Science among the Ottomans

Science among the Ottomans

Author: Miri Shefer-Mossensohn

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-10-15

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1477303618

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Scholars have long thought that, following the Muslim Golden Age of the medieval era, the Ottoman Empire grew culturally and technologically isolated, losing interest in innovation and placing the empire on a path toward stagnation and decline. Science among the Ottomans challenges this widely accepted Western image of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottomans as backward and impoverished. In the first book on this topic in English in over sixty years, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn contends that Ottoman society and culture created a fertile environment that fostered diverse scientific activity. She demonstrates that the Ottomans excelled in adapting the inventions of others to their own needs and improving them. For example, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire boasted the seventh-longest electric telegraph system in the world; indeed, the Ottomans were among the era’s most advanced nations with regard to modern communication infrastructure. To substantiate her claims about science in the empire, Shefer-Mossensohn studies patterns of learning; state involvement in technological activities; and Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Ottomans who produced, consumed, and altered scientific practices. The results reveal Ottoman participation in science to have been a dynamic force that helped sustain the six-hundred-year empire.


Negotiating Normality

Negotiating Normality

Author: Daniela Koleva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351503286

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This book is about state socialism, not as a political system, but as an "ecosystem" of interactions between the state and the citizens it sought to control. It includes case studies that demonstrate how the major ideological principles of socialism translated into motives guiding people's lives. This unique post-revisionist study focuses on people's lives and experiences rather than political systems. The studies are grouped around three common elements—socialist labor, the new socialist man, and the socialist way of life. Using first-hand accounts, the authors find minute deviations from the norms that eventually lead to renegotiation of the norms themselves. Focusing on routines, not extremes, they present socialism in its "normal" state. The volume demonstrates different national strategies for dealing with the past in the post-socialist world. Studies of the socialist past may strive to be objective, but their messages tend to be complex. Rather than arriving at one truth about the nature of socialism, this volume explores the many ways people have survived the system.


Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 12 Asia, Africa and the Americas (1700-1800)

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 12 Asia, Africa and the Americas (1700-1800)

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-12-24

Total Pages: 932

ISBN-13: 9004384162

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Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 12 (CMR 12) covering the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas in the period 1700-1800 is a further volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the 7th century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 12, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Karoline Cook, Sinéad Cussen, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Emma Gaze Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Radu Păun, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Ann Thomson, Carsten Walbiner


Generations in Towns

Generations in Towns

Author: Finn-Einar Eliassen

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-07-13

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1527556689

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The existence and changing of generations in family life, business and politics was a central feature of towns as well as rural societies in earlier times. Even so, it remains understudied by urban historians of the pre-modern period. This book aims to fill some of this gap, containing twelve studies of generations in late medieval and early modern European towns, ranging from the Mediterranean to the Nordic countries, with a time-span from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century. Dealing with topics like succession and inheritance, family consciousness, as well as relations and conflicts within and between generations, the articles demonstrate the importance and potential of generational studies on pre-modern towns. The book will appeal to anyone who takes an interest in urban social and cultural history, legal and family history in medieval and early modern times.


Europe and World Society

Europe and World Society

Author: Chris Rumford

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 131733275X

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Europe and World Society offers a distinctive critical approach to understanding European transformations, exploring both the progress and limitations of integration on various key policy areas such as agricultural policy, education reform, migration, and external relations, as well as the relationship between European regionalism and globalization. Due to its innovative theoretical framework, based on macro perspectives including ‘World Polity Theory’, developed by Stanford sociologist John W. Meyer, this collection contributes to both the recent ‘sociological turn’ in European studies, and to the constructivist critiques of rational choice accounts of modern Europe. At a time when the European integration project has been severely challenged by multiple economic, political, and social crises, this book offers a timely, global perspective that sheds light on the dynamism and multiplicity of the actors, discourses, and processes which underlie contemporary Europe. The book’s distinctive global approach allows it to move the debate beyond state- and EU-centrism, and establish the ‘missing link’ between Europe and its global context. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.