The Twentieth-Century Urals Economy in Historical Perspective

The article discusses major works on economic history published by Urals scholars over the past few decades and outlines the main stages of their research development. The analysis of these works leads to the theoretical conclusion that there has been a recent upsurge in the scholarly interest in economic history. This trend is related to the multimethodological approach gaining popularity among these scholars and the two disciplines, economics and history, drawing closer together. There is a popular belief that history can prove useful to any economist as a storage of economic facts tested by life itself and as a collection of various economic experiments. History, however, is also very important as a source of economic ideas. Thus, there is a process of genuine ‘cross-disciplinary communication’, which manifests itself in economists and historians’ exchanging theories developed within the framework of their disciplines. In its modern stage, the economic history of the Urals focuses on the problems which were not previously covered by historical studies for a number of objective reasons: some sources were classified and unavailable due to security control; and some topics were considered inappropriate to raise in studies of national history. Historians have now turned to such questions as the creation and development of industry-specific territorial production complexes, which used to be predominantly studied by economists. Nowadays, economic history discovers new topics for research, expands its database of sources, applies diverse methodology, and uses conceptual approaches and methods developed both by Russian and foreign economists

Comments on Law and Versteeg's The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution

Governmen

Menorah Review (No. 10, Spring, 1987)

Jews by Birth and Jews by Choice: Conversion in Jewish History -- Modernization Theory and Contemporary Jewish History -- The Language of Extermination -- The Predicate Theology of Judaism -- Streams of Depth -- Noah and Universalis

Coming and leaving. Internal mobility in late Imperial Austria.

The paper investigates the determinants of internal migration within late imperial Austria. In contrast to the modernization paradigm which studies onedirectional migration flows from rural to urban areas, our approach highlights that spatial mobility consisted of movements in both directions. Using data on all districts of the Austrian part of the Hapsburg Monarchy, we find that in- and outmigration rates are positively correlated, and that the modernization paradigm in migration research is consistent with our results for net-migration rates, but inconsistent with those for out-migration. (author's abstract)Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

The English Curriculum in the People's Republic of China

The status and role of English as a school subject in China has fluctuated wildly because of its desirable but sensitive connotations. English is the language of world trade and communications, which makes its study an important strategy in implementing internationally-oriented policies for "modernization", while its historical overtones of imperialism, capitalism and even barbarianism are unwelcome for those who prefer more self-reliant and isolationist approaches. This paper traces the career of the English curriculum in China since 1949, with particular reference to the junior secondary school curriculum, through an analysis of the national syllabus and textbooks. It identifies five distinct periods and analyses the major forces of curriculum change, the dynamics of curriculum design, and the principal features of models for change in each of the periods. It is argued that the overall process of policy-making, and curriculum development specifically, has been characterized by a complexity and pattern of development which is not adequately recognized in existing portrayals that have focused on the relationship between macro political shifts and educational policies, and have emphasized the role of the state

Narratives of loss and order and imaging the Belgian landscape 1900-1945

In their article "Narratives of Loss and Order and Imaging the Belgian Landscape 1900-1945" Bruno Notteboom and David Peleman analyze a number of publications on landscape, focusing on narratives constructed by means of landscape images published in Belgium. With the work of Jean Massart and Emile Vanderwelde as a point of departure, Notteboom and Peleman discuss popularizing publications in the fields of botany, agricultural education, and tourism, as well as an urban planning. They address the three realms of landscape narratives defined by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton as story, context/intertext, and discourse. Notteboom and Peleman distinguish three recurrent operations or narrative techniques: framing, sequencing, and juxtaposing whereby their main argument is that in spite of their ideological differences the publications they discuss seek a way of dealing with processes of modernization and with the loss of a traditional way of living defined by a direct relation with the land