The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: A Review Essay of McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics

The homeostatic method, which was developed to reconstruct the number of inhabitants of a city or even a country in pre-statistical periods, has yet to receive much attention from demographic historians. Applied first to Amsterdam during the years from 1586 to 1865, the method has subsequently been used to compute the population of other places, including England from 1541 to 1871. The author reviews major schools of thought in historical demography and shows that the homeostatic method, with its emphasis on fertility regulated by marriages, logically extends some schools and is both simpler and more accurate than others. He then explains the method in detail, applying it to Dutch and English cases, and compares its estimates with those obtained through the use of other techniques.     

《宋史》人名补校

中华书局点校本《宋史》,摒除了以往各种版本《宋史》中的大量讹误,是迄今为止最具权威性的《宋史》版本.但金无足赤,现行中华书局点校本《宋史》中仍有失校或校勘失当的情况.笔者因长期与《宋史》打交道,发现现行点校本《宋史》中有一些人名失校或校勘失当,以下试一析之,以求就正于专家.     

Gender Blindness and the Annulment of the Development Contract

This contribution to the Forum Debate responds to Horner and Hulme's analysis on the ‘rise of the South’, which they see as suggesting a dramatic redrawing of the global map of development and inequality. This response presents a critical South feminist perspective, informed by the lived realities of women in the South. It is based on a historical and political perspective that goes beyond income inequality to understand gender inequality in development within the persistent North–South divide.     

Destruction and the Rhetoric of Excavation

In this paper a recurrent perception of archaeological excavation as destruction is addressed. By examining this rhetoric in discourses about fieldwork in the UK, the theoretical issues implicit in its use are examined, issues that affect not only Britain but also other European countries and beyond. Tying it into notions of the archaeological record and the archaeological resource, the traditional model of the archaeological process is found to be problematic and an alternative perspective is presented which characterizes fieldwork in a radically different way, through the concept of displacement. Considered as a materializing practice, the processes of excavation and archiving are examined in new ways.     

John Burton versus international relations: the costs of criticism

This article explores the intellectual legacy of John Wear Burton, who died in June 2010. Widely lauded as a pioneer in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies, Burton's legacy in the broader study of international relations (IR) is more ambiguous. The author argues that Burton is best remembered as a critic of IR rather than as a contributor to the discipline, particularly as it evolved from the mid 1980s to the present. Burton's most trenchant criticisms of IR in the 1960s and 1970s were really directed against a superficial version of realism. Burton's work on human needs and conflict resolution, in contrast, has had a more enduring legacy.