnerable to psychologism than Russell’s method. How are we to understand the use of the first-person indexical in the Tractatus? It is not used as a referring term: it does not stand for the author, a world-soul, or a transcendental subject. Its function is rather to engage the reader in applying the first-person method when aiming to understand the Tractatus.

The introduction explains the purpose of this book and situates this book in the relevant literature. It discusses the meaning of securitization as used in this book, and it introduces Just Securitization Theory on which the theory of the moral duty to secure developed in this book builds. It also discusses the methods employed and methodology informing this work. Finally, it provides a chapter overview.