History Of Empirical Research Research Articles

Tolstoy’s Happy Children of Peace. The Wartime Translation of 'Sebastopol in December' (1855)

A geopolitical clash between Russia and other European powers, the Crimean War (1854–1856) witnessed the first mediatized armed conflict in modern history. During the war, the young Lev Tolstoy wrote and published three Sevastopol Sketches, based on his wartime experiences in the besieged port of Sevastopol. Upon publication, the first of the stories was translated into French and published within a fortnight. Une journée à Sévastopol en décembre 1854 featured in Le Nord, a Brussels newspaper covertly operated by the Russian government. An in-depth analysis of the translation shows that the text was abridged and carefully groomed to serve Russia’s interests and Tolstoy’s patriotism made way for an appeal to the target audience, designated as ‘happy children of peace.’ Elaborating on the origins of the translation and its publishing context, I argue that this particular translation needs to be read both as an act of soft power and as an act of diplomacy. If the target text is considered as a historical document among other sources, empirical historical research can prove beneficial to the discipline and move forward the debate on Translation Studies’ approach to highly ideological contexts, in particular translations in periodicals.

Separability, spillovers, and segmented markets : Evidence from dairy in India

AbstractA long history of empirical research has focused on testing whether and when household consumption and production decisions are separable. If markets were perfect, household consumption would be independent of production. In this article, we propose that market channel choice complicates this relationship. Our analysis of household panel data from rural India, focusing on dairy, leads us to four key conclusions. First, milk consumption is correlated with production, and markets are not a complete substitute for household production. Second, a large presence of formal milk buyers in a village is associated with lower milk consumption in dairy households, overturning the positive association of participation in formal value chains with household milk consumption. Third, contrary to expectations, for households that do not own dairy animals and net buyers, the presence of formal value chains remains uncorrelated with milk consumption. Fourth, we infer, test for and find suggestive evidence of segmented milk markets, that is, different types of households participate in different markets for milk that do not seem to interact with each other. Policymakers focused on market development or production‐based strategies need to factor in the possibility of market segmentation based on market channels while designing interventions.

Inquisition and Knowledge, 1200–1700, ed. Peter Biller and L.J. Sackville

This volume aims to explore knowledge of heresy and inquisition in the medieval period and ‘knowledge [of it] through editions and empirical historical research’ in the early modern era. The period 1200–1700 allows an examination of contemporaneous knowledge of medieval heresy and inquisition, as well as a study of polemical descriptions and uses of heresy and inquisition in the wake of the Reformation. The book contains thirteen chapters that survey a commendable selection of topics, plus a lucid and instructive introduction by the editors, Peter Biller and L.J. Sackville. Conspicuously, and consciously, the perennial questions over the existence, or extent, of ‘Catharism’ are mostly absent. The volume is stronger for this decision, and the varied assortment of historical inquiries into knowledge of heresy that are pursued demonstrates the benefits of this choice: topics discussed include the relationship between schism and heresy, and Greeks and heretics, in the minds of Latin theologians and canonists (Irene Bueno, ch. 5), the production of ‘user-friendly’ handbooks of persuasion against heretical thought for use with the laity (Adam Poznański, ch. 7), and the ‘authentic voices’ of young women interrogated about their relationship with a community of ‘cowled nuns’ in early fourteenth-century Lower Silesia (Paweł Kras, ch. 4).

A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada

Divided into five sections, A Bounded Land is a career-spanning collection of essays, journal articles, and book chapters by historical geographer Cole Harris, all related in one way or another to settler colonialism. Most of this material was previously published, some as far back as the early 1970s, and, while portions are edited for length and clarity, the book holds together well, exploring a set of connected themes over four centuries and across a broad set of spaces in northern North America.Over his career, Harris made several critical contributions to the history of what is now Canada, including his editorial work on the Historical Atlas of Canada, his essential study of the formation of reserves in British Columbia (Making Native Space), and his excellent historical geographical synthesis of early Canada (The Reluctant Land). This collection demonstrates the depth of his thinking and the breadth of his interest. Ranging from Acadia, to the seigneuries of Lower Canada (Quebec) and the early townships of Upper Canada (Ontario), and finally to the contested Indigenous and settler spaces of British Columbia, A Bounded Land is breathtaking in its scale and ambition, all while being eminently approachable for a wide audience.Harris wrote much of the material in the book well before settler colonialism’s rise to scholarly prominence. He includes the concept here as a means of both signaling the themes he treats and, more importantly, demonstrating how a commitment to the specificity of place, space, society, population, and period are necessary for histories of colonial dispossession and settlement. Even in those pieces written before he had the term, Harris focuses squarely on “that form of colonialism associated with immigrants who became the dominant population in the territories they occupied, and, in so doing, displaced the Indigenous peoples who previously lived there” (3). This bare-bones definition coupled with a commitment to empirical historical research makes the book a valuable contribution to the literature on settler colonialism and its limitations. The book’s introduction and postscript succinctly and effectively tie its many pieces together while also inserting Harris’s writing into the larger literature, both explaining those works that influenced him (some of which are no longer widely read) and underlining scholarship that, while appearing after A Bounded Land’s individual chapters were first published, resonates with the book’s themes.As he moves through the book, Harris raises several powerful phenomena that he sees reproduced, though always in slightly different ways depending on place and time, across northern North America. Several of these will be of interest to readers of Ethnohistory. Harris returns frequently to conservative migrations, as rural residents threatened with displacement in industrializing and urbanizing Europe sought to maintain their status as independent producers elsewhere. He also focuses on the limits settler migration encountered where climate and soil—the “bounded land”—made the family farm impossible or its poverty a foregone conclusion. Harris ascribes Indigenous peoples’ differing historical experience in part to whether they lived within or beyond this “bounded land” (in Canada, he writes, “settler colonialism . . . has been a bounded project” [10]). Harris also focuses on the different human geography, population, and relative value of land and labor that made settler societies distinct from the European cultures and social structures from which they, in conversation and contestation with Indigenous societies and lands, emerged.While Harris concentrates on Indigenous experience in several chapters, A Bounded Land is primarily concerned with analyzing settlers, their claims to space, and their social and cultural adaptation to their new surroundings. This is critical since, as he rightly highlights in several distinct historical and geographical contexts, settler societies were not simple transplants from Europe but were shaped by the land to which they had moved and, in doing so, the peoples they worked to dispossess.

Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration by Mark R. Mullins

Reviewed by: Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration by Mark R. Mullins Saitō Kōta Yasukuni Fundamentalism: Japanese Religions and the Politics of Restoration. By Mark R. Mullins. University of Hawai'i Press, 2021. 270 pages. ISBN: 9780824889012 (hardcover; also available as softcover and e-book). Despite the vast number of books and essays that have been written on it, Yasukuni Shrine remains a difficult subject for academic discussion. The difficulty stems first [End Page 170] of all from the complex history of the shrine from the Meiji period to the present. But another major factor is the violent political debate that the shrine still inspires in Japan and abroad. Discussions of Yasukuni tend to strongly reflect the political position of the debater, sometimes leading to an oversimplification of his or her viewpoint. While some attempts at empirical historical research have been made in the interest of avoiding such problems, even they have not been able to wholly escape the ideology that inevitably surrounds Yasukuni Shrine. Especially challenging is the question of how to understand the ideology of rightists who are trying to revitalize the role of this shrine in current Japanese politics. Calling that ideology State Shinto would be one possible solution, but that only invites the more difficult question of what this academically and politically contentious term really means. In Yasukuni Fundamentalism, Mark R. Mullins, who has published many important studies on religion in modern Japan, tackles these issues from the perspective of the historical sociology of religion. As reflected in the title, the key to this book is the concept of fundamentalism, which Mullins deploys to reveal the process by which the changes Yasukuni Shrine underwent during the Allied Occupation led to the rise of right-wing political forces seeking what they saw as restoration. The introduction explains the author's framework for examining Yasukuni Shrine. Mullins focuses on the new relationship between nationalism and organized religion in contemporary Japan, seeing it as part of the rise of global religious nationalism. As a central example he cites the movement toward cooperation between the Shinto shrine community and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—a push for desecularization or deprivatization that seeks to restore the official role that was taken away from Shinto by the policies of the Occupation. This movement is sometimes understood as "an effort to restore State Shinto" (p. 20). However, Mullins himself does not choose to employ the concept of State Shinto, noting that the movement includes no claim to revive the prewar control of shrines under the Bureau of Shrines in the Home Ministry. He also observes that many in the Shinto community are not sympathetic to the movement. His argument and its rationale are solid. Mullins contends, rather, that the contemporary Japanese neonationalist movement is best understood as religious fundamentalism, given that it emerged as a response to the confusion caused by modernization and secularization, and is a "politics of inclusion" that seeks to reclaim the "essential" beliefs and values of the past and enforce them on the entire population (pp. 23–24). Inspired by the discourse of the movement's critics, Mullins describes it as "Yasukuni fundamentalism" in acknowledgement of the symbolic meaning the shrine holds in the movement's goal of restoring an old Japan (pp. 25–27). Part 1 (chapters 1 to 3) of the book delineates the postwar history of Japanese religious nationalism. Chapter 1, "Imperialist Secularization: The Restructuring of Religion and Society in Occupied Japan," details the establishment of the separation of religion and state in occupied Japan. As is well known, the Shinto Directive [End Page 171] issued by GHQ/SCAP in 1945 severed the relationship between Shinto and the state. This was a forced secularization by a foreign power and a typical example of what N. J. Demerath calls "imperialist secularization."1 Mullins notes, however, that the US State Department had been aware of the complex nature of "military shrines" such as Yasukuni from before the Occupation (pp. 38–39). The difficult decision of whether to apply the principle of freedom of religion to military shrines was left to the Religions and Cultural Resources Division of the Civil Information and Educational Section, which...

Abdul Sattar Edhi in Politics with Atypical Ideologies

Few people know that Abdul Sattar Edhi, the renowned social worker, also tried his luck in the political field. This study draws attention to his activities in the political field. It uncovers the political style and ideologies of this future leviathan in social work to find out why and how a genuine social worker could not get a proper place in politics and did not succeed in winning the votes and support of people. Along with the analysis of his electoral contests, his political ideology has also been highlighted in this study. To arrive at its findings the study evaluates the primary as well as secondary sources employing historical methods of research. Multiple sources of primary data like the interviews, biographies, and authentic press reports helped in the formation of the needed evidence for the empirical historical research in this study. It is finally construed that Edhi’s thoughts and style of work in politics did not match with the prevailing political atmosphere and behavior. His realistic approach could not attract a following in the political field where attachment of religious sentiments with politics and deceptive slogans of political characters did not leave any space for a real social worker to succeed.

Evidential remains

This article utilises the theoretical perspectives of the forensic turn to further expand our historical understandings and interpretations of the events of the Holocaust. More specifically, it applies a theory of the materialities of dead bodies to historically reconstruct and reinterpret the death march from Buchenwald to Dachau from 7 to 28 April 1945. It focuses on dead bodies as ‘evidence’, but explores how the evidential meanings of corpses along the death-march route evolved and changed during the march itself and in the aftermath of discovery by approaching American military forces. While drawing on theories of the evidential use of dead bodies, it remains firmly grounded in empirical historical research based on archival sources. The archives at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp contain eyewitness accounts and post-war trial testimony that enable a deeply contextualised ‘microhistory’ of the geography, movements, perpetrators, victims and events along this specific death march in April and May 1945. This ‘thick description’ provides the necessary context for a theoretical reading of the changing evidential meanings of dead bodies as the death march wove its way from Buchenwald to Dachau and the war and the Holocaust drew to an end.

How do political elites persist? Political selection, political inequality and empirical historical research

How do political elites persist? Populist movements highlight the continued tension between citizens and political elites. This article reviews some recent research on political selection and inequality. I consider political inequality as the persistent political selection of specific individuals or their relatives over time. Empirical historical research employing statistical analysis of natural experiments can help to understand the connection between specific democratic institutions, such as elections or lotteries, and political selection, political behaviour, or political inequality over time. Some democratic features enable elites to persist, yet there is much variation in political inequality over time and space. Further research could aim to disentangle institutional causes of this variation from determinants of institutional choice.

The Past, History, and Corporate Social Responsibility

An emerging body of research recognizes the importance of the past and history for corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholarship and practice. However, the meanings that scholars and practitioners can ascribe to the past and history differ fundamentally, posing challenges to the integration of history and CSR thinking. This essay reviews diverse approaches and proposes a broad conceptualization of the relationship between the past, history, and CSR. We suggest historical CSR as an umbrella term that comprises three distinct theoretical perspectives. The “past-of-CSR” perspective is concerned with the history of CSR and business ethics as a set of concepts and practices. The “past-in-CSR” perspective involves employing empirical historical research to substantiate and elaborate CSR concepts and theories. Finally, the “past-as-CSR” perspective seeks to understand the past as a living, yet contested, facet of current organizations, influencing contemporary perceptions of corporate and managerial responsibility. We then elaborate on conceptual issues and paths that may prove useful for future research. In all, this essay and the thematic symposium it precedes strive to deepen and broaden the salience of the past and history for thinking about business ethics and business responsibilities.

A developmental approach to historical causal inference

Empirical historical research typically falls into one of three categories: the study of major historical events; the use of “history as data” to test general theories; and the study of the legacies of historical processes. We argue that because of data sparsity and dynamically unfolding processes, the study of major historical events is less well suited to design-based inference than other types of historical research. Drawing examples from our own work, we propose a set of research procedures for designing causally oriented work, and argue that the construction of a “timeline of relevant counterfactual nodes” can facilitate the organization of a research project investigating complex historical processes. The researcher can focus on relevant counterfactual moments as potential episodes of change using either statistical or qualitative techniques as appropriate, moving forward through the timeline and updating their beliefs about a hypothesized cause’s importance across the process.

Revisiting Erik Erikson’s Legacy on Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

ABSTRACT Erik Erikson is seldom associated with work on culture, race, and ethnicity. What is ironic about this lack of association is not only that Erikson did consider these factors but that they figured prominently into his theorizing. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of Erikson’s views that is more accurate than is what is typically represented by (1) reviewing a brief history of empirical research on identity development since Erikson, (2) providing a broad summary of Erikson’s writing on how identity is shaped by culture, race, and ethnicity, (3) arguing that Erikson’s work suggests that historical trauma serves as an ideological setting for the identity development of marginalized groups, and (4) describing how historical trauma is associated with threats to temporal identity integration or self-continuity.

Individual differences in cortisol stress response predict increases in voice pitch during exam stress

Despite a long history of empirical research, the potential vocal markers of stress remain unclear. Previous studies examining speech under stress most consistently report an increase in voice pitch (the acoustic correlate of fundamental frequency, F0), however numerous studies have failed to replicate this finding. In the present study we tested the prediction that these inconsistencies are tied to variation in the severity of the stress response, wherein voice changes may be observed predominantly among individuals who show a cortisol stress response (i.e., an increase in free cortisol levels) above a critical threshold. Voice recordings and saliva samples were collected from university psychology students at baseline and again immediately prior to an oral examination. Voice recordings included both read and spontaneous speech, from which we measured mean, minimum, maximum, and the standard deviation in F0. We observed an increase in mean and minimum F0 under stress in both read and spontaneous speech, whereas maximum F0 and its standard deviation showed no systematic changes under stress. Our results confirmed that free cortisol levels increased by an average of 74% (ranging from 0 to 270%) under stress. Critically, increases in cortisol concentrations significantly predicted increases in mean F0 under stress for both speech types, but did not predict variation in F0 at baseline. On average, stress-induced increases in voice pitch occurred only when free cortisol levels more than doubled their baseline concentrations. Our results suggest that researchers examining speech under stress should control for individual differences in the magnitude of the stress response.

O CONCEITO MARXIANO DE PROLETARIADO: UMA CRÍTICA

Resumo A teoria marxiana do proletariado exige uma séria reconsideração. Sua delimitação teórica do proletariado frente a outros grupos subalternos (o lumpemproletariado e os escravos) é inconsistente; as análises das classes concretas baseadas nessa teoria foram amplamente refutadas pela pesquisa empírico-histórica; e sua previsão do crescimento do proletariado somente se confirmou parcialmente por desenvolvimentos tardios. Indubitavelmente, necessitamos de uma nova conceituação do proletariado baseada antes na inclusão que na exclusão.

Moshe Prager's Holocaust historicism: concrete data, inner faith and myth

ABSTRACTMoshe Prager was the earliest historiographer of the Holocaust. He dedicated his life's work to probing into its abyss to contribute to the future revival of the Jewish people. Later scholars of the Holocaust were engaged either in standard empirical historical research, hagiography, or the catastrophe's mythic layer. Prager acted as an objective historian concerned with Jewish physical existence; with the hagiographer's ahistorical religious concerns and with the historian of religion's attention to metahistorical issues of moral dichotomy and religious practice. Prager held that the Holocaust changed the direction of Jewish history, and therefore addressed all three dimensions.

Guthrie Wilson and the trans‐Tasman educational career

PurposeGuthrie Wilson (1914‐1984) was one example of the trend of migration of teachers from New Zealand public schools to Australian private schools. The purpose of this paper is to explore this particular case with a view to revealing some of the dynamics involved and challenges facing certain types of Australasian schools in the 1950s and 1960s.Design/methodology/approachThis article is essentially founded on empirical historical research and on analysis of data from published and archival sources and from interviews with participants and observers. It is placed in the context of the literature on both educational change in Australasia and trans‐Tasman migration at the time.FindingsAlthough Guthrie Wilson craved recognition as a novelist, he excelled as a school Principal, partly because he seemed to fit certain notions of education, leadership and manhood which suited the Council of The Scots College Sydney. In the 1960s, the Council wanted to maintain traditions which appeared to have been weakened by Wilson's progressive predecessor and challenged by social change. Though he fulfilled the Council's expectations, Wilson also proved to be a mediator between traditional and progressive education. Thus, Wilson could be both an honourable representative of the “Old School” and modestly progressive.Originality/valueBiographical studies can reveal unsuspected patterns as well as challenge casual generalizations. Images of schools and of their leadership, held by both contemporaries and later observers, can prove to be subtly misleading on closer inspection. In particular, the article confronts a number of school myths which affect not only the schools involved but all schools, mutatis mutandis.

Worship, Reflection, Empirical Research

In my youth, I was a worshipper of Mao Zedong. From the latter stage of the Mao Era to the early years of Reform and Opening, I began to reflect on Mao and the Communist Revolution he launched. In recent years I’ve devoted myself to empirical historical research on Mao, seeking the truth about Mao and China’s modern history.

Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (review)

Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages. By Don C. Skemer. [Magic in History] (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. Pp. viii, 327. $75.00 clothbound, $25.00 paperback.) The topic of never fails to arouse interest, even in what Weber described as our disenchanted modern world. Yet I would contend that hardly any two of us can be found today to agree on exactly what the word means. Convinced that empirical historical research will do much to dispel the confusion, the Pennsylvania State University Press recently began its monograph series, Magic in History. Don Skemer's study on medieval represents the latest return on what is already proving to be remarkably profitable investment of scholarly and publishing resources. As Skemer makes clear at the start, the object of his investigation consists of apotropaic texts, handwritten or mechanically printed on . . . writing supports of varying dimensions and around the neck or placed elsewhere on the body for protection against harmful enemies and spirits or to bring health and good fortune (p. 1). He emphasizes that such textual amulets are to be distinguished from talismans - reserved for astrological seals and figures procured and worn for similar purposes - and charms - referring simply to speech acts though again performed with much the same ends in mind (pp. 8-9). The Latin terms signifying his intended objects were, among the church fathers, ligatura and phylacterium, but for most of the Middle Ages charta, cedula, scripttera, scriptura, or breve. Most common among Middle English equivalents were brief and writ. Though the author announces his intention to focus on and their use from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, in fact his book covers the subject well for the whole of the European Middle Ages. What stands out in Skemer's approach is the commendable determination not to fall prey to preconceptions about the dividing line between magic and religion, warning us that rationalism and Orientalism have encouraged most modern scholars to regard medieval as residues of the primitive in ritual practices of the lower orders of society, he insists that an unbiased look reveals them instead as prevalent in the most orthodox Christian circles and just as - perhaps more - common among the elite as in the ranks of illiterate peasants. Late-antique intellectuals like Augustine might have fulminated against as either fraudulent or dependent on demonic intervention, and Caesarius of Aries condemned their use as at best sacrilege. But for most of the centuries between the sixth and the sixteenth, they were accepted by the majority of clergy and laity alike as - in Skemer's words - a renewable source of Christian empowerment (p. 1). No doubt the primary use to which Skemer's volume wEl be put is as guidebook to actual that have survived from the Middle Ages and index of amuletic practices witnessed in the extant sources. …

Fifty Years of Warning Researchers

This paper attempts to trace the history of empirical research on warning labels and signs, with particular emphasis on work within the HFES. Observations are made about the focus and methods that have been used, highlighting considerable progress as well as continuing problems. The approach typically taken in work presented to the HFES is compared with safety communication research reported in other disciplines, and suggestions are made for future directions.

A design for evidence - based soft research

Active research is being done in how to go from requirements to architecture. However, no studies have been attempted in this area despite a long history of empirical research in software engineering (SE). Our goal is to establish a framework for the transformation from requirements to architecture on the basis of a series of empirical studies. The first step is to collect evidence about practice in industry before designing relevant techniques, methods and tools. As part of this step, we use an interview-based multiple-case study with a carefully designed process of conducting the interviews and of preparing the data collected for analysis while preserving its integrity. In this paper, we describe the design of this multiple-case study, delineate the evidence trail, discuss validity issues, outline the data analysis focus, discuss meta issues on evidence-based SE particularly on combining and using evidence, describe triangulation approaches, and present two methods for accumulating evidence.

Violence in close relationships—development of a research area: Comment on Archer (2000).

A brief history of empirical research on violence in close relationships is presented. Assumptions of and conclusions made by feminist researchers about the problems of battered wives are reviewed. It is argued that their focus on marital violence as a form of aggression against women by men and their concern for severely beaten wives may have caused them to ignore high levels of female violence in marriage and dating. J. Archer's (2000) meta-analysis of studies of marital and dating violence showed that both sexes display violence in these relationships, although women are more likely to be injured. An expansion of Archer's definition of heterosexual violence (or violence in close relationships) to include sexual aggression and stalking is suggested. Reasons for relatively high levels of female violence in close relationships relative to violence toward strangers are briefly discussed. It is argued that more attention needs to be given to male victims of violence from their partners.