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Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

    • Toward a General Theory of Social Control

      Fundamentals
      • 1st Edition
      • Donald Black
      • English
      Studies on Law and Social Control: Toward a General Theory of Social Control, Volume 1: Fundamentals focuses on the dynamics, practices, and mechanisms involved in social control. The selection first underscores social control as a dependent variable and division of labor in social control. Discussions focus on the explanation of division of social control labor; concept of division of social control labor; conceptions of the relationship between law and social control; quantity of normative behavior; and concept of social control. The text then takes a look at the stage of disputing to complaining, liability and social structure, and social organization of vengeance. Topics include revenge among inmates, contingency of vengeance, design of vengeance, liability and conflict management, idiom of liability in stateless societies, and complaining and the direction of law. The publication ponders on the variability of punishment, compensation in cross-cultural perspective, therapy and social solidarity, logic of mediation, and gossips and scandals. Concerns include role of gossip in small-scale societies, therapeutic social control in individualistic groups and tribal societies, social organization of compensation, and existing theories of punishment. The selection is a vital source of data for sociologists and researchers interested in the fundamentals of social control.
    • Imagery

      Current Cognitive Approaches
      • 1st Edition
      • Sydney Joelson Segal
      • English
      Imagery: Current Cognitive Approaches focuses on cognitive approaches to the study of imagery. Topics range from the brief image or icon, which serves as the source of storage in short-term memory, to global behavior changes, including hallucinatory imagery under the influence of drugs and hypnotic states. The role of the image in verbal learning and the relationship of the image to both sensory and cognitive aspects of perception are also considered. Comprised of six chapters, this book begins with a discussion on the relationship between imagery and language and a review of some specific evidence pertaining to the psycholinguistic problems of meaning, comprehension, and the learning and retention of verbal material. Subsequent chapters deal with visual perception and the function of iconic storage; different theoretical views on the definition of image; and processing of the stimulus in imagery and perception. The book concludes by analyzing how vivid imagery, "hallucinations", and other alterations in visual perception are produced by LSD and also by suggestions given under hypnosis. This monograph will be of interest to graduate students, teachers, and researchers of cognitive psychology, as well as to clinical psychologists and psychiatrists.
    • The Unity of the Senses

      Interrelations Among the Modalities
      • 1st Edition
      • Lawrence E. Marks
      • Edward C. Carterette + 1 more
      • English
      Academic Press Series in Cognition and Perception: The Unity of the Senses: Interrelations Among the Modalities focuses on the perceptual processes, approaches, and methodologies involved in studies on the unity of the senses. The publication first elaborates on the doctrines of equivalent information, analogous sensory attributes and qualities, and common psychophysical properties. Discussions focus on discrimination, sensitivity, sound symbolism, intensity, brightness, and cross-modal perception of size, form, and space. The text then examines the doctrine of neural correspondences and sound symbolism in poetry, including sound and meaning, analogue and formal representation, vowel symbolism in poetry, coding perceptual information, coding sensory attributes, and evolution and development. The manuscript takes a look at synesthetic metaphor in poetry, as well as unity of the senses and synesthetic metaphor, warm and cool colors, synesthetic metaphors of odor and music, metaphorical imperative, and the music of Conrad Aiken. The publication is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in the unity of the senses.
    • Reinforcement

      Behavioral Analyses
      • 1st Edition
      • R. M. Gilbert + 1 more
      • English
      Reinforcement: Behavioral Analyses covers the proceedings of the 1970 Symposium on Schedule-induced and Schedule-Dependent Phenomena, held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This symposium highlights theoretically inclined papers on reinforcement processes. This text contains 10 chapters and begins with a description of how behavior is induced by various environmental events, especially reinforcing events, as well as the relationship between control by inducing stimuli and reinforceability. The subsequent chapters deal with reinforcement phenomena in terms of preference relations and the conditioned emotional responses in terms of opposing motivational processes. These topics are followed by reviews of schedule-dependent effects of preaversive stimuli and the maintenance of behavior by apparent reinforcers that might be expected to punish, as well as the identification of critical variable that underlie the phenomenon. Other chapters examine the interactions between operant and responded conditioning processes. The final chapters outline the experiments on behavior stream whose hallmark is reinforcement if the absence of specified behavior. These chapters emphasize the analogy between the evolution of species and the modification of behavior. This book will be of value to behaviorists and psychologists.
    • Communication and Affect

      Language and Thought
      • 1st Edition
      • Patricia Pliner + 2 more
      • English
      Communication and Affect: Language and Thought is a collection of papers presented at the second symposium on Communication and Affect held at Erindale College, University of Toronto, in March 1972. This volume contains a series of papers dealing with neobehavioristic approach to language and thought. The individual papers represent a broad spectrum of topics that are linked by their common neobehavioristic methodology and by their subject matter dealing with human verbal and symbolic behavior. Topics discussed in the compendium include the linguistic concept of marked and unmarked attributes and its relation to cognitive structure and affect; a comparison of the pictorial and verbal modes of representing information; the evolution of human cognition; empirical and theoretical approaches to the question of localization of language functions in the human brain; and the nature of implicit communications in experimental situations. Psychologists, behavioral scientists, linguists, and researchers in the field of human communication will find the book invaluable.
    • Regional Analysis

      Volume 2: Social Systems
      • 1st Edition
      • Carol A. Smith
      • English
      Regional Analysis, Volume II: Social Systems consists of studies on the general applications of the regional framework for analyzing socioeconomic systems as they exist and develop in territorial-environm... systems. This volume is concerned with social systems, emphasizing the interrelationships among the institutional components of complex societies. Marriage and kinship, political organization, formation of ethnic and cultural-territorial groups, and stratification systems that are affected by regional-environment... variables are also covered. This publication is beneficial to social and regional scientists, geographers, economists, social anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists, and political scientists intending to acquire knowledge of the implications of rural-urban relations and regional settlement patterns.
    • Networks and Marginality

      Life in a Mexican Shantytown
      • 1st Edition
      • Larissa Adler Lomnitz
      • E. A. Hammel
      • English
      Networks and Marginality: Life in a Mexican Shantytown describes the life and survival of economically marginal or poor people in Cerrada del Cóndor, a shantytown of about 200 houses in the southern part of Mexico City. The field work is carried out between 1969 and 1971 using combined anthropological and quantitative methods. This book is composed of 10 chapters and begins with an overview of the theoretical concepts essential for an adequate comprehension of the later chapters, followed by a summary of the development and evolution of Mexico City as they relate to Cerrada del Cóndor. Considerable chapters examine the migration process, the economy, the family and kinship patterns, and the reciprocity networks and associated mechanisms of survival value in the shantytown. The remaining chapters discuss some of the relevant theoretical points raised by the findings, including the reciprocity, the confianza concept, and the importance of informal economic exchange in complex urban societies. This book will prove useful to economists, anthropologists, social scientists, and researchers.
    • Learning Strategies

      • 1st Edition
      • Harold F. O'Neil
      • English
      Learning Strategies describes a program of research in learning strategies initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1976. The goal of the program is to improve learning, decrease training time, and reduce training costs by developing and evaluating instructional materials designed to teach basic intellectual and affective skills. This book records the program's progress and suggests further avenues for research. Comprised of eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the teaching and learning approaches to the improvement of education, followed by a discussion on DARPA's preliminary work on an empirically based learning-strategy training program as well as its efforts to expand and modify the program. In order to provide an intellectual foundation for this program, several fields are surveyed for potential learning strategies, namely, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, behavioral modification, and motor learning. An instructional systems development approach for learning strategies is also proposed. The final chapter deals with models of evaluation extant in education and training and discusses the specific application of transactional evaluation to the DARPA Learning Strategies Research Program. This monograph should be of interest to students, teachers, and educational psychologists.
    • Stimulating Creativity

      Individual Procedures
      • 1st Edition
      • Morris I. Stein
      • English
      Stimulating Creativity: Volume 1, Individual Procedures discusses the psychological and social factors affecting creativity, including techniques applicable in technological and consumer-related product areas. Creativity is a process consisting of three overlapping stages—hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing, and the communication of results. The book reviews past criteria of creativity, and then suggests techniques, based on social and psychological differentiating characteristics of creativity, that can stimulate creativity. The text also considers some procedures which the individual can use to stimulate creativity, or overcome blocks that stop creativity. The book explains in detail individual procedures, group procedures, as well the techniques appropriate in each stage of the creative process. The text notes that the creative process occurs in a social context, primarily manifested during the communication stage. The book considers the following group procedures for stimulating creativity, namely, brainstorming, creative problem-solving, synectics, and a personality-insight approach. Examples of programs employed in different companies or organization can free an individual from difficulties and problems, make him more receptive to other programs, or he can use these programs as basis to develop newer programs. The book can prove insightful for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, child educators, students or professors in psychology, for parents of young children or adolescents, and also for general readers interested in self-improvement.
    • Corporate Planning and LAN

      Information Systems as Forums
      • 1st Edition
      • Ru Michael Sabre + 1 more
      • English
      Corporate Planning and LAN: Information Systems as Forums provides information pertinent to the Forum Information System (FIS), a conceptual basis for all corporate planning. This book presents an information system which, by means of LAN, organizational development style prototyping, and organizational learning utilization, can open communications among managers, executives, owners, and employees in a corporate setting. Organized into 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the four phases to the eventual use of the FIS in a corporate setting. This text then explores FIS as part of a paradigm shift in corporate information systems, which began with the introduction of the use of computers. Other chapters consider the actual creation of the LAN-based FIS, the technical details of implementation, the programming, and the hardware configuration. This book discusses as well the organizational learning that occurs when using the system. This book is a valuable resource for executives, managers, employees, and corporate decision makers.