scholarly journals The School of Oriental and African Studies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Penrose
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
National Development ◽  
Science Research ◽  
African Studies ◽  
London School ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
Overseas Development Institute ◽  
Comprehensive Study

This chapter covers the period 1960–78. A readership in economics with reference to the Middle East at the London School of Economics and School of Oriental and African Studies was followed in 1964 by taking up the first chair of economics with special reference to Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Edith developed the new department and co-founded the Journal of Development Studies. She travelled extensively, particularly in the Middle East, where she taught and advised at the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo. In 1978, with E. F. Penrose, she published Iraq: International Relations and National Development, a comprehensive study of the political and economic development of the state of Iraq. She contributed to public bodies including the British Social Science Research Council and the Overseas Development Institute, the Commonwealth Development Corporation, the Monopolies Commission, and the Sainsbury Committee.

Raymond William Firth, 1901–2002

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. R. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
London School ◽  
Founding Member ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
Second World

Raymond Firth was an anthropologist, working chiefly in the Pacific, Malaysia and London, in the fields of economics, religion and kinship. Firth held permanent teaching posts at Sydney (1930–2) and at the London School of Economics (1932–40, 1944–68). During the Second World War he served in Naval Intelligence; he became secretary of the Colonial Social Science Research Council in 1944–5, and was a founding member of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth in 1946. Firth was a patient and generous teacher whose many graduate students remained loyal throughout their lives; he was an able and purposeful administrator of great integrity: no one alive can remember him doing a mean or malicious or self-interested act. In anthropology he was resolutely humane and empirical: his aim was always to convey the variety and complexity of people's experience, and to show how his theory was based on that understanding.

Simon Frederick Peter Halliday 1946–2010

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADAM ROBERTS
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
London School ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
London School Of Economics

Fred Halliday was a writer, teacher and public intellectual whose work spanned two closely related fields: the post-colonial societies of the Middle East; and international relations. His first major book, published in 1974, was Arabia without Sultans, although he gained a wider readership with Threat from the East?, published in paperback in 1982. In 1975, Halliday was appointed as Fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and then, in 1983, he moved to the London School of Economics. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002. Obituary by Adam Roberts FBA.

Pacific unions: a reappraisal of the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other’

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Cohen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Considerable Support ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Considerable support has emerged over recent years among scholars of international relations for the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other.’ Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr note that over the last two centuries ‘Democracies were very unlikely to fight each other.’ This finding is supported, R. J. Rummel argues, by both ‘Historical studies and empirical social science research’. Some authors hail it as a law—perhaps the only one we have—of international relations. References in the literature suggest that the theory has acquired the status of a received truth. It is ‘the one argument that all the analysts agree on’, concludes Robert Rothstein. ‘Scholars of contemporary international relations are nearing consensus, suggest the Embers and Russett. In the latest, most comprehensive study of the phenomenon, Russett even finds evidence for it in non-industrial societies. Believing the facts of the matter to have been established, theorists have moved on to seek the causal mechanism generating the phenomenon.

Reign of Arrows

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Leo Overtoom
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
World State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Comprehensive Study

From minor nomadic tribe to major world empire, the story of the Parthians’ success in the ancient world is nothing short of remarkable. In their early history, the Parthians benefited from strong leadership, a flexible and accommodating cultural identity, and innovative military characteristics that allowed them to compete against and indeed eventually overcome Greek, Persian, Central Asian, and eventually Roman rivals who were often more powerful. Reign of Arrows provides the first comprehensive study dedicated entirely to early Parthian history within the Hellenistic world prior to contact with Rome and the first comprehensive effort since 1938 to evaluate early Parthian political history. It is a major effort to synthesize a wide array of especially recent scholarship across numerous fields of study in order to present the reader with the most cogent, well-rounded, and up-to-date account of the intersections of Hellenistic and Parthian history possible. It draws on a wide variety of sources to explain the political and military encounters that shaped the international environment of the Hellenistic Middle East from the middle third to the early first centuries BCE. This study treats broader issues of international relations in the ancient world, state decision-making, royal identity and ideology, evolving spatial perspectives and power relations, and state security concerns. It combines traditional historical approaches, such as source criticism and the integration of material evidence, with the incorporation of modern international relations theory to better examine the rise of the Parthians to dominance over the ancient Middle East.

Introductory Remarks on African Humanities

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Bennetta Jules-Rosette ◽  
Robert Cancel
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
Popular Arts ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Other World

This issue of the African Studies Review is devoted to research in the African humanities. The appearance of new approaches to the study of literary texts, oral traditions, and the popular arts has inspired us to assemble this collection. Recently, the African humanities have been neglected as an important area in which new empirical and theoretical advances have been made for the study of oral texts, art, and performance.The articles in this collection by Robert Cancel, David Coplan, Bennetta Jules-Rosette, and V. Y. Mudimbe were presented at the Conference on Popular Arts and the Media in Africa held at the University of California, San Diego from May 17-19, 1982. This conference was sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. We would like to thank the Joint Committee for their support of this conference and our initial efforts to develop a research synthesis for the African humanities.This collection begins with V. Y. Mudimbe's commentary on the nature of African art and the limitations of research models used to study it. He questions the role and position of African arts, especially visual arts, in the post-colonial world. He suggests that the time has passed where most of these works can be judged simply as self-enclosed cultural referents, isolated from the effects of the last two hundred years of history. The process of “aesthetization” that he describes is one which, in various transformations, informs each of the papers that follow. When Fanon suggested that to take on a language is to “take on a world,” he foreshadowed the ideas that acknowledge the development of Africa's humanities in a context of cultural interchange with other world traditions. This is not to accept the Victorian pronouncements that credited all African achievements to various forms of Western influence. Rather, it is a movement towards the view that African culture, always fluid and dynamic, has been responsive to all manner of influences, both local and foreign.

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