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Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Symbolic Play

    The Development of Social Understanding
    • 1st Edition
    • Inge Bretherton
    • English
    Symbolic Play: The Development of Social Understanding describes the development of symbolic play from infancy through the preschool years. This text is divided into 12 chapters that focus on make-believe as an activity within which young children spontaneously represent and practice their understanding of the social world. The first chapter introduces the development of event schemata produced in symbolic play, about children's management of the playframe, and about the development of subjunctive, or "what if" thought. The next chapters are devoted to the development of joint pretending, specifically the use if shared scripts in the organization of make-believe play and the subtleties of metacommunication. These chapters also emphasize the supporting role of the mother in early collaborative make-believe. These topics are followed by discussions of the child's growing ability to represent the internal states of the inanimate figures whose doing can vicariously enacts. The remaining chapters focus on social interaction through symbolic play with dolls, toy animals, object props, and language. This book will prove useful to psychologists and researchers in the fields of human development, society, and family.
  • Prehistory of the Nile Valley

    • 1st Edition
    • Fred Wendorf + 1 more
    • Stuart Struever
    • English
    Studies in Archeology: Prehistory of the Nile Valley provides information pertinent to the prehistoric settlements along the Nile Valley. This book presents brief descriptions and the characteristics of the primary archeological taxonomic entities defined in the post-Nubia work. Organized into two parts encompassing 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the physiography of the Nile Valley and the Nile River, which gives fertility to the desert and attracts people to live beside its banks. This text then describes the geology of the El-Kilh area that lies on the west bank of the Nile about 15 km north of Idfu. Other chapters consider the series of lake aggradations and recessions during the Holocene in the Fayum Depression. This book discusses as well the development of the landscape at Dishna. The final chapter deals with the abundant geological and archeological data in Nubia. This book is a valuable resource for anthropologists.
  • Law and Economics of Vertical Integration and Control

    • 1st Edition
    • Roger D. Blair + 1 more
    • English
    Law and Economics of Vertical Integration and Control focuses on the processes, methodologies, and approaches involved in the law and economics of vertical integration and control. The publication first elaborates on transaction costs, fixed proportions and contractual alternatives, and variable proportions and contractual alternatives. Discussions focus on sales revenue royalties, ownership integration, output royalties, important product-specific services, successive monopoly, advantages and limitations of internal transfers, and transaction cost determinants. The text then examines vertical integration under uncertainty and vertical integration without contractual alternatives. The book ponders on legal treatment of ownership integration and per se illegal contractual controls. Topics include tying arrangements, public policy assessment, resale price maintenance, vertical integration and the Sherman Act, market foreclosure doctrine, and the 1982 Merger Guidelines. The text also takes a look at contractual controls that are not illegal per se, alternative legal rules, and antitrust policy. The publication is a dependable reference for researchers interested in the law and economics of vertical integration and control.
  • Theory of General Economic Equilibrium

    • 1st Edition
    • Trout Rader
    • English
    Theory of General Economic Equilibrium provides information pertinent to the general economic equilibrium theory. This book covers a variety of topics, including efficiency, economic systems analysis, welfare economics, and international trade. Organized into three parts encompassing eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the theory of efficient production and growth where consumer preferences play a subordinate role. This text then examines that for the case where preferences satisfy appropriate conditions, efficiency theory is superseded as normative analysis by optimality theory. Other chapters consider the optimization of consumer preferences that leads to the decline of many families. This book discusses as well the existence of equilibrium, which is of importance to both normative and positive economics. The final chapter deals with the question of the speed with which the economic system attains its equilibrium state, which is assumed to be stationary. This book is a valuable resource for professional economists and advanced graduate students in economics.
  • Life-Span and Change in a Gerontological Perspective

    • 1st Edition
    • Joep M. A. Munnichs + 2 more
    • English
    Life-Span and Change in a Gerontological Perspective provides a critical evaluation of different methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of behavioral development in a life-span perspective. This book addresses the need for more integrated knowledge in the field of gerontological and life-span psychology. Organized into three parts encompassing 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the most significant longitudinal studies in a life-span perspective. This text then examines the developmental research in adulthood and old age, which provide insights into processes specific to the later periods of the life span and theoretical conceptualizations of development and its determinants during the whole life-span. Other chapters consider the connection between the age of longitudinal studies and the theory used implicitly. This book discusses as well data on the intelligence of the elderly. The final chapter deals with the problems and processes involving family networks and aging. This book is a valuable resource for psychologists, social scientists, and gerontologists.
  • Prehistoric Man and His Environments

    A Case Study in the Ozark Highland
    • 1st Edition
    • W. Raymond Wood + 1 more
    • English
    Prehistoric Man and His Environments: A Case Study in the Ozark Highland offers a preliminary model for the paleoecology of the western Ozark Highland in Missouri for the last 35,000 years and an interpretation of how humans have adapted to and exploited the area for the 10,500 years they are known to have lived there. The model, a set of hypotheses that includes a putative explanatory framework for the observations made at Ozark, is based on more than a decade of interdisciplinary fieldwork. Comprised of 14 chapters, this volume begins with a background on the interdisciplinary studies undertaken in the Pomme de Terre River Valley. The research has centered on the post-glacial deposits at the Rodgers Shelter and on five nearby spring bogs, each of which contained the bones of extinct mammals, pollen, and other material dating from late Pleistocene and early Holocene times. The archaeological investigations and subsequent analyses of these sites are discussed in detail. Sedimentary processes, changing subsistence patterns, material culture, and human burials at Rodgers Shelter are then analyzed. The final chapter describes the direction of research in the Ozark Highland, including plans to test aspects of the proposed model. This book will be of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, geologists, and botanists.
  • Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Change

    • 1st Edition
    • Ben G. Blount + 1 more
    • English
    Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Change focuses on the influence of sociocultural terms on the forms of languages. The selection first underscores the sociocultural dimensions of language change and language evolution and speech style. Discussions focus on the relation of speech style and language evolution, linguistic evidence of language evolution, autonomy of code and style, language contact phenomena, and extension of the concept of language. The book then takes a look at speech and social prestige in the Belizian speech community; Japanese numeral classifiers; and speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature. Topics include appearance of varietal names, differentiation and formation of specific names, six universal categories of ethnobotanical nomenclature, salience of speech, and prestige, social success, and language. The publication elaborates on color categorization in West Futunese; creolization and syntactic change in New Guinea Tok Pisin; relexification processes in Philippine Creole Spanish; and the historical and sociocultural aspects of the distribution of linguistic variants in highland Chiapas, Mexico. The selection is a valuable source of data for language experts and researchers interested in the sociocultural dimensions of language change.
  • Portfolio Theory

    With Application to Bank Asset Management
    • 1st Edition
    • Giorgio P. Szegö
    • Karl Shell
    • English
    Portfolio Theory: With Application to Bank Asset Management provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of the management of bank assets and liabilities. This book presents the mean-variance approach to obtain many analytical results and a complete insight into the portfolio selection problem. Organized into 16 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the formalization of decision-making under uncertainty. This text then presents the construction and complete analysis of a Markowitz-type portfolio selection model. Other chapters consider the problems of portfolio selection in an inflationary or multicurrency environment. This book discusses as well an approximate technique for constructing a diagonal model at the cost of increasing by one the number of investments and the number of constraints. The final chapter deals with the study of the portfolio selection problem and to the analysis of the properties of the efficient set of the mean variance criterion. This book is a valuable resource for economists.
  • Alpacas, Sheep, and Men

    The Wool Export Economy and Regional Society in Southern Peru
    • 1st Edition
    • Benjamin S. Orlove
    • E. A. Hammel
    • English
    Alpacas, Sheep, and Men: The Wool Export Economy and Regional Society in Southern Peru investigates the response of the Sicuani region in southern Peru to the wool export economy and its consequent integration into the nation-state in the late nineteenth century. The book traces the economic and political conflicts engendered by the export economy, such as those between landlords and peasants in the countryside and landlords versus traders in town. It also examines how these conflicts shaped the metamorphosis of a closed, isolated, localized society into an open one and its incorporation into national politics as well as global economics. Comprised of 11 chapters, this book begins with a review of the theories of modernization and dependency, followed by a discussion on the development of the world market for wool and the component elements of the wool economy of the entire southern Peru. Subsequent chapters focus on the regional society in more detail, with emphasis on the concept of region and the economic activities of different sectors; variation in forms of land tenure and labor relations in two provinces; the relations among herders, peasants, and artisans; and regional politics. The three major groups of artisans and workers in the region who use wool are considered, namely, urban furriers, textile mill workers, and rural weavers. The book concludes with an analysis of the fundamental importance of the wool export economy in the Sicuani region using the sectorial model. This monograph should be of interest to students and anthropologists.
  • Migration and Economic Growth in the United States

    National, Regional, and Metropolitan Perspectives
    • 1st Edition
    • Michael J. Greenwood
    • Edwin S. Mills
    • English
    Migration and Economic Growth in the United States: National, Regional, and Metropolitan Perspectives describes the post-World-War-II behavior of selected variables that explains the evolution of urban size and composition in the United States. This book is organized into nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides a brief historical overview of the urbanization process in the United States. In Chapters 2 and 3, certain national forces that shape the spatial distribution of population and economic activity during the postwar period are deliberated. Chapters 4 and 5 elaborate the behavior of the central cities and suburban rings of 62 major metropolitan areas. A model of metropolitan growth is dealt with in Chapter 6, followed by an evaluation of estimates of the model from 1950 to 1970 in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 covers a model of intrametropolitan location of employment, housing, and labor force. The last chapter elaborates the employment policy implications of population redistribution in the United States. This publication is beneficial to economists and specialists concerned with migration and economic growth in the United States.