This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources-psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models.

What explains the rapid growth of state power in early modern Europe? While most scholars have pointed to the impact of military or capitalist revolutions, Philip S. Gorski argues instead for the importance of a disciplinary revolution unleashed by the Reformation. By refining and diffusing a variety of disciplinary techniques and strategies, such as communal surveillance, control through incarceration, and bureaucratic office-holding, Calvin and his followers created an infrastructure of religious governance and social control that served as a model for the rest of Europe—and the world.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Body and Soul: Calvinism, Discipline, and State Power in Early Modern Europe
2. Disciplinary Revolution from below in the Low Countries
3. Disciplinary Revolution from above in Brandenburg-Prussia
4. Social Disciplining in Comparative Perspective
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Often likened to Kafka's The Castle, The Tartar Steppe is both a scathing critique of military life and a meditation on the human thirst for glory. It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...
"Buzzati's take on military matters is ambiguous. He makes much of the elaborate system of passwords at the fort -- a system that leads to one officer's death -- or the coded music of bugle calls, as well as the way in which time itself is stratified and subdivided. . . But if this is satire, it's a satire on us all, conscripted to the fortress of our expectations, hoping by secret signals and the solace of routine to push time back from the battlements, even as they crumble." --Eric Ormsby, NY Sun
Undoubtedly a masterpiece . . . [Buzzati] has brought to life a universal man and cast his being in surrounding which are familiar to us all . . . It is a sublime book and Buzzati a master of the written word. --Sunday Times

这本书，其实就是教大家凡事以“平常心”看待的练习。书中从始至终都会看到“慢”这个词，这个“慢”，指的是“自慢（自尊、骄傲）”与“傲慢”。而这个“慢”，也常常是因为与他人比较，或是与内心的自我形像衡量所产生的。只要提防“慢”的滋长，就可渐渐建立“平常心”，练就了这颗柔软心，就可以把生活过得愈发悠然自得。

Starting from a Marxist analysis of the ideas of Max Weber on China and India's "hydraulic-bureaucratic official-state" and building on Marx's sceptical view of the Asiatic Mode of Production, Wittfogel came up with an analysis of Oriental despotism which emphasized the role of irrigation works, the bureaucratic structures needed to maintain them and the impact that these had on society, coining the term "hydraulic empire" to describe the system. In his view, many societies, mainly in Asia, relied heavily on the building of large-scale irrigation works. To do this, the state had to organize forced labor from the population at large. As only a centralized administration could organize the building and maintenance of large-scale systems of irrigation, the need for such systems made bureaucratic despotism inevitable in Oriental lands. This structure was uniquely placed to also crush civil society and any other force capable of mobilizing against the state. Such a state would inevitably be despotic, powerful, stable and wealthy. Wittfogel's anticommunism led in "Oriental Despotism" to extend the hydraulic hypothesis to Russia, where it hardly is applicable.

We surround ourselves with material things that are invested with memories but can only stand for what we have lost. Physical objects--such as one's own body--situate and define us; yet at the same time they are fundamentally indifferent to us. The melancholy of this rift is a rich source of inspiration for artists. Peter Schwenger deftly weaves together philosophical and psychoanalytical theory with artistic practice. Concerned in part with the act of collecting, "The Tears of Things" is itself a collection of exemplary art objects--literary and cultural attempts to control and possess things--including paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe and Rene Magritte; sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Marcel Duchamp; Joseph Cornell's boxes; Edward Gorey's graphic art; fiction by Virginia Woolf, Georges Perec, and Louise Erdrich; the hallucinatory encyclopedias of Jorge Luis Borges and Luigi Serafini; and the corpse photographs of Joel Peter Witkin. However, these representations of objects perpetually fall short of our aspirations. Schwenger examines what is left over--debris and waste--and asks what art can make of these. What emerges is not an art that reassembles but one that questions what it means to assemble in the first place. Contained in this catalog of waste is that ultimate still life, the cadaver, where the subject-object dichotomy receives its final ironic reconciliation. Peter Schwenger is professor of English at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of "Fantasm and Fiction: On Textual Envisioning, Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word," and "Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature."

In religious studies, theory and method research has long been embroiled in a polarized debate over scientific versus theological perspectives. Ronald L. Grimes shows that this debate has stagnated, due in part to a manner of theorizing too far removed from the study of actual religious practices. A worthwhile theory, according to Grimes, must be practice-oriented, and practices are most effectively studied by field research methods.
The Craft of Ritual Studies melds together a systematic theory and method capable of underwriting the cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study of ritual. Grimes exposes the limitations that disable many theories of ritual--for example, defining ritual as essentially religious, assuming that ritual's only function is to generate group solidarity, or treating ritual as a mirror of the status quo. He provides a guide for fieldwork on complex ritual events, particularly those characterized by social conflict or cultural creativity. The volume includes a case study, focusing on a single complex event: the Santa Fe Fiesta, a New Mexico celebration marked by protracted ethnic conflict and ongoing dramatic creativity. Grimes develops such themes as the relation of ritual to media, theater, and film, the dynamics of ritual creativity, the negotiation of ritual criticism, and the impact of ritual on cultural and physical environments.
This important book, the capstone work of Grimes's three decades of leadership in the field of ritual studies, is accompanied by a set of online videos, as well as appendices illustrating key aspects of ritual studies.

Inspiring stories and practical advice from America’s most respected journalists The country’s most prominent journalists and nonfiction authors gather each year at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Telling True Stories presents their best advice—covering everything from finding a good topic, to structuring narrative stories, to writing and selling your first book. More than fifty well-known writers offer their most powerful tips, including:
• Tom Wolfe on the emotional core of the story
• Gay Talese on writing about private lives
• Malcolm Gladwell on the limits of profiles
• Nora Ephron on narrative writing and screenwriters
• Alma Guillermoprieto on telling the story and telling the truth
• Dozens of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists from the Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and more . . . The essays contain important counsel for new and career journalists, as well as for freelance writers, radio producers, and memoirists. Packed with refreshingly candid and insightful recommendations, Telling True Stories will show anyone fascinated by the art of writing nonfiction how to bring people, scenes, and ideas to life on the page.

Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields.
The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy.
This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.

In this companion volume to John van Maanen's "Tales of the Field", three scholars reveal how the ethnographer turns direct experience and observation into written fieldnotes upon which an ethnography is based. Drawing on years of teaching and field research experience, the authors develop a series of guidelines, suggestions and practical advice about how to write useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, both cultural and institutional. Using actual, unfinished "working" notes as examples, they illustrate options for composing, reviewing and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and descriptive strategies, including evocation of sensory detail, synthesis of complete scenes, the value of partial versus omniscient perspectives and of first-person versus third-person accounts. Of particular interest is the authors' discussion of notetaking as a mindset. They show how transforming direct observations into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but more crucially from learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they argue, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor, to see colours and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms like a poet. The authors also emphasize the ethnographer's core interest in presenting the perceptions and meanings which the people studied attach to their own actions. They demonstrate the subtle ways that writers can make the voices of people heard in the texts they produce. Finally, they analyze the "processing" of fieldnotes - the practice of coding notes to identify themes and methods for selecting and weaving together fieldnote excerpts to write a polished ethnography. This book, however, is more than a "how-to" manual. The authors examine writing fieldnotes as an interactive and interpretive process in which the researcher's own commitments and relationships with those in the field inevitably shape the character and content of those fieldnotes. They explore the conscious and unconscious writing choices that produce fieldnote accounts. And they show how the character and content of these fieldnotes inevitably influence the arguments and analyses the ethnographer can make in the final ethnographic tale. This book shows that note-taking is a craft that can be taught. Along with "Tales of the Field" and George Marcus and Michael Fisher's "Anthropology as Cultural Criticism", "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes" should provide an essential tool for students and social scientists alike.

First published in 1986 Mary Douglas’ theory of institutions uses the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim and Ludwig Fleck to determine not only how institutions think, but also the extent to which thinking itself is dependent upon institutions. Different kinds of institutions allow individuals to think different kinds of thoughts and to respond to different emotions. It is just as difficult to explain how individuals come to share the categories of their thought as to explain how they ever manage to sink their private interests for a common good.
Douglas forewarns us that institutions do not think independently, nor do they have purposes, nor do they build themselves. As we construct our institutions, we are squeezing each other’s ideas into a common shape in order to prove their legitimacy by sheer numbers. She admonishes us not to take comfort in the thought that primitives may think through institutions, but moderns decide on important issues individually. Our legitimated institutions make major decisions, and these decisions always involve ethical principles.

日本研究草原民族与蒙古历史第一人杉山正明
继《蒙古帝国的兴亡》、《忽必烈的挑战》之后又一力作
一部打破中原史观与西方文明史观、放眼欧亚大陆的作品
还原游牧民的真实面貌，洗刷野蛮、杀戮等刻板认知
一直以来，不分东西方，只要提到游牧民，一般都会不分青红皂白地就直接作出负面印象的描述，几乎已经定型。
作为日本研究草原民族与蒙古历史第一人，杉山正明超越了以西欧、中国为中心的视野，在充分掌握欧亚各地区丰富文献资料的基础上，描绘出别开生面的游牧帝国与世界历史，将游牧民“野蛮入侵者”或“军事破坏者”的形象彻底颠覆。他用详实的史料证明，从公元4世纪到14世纪的1000多年间，欧亚大陆舞台上真正的主角就是游牧民。游牧民的活动范围之广、活动速度之快是农耕者无法比拟的，而且他们生活朴素，注重贸易，提倡文化上的包容。正是运用这些优势，游牧民主导或引发了欧亚大陆在经济、政治、军事、文化等方面的诸多变革。13世纪的蒙古帝国更是书写了游牧民历史上最辉煌的一页，成为世界历史的分水岭。
杉山正明并非从民族史的角度来分析这些历史事件，而是基于一种世界史观——关于欧亚世界史的构想。因此，这是一部打破中原史观与西方文明史观、放眼欧亚大陆的作品！

“然而，在无动于衷的人群里，契诃夫的妻子和母亲紧紧地偎依着，相互搀扶。在这个世界上的所有人当中，契诃夫曾经真正深爱过的，惟有她们俩。”
是看到这里，要合上书页之时，才能真的明白，什么是“混合着玩笑、伤感和平静的失望”，什么是“水晶一般的冷漠”。在疲惫的孤独的背面，始终希望能够捕捉到一丝让这个世界亮起来的清美的光辉——这是伊莱娜·内米洛夫斯基笔下的契诃夫，也是伊莱娜·内米洛夫斯基自己。
——袁筱一
呈现在我们眼前的这个人，并没有因其不幸的身世而遭到贬低。穷困潦倒，拖家带口，体弱多病，安东·契诃夫的一生历尽坎坷。其中艰辛，被朴实的语言一一道来，没有华丽的词藻。他生于苦难，长于苦难。过去，我们只因他的作品而爱戴他，崇拜他。如今，我们对他的爱戴和崇拜将更进一步。这应归功于这本传记。它在世界文学史上铭刻下了动人的篇章。经由伊莱娜·内米洛夫斯基，契诃夫将令我们感到更加亲切，也更容易接近。
——让-雅克·贝尔纳（法国剧作家）
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内容简介：
俄国文学大师安东·契诃夫一生历尽坎坷，他拖家带口，体弱多病，穷困潦倒。然而，他又是勇敢、顽强和勤奋的。他二十六岁业已成名，家喻户晓。但是他最初写小说只是“玩玩”，但他缺乏自信，甚至不敢署自己的名字。是一位年过六十五岁的老作家在偶然读到他的一篇小说并被他打动后，富有远见地与他通信，鼓励他，指导他……
作为俄裔作家，内米洛夫斯基从小深受契诃夫的影响，在她的作品中渗透着契诃夫的文学精神。在这部篇幅不长的传记作品中，内米洛夫斯基为我们揭示了一个有血有肉的契诃夫，并且超越了对其人生的呈现，令我们的阅读之旅愈加荡气回肠。

本书讲述了中国宪法的十大基本问题：国家为什么要有宪法，吾国宪法何以至今没有确立，人权为宪法基本，国民大会问题，行政权（总统与行政院），立法权（立法院等），司法独立，民主国政党，立宪国家财政，朝野上下之大责任等。
商务印书馆再版，特邀广州大学副校长、著名宪法与行政法学者董皞博士撰写了导读文章——激变社会、漂泊人生、宪政思想，以方便学人参考阅读。

Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a little-known surveillance state in America’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that should stabilize young lives—family, relationships, jobs—into liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences.
Alice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the pernicious effects of this pervasive policing. Goffman introduces us to an unforgettable cast of young African American men who are caught up in this web of warrants and surveillance—some of them small-time drug dealers, others just ordinary guys dealing with limited choices. All find the web of presumed criminality, built as it is on the very associations and friendships that make up a life, nearly impossible to escape. We watch as the pleasures of summer-evening stoop-sitting are shattered by the arrival of a carful of cops looking to serve a warrant; we watch—and can’t help but be shocked—as teenagers teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run from the police (and, crucially, to keep away from friends and family so they can stay hidden); and we see, over and over, the relentless toll that the presumption of criminality takes on families—and futures.
While not denying the problems of the drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it, through her gripping accounts of daily life in the forgotten neighborhoods of America's cities, Goffman makes it impossible for us to ignore the very real human costs of our failed response—the blighting of entire neighborhoods, and the needless sacrifice of whole generations.