BACK TO THE FUTURE: POSTNARRATIVIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Jouni‐Matti Kuukkanen has written an important book. It directly confronts a key theoretical dilemma that has shadowed debate in historiography for several decades: histories cannot be written without using some narrative structure or other, but epistemological evaluation cannot be applied to narratives qua narrative. Thus, if empirical inquiry takes the form of a history, then it cannot be rationally evaluable, and if rationally evaluable, empirical inquiry cannot be in the form of a history. Kuukkanen's book both directly confronts and proposes a strategy for surmounting this tired and tiresome theoretical barrier. Kuukkanen deserves great credit for attempting to reshape a long‐stalled debate in a way that enables the theoretical options to be imagined anew. Yet his structuring of the oppositional tendencies engenders some ongoing problems regarding how to understand the philosophical stakes and options. This review argues that achieving Kuukkanen's postnarrativist future requires going back to past epistemic concerns discarded because they were tied to conceptions of logic and explanation that could not be reconciled with narrative form. Kuukkanen practices postnarrativism but still preaches a prenarrativist conception of logic. To reach his promised future, to actually overcome the dilemma that he rightly seeks to transcend, one must actually have the courage of Kuukkanen's pragmatist convictions.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in This Article:
Scholars, Sufis and Saints: Muslim Religious Institutions Since 1500. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie.
Sayyid Jam ad-D"al-Afghānī": A Political Biography. By Nikki R. Keddie.
Kit lkhtil Us-Madhib of Qzāī Nuā b. Muāmmad. Edited with a critical introduction by S.T. Lokhand walla.
Islam in Uganda :Islamisation Through a Centralised State in Pre-Colonial Africa. By Arye Oded.
The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. By William B. Quandt, Fuad Jaber, Ann Mosely Lesch.
Arab Politics in the Soviet Mirror. By Aryeh Yodfat.     

EVALUATION FOR CUTBACK MANAGEMENT IN SMALL CITIES: CAN THE PROBLEMS BE SOLVED?

Problems of undertaking applied research in small cities planning economic cutbacks are explored. Researchers face problems in balancing administrative and political pressures. Predetermined ideas held by members of the city council on how the city should cut back services might cause politicians to ignore the findings of the study. While the belief of department heads that the study was simply going to excuse cutbacks could cause difficulty in data gathering efforts. In overcoming these problems care was needed in defining precisely what topics to study, in getting mutual consent on technical issues and in protecting the findings from possible distortion.     

Book reviews

S. Schafer, The Political Criminal: The Problem of Morality and Crime, Free Press, New York, 1974, pp. 179, $8.95.

Audrey Williamson, Thomas Paine: His Life. Work and Times, London, George Allen & Unwin. 1973, pp. 296, $14.40.

Anthony Clunies Ross and John Langmore, eds, Alternative Strategies for Papua New Guinea, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1973, pp. viii + 263, $5.95.

Frank Stevens, Aborigines in the Northern Territory Cattle Industry, ANU Press, Canberra, 1974, pp. xiv + 226, $7.95.

K. Lindgren, H. H. Mason and B. L. J. Gordon, The Corporation and Australian Society, Law Book Co., Sydney, 1974, pp. v + 334, $14.50.

J. R. Davis and P. Spearritt, Sydney at the Census: 1971 A Social Atlas, Urban Research Unit, ANU, Canberra, 1974.     

FACTORS AFFECTING RESPONSE TO NOISE IN OUTDOOR RECREATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

As the world gets more and more crowded, silence becomes a rarer and rarer natural resource. (Rennicke 1987, 27)     

Police and Political Violence in the 1960s and 1970s: Germany and Italy in a Comparative Perspective

Notwithstanding the significant differences between the German and Italian police models (federal and civil vs. centralised and militarised), in both countries the confrontation with the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a profound impact on police conceptions and public order strategies. Police forces in some German federal states (West Berlin) followed a hard line until the late 1960s, while in others (Munich, Hamburg) reforms to the Weimar-centred police intervention tactics took place beginning in the early to mid-1960s. In Italy, traditional police conceptions and strategies remained largely unchanged and re-emerged in 1968. Here, a movement from within the police led to the demilitarisation and unionisation of the state police in 1981. In both countries, fighting left-wing terrorism in the 1970s stimulated technical modernisation and enhanced the centralisation of the police. In critical response to police tactics, in the late 1970s Germany police matters were increasingly perceived as a concern not only of the state but of civil society—even if policing remained a highly contested terrain. In Italy, such matters largely remained state concerns in which only politicians and internal security specialists were entitled to intervene.