Introduction

Catherine Gallagher's importance as a scholar of nineteenth-century British culture and a historian and theorist of the novel makes the appearance of a new monograph by her an event for Victorianists (among others). This is true even when few of the materials she discusses are, strictly speaking, Victorian, as is the case with her new book, Telling It Like It Wasn't: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction. In Telling It Like It Wasn't, Gallagher traces the emergence and development of analytic and narrative discourses premised on counterfactual-historical hypotheses. As the author explains, these hypotheses are past-tense, conditional conjectures “pursued when the antecedent condition is known to be contrary to fact,” such as, to take her two major examples, What if the South won the Civil War? and What if the Nazis had invaded Britain? Bringing together what Gallagher calls “counterfactual histories,” which are more analytical than narrative and typically consider multiple unrealized possibilities; works of “alternate history,” which describe one continuous sequence of departures from the historical record but draw their dramatis personae exclusively from that record; and “the alternate-history novel, [which] invents not only alternative-historical trajectories but also fictional characters,” Telling It Like It Wasn't explores the distinctive uses and dynamic interactions of these forms over the past two centuries and considers their implications for our understanding of more conventional fiction and historiography.

„Für Politik relevant“ bedeutet mehr als nur „Forschung mit Anwendungsbezug“ – Kommentar zu Guy Bodenmann

In this commentary on Bodenmann’s paper, I try to exemplify that in order to be relevant to the formulation of social policies, researchers need to offer more than correlative evidence on potential family antecedents of children’s behaviour that are deemed problematic for the development of competence. Rather, a clear cause-effect relation has to be established via adequate design. Moreover, policy makers need information on the malleability of the antecedent condition, such as parental sensitivity mentioned by Bodenmann, knowledge about potential thresholds for effective intervention, cost-effect estimates, and insights into potential side effects and alternative solutions to the targets and measures originally suggested. Zusammenfassung Der Kommentar zu Bodenmanns Beitrag versucht an Beispielen zu zeigen, dass es mehr als korrelativer Evidenz zum Zusammenhang von familiären Risikobedingungen und problematischen kindlichen Verhaltensweisen bedarf, wenn man als Forscher politische Entscheidungen zur Planung von Interventionen beeinflussen will. Zuvorderst muss eine klare Ursache-Wirkungs-Beziehung mit geeigneten Designs belegt werden. Weiterhin sind Informationen über die Veränderbarkeit der Risikobedingung, etwa die von Bodenmann angeführte elterliche Sensitivität erforderlich, man benötigt Kenntnisse zu möglichen Schwelleneffekten mit Blick auf das Problemverhalten, Abschätzungen der Kostenwürdigkeit, sowie Einsichten in mögliche Nebeneffekte der Intervention und alternativer Ziele und Maßnahmen.

Crowding and Human Behavior: A Guide for Urban Planners

Research concerned with the effects of population density on humans is inconsistent in demonstrating aversive effects of high density. The concept of ‘crowding’ is discussed in an attempt to develop a suitable definition. Crowding is said to result from physical density, a necessary antecedent condition, and a number of personal and social factors. Characteristics of the physical environment, social environment, task environment, and individual are explored in order to delineate the determinants of crowding, and the effects of density and crowding on human behavior are discussed. Several theories of crowding are critically examined, and the superiority of the interference model is argued. The interference model is translated into principles aimed at providing planners with concrete intervention strategies for dealing with the problem of overcrowding.