A volume of studies of utilitarianism considered both as a theory of personal morality and a theory of public choice. All but two of the papers have been commissioned especially for the volume, and between them they represent not only a wide range of arguments for and against utilitarianism but also a first-class selection of the most interesting and influential work in this very active area. There is also a substantial introduction by the two editors. The volume will constitute an important stimulus and point of reference for a wide range of philosophers, economists and social theorists.

What is it about human nature that makes our species capable of thinking scientifically? Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, Scott Atran traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology. The author proceeds not only from the more traditional philosophical, historical or sociological perspectives, but from a point of view he considers more basic and necessary to all of these: that of cognition.

Ending the Terror makes accessible for the first time to an English-speaking readership a major revisionist assessment of a crucial moment in the history of the French Revolution. The months that followed the fall of Robespierre in July 1794 mark not just a turning point in the history of the Revolution: "Thermidor" is also a symbolic moment that came to haunt the subsequent revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By this date the Terror as a system of power was discredited, and the engineers of the Terror were confronting the problem of how to dismantle it without repudiating...

This book is a major contribution to a controversial area of economic history and to the debate about the nature of British society in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Translated into English for the first time, it provides a detailed analysis of the banking community of London when the City was the undisputed financial center of the world. Attention is paid to the social origins, education careers, business interests and fortunes of its members, to the networks of relationships of its most important dynasties, as well as to the political influence of the world of banking.

This volume explores the patterns of relations between the sexes and the political orientations of the world's contemporary foragers.

This book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage in western France.

The Age of the Crowd is at one level an historical account of the development of mass psychology, and at another an analysis of its implications for prevalent political and social life. It was the prophecy of Gustave Le Bon in 1895 that the twentieth century would be 'l'age des foules' that gave Serge Moscovici the title for his book, and it presents a systematic exposition of Le Bon's ideas and those of Gabriel Tarde, demonstrating convincingly their influence on the theories of collective psychology advanced by Sigmund Freud. These theories are re-examined by Professor Moscovici in a...

This 1983 book records a fascinating analysis of the Solidarity movement in Poland. Alain Touraine here proposes an understanding of the place of social movements in contemporary society, and a fresh means of analysing them through 'sociological intervention'. In 1981 he and a team of researchers applied these research methods to the Solidarity movements. Groups of Solidarity activists were involved in a discourse over the nature and aims of their political and economic struggle. What emerges is a record of exceptional value in understanding the movement which transformed Polish society,...

A 1982 anthology of studies by French literary theorists representing the most significant contributions to the field made in France in the preceding fifteen years.