BiblioVault - Books about Origins -

Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University

William Clark

University of Chicago Press, 2005

Tracing the transformation of early modern academics into modern researchers from the Renaissance to Romanticism, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University uses the history of the university and reframes the "Protestant Ethic" to reconsider the conditions of knowledge production in the modern world.

William Clark argues that the research university—which originated in German Protestant lands and spread globally in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—developed in response to market forces and bureaucracy, producing a new kind of academic whose goal was to establish originality and achieve fame through publication. With an astonishing wealth of research, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University investigates the origins and evolving fixtures of academic life: the lecture catalogue, the library catalog, the grading system, the conduct of oral and written exams, the roles of conversation and the writing of research papers in seminars, the writing and oral defense of the doctoral dissertation, the ethos of "lecturing with applause" and "publish or perish," and the role of reviews and rumor. This is a grand, ambitious book that should be required reading for every academic.

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Access to Origins

Affines, Ancestors, and Aristocrats

By Mary W. Helms

University of Texas Press, 1998

In many non-industrial, non-Western societies, power and prestige are closely linked to the extent of an individual's or group's perceived connection to the supernatural realm, which also explains and validates tangible activities such as economic success, victories in war, or control over lucrative trade. Affines (in-laws), ancestors, and aristocrats, in particular, are connected to the realm of creative cosmological origins (i.e., to Genesis), which accords them distinctive, supernatural powers and gives them a natural and legitimate right to worldly authority.

This is the hypothesis that Mary W. Helms pursues in this broadly cross-cultural study of aristocracy in chiefly societies. She begins with basic ideas about the dead, ancestors, affines, and concepts of cosmological origins. This leads her to a discussion of cosmologically defined hierarchies, the qualities that characterize aristocracy, and the political and ideological roles of aristocrats as wife-givers and wife-takers (that is, as in-laws). She concludes by considering various models that explain how societies may develop or define aristocracies.

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The Alabama Folk Lyric

A Study in Origins and Media of Dissemination

Collected and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Ray B. Browne

University of Wisconsin Press, 1979

Alabamians have always been a singing people. The settlers who moved into the various sections of the state brought with them songs which reflected their national origins and geographical backgrounds, and as they spread into the hills and over the lowlands they created new songs out of the conditions under which they lived. Also, they absorbed songs from outside sources whenever these pieces could be adapted to their sentiments and ways of life. Thus, by a process of memory, composition and recreation they developed a rich body of folk songs. The following collection a part of the effort to discover and preserve these songs.

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Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape

Christopher S. Wood

University of Chicago Press, 1993

In the early sixteenth century, Albrecht Altdorfer promoted landscape from its traditional role as background to its new place as the focal point of a picture. His paintings, drawings, and etchings appeared almost without warning and mysteriously disappeared from view just as suddenly. In Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape,Christopher S. Wood shows how Altdorfer transformed what had been the mere setting for sacred and historical figures into a principal venue for stylish draftsmanship and idiosyncratic painterly effects. At the same time, his landscapes offered a densely textured interpretation of that quintessentially German locus—the forest interior.

This revised and expanded second edition contains a new introduction, revised bibliography, and fifteen additional illustrations.

“Excellent illustrations . . . [and] detailed exuberant comments leave the reader in no doubt about Altdorfer’s brilliance and originality.”—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books

“A study that is bound to become a standard work.”—Independent on Sunday

“Sumptuous.”—Daily Telegraph

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Altruistically Inclined?

The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity

Alexander J. Field

University of Michigan Press, 2004

Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity—domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions.

Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored by natural selection operating only at the level of the individual organism.

Emphasizing universal and variable features of human culture, developing research on how the brain functions, and refinements of thinking about levels of selection in evolutionary processes, Alexander J. Field argues that humans are born with the rudiments of a PD solution module—and differentially prepared to learn norms supportive of it. His emphasis on failure to harm, as opposed to the provision of affirmative assistance, as the empirically dominant form of altruistic behavior is also novel.

The point of departure and principal point of reference is economics. But Altruistically Inclined? will interest a broad range of scholars in the social and behavioral sciences, natural scientists concerned with the implications of research and debates within their fields for the conduct of work elsewhere, and educated lay readers curious about essential features of human nature.

Alexander J. Field is the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University.

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American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, 3rd Ed

John F. Reiger

Oregon State University Press, 2001

Environmentalists who believe that hunters and anglers are interested only in the kill and the catch may be surprised to learn that sportsmen were originally in the vanguard of the conservation movement. John Reiger's work has been hailed as an authoritative look at these early conservationists; now his landmark book is available in an expanded edition that broadens its historic sweep.

Beginning in the 1870s, sportsmen across America formed hundreds of organizations that not only fostered responsibility for game habitats but also spearheaded the creation of national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. Reiger tells how these "gentlemen" hunters and anglers, outdoor journals like Forest and Stream, and organizations such as the Boone and Crockett Club—founded by Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, and other prominent sportsmen—lobbied for laws regulating the taking of wildlife, and helped to arouse public interest in wilderness preservation.

In this new edition, Reiger traces the antecedents of the sportsmen's conservation movement to the years before the Civil War. He extends his coverage into the present by demonstrating how the nineteenth-century sportsman's code—with its demand for taking responsibility for the total environment—continues to be the cornerstone of the sporting ethic. A new Epilogue depicts leading environmental thinker Aldo Leopold as the best-known exponent of this hunter-conservationist ideal.

Praised as "one of the seminal works in conservation history" by historian Hal Rothman, Reiger's book continues to be essential reading for all concerned with how earlier Americans regarded the land, demonstrating even to those who oppose hunting that they share with sportsmen and sportswomen an awareness and appreciation of our fragile environment.

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Arab-American Faces and Voices

The Origins of an Immigrant Community

By Elizabeth Boosahda

University of Texas Press, 2003

As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than one hundred years of the Arab-American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants.

Boosahda focuses on the Arab-American community in Worcester, Massachusetts, a major northeastern center for Arab immigration, and Worcester's links to and similarities with Arab-American communities throughout North and South America. Using the voices of Arab immigrants and their families, she explores their entire experience, from emigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the present-day lives of their descendants. This rich documentation sheds light on many aspects of Arab-American life, including the Arab entrepreneurial motivation and success, family life, education, religious and community organizations, and the role of women in initiating immigration and the economic success they achieved.

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The Arc of War

Origins, Escalation, and Transformation

Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson

University of Chicago Press, 2011

In this far-reaching exploration of the evolution of warfare in human history, Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson provide insight into the perennial questions of why and how humans fight. Beginning with the origins of warfare among foraging groups, The Arc of War draws on a wealth of empirical data to enhance our understanding of how war began and how it has changed over time. The authors point to the complex interaction of political economy, political and military organization, military technology, and the threat environment—all of which create changing incentives for states and other actors. They conclude that those actors that adapt survive, and those that do not are eliminated. In modern times, warfare between major powers has become exceedingly costly and therefore quite rare, while lesser powers are too weak to fight sustained and decisive wars or to prevent internal rebellions.

Conceptually innovative and historically sweeping, The Arc of War represents a significant contribution to the existing literature on warfare.

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