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An Analysis of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow

An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic

An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic

Keith Thomas's classic study of all forms of popular belief has been influential for so long now that it is difficult to remember how revolutionary it seemed when it first appeared. By publishing Religion and the Decline of Magic Thomas became the first serious scholar to attempt to synthesize the full range of popular thought about the occult and the supernatural studying its influence across Europe over several centuries. At root his book can be seen as a superb exercise in problem-solving: one that actually established magic as a historical problem worthy of investigation. Thomas asked productive questions not least challenging the prevailing assumption that folk belief was unworthy of serious scholarly attention and his work usefully reframed the existing debate in much broader terms allowing for more extensive exploration of correlations not only between different sorts of popular belief but also between popular belief and state religion. It was this that allowed Thomas to reach his famous conclusion that the advent of Protestantism – which drove out much of the superstition that characterised the Catholicism of the period – created a vacuum filled by other forms of belief; for example Catholic priests had once blessed their crops but Protestants refused to do so. That left farmers looking for other ways of ensuring a good harvest. It was this Thomas argues that explains the survival of what we now think of as magic at a time such beliefs might have been expected to decline – at least until science arose to offer alternative paradigms. | An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic

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An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s 1974 paper ‘Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ is a landmark in the history of psychology. Though a mere seven pages long it has helped reshape the study of human rationality and had a particular impact on economics – where Tversky and Kahneman’s work helped shape the entirely new sub discipline of ‘behavioral economics. ’ The paper investigates human decision-making specifically what human brains tend to do when we are forced to deal with uncertainty or complexity. Based on experiments carried out with volunteers Tversky and Kahneman discovered that humans make predictable errors of judgement when forced to deal with ambiguous evidence or make challenging decisions. These errors stem from ‘heuristics’ and ‘biases’ – mental shortcuts and assumptions that allow us to make swift automatic decisions often usefully and correctly but occasionally to our detriment. The paper’s huge influence is due in no small part to its masterful use of high-level interpretative and analytical skills – expressed in Tversky and Kahneman’s concise and clear definitions of the basic heuristics and biases they discovered. Still providing the foundations of new work in the field 40 years later the two psychologists’ definitions are a model of how good interpretation underpins incisive critical thinking. | An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

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An Analysis of Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

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An Analysis of Griselda Pollock's Vision and Difference Feminism Femininity and the Histories of Art

An Analysis of Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

An Analysis of Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom

An Analysis of Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom

Milton Friedman was arguably the single most influential economist of the 20th-century. His influence particularly on conservative politics in America and Great Britain substantially helped – as both supporters and critics agree – to shape the global economy as it is today. Capitalism and Freedom (1962) is a passionate but carefully reasoned summary of Friedman’s philosophy of political and economic freedom and it has become perhaps his most directly influential work. Friedman’s argument focuses on the place of economic liberalism in society: in his view free markets and personal economic freedom are absolutely necessary for true political freedom to exist. Freedom for Friedman is the ultimate good in a society – the marker and aim of true civilisation. And crucially he argues real freedom is rarely aided by government. For Friedman indeed “the great advances of civilization whether in architecture or painting in science or literature in industry or agriculture have never come from centralized government”. Instead he argues they have always been produced by “minority views” flourishing in a social climate permitting variety and diversity. ” In successive chapters Friedman develops a well-structured line of reasoning emerging from this stance – leading him to some surprising conclusions that remain persuasive and influential more than 60 years on. | An Analysis of Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom

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An Analysis of Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom

An Analysis of Franz Boas's Race Language and Culture

An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

To the dismay of many commentators – who had hoped the world was evolving into a more tolerant and multicultural community of nations united under the umbrellas of supranational movements like the European Union – the nationalism that was such a potent force in the history of the 20th-century has made a comeback in recent years. Now more than ever it seems important to understand what it is how it works and why it is so attractive to so many people. A fine place to start any such exploration is with Ernest Gellner's seminal Nations and Nationalism a ground-breaking study that was the first to flesh out the counter-intuitive – but enormously influential – thesis that modern nationalism has little if anything in common with old-fashioned patriotism or loyalty to one's homeland. Gellner's intensely creative thesis is that the nationalism we know today is actually the product of the 19th-century industrial revolution which radically reshaped ancient communities encouraging emigration to cities at the same time as it improved literacy rates and introduced mass education. Gellner connected these three elements in an entirely new way contrasting developments to the structures of pre-industrial agrarian economies to show why the new nationalism could not have been born in such communities. He was also successful in generating a typology of nationalisms in an attempt to explain why some forms flourished while others fizzled out. His remarkable ability to produce novel explanations for existing evidence marks out Nations and Nationalism as one of the most radical stimulating – and enduringly influential – works of its day. | An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism

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An Analysis of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Ecomonic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000

An Analysis of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Ecomonic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000

Paul Kennedy owes a great deal to the editor who persuaded him to add a final chapter to this study of the factors that contributed to the rise and fall of European powers since the age of Spain’s Philip II. This tailpiece indulged in what was for an historian a most unusual activity: it looked into the future. Pondering whether the United States would ultimately suffer the same decline as every imperium that preceded it it was this chapter that made The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers a dinner party talking point in Washington government circles. In so doing it elevated Kennedy to the ranks of public intellectuals whose opinions were canvassed on matters of state policy. From a strictly academic point of view the virtues of Kennedy's work lie elsewhere and specifically in his flair for asking the sort of productive questions that characterize a great problem-solver. Kennedy's work is an example of an increasingly rare genre – a work of comparative history that transcends the narrow confines of state– and era–specific studies to identify the common factors that underpin the successes and failures of highly disparate states. Kennedy's prime contribution is the now-famous concept of ‘imperial overstretch ’ the idea that empires fall largely because the military commitments they acquire during the period of their rise ultimately become too much to sustain once they lose the economic competitive edge that had projected them to dominance in the first place. Earlier historians may have glimpsed this central truth and even applied it in studies of specific polities but it took a problem-solver of Kennedy's ability to extend the analysis convincingly across half a millennium. | An Analysis of Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers Ecomonic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000

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An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

An Analysis of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

An Analysis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan The Impact of the Highly Improbable

An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

What caused the rise of Chicago and how did the city's expansion fuel the westward movement of the American frontier – and influence the type of society that evolved as a result? Nature's Metropolis emerged as a result of William Cronon asking and answering those questions and the work can usefully be seen as an extended example of the critical thinking skill of problem-solving in action. Cronon navigates a path between the followers of Frederick Jackson Turner author of the thesis that American character was shaped by the experience of the frontier and revisionists who sought to suggest that the rugged individualism Turner depicted as a creation of life in the West was little but a fiction. For Cronon the most productive question to ask was not whether or not men forged in the liberty-loving furnace of the Wild West had the sort of impact on America that Turner posited but the quite different one of how capitalism and political economy had combined to drive the westward expansion of the US. For Cronon individualism was scarcely even possible in a capitalist machine in which humans were little more than cogs and the needs and demands of capital not capitalists prevailed. Nature's Metropolis then is a work in which the rise of Chicago is explained by generating alternative possibilities and one that uses a rigorous study of the evidence to decide between competing solutions to the problem. It is also a fine work of interpretation for a large part of Cronon's argument revolves around his attempt to define exactly what is rural and what is urban and how the two interact to create a novel economic force. | An Analysis of William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis Chicago and the Great West

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An Analysis of N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God

An Analysis of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

An Analysis of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

An Analysis of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

The history of anthropology is to a large extent the history of differing modes of interpretation. As anthropologists have long known examining analyzing and recording cultures in the quest to understand humankind as a whole is a vastly complex task in which nothing can be achieved without careful and incisive interpretative work. Edward Evans-Pritchard’s seminal 1937 Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande is a model contribution to anthropology’s grand interpretative project and one whose success is based largely on its author’s thinking skills. A major issue in anthropology at the time was the common assumption that the faiths and customs of other cultures appeared irrational or illogical when compared to the “civilized” and scientific beliefs of the western world. Evans-Pritchard sought to challenge such definitions by embedding himself within a tribal culture in Africa – that of the Azande – and attempting to understand their beliefs in their proper contexts. By doing so Evans-Pritchard proved just how vital context is to interpretation. Seen within their context he was able to show the beliefs of the Azande were far from irrational – and magic actually formed a coherent system that helped mould a functional community and society for the tribe. Evans-Pritchard’s efforts to clarify meaning in this way have proved hugely influential and have played a major part in guiding later generations of anthropologists from his day to ours. | An Analysis of E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft Oracles and Magic Among the Azande

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An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Despite having no formal training in urban planning Jane Jacobs deftly explores the strengths and weaknesses of policy arguments put forward by American urban planners in the era after World War II. They believed that the efficient movement of cars was of more value in the development of US cities than the everyday lives of the people living there. By carefully examining their relevance in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jacobs dismantles these arguments by highlighting their shortsightedness. She evaluates the information to hand and comes to a very different conclusion that urban planners ruin great cities because they don’t understand that it is a city’s social interaction that makes it great. Proposals and policies that are drawn from planning theory do not consider the social dynamics of city life. They are in thrall to futuristic fantasies of a modern way of living that bears no relation to reality or to the desires of real people living in real spaces. Professionals lobby for separation and standardization splitting commercial residential industrial and cultural spaces. But a truly visionary approach to urban planning should incorporate spaces with mixed uses together with short walkable blocks large concentrations of people and a mix of new and old buildings. This creates true urban vitality. | An Analysis of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Michael E. Porter’s 1980 book Competitive Strategy is a fine example of critical thinking skills in action. Porter used his strong evaluative skills to overturn much of the accepted wisdom in the world of business. By exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the accepted argument that the best policy for firms to become more successful was to focus on expanding their market share he was able to establish that the credibility of the argument was flawed. Porter did not believe such growth was the only way for a company to be successful and provided compelling arguments as to why this was not the case. His book shows how industries can be fragmented with different firms serving different parts of the market (the low-price mass market and the expensive high-end market in clothing for example) and examines strategies that businesses can follow in emerging mature and declining markets. If printing is in decline for example there may still be a market in this industry for high-end goods and services such as luxury craft bookbinding. Porter also made excellent use of the critical thinking skill of analysis in writing Competitive Strategy. His advice that executives should analyze the five forces that mold the environment in which they compete – new entrants substitute products buyers suppliers and industry rivals – focused heavily on defining the relationships between these disparate factors and urged readers to check the assumptions of their arguments. Porter avoided technical jargon and wrote in a straightforward way to help readers see that his evaluation of the problem was strong. Competitive Strategy went on to be a highly influential work in the world of business strategy. | An Analysis of Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

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An Analysis of Jacques Derrida's Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

How do you solve a problem like understanding Iraq? For Hanna Batatu the solution to this conundrum lay in generating alternative possibilities that effectively side-stepped the conventional wisdom of the time. Historians had long held that Iraq – like other artificial creations of ex-colonial European powers who drew lines onto the world map that ignored longstanding tribal ethnic and religious ties – was best understood by delving into its political and religious history. Batatu used the problem solving skills of asking productive questions and generating alternative possibilities to argue that Iraq’s history was better understood through the lens of a Marxist analysis focused on socio-economic history. The Old Social Classes concludes that the divisions present in Iraq – and exposed by the revolutionary movements of the 1950s – are those characterized by the struggle for control over property and the means of production. Additionally Batatu sought to establish that the most important political movements of the time notably the nationalist Ba'athists and the pan-Arab Free Officers Movement had their origins in a homegrown communist ideology inspired by local conditions and local inequality. By posing new questions – and by undertaking a vast amount of research in primary sources a rarity in the history of this region – Batatu was able to produce a strong new solution to a longstanding historiographical puzzle. | An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

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An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

Few historians can claim to have undertaken historical analysis on as grand a scale as Geoffrey Parker in his 2013 work Global Crisis: War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It is a doorstop of a book that surveys the ‘general crisis of the 17th century ’ shows that it was experienced practically throughout the world and was not merely a European phenomenon and links it to the impact of climate change in the form of the advent of a cold period known as the ‘Little Ice Age. ’ Parker’s triumph is made possible by the deployment of formidable critical thinking skills – reasoning to construct an engaging overall argument from very disparate material and analysis to re-examine and understand the plethora of complex secondary sources on which his book is built. In critical thinking analysis is all about understanding the features and structures of argument: how given reasons lead to conclusions and what kinds of implicit reasons and assumptions are being used. Historical analysis applies the same skills to the fabric of history asking how given chains of events occur how different reasons and factors interact and so on. Parker though takes things further than most in his quest to understand the meaning of a century’s-worth of turbulence spread across the whole globe. Beginning by breaking down the evidence for significant climatic cooling in the 17th-century (due to decreased solar activity) he moves on to detailed study of the effects the cooling had on societies and regimes across the world. From this detailed spadework he constructs a persuasive argument that accounts for the different ways in which the effects of climate change played out across the century – an argument with profound implications for a future likely to see serious climate change of its own. | An Analysis of Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis War Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

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