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Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader

by Mark Goodale

This innovative reader brings together key works that demonstrate the important and unique contributions anthropologists have made to the understanding and practice of human rights over the last 60 years. Draws on a range of intellectual and methodological approaches to reveal both the ambiguities and potential of the postwar human rights project. Brings together essays by both contemporary luminaries and seminal figures to provide a rich introduction to the subject. Supplemented with selected international human rights documents and links to websites on human rights.

Human Robots in Myth and science (Routledge Revivals)

by John Cohen

First published in 1966, in Human Robots in Myth and Science, the author traces the idea of the robot from antiquity until the present day (1960s) and sketches the lines of its likely development in the future. Modern science, like science fiction, is deeply concerned with the idea of a robot or self-regulating artifact which operates without human aid. Ultra rapid computers, pilotless planes, and automated factories straight away come to mind, but there are numberless other automatic devices.As John Cohen probes this exciting theme it becomes increasingly clear that the notion of a robot has had far reaching repercussions in the history of science, philosophy and literature and in the growth of industry. In his analysis of the motives of robot makers throughout the ages, the author distinguishes the impulse which challenges the gods themselves from the merely utilitarian urge. There is a vast difference between the age-old quest for technical skill and the desire to wrest from the gods the secret of making a man. The topic is treated historically, beginning with Biblical, Egyptian, Greek and other antique robots and their significance and followed by a description of the ‘man-made men’ of medieval science, alchemy and fiction. The theory of robots come into its own in the seventeenth century and its application, in craftsmanship in industry, in the eighteenth century. It is only in the recent past however, that the world of robots has begun to flourish in an ever-growing scale. In the age of AI, this historical reference work is a must read for scholars and researchers of history, philosophy and literature.

Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece

by Dennis D. Hughes

Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.

Human Sciences and Human Interests: Integrating the Social, Economic, and Evolutionary Sciences (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

by Mikael Klintman

Within the disciplines of social, economic, and evolutionary science, a proud ignorance can often be found of the other areas’ approaches. This text provides a novel intellectual basis for breaking this trend. Certainly, Human Sciences and Human Interests aspires to open a broad debate about what scholars in the different human sciences assume, imply or explicitly claim with regard to human interests. Mikael Klintman draws the reader to the core of human sciences - how they conceive human interests, as well as how interests embedded within each discipline relate to its claims and recommendations. Moreover, by comparing theories as well as concrete examples of research on health and environment through the lenses of social, economic and evolutionary sciences, Klintman outlines an integrative framework for how human interests could be better analysed across all human sciences. This fast-paced and modern contribution to the field is a necessary tool for developing any human scientist’s ability to address multidimensional problems within a rapidly changing society. Avoiding dogmatic reasoning, this interdisciplinary text offers new insights and will be especially relevant to scholars and advanced students within the aforementioned disciplines, as well as those within the fields of social work, social policy, political science and other neighbouring disciplines.

Human Sciences and Human Interests: Integrating the Social, Economic, and Evolutionary Sciences (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

by Mikael Klintman

Within the disciplines of social, economic, and evolutionary science, a proud ignorance can often be found of the other areas’ approaches. This text provides a novel intellectual basis for breaking this trend. Certainly, Human Sciences and Human Interests aspires to open a broad debate about what scholars in the different human sciences assume, imply or explicitly claim with regard to human interests.Mikael Klintman draws the reader to the core of human sciences - how they conceive human interests, as well as how interests embedded within each discipline relate to its claims and recommendations. Moreover, by comparing theories as well as concrete examples of research on health and environment through the lenses of social, economic and evolutionary sciences, Klintman outlines an integrative framework for how human interests could be better analysed across all human sciences.This fast-paced and modern contribution to the field is a necessary tool for developing any human scientist’s ability to address multidimensional problems within a rapidly changing society. Avoiding dogmatic reasoning, this interdisciplinary text offers new insights and will be especially relevant to scholars and advanced students within the aforementioned disciplines, as well as those within the fields of social work, social policy, political science and other neighbouring disciplines.

Human Security in Turkey: Challenges for the 21st century (Routledge Studies in Security and Conflict Management)

by Alpaslan Özerdem Füsun Özerdem

This edited volume explores human security challenges in the context of Turkey. Turkey occupies a critical geopolitical position between Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus. It is an important peace-broker in regional conflicts and a leading country in peacekeeping operations, and has been a generous donor for disaster response around the world. However, Turkey is also facing a number of fundamental sociocultural and development challenges and its internal stability is affected by a protracted armed conflict based on Kurdish separatism. In other words, Turkey is at a crossroads in its transformation from a state-centred security perspective to one based on human security. To explore selected human security challenges within a wider context of peace and development, this volume focuses on a number of key issues in relation to democratization and social cohesion, before going on to investigate the role of Turkey as an agent of peace in the international context. Written by academics from the fields of peace studies, international relations, politics and development studies, the discussions examine and highlight the issues that Turkey must overcome if it is to successfully strengthen its human security trajectories in the near future. This book will be of much interest to students of human security, Turkish politics, conflict management, peace studies and IR in general.

Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire

by Dr. Neve Gordon Nicola Perugini

From Syrian civilians locked in iron cages to veterans joining peaceful indigenous water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, from Sri Lanka to Iraq and from Yemen to the United States, human beings have been used as shields for protection, coercion, or deterrence. Over the past decade, human shields have also appeared with increasing frequency in antinuclear struggles, civil and environmental protests, and even computer games. The phenomenon, however, is by no means a new one. Describing the use of human shields in key historical and contemporary moments across the globe, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini demonstrate how the increasing weaponization of human beings has made the position of civilians trapped in theaters of violence more precarious and their lives more expendable. They show how the law facilitates the use of lethal violence against vulnerable people while portraying it as humane, but they also reveal how people can and do use their own vulnerability to resist violence and denounce forms of dehumanization. Ultimately, Human Shields unsettles our common ethical assumptions about violence and the law and urges us to imagine entirely new forms of humane politics.

Human Smoke

by Nicholson Baker

Unique, brilliantly-executed and sure to spark controversy and debate about our past as well as our future, HUMAN SMOKE powerfully illustrates the world's gradual and horrifying advance towards World War II and the Holocaust. Were the voices of the time predicting its inevitability? Meticulously researched and incredibly well-documented, Nicholson Baker uses sources including newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, memoirs and diaries to juxtapose hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering and mercy - all cleverly structured in a series of powerful vignettes. Questioning the much-romanticised myths of the 1930s and '40s, Baker shows us that it was thanks in part to Churchill that Mussolini ascended to power so quickly, and that, before leading the United States against Nazi Germany, a young FDR spent much of his time lobbying for a restriction in the number of Jews admitted to Harvard. Conversely, HUMAN SMOKE also reminds us of those who had the foresight to anticipate the coming bloodshed and the courage to oppose the tide of history, as Gandhi demonstrated when he made his symbolic walk to the ocean - for which he was immediately imprisoned by the British. Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Nicholson Baker has assembled a narrative within HUMAN SMOKE that unfolds gracefully, tragically and persuasively. An utterly compelling account of the sickening loss humanity has borne at its own hand which poses the question: Are we going down the same path again?

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

by Nicholson Baker

Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II. Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust. Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

Human Tissue in the Realist Novel, 1850-1895 (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine)

by Ben Moore

This Pivot engages with current debates about anthropocentrism and the Anthropocene to propose a reappraisal of the realist novel in the second half of the nineteenth century. Through three case studies, it argues for ‘human tissue’ as a conceptual tool for reading that brings together biology, literature and questions of layering. This new approach is shown to be especially salient to the Victorian period, when the application of ‘tissue’ to biology first emerges. The book is distinctive in bringing together theoretical concerns around realism and the Anthropocene – two major topics in literary criticism – and presenting a new methodology to approach this conjunction, demonstrated through original readings of Charles Kingsley, George Eliot, and Emile Zola and two English-language writers he influenced (George Moore and Vernon Lee).

Human Traces: A Novel (Vintage International Ser.)

by Sebastian Faulks

Sixteen-year-old Jacques Rebière is living a humble life in rural France, studying butterflies and frogs by candlelight in his bedroom. Across the Channel, in England, the playful Thomas Midwinter, also sixteen, is enjoying a life of ease-and is resigned to follow his father's wishes and pursue a career in medicine. A fateful seaside meeting four years later sets the two young men on a profound course of friendship and discovery; they will become pioneers in the burgeoning field of psychiatry. But when a female patient at the doctors' Austrian sanatorium becomes dangerously ill, the two men's conflicting diagnosis threatens to divide them--and to undermine all their professional achievements. From the bestselling author of Birdsong comes this masterful novel that ventures to answer challenging questions of consciousness and science, and what it means to be human.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Human Trafficking and Security in Southern Africa: The South African and Mozambican Experience (African Histories and Modernities)

by Richard Obinna Iroanya

This book investigates the links between human trafficking and national security in Southern Africa. Human trafficking violates borders, supports organised crime and corrupts border officials, and yet policymakers rarely view the persistence of human trafficking as a security issue. Adopting an expanded conceptualisation of security to encompass the individual as well as the state, Richard Obinna Iroanya lays the groundwork for understanding human trafficking as a security threat. He outlines the conditions and patterns of human trafficking globally before moving into detailed case studies of South Africa and Mozambique. Together, these case studies bring into focus the lives of the ‘hidden population’ in the region, with analysis and policy recommendations for combating a global phenomenon.

Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered

by Vladislava Stoyanova

By reconsidering the definitions of human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced labour, Vladislava Stoyanova demonstrates how, in embracing the human trafficking framework, the international community has sidelined the human rights law commitments against slavery, servitude and forced labour that in many respects provide better protection for abused migrants. Stoyanova proposes two corrective steps to this development: placing a renewed emphasis on determining the definitional scope of slavery, servitude or forced labour, and gaining a clearer understanding of states' positive human rights obligations. This book compares anti-trafficking and human rights frameworks side-by-side and focuses its analysis on the Council of Europe's Trafficking Convention and Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. With innovative arguments and pertinent case studies, this book is an important contribution to the field and will appeal to students, scholars and legal practitioners interested in human rights law, migration law, criminal law and EU law.

Human Voices of the Russian Campaign of 1812: a translation of “Etudes d’Histoire”

by Harriet M. Capes Arthur Chuquet

This ebook is purpose built and is proof-read and re-type set from the original to provide an outstanding experience of reflowing text for an ebook reader. Few French historians of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period have the stature of Arthur Chuquet, his copious writings on the era are most penetrating and accurate. He was also a master of infusing them with a character of the men that shaped the age; this was possible only by his encyclopaedic knowledge of the memoirs and letters of the combatants, diplomats, generals of the European powers. In this translation of one of his volumes, he focusses on the experiences of the men of the Grande Armée as they march into Russia, a march that would cost so many of their lives. The vivid pictures drawn from the memoiralists are elucidated by Chuquet's notes and his tight incisive editing. Not a campaign history, but snapshots of the experiences of the high and low of the French and Allied forces; from Napoleon's aide-de-camp de Narbonne to lowly paymaster Guillaume Peyrusse. An excellent collection of memoirs. Title - Human Voices of the Russian Campaign of 1812 Sub-Title - translation of "Etudes d'Histoire" Author -- Arthur Chuquet (1853-1925) Translator -- Harriet M. Capes (???? - ????) Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in 1913, London, by Andrew Melrose. Original - 296 pages.

Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism

by Jane Pulkingham

J.S. Woodsworth, a founding member and leader of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) and member of Parliament, was a social policy pioneer who promoted human welfare and rights over interests of property or finance. The essays in Human Welfare, Rights, and Social Activism explore the contemporary significance of Woodsworth's human rights framework by examining current social welfare objectives.Canadians continue to grapple with the enduring question of how to accommodate and reconcile social diversity and difference while articulating a common interest and advancing human rights, both domestically and internationally. These interdisciplinary essays address such issues as globalization, labour rights and law, the gendered and racialized dimensions of transnational labour, the relationship between human rights, social programs, and social rights, and the emergent cultural politics of difference. Taken as a whole, these essays pursue a careful consideration of the historical and contemporary exclusions to polity that occur around gender, ethnicity, class, and race.

Human and Aquatic Beings: Interactions in and beyond the Eastern Mediterranean (Themes in Contemporary Archaeology)

by Lærke Recht Christina Tsouparopoulou

This volume examines the role of fish and molluscs in everyday life as well as in terms of their impact on social structures, and as part of ideological and symbolic expression. Given the prevalence of anddependence on water in various forms in all regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and Western Asia, it is no wonder that fish and other aquatic species made an impact on human lives. Yet this topic remains rather understudied. Until recently, ongoing projects in marine and freshwater species and their interaction with humans and the environment either focus on the European marine ecosystem or on themes other than the social interactions of humans and aquatic species. The chapters in this volume explore questions related to fishing practices and technologies, social status, human-fish/mollusc relations (including potential over-exploitation), and fish/molluscs in ritual practices (e.g. as temple offerings, festival consumption, burial offerings), and ideology and religion (e.g. associated with supernatural beings or sacred space, as hybrid creatures, and as represented in luxury goods). The volume also examines aquatic species as a nonalimentary resource, for example as jewellery, inlays, dyeing and medicinal purposes. The material under investigation includes faunal remains (worked and unworked), fishing gear and related tools, iconography and written sources. Many chapters also integrate multiple lines of evidence, ranging from stylistic, contextual and iconographic analyses to zooarchaeological investigations. This volume is relevant to archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, biologists and anyone interested in human-animal relations and/or the archaeology of the early Eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions.

Human and Machines: Philosophical Thinking of Artificial Intelligence (Human Intelligence)

by Yike Guo Jun Gu

This book shares Chinese scholars’ philosophical views on artificial intelligence. The discussions range from the foundations of AI—the Turing test and creation of machine intelligence—to recent applications of AI, including decisions in games, natural languages, pattern recognition, prediction in economic contexts, autonomous behaviors, and collaborative intelligence, with the examples of AlphaGo, Microsoft’s Xiao Bing, medical robots, etc. The book’s closing chapter focuses on Chinese machines and explores questions on the cultural background of artificial intelligence. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for all members of the general public who are interested in the future development of artificial intelligence, especially from the perspective of respected Chinese scholars.

Human and Water Security in Israel and Jordan

by Philip Jan Schäfer

The work aims at answering the question as to how far discourses on human security are present in Jordan and Israel, if they converge and if political solutions for the issue of water security could be derived. The analysis is based on the assumption that from human security perspective common solutions for urgent problems can be derived more easily than out of a perspective of national security. Yet it is acknowledged that according to a new security perspective different security threats are being identified by relevant actors. An empirical analysis of written statements and utterances of the respective security elites establishes the methodological tool for the identification of human security discourses in Israel and Jordan. Subsequently it is estimated how far water is presented as a matter of national security in Israel and Jordan using the theory of securitization.

Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation: Theory and Evidence-Based Practice

by Barry L. Stiefel Jeremy C. Wells

Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation addresses the question of how a human-centred conservation approach can and should change practice. For the most part, there are few answers to this question because professionals in the heritage conservation field do not use social science research methodologies to manage cultural landscapes, assess historical significance and inform the treatment of building and landscape fabric. With few exceptions, only academic theorists have explored these topics while failing to offer specific, usable guidance on how the social sciences can actually be used by heritage professionals. In exploring the nature of a human-centred heritage conservation practice, we explicitly seek a middle ground between the academy and practice, theory and application, fabric and meanings, conventional and civil experts, and orthodox and heterodox ideas behind practice and research. We do this by positioning this book in a transdisciplinary space between these dichotomies as a way to give voice (and respect) to multiple perspectives without losing sight of our goal that heritage conservation practice should, fundamentally, benefit all people. We believe that this approach is essential for creating an emancipated built heritage conservation practice that must successfully engage very different ontological and epistemological perspectives.

Human-Earth System Dynamics: Implications To Civilizations

by Rongxing Guo

This book explores the factors and mechanisms that may have influenced the dynamic behaviors of earliest civilizations, focusing on both environmental (geographic) factors on which traditional historic analyses are based and human (behavioral) factors on which anthropological analyses are usually based. It also resurrects a number of common ancestral terms to help readers understand the complicated process of human and cultural evolution around the globe. Specifically, in almost all indigenous languages, the words ‘wa’ and any variants of it were originally associated with the sound of crying of – and certainly were selected as the common ancestral word with the meanings of “house, home, homeland, motherland, and so on” by – early humans living in different parts of the world.This book provides many neglected but still crucial environmental and biological clues about the rise and fall of civilizations – ones that have largely resulted from mankind’s long-lasting “Win-Stay Lose-Shift” games throughout the world. The narratives and findings presented at this book are unexpected but reasonable – and are what every student of anthropology or history needs to know and doesn't get in the usual text.“Professor Guo explores the dynamics of civilizations from the beginnings to our perplexingly complex world. There are lots of thought-provoking ideas here on the rise and decline of civilizations and nations... Anyone wishing to understand global developments should give this book serious consideration.” ----John Komlos, University of Munich, Germany, and Duke University, USA“It is interesting to see a Chinese perspective on the questions of deep history that have engaged Jared Diamond, Yuval Harari and David Christian. Guo argues that understanding cyclical threats has been the key to human progress, which is driven by the dialectic of material privation and human ingenuity.” ----Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University, USA

Humane Endeavour: The Story of the China War

by Haldore Hanson

As a foreign correspondent in the 1930’s, Haldore Hanson covered the Chinese civil war and the invasion of China by Japan. Traveling rural roads on bicycle, he rotated among the warring forces and was occasionally arrested by one side or the other.The present volume, “Humane Endeavor”, which was first published in 1939, was praised as a rare close-up from the remote front lines. Owing to his expertise, the State Department hired him as an official in 1942. After World War II, he became assistant director of the Point Four development aid program for Asia.“A complete coverage of the war years, with pictures of outstanding personalities. [Hanson] reports on the fall of Peiping, on war on the Mongel front, on the sieges of Shanghai, Nanking, on Japanese atrocities, war in the air, finance and man power, Japanese rule in conquered areas, guerilla warfare, border republics, [and] experiences with the 8th Route Army. Interesting reading it holds the interest throughout, and has the vitality of a first-hand record.”—Kirkus Review

Humane Insight: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death

by Courtney R. Baker

In the history of black America, the image of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body has long been looked at by others from a safe distance. Courtney Baker questions the relationship between the spectator and victim and urges viewers to move beyond the safety of the "gaze" to cultivate a capacity for humane insight toward representations of human suffering. Utilizing the visual studies concept termed the "look," Baker interrogates how the notion of humanity was articulated and recognized in oft-referenced moments within the African American experience: the graphic brutality of the 1834 Lalaurie affair; the photographic exhibition of lynching, Without Sanctuary ; Emmett Till's murder and funeral; and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Contemplating these and other episodes, Baker traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity used the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice. An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.

Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876–1914

by Rob Boddice

In this compelling history of the co-ordinated, transnational defence of medical experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rob Boddice explores the experience of vivisection as humanitarian practice. He captures the rise of the professional and specialist medical scientist, whose métier was animal experimentation, and whose guiding principle was 'humanity' or the reduction of the aggregate of suffering in the world. He also highlights the rhetorical rehearsal of scientific practices as humane and humanitarian, and connects these often defensive professions to meaningful changes in the experience of doing science. Humane Professions examines the strategies employed by the medical establishment to try to cement an idea in the public consciousness: that the blood spilt in medical laboratories served a far-reaching human good.

Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

by Samuel Moyn

A prominent historian exposes the dark side of making war more humaneIn the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who’s president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere.In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical—to ban torture and limit civilian casualties—have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability. Leo Tolstoy prominently opposed their efforts, reasoning that war needed to be abolished, not reformed—and over the subsequent century, a popular movement to abolish war flourished on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, however, reformers shifted their attention from opposing the crime of war to opposing war crimes, with fateful consequences.The ramifications of this shift became apparent in the post-9/11 era. By that time, the US military had embraced the agenda of humane war, driven both by the availability of precision weaponry and the need to protect its image. The battle shifted from the streets to the courtroom, where the tactics of the war on terror were litigated but its foundational assumptions went without serious challenge. These trends only accelerated during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Even as the two administrations spoke of American power and morality in radically different tones, they ushered in the second decade of the “forever” war.Humane is the story of how America went off to fight and never came back, and how armed combat was transformed from an imperfect tool for resolving disputes into an integral component of the modern condition. As American wars have become more humane, they have also become endless. This provocative book argues that this development might not represent progress at all.

Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History

by Roderick Floud David Mitch Santhi Hejeebu

Most of the existing research on economic history relies either solely or ultimately on calculations of material interest to explain the major events of the modern world. However, care must be taken not to rely too heavily on materialism, with its associated confidence in perfectly rational actors that simply do not exist. What is needed for a more cogent understanding of the long history of capitalist growth is a more realistic, human-centered approach that can take account of the role of nonmaterial values and beliefs, an approach convincingly articulated by Deirdre McCloskey in her landmark trilogy of books on the moral and ethical basis of modern economic life. With Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History, Roderick Floud, Santhi Hejeebu, and David Mitch have brought together a distinguished group of scholars in economics, economic history, political science, philosophy, gender studies, and communications who synthesize and build on McCloskey’s work. The essays in this volume illustrate the ways in which the humanistic approach to economics that McCloskey pioneered can open up new vistas for the study of economic history and cultivate rich synergies with a wide range of disciplines. The contributors show how values and beliefs become embedded in the language of economics and shape economic outcomes. Chapters on methodology are accompanied by case studies discussing particular episodes in economic history.

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