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Elsevier

Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Qsar es-Seghir

    An Archaeological View of Medieval Life
    • 1st Edition
    • Charles L. Redman
    • English
    Qsar es-Seghir: An Archaeological View of Medieval Life presents the findings of archaeological investigations at Qsar es-Seghir, a medieval port midway between Tangier and Ceuta on the Moroccan shores of the Strait of Gibraltar. The archaeology and material inventory of Qsar es-Seghir are described, along with the reconstruction of the city based on archaeological analysis. Comprised of seven chapters, this book begins with an introduction to Qsar es-Seghir and an overview of the Moroccan-American Archaeological Project that was launched with the support of the Smithsonian Institution and the government of Morocco to study life in this ancient Islamic city during the medieval period. After documenting the history of Qsar es-Seghir, the Islamic city is described based on the accounts of geographers and historians and then as it emerged through the archaeological excavations. Emphasis is on the architecture and town plan as they reveal the organizing principles of the society and the daily lifeways of its inhabitants. Subsequent chapters focus on the artifacts used by the people of Qsar es-Seghir, including tools, weapons, tableware, and jewelry; the activities that were conducted at Qsar es-Seghir; and the town plan, fortifications, monuments, and housing at Qsar es-Seghir as a Portuguese colony. This monograph should be of value to students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, as well as to laypersons interested in medieval life.

  • Household and Economy

    Welfare Economics of Endogenous Fertility
    • 1st Edition
    • Marc Nerlove + 2 more
    • Karl Shell
    • English
    Household and Economy: Welfare Economics of Endogenous Fertility deals with welfare economics and the socially optimal population size, as well as the social consequences of individual choice with respect to family size within each generation. The general equilibrium implications of endogenous fertility for a number of issues of population policy are discussed. In addition to their own consumption, the number of children and the utility of each child is assumed to enter the utility function of the parents. Comprised of 10 chapters, this volume begins with a review of social welfare criteria for optimal population size and the static theory of optimal population size, optimal population growth with exogenous fertility, and the theory of endogenous fertility. The reader is then introduced to the basic principles of welfare economics and the economics of externalities, followed by a summary of the traditional theory of household behavior. Subsequent chapters focus on optimal population size according to various social welfare criteria; real and potential externalities generated by the endogeneity of fertility; and the principal alternative reason for having children: to transfer resources from the present to support the future consumption of parents in old age. The book concludes by assessing the implications of endogenous fertility for within-generation income distribution policies and reflecting on the directions in which future research may be fruitful. This monograph will be of value to economists, social scientists, students of welfare economics, and those who wish to understand the contribution of economic analysis to an improved understanding of population policy.

  • The Shanidar Neandertals

    • 1st Edition
    • Erik Trinkaus
    • English
    The Shanidar Neandertals describes the functional morphology of the Neanderthals and their place in human evolution based on a paleontological study of fossils discovered at Shanidar Cave in northeastern Iraq. Functional interpretations are provided that describe and discuss the individual fossils. The phylogenetic implications of the Shanidar specimens are also discussed. Comprised of 14 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the Neanderthal remains from the Shanidar Cave and the paleontological data obtained from the fossils. The discussion then turns to the history of the excavations in Shanidar Cave and the discoveries of the Neanderthals; morphometrics of the Shanidar remains; and determination of the age and sex of the Shanidar Neanderthals. Subsequent chapters focus on various aspects of the Neanderthal fossils, including the cranial and mandibular remains; the dental remains; the axial skeleton; and the upper and lower limb remains. The immature remains are also described, along with bodily proportions and the estimation of stature. This monograph will be of interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and paleopathologists.

  • Language Development and Aphasia in Children

    New Essays and a Translation of Kindersprache und Aphasie by Emil Fröschels
    • 1st Edition
    • R. W. Rieber
    • English
    Language Development and Aphasia in Children: New Essays and a Translation of Kindersprache und Aphasie by Emil Fröschels deals with problems of theory, method, and therapy as well as the interpretation of language development and aphasia in children. A translation of Emil Fröschels' book Kindersprache und Aphasie into English (Child Language and Aphasia) is included. Comprised of 26 chapters, this book begins with a historical review that illustrates how the ideas of other influential figures laid the groundwork for Child Language and Aphasia (1918), including Géraud de Cordemoy and Denis Diderot. The discussion then turns to the environment that surrounded Child Language and Aphasia and some of Fröschels' observations regarding the nature of aphasia in children. The effect of left hemisphere arteriopathy on communicative intent, expression, and language comprehension in a right-handed nine-year-old girl is also examined. Subsequent chapters focus on theories of reading and language development; the psychology of association; the theory of the transitive contents of consciousness; and stuttering in children and aphasics. This monograph should be of considerable interest to students, researchers, and specialists in the fields of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and neurophysiology.

  • 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.

  • The Regulatory Process and Labor Earnings

    • 1st Edition
    • Ronald G. Ehrenberg
    • Richard B. Freeman
    • English
    The Regulatory Process and Labor Earnings focuses on one form of government intervention in the marketplace—state regulation of public utilities. This book provides the most comprehensive study of labor costs in a regulated industry and includes a summary of a major econometric study. This text addresses a number of related issues, such as the effect of regulatory process to the structure of collective bargaining and labor earnings in regulated industries, legal rights of state utility commissions to deny proposed rate increases that are based on excessive upturns in labor cost, and incentive schemes that can be used to encourage public utilities to hold down labor and non-labor cost increases. This publication is a good reference for students and individuals involved in the regulatory process.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Production Sets

    • 1st Edition
    • Murray C. Kemp
    • English
    Production Sets is a 12-chapter text that provides a comprehensive account of the properties of production sets. After a brief history of the analysis of production set possibilities, this book goes on examining the flatness of the transformation surface and the properties of production set possibilities with pure intermediate products. The succeeding chapters cover the shape aspects of production sets and the nonsubstitution over the production-possibili... frontier. These topics are followed by discussions of some implications of variable returns to scale, specifically the relation between output responses and the shape of the locus of production possibilities. The final chapters explore the production-possibili... set with public intermediate goods and the scale effect of public goods on production-possibili... sets. These chapters also look into the properties of the per capita production set in the two-sector model of economic growth. This book will prove useful to economists, teachers, and students.

  • Monkeys as Perceivers

    • 1st Edition
    • Roger T. Davis
    • Leonard A. Rosenblum
    • English
    Primate Behavior: Developments in Field and Laboratory Research, Volume 3: Monkeys as Perceivers illustrates some general procedures for studying nonverbal perceiving in monkeys. This book takes into account the environment that was present when the monkeys were evolving their basic patterns of behavior in order to describe monkeys as perceivers. The topics include the general requirements for a description of nonverbal perception, inferences about attention, and complex conflicting cues of space. The interpretation of spatial discontiguity, alternative ways to measure detour performance, and methodological problems in specifying form are also described. This publication likewise covers the confusion errors in short-term memory and color perception. This volume is suitable for biologists and researchers interested in monkeys as perceivers.

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