Cultural History

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Le thème de la concordance fait partie d'une longue tradition européenne relative aux diffé-rences religieuses. Bien que déjà présente lors de l'apologétique des premiers siècles de l'ère chrétienne, et au Moyen Âge, la concordance prend véritablement forme au temps de la Renaissance. D'une manière générale, tout au long des millénaires de son histoire, le christia-nisme évolue entre deux pôles opposés, celui de l'exclusivisme religieux hérité du judaïsme et de l'Ancien Testament, et celui d'une sorte d'inclusivisme fondé sur des sources grecques et romaines. Tandis que l'Ancien Testament présentait toute forme d'éloignement par rapport au culte de Yahvé comme manifestation d'idolâtrie, les philosophes grecs et latins avaient exprimé davantage de compréhension, et des attitudes plus inclusives, vis-à-vis des nombreuses formes d'expression religieuse de leur temps, défendant son identité particulière, n'admettant aucun compromis avec la culture hellénique ou romaine. Rome, en revanche, au cours de son expansion impériale, avait tendance à incorporer les dieux étrangers en un panthéon fondé de plus en plus sur un processus de réinterprétation (interpretatio romana). En fin de compte, nous le verrons, les problèmes relatifs à la concordance proviennent du conflit entre l'exclusivisme bi-blique et l'inclusivisme gréco-romain; et le point tournant de l'histoire de ce thème correspond à l'avènement de la Réforme protestante conjointement avec l'enrichissement des connaissances apporté par les explorations géographiques, lesquelles mirent à l'épreuve la concordance, et montrèrent son incompatibilité irrémédiable non seulement avec l'exclusivisme biblique mais aussi avec l'autorité même de la Bible. Origines de la « concordance » Pour bien comprendre son attitude vis-à-vis de la différence religieuse, il faut considérer le christianisme dans le contexte religieux de ses origines. Les premiers chrétiens vivaient du temps de la culture judaïque du Second Temple, entre 515 de l'ère chrétienne, ère de la construction du Temple à la suite de la captivité babylonienne, et 570, date de la destruction du Temple, et du commencement de la diaspora. Au cours de cette période les Juifs avaient la difficile tâche de définir leur identité à l'encontre de la culture hellénique, d'abord imposée au monde médi-terranéen par Alexandre le Grand, puis adoptée par les Romains comme la koinè culturelle de l'Empire. En réaction à cette situation les communautés juives s'affermirent dans leur apparte-nance à leurs anciennes origines pastorales, dans leur croyance en un seul Dieu, leur dévotion à l'égard de la Torah et surtout dans leur attente angoissée du Messie annoncé par les prophètes de l'Ancien Testament. Par ailleurs, les premiers chrétiens vivaient dans un contexte dominé par la culture ro-mano-hellénique et devaient se conformer à ses formes particulières d'ìnclusivisme religieux. Depuis les débuts de son expansion à travers l'Italie et la Méditerranée, les Romains avaient doi 10.1075/chlel.xxx.01sor

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of traffic forecasts in transportation infrastructure projects. The sample used is the largest of its kind, covering 210 projects in 14 nations worth U.S.$59 billion. The study shows with very high statistical significance that forecasters generally do a poor job of estimating the demand for transportation infrastructure projects. For 9 out of 10 rail projects, passenger forecasts are overestimated; the average overestimation is 106%. For half of all road projects, the difference between actual and forecasted traffic is more than ±20%. The result is substantial financial risks, which are typically ignored or downplayed by planners and decision makers to the detriment of social and economic welfare. Our data also show that forecasts have not become more accurate over the 30-year period studied, despite claims to the contrary by forecasters. The causes of inaccuracy in forecasts are different for rail and road projects, with political causes playing a larger role for rail than for road. The cure is transparency, accountability, and new forecasting methods. The challenge is to change the governance structures for forecasting and project development. Our article shows how planners may help achieve this.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

In this (2003) paper I seek to challenge the dominant modes of conceiving the relationship between memory and national identity, and in so doing offer analysts of nationalism an improved understanding of the dynamics of national identity formation. The concept of collective memory is invoked regularly in attempts to explain the pervasiveness and power of nationalism. I argue that the concept is misused routinely in this context, and instead I employ a ‘social agency’ approach to theorizing, whereby memory is conceived in a more limited and cogent manner. I argue that it is important to distinguish clearly between memory and mythology, both of which are essential to understanding national identity, for not only are the two concepts distinct, they can also act in opposition to each other. Following from this I introduce the notion of a ‘mythscape’, the temporally and spatially extended discursive realm in which the myths of the nation are forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly. Through employing the idea of a mythscape we can relate memory and mythology to each other in a theoretically profitable way.

This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure developments pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, it explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not those of their competition, that gain approval and funding. This results in the ‘survival of the unfittest’, in which often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, it presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large-infrastructure projects with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.

A major source of risk in project management is inaccurate forecasts of project costs, demand, and other impacts. The paper presents a promising new approach to mitigating such risk, based on theories of decision making under uncertainty which won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics. First, the paper documents inaccuracy and risk in project management. Second, it explains inaccuracy in terms of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Third, the theoretical basis is presented for a promising new method called "reference class forecasting," which achieves accuracy by basing forecasts on actual performance in a reference class of comparable projects and thereby bypassing both optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Fourth, the paper presents the first instance of practical reference class forecasting, which concerns cost forecasts for large transportation infrastructure projects. Finally, potentials for and barriers to reference class forecasting are assessed.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

"Over budget, over time, over and over again" appears to be an appropriate slogan for large, complex infrastructure projects. This article explains why cost, benefits, and time forecasts for such projects are systematically over-optimistic in the planning phase. The underlying reasons for forecasting errors are grouped into three categories: delusions or honest mistakes; deceptions or strategic manipulation of information or processes; or bad luck. Delusion and deception have each been addressed in the management literature before, but here they are jointly considered for the first time. They are specifically applied to infrastructure problems in a manner that allows both academics and practitioners to understand and implement the suggested corrective procedures. The article provides a framework for analyzing the relative explanatory power of delusion and deception. It also suggests a simplified framework for analyzing the complex principal-agent relationships that are involved in the approval and construction of large infrastructure projects, which can be used to improve forecasts. Finally, the article illustrates reference class forecasting, an outside view de-biasing technique that has proven successful in overcoming both delusion and deception in private and public investment decisions.

„Życie rzeczy w powojennej Polsce" to opowieść o kilku latach po drugiej wojnie światowej z perspektywy codziennych przedmiotów – nie tylko tych rzeczywistych, ale również wyobrażonych. O poszukiwaniach ukrytego skarbu, o gościnnych przedmiotach na Ziemiach Odzyskanych, o szabrze wprawiającym rzeczy w nieustanny ruch z rąk do rąk, o zachodnich darach płynących do Polski, wreszcie o wizjach nowych przedmiotów kształtujących nowy socjalistyczny porządek. To również opowieść o długu zaciągniętym u poprzednich właścicieli przejmowanych przedmiotów, który staje się nieusuwalną częścią polskiej tożsamości.

Nie jest to jednak historia rzeczy, ale próba dotarcia do historii w rzeczach – nie rekonstrukcja biografii konkretnych przedmiotów, ale poszukiwanie zastygłych w nich pragnień i fantazji polskiej kultury. Jakie emocje i pragnienia rzeczy pobudzały? W jaki sposób nadawano im nowe znaczenia? W jaki sposób przedmioty były używane do organizowania i przekształcania emocji – niepewności, obaw, ale i nadziei? Jaką rolę widziała w nich nowa władza i jak wykorzystywała je do budowy nowego porządku?

This essay explores the nature and significance of aesthetic approaches to the study of word politics.  More specifically, it contrasts aesthetic with mimetic forms of representation.  The latter, which have dominated international relations scholarship, seek to represent the political as authentically as possible.  An aesthetic approach, by contrast, assumes that there is always a gap between a form of representation and what is represented therewith.  Rather than ignoring or seeking to narrow this gap, as mimetic approaches do, aesthetic insight recognises that the inevitable difference between the represented and its representation is the very location of politics.  The essay argues for the need to reclaim the political value of the aesthetic, not to replace one orthodoxy with another, but to broaden our abilities to comprehend and deal with the key dilemmas of world politics.  Images, narratives and sounds could then be appreciated alongside more accepted sources of knowledge about the international.  But embarking on such an aesthetic turn amounts to more than simply adding an additional, sensual layer of interpretation.  It calls for a significant shift away from a model of thought that recognises external appearances and channels them into one form of common sense, towards an approach that generates a more diverse but also more direct encounter with the political.  The latter allows for productive interactions across different faculties, including sensibility, imagination and reason, without

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.

Dans le corpus des terres cuites féminines du Levant Sud, les figurines issues du même moule constituent un élément clé de contact entre différentes régions et favorisent la compréhension de l’échange culturel à un stade précoce (Xe/IXe siècle avant notre ère) du développement d’entités politiquement distinctes dans la région. L’existence de plusieurs figurines issues du même moule sur le haut plateau de la Jordanie, dans la vallée du Jourdain et sur les hautes terres occidentales révèle un intérêt commun d’utiliser de telles figurines. Sur la base de quelques réminiscences (historiques ?) dans la tradition biblique, les figurines issues du même moule et particulièrement les figurines au tambour modifiées de la même région témoignent des éléments d’anciens traditions votives transrégionales. Le fait que le tambour de ces figurines a été remplacé par un bébé ou que le bébé a été attaché secondairement sur le tambour de la mère fournit des données précieuses sur la fonction de ces figurines. D’autres recherches sont nécessaires sur l’usage des terres cuites féminines au tambour dans les contextes du rituel, du vœu et d’anciennes pratiques votives.

This article provides an answer to what has been called the biggest problem in theorizing and understanding planning: the ambivalence about power found among planning researchers, theorists, and students. The author narrates how he came to work with issues of power and gives an example of how the methodology he developed for power studies—phronetic planning research—may be employed in practice. Phronetic planning research follows the tradition of power studies running from Machiavelli and Nietzsche to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. It focuses on four value-rational questions: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What should be done? These questions are exemplified for a specific instance of Scandinavian urban planning. The author finds that the questions, and their answers, make a difference to planning in practice. They make planning research matter.

Literary societies are a focus both of literary studies and social history.  In particular, they played an important role in the modernization of Central Europe in the 19th century. Becoming widespread in this era, they helped develop a democratic  political culture and disseminated literature to a wider audience. Hungarian historiography has depicted this period as one of large-scale social segregation and a fragmented middle class which refused to have any contact with the bourgeoisie,  while Slovakian historians have emphasized the exclusion of Slovaks from elite society.  Kassa (today Košice), which was then situated in northern Hungary and is now the largest city in eastern Slovakia, has, however, been recognized as a more complicated example that challenges these assumptions.  For instance, the importance of local citizenry was preserved in the first half of the 19th century, in contrary to other cities in Hungary.  The purpose of this article is to examine the composition of the most prominent social club of the town to provide fresh insights into the social history of Kassa in this period, and the larger processes shaping urban life in Central Europe in the period before the First World War. In particular, this article argues that a culture of both pluralism and exclusion was evident in the membership of Kassa’s Kazinczy Circle, and that their affiliations reveal a more complicated social network in the city, which both preserved communal solidarity during a period of rapid urbanization and encouraged the growth of modern democratic values.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

Modernity does not possess a monopoly on mass incarceration, population fears, forced migration, famine, or climatic change. Indeed, contemporary and early modern concerns over these matters have extended interests in Thomas Malthus. Yet, despite extensive research on population issues, little work explicates the genesis of population knowledge production or how the process of intellectual transfer occurred during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This paper examines the Delessert network's instrumental role in cultivating, curating, and circulating knowledge that popularized Malthusian population theory, including the theory's constitutive elements of political economy, philanthropy, industry, agriculture, and botany. I show how deviant, nonconformist groups suffered forced migration for their political philosophy, particularly during the revolutionary 1790s, resulting in their imprisonment and migration to America. A consequence of these social shifts was the diffusion and dissemination of population theory—as a pursuit of scientific knowledge and exploration—across both sides of the Atlantic. By focusing on the Delesserts and their social network, I find that a byproduct of inter and intra continental migration among European elites was a knowledge exchange that stimulated Malthus's thesis on population and Genevan Augustin Pyramus Candolle's research on botany, ultimately culminating in Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and human evolution.

Flora Thompson's account of the English countryside during the eighteen-eighties and nineties – Lark Rise to Candleford – continues to be an important source for rural history. In that text the protagonist's mother says that witches had 'all died out', and none had been known in her generation. The informants of late Victorian folklorists sometimes made similar remarks. Historians have taken such statements about witchcraft being a thing of the past at face value, inferring from them that plebeian concern about its influence was disappearing during the final decades of the nineteenth century. This article uses evidence from the English south midlands, and insights provided by anthropological studies of sorcery, to suggest an alternative interpretation. Rather than being a sincere statement of belief, assertions that witches had 'all died out' were part of a strategy to avoid speaking about a dreaded subject. Such pains were taken because it was believed that talking about witchcraft was a dangerous activity that would lead to the bewitchment of anyone with a loose tongue.

In an environment of racial tension and conflict in Southern California during the first half of the twentieth century, the Ramona Pageant and the plays by the Padua Hills Mexican Players offered Mexican American performers a vital role in perpetuating cultural memory through music and dance. The Ramona Pageant, which began in Hemet, California in 1923 and is still in operation, remains one of the longest-running pageants, or historical dramas, in U.S. history. Similarly, the Mexican Players were founded during the Great Depression in 1931 in Claremont, California and performed continuously for more than forty years. This article argues that Hispanic musicians achieved a degree of cultural agency in these plays through the performance of Mexican folk music, especially canciones (love songs) and corridos (narrative ballads), which were essential elements in the " soundscape " of the Southwest. Although Anglos created and directed the plays, they did not create or perform the music. In spite of the plays' largely romanticized portrayals of California's Spanish and Mexican past, they provided some of the few prominent forums in Southern California for Mexican American musicians and dancers during the first half of the twentieth century.

It is often assumed that the history of 19th-century France was determined by a struggle between anti-religious progressive reformers and Catholic reactionaries, culminating in laïcité. In this process, the role of socialism as a secular force is usually taken for granted. This article will argue that a more complex approach to socialism can contribute to a better understanding of secularization and the emergence of “modern” forms of religion. Firstly, it will be discussed that pre-1848 social reformers were highly religious, despite their depiction in historical narratives influenced by Marxism. Secondly, it will be shown that socialist ideas continued, after 1848, in new religious movements. This will be demonstrated on the basis of the intellectual development of the socialist Alphonse-Louis Constant who, under his pen-name Eliphas Lévi, is regarded as the founder of occultism. An analysis of his writings will help to illuminate the ambiguous relationship between socialism and secularization.

Cet article propose une réflexion d’ensemble autour de la mutation fondamentale de l’humanisme en tant que « mouvement culturel », en distinguant une période charnière – les années 1400-1430 en Italie – et en interrogeant la notion même de mouvement comme catégorie d’analyse spécifique et stimulante pour l’histoire intellectuelle. Un effet de seuil décisif est caractérisé, fruit de processus mémoriels, sociologiques et savants corrélés. L’émergence d’une conscience de groupe ancrée dans un rapport réflexif à l’histoire, l’élaboration d’une gamme de pratiques et de références associée à la constitution d’une sociabilité dynamique, la fixation enfin de repères identitaires à la fois distinctifs et producteurs d’adhésion concourent à structurer un « espace des possibles » doté d’une puissante valeur symbolique, à partir du paradigme de la « redécouverte de l’Antiquité ». Dans l’interaction entre circulation des idées, pratiques sociales et imaginaires collectifs se joue l’essor d’un phénomène culturel de longue portée qui, au-delà des grands auteurs, se déploya de multiples façons et créa une « actualité » pensée comme telle.

Castañeda's study goes well beyond the common anthropological focus on the "impact" of tourism on Mayan communities, instead focusing on the complicated, historical relationships between Maya actors, anthropologists, and tourists at the well know archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, and the nearby - but not so well known - Maya community of Pisté. Castañeda's study weaves together the history of anthropology in Yucatan (with a particular focus on the works of Redfield and Steggarda), tourism (including a fascinating analysis of New Age spiritualists and Aztec revivalists during the equinox at Chichén Itzá), and local Maya actors (through an analysis of their engagement with anthropologists, tourists, and the Mexican state).

http://www.osea-cite.org/class/Review_In_Museum_Maya_Culture_01Lynn_Stephen.pdf

http://www.osea-cite.org/class/Review_In_Museum_Maya_Culture_02James_Todd.pdf