The central theme of this book can be summed up as ‘neither electoral sociology nor linguistic turn’. Instead, its author emphasises the micro context of politics – how local social and cultural milieux shaped the reception of political ideas, and hence the fortunes of political parties. His focus is, thus, ‘how ... ideas were filtered by localized social and economic structures and processes o...

already been well charted elsewhere. In part because there is scant comparison of the sort that can extract broader significance from narrowly local scrutiny, the monograph offers little that is analytically new. But it does draw upon a rich cache of regional manuscripts that often generate intriguing glimpses of what health care and the experience of illness were like. Accordingly, the most un...

historiography by sunnīs on the subject of the purified imams (a.s.)’s life started along with the shī‘as’ and has continued ever since. the evolutionary development of this trend, which has had its ups and downs proportionate to the cultural vicissitudes of the muslim world, requires undergoing serious studies. despite addressing such issues as the why, the how, and the context of the producti...

SURELY the time has come to stop applying the word revolution to the rise of new scientific research programmes. Our century has seen many upheavals in scientific ideas--so many and so varied that the notion of scientific revolution has been stretched out of shape and can no longer be made to cover the processes of change characteristic of most sciences these past hundred years. By general cons...