Rethinking Comparison

Brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars to revolutionize qualitative research design. Provides novel strategies for conducting comparative political research beyond the controlled comparisons typically taught in graduate methods courses.

Although comparative exercises are used or applied both explicitly and implicitly in a large number of archaeological publications, they are often uncritically taken for granted. As such, the authors of this book reflect on comparison as a core theme in archaeology from different perspectives, and different theoretical and practical backgrounds. The contributors come from different universities and research contexts, and approach themes and objects from Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages, presenting case studies from Western Europe, the Near East and Latin America. The chapters here also relate archaeology with other disciplines, like art studies, photography, cinema, computer sciences and anthropology, and will be of interest to a wide range of readers, not only archaeologists and those interested in the area of social sciences, but for all those interested in how we construct the past today.

Qualitative comparative methods – and specifically controlled qualitative comparisons – are central to the study of politics. They are not the only kind of comparison, though, that can help us better understand political processes and outcomes. Yet there are few guides for how to conduct non-controlled comparative research. This volume brings together chapters from more than a dozen leading methods scholars from across the discipline of political science, including positivist and interpretivist scholars, qualitative methodologists, mixed-methods researchers, ethnographers, historians, and statisticians. Their work revolutionizes qualitative research design by diversifying the repertoire of comparative methods available to students of politics, offering readers clear suggestions for what kinds of comparisons might be possible, why they are useful, and how to execute them. By systematically thinking through how we engage in qualitative comparisons and the kinds of insights those comparisons produce, these collected essays create new possibilities to advance what we know about politics.

Over the past decades, the field commonly known as comparative law has significantly expanded. The multiplication of journals, the proliferation of scholarship and the creation of courses or summer schools specifically devoted to comparative law attest to its increasing popularity. Within the Western legal tradition, a traditional, black-letter approach to law has proved particularly authoritative. This co-authored book rethinks comparative law’s mainstream model by providing both students and lawyers with the intellectual equipment allowing them to approach any foreign law in a more meaningful way.

In studies of gender and sexuality in popular music, the concept of difference is often a crucial analytic used to detect social agency; however, the alternative analytic of ambiguity has never been systematically examined. While difference from heterosexual norms is taken to be the multivalent sign of resistance, oppression, and self-invention, it can lead to inflated claims of the degree and power of difference. This book offers critically-oriented case studies that examine the theory and politics of ambiguity. Ambiguity means that there are both positive and negative implications in any gender and sexuality practices, both sameness and difference from heteronormativity, and unfixed possibility in the diverse nature of discourse and practice (rather than just "difference" among fixed multiplicities). Contributors present a diverse array of approaches through music, sound, psyche, body, dance, performance, race, ethnicity, power, discourse, and history. A wide variety of popular music genres are broached, including gay circuit remixes, punk rock, Goth music, cross-dress performance, billboard 100 songs, global pop, and nineteenth-century minstrelsy. The authors examine the ambiguities of performance and reception, and address the vexed question of whether it is possible for genuinely new forms of gender and sexuality to emerge musically. This book makes a distinctive contribution to studies of gender and sexuality in popular music, and will be of interest to fields including Popular Music Studies, Musicology/Ethnomusicology, Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, and Media Studies.

Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan builds readers’ knowledge of and confidence in statistical modeling. Reflecting the need for even minor programming in today’s model-based statistics, the book pushes readers to perform step-by-step calculations that are usually automated. This unique computational approach ensures that readers understand enough of the details to make reasonable choices and interpretations in their own modeling work. The text presents generalized linear multilevel models from a Bayesian perspective, relying on a simple logical interpretation of Bayesian probability and maximum entropy. It covers from the basics of regression to multilevel models. The author also discusses measurement error, missing data, and Gaussian process models for spatial and network autocorrelation. By using complete R code examples throughout, this book provides a practical foundation for performing statistical inference. Designed for both PhD students and seasoned professionals in the natural and social sciences, it prepares them for more advanced or specialized statistical modeling. Web Resource The book is accompanied by an R package (rethinking) that is available on the author’s website and GitHub. The two core functions (map and map2stan) of this package allow a variety of statistical models to be constructed from standard model formulas.

Comparative case studies are an effective qualitative tool for researching the impact of policy and practice in various fields of social research, including education. Developed in response to the inadequacy of traditional case study approaches, comparative case studies are highly effective because of their ability to synthesize information across time and space. In Rethinking Case Study Research: A Comparative Approach, the authors describe, explain, and illustrate the horizontal, vertical, and transversal axes of comparative case studies in order to help readers develop their own comparative case study research designs. In six concise chapters, two experts employ geographically distinct case studies—from Tanzania to Guatemala to the U.S.—to show how this innovative approach applies to the operation of policy and practice across multiple social fields. With examples and activities from anthropology, development studies, and policy studies, this volume is written for researchers, especially graduate students, in the fields of education and the interpretive social sciences.

Comparative Law is experiencing something of a renaissance,as legal scholars and practitioners traditionally outside the discipline find it newly relevant in projects such as constitution and code drafting, the harmonization of laws, court decisions, or as a tool for understanding the globalization of legal institutions. On the other hand, comparativists within the discipline find themselves asking questions about the identity of comparative law, what it is that makes comparative law unique as a discipline, what is the way forward. This book, designed with courses in comparative law as well as scholarly projects in mind, brings a new generation of comparativists together to reflect on the character of their discipline. It aims to incite curiosity and debate about contemporary issues within comparative law by bringing the discipline into conversation with debates in anthropology, literary and cultural studies, and critical theory. The book addresses questions such as what is the disciplinary identity of comparative law; how should we understand its relationship to colonialism, modernism, the Cold War, and other wider events that have shaped its history; what is its relationship to other projects of comparison in the arts, social sciences and humanities; and how has comparative law contributed at different times and in different parts of the world to projects of legal reform. Each of the essays frames its intervention around a close reading of the life and work of one formative character in the history of the discipline. Taken as a whole, the book offers a fresh and sophisticated picture of the discipline and its future. Contents: Montesquieu: the specter of despotism and the origins of comparative law (Robert Launay); Max Weber and the uncertainties of categorical comparative law (Ahmed White); Rethinking Hermann Kantorowicz: Free law, American legal realism and the legacy of anti-formalism (Vivian Grosswald Curran); Encountering amateurism: John Henry Wigmore and the uses of American formalism (Annelise Riles); Nobushige Hozumi: A skillful transplanter of western legal thought into Japanese soil (Hitoshi Aoki); Sanhuri, comparative law and Islamic legal reform, or why cultural authenticity is impossible (Amr Shalakany); Sculpting the agenda of comparative law: Ernst Rabel and the facade of language (David J. Gerber); René David: At the head of the family (Jorge L. Esquirol); Postmodern-Structural Comparative Jurisprudence? The aggregate impact of R. B. Schlesinger and R. Sacco to the understanding of the legal order (Ugo Mattei).

Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan builds your knowledge of and confidence in making inferences from data. Reflecting the need for scripting in today's model-based statistics, the book pushes you to perform step-by-step calculations that are usually automated. This unique computational approach ensures that you understand enough of the details to make reasonable choices and interpretations in your own modeling work. The text presents causal inference and generalized linear multilevel models from a simple Bayesian perspective that builds on information theory and maximum entropy. The core material ranges from the basics of regression to advanced multilevel models. It also presents measurement error, missing data, and Gaussian process models for spatial and phylogenetic confounding. The second edition emphasizes the directed acyclic graph (DAG) approach to causal inference, integrating DAGs into many examples. The new edition also contains new material on the design of prior distributions, splines, ordered categorical predictors, social relations models, cross-validation, importance sampling, instrumental variables, and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. It ends with an entirely new chapter that goes beyond generalized linear modeling, showing how domain-specific scientific models can be built into statistical analyses. Features Integrates working code into the main text Illustrates concepts through worked data analysis examples Emphasizes understanding assumptions and how assumptions are reflected in code Offers more detailed explanations of the mathematics in optional sections Presents examples of using the dagitty R package to analyze causal graphs Provides the rethinking R package on the author's website and on GitHub

Rethinking the Romance Genre examines why the romance genre has proven such an irresistible form for contemporary writers and filmmakers as they approach global issues. In contemporary texts ranging from literary works, to films, to social media, romance facilitates a range of intimacies that offer new feminist models in the age of globalization.