MSH: Colloques – serie

What can or should be done to ward off or alleviate the effect of financial crises? The papers in this book examine this question, focusing on particular crises, notably those of 1836, 1873, 1920 and 1929. Based on a historical consideration of the nature and propagation of financial crises, the major theoretical issues raised by the contributors centre on whether a financial system, of a nation or of the capitalist world as a whole, is fragile or robust. Although no precise definitions are agreed upon, financial crises are distinguished from crises of unemployment or crises of wartime devastation. The book is based on the papers and proceedings of a conference held in Bad Homberg, West Germany, in May 1979 under the auspices of the Maison de Science de I'Homme and with the support of the Werner-Reimers Stiftung.

The papers in this volume represent the first attempt at a coherent analysis of the institutional structure of French science and technology in the nineteenth century. They treat both research and education and cover the main developments in the period from the establishment of the Napoleonic University in 1808 to the outbreak of the First World War. The papers reflect the intense interest in the social history of French science since the Revolution and convey a vivid impression of different modes of thought in a particularly active field of research. The contributions stress and develop more clearly than in any previous study, the theme of structural change in a complex interlocking network of institutions. Far from being an unresponsive monolith, France's system of scientific research and education proved capable of significant modification and expansion, especially in the later nineteenth century. To an extent that has not been fully recognised by historians, the French did respond to the changing demands of an industrialising economy and to the intellectual, economic and political challenge of the new Germany - a point that needs to be taken into account in discussions of the supposed decline of French science in the nineteenth century.

What can or should be done to ward off or alleviate the effect of financial crises? The papers in this book examine this question, focusing on particular crises, notably those of 1836, 1873, 1920 and 1929. Based on a historical consideration of the nature and propagation of financial crises, the major theoretical issues raised by the contributors centre on whether a financial system, of a nation or of the capitalist world as a whole, is fragile or robust. Although no precise definitions are agreed upon, financial crises are distinguished from crises of unemployment or crises of wartime devastation. The book is based on the papers and proceedings of a conference held in Bad Homberg, West Germany, in May 1979 under the auspices of the Maison de Science de I'Homme and with the support of the Werner-Reimers Stiftung.

The essays in this volume were first published in 1979 and were written by specialists in different aspects of the study of pastoralism, covering all major groups of nomadic pastoralists. They show how the study of nomadic pastoralism can contribute to the understanding of the forms of human existence. The essays examine the relationships between the economic and social organization of pastoral societies and the ecological constraints to which they are subjected, discuss the factors which contribute to the emergence of social and economic inequalities within nomadic societies and analyse whether the evolution of pastoral society is a function of the contact which nomadic groups have with settled agricultural and urban societies or of the contradictions internal to pastoral societies themselves.