Looks at how whole domains of phenomena come into being and sometimes pass away as objects of scientific study. With examples from the natural and social sciences, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, this book explores the ways in which scientific objects are both real and historical.

While the questions of ethics have become increasingly important in recent years for many fields within the humanities, there has been no single volume that seeks to address the emergence of this concern with ethics across the disciplinary spectrum. Given this lack in currently available critical and secondary texts, and also the urgency of the issues addressed by the critics assembled here, the time is right for a collection of this nature.

Curious about the images of the city that have been evolving in the different social sciences, we did what academics often do in such a situa 1 tion: we set up a seminar on "Images of the City in the Social Sciences." From the start, we counted on the help of specialists in other fields to pursue their interests. Of the persons who agreed to participate, all but two came from the United States, and their analyses, in the main, reflect the experience of Western countries and the United States. In our formal instructions to our collaborators, we took fi>r granted that a variety of images of the city could be found or inferred in their fields of expertise. We asked them to identify these images and their functions, to explain how and why they have changed over time, and to relate these images to the distinct intellectual traditions and techniques-analytical or otherwise-in their respective fields. The definition of image was left to the judgment of the participants.

This second collection of articles by Patricia Crone brings together studies on the development of early Muslim society, above all the army with which it was originally synonymous, from shortly after the Prophet's death until the mid-Abbasid period. The focus is on the changes that the Arab tribesmen underwent thanks to settlement outside Arabia, their strained relations with converts from the conquered population, and their gradual eclipse by them.

This comparative study analyses the traditional elite of Iraq and their sucessors - the Communists, the Bathists and Free Officers - in terms of social and economic relationships in each area of the country. The author draws on secret government documents and interviews with key figures, both in power and in prison, to produce an engrossing story of political struggle and change. 'A landmark in Middle Eastern historical study' Roger Owen, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 'By far the best book written on the social and political history of modern Iraq' Ahmad Dallal, Professor of Middle Eastern History, Stanford University

Are reports of the death of conventional fieldwork in anthropology greatly exaggerated? This book takes a critical look at the latest developments and key issues in fieldwork. The nature of 'locality' itself is problematic for both research subjects and fieldworkers, on the grounds that it must now be maintained and represented in relation to widening (and fragmenting) social frames and networks. Such developments have raised questions concerning the nature of ethnographic presence and scales of comparison. From the social space of a cybercafe to cities in India, the UK and South Africa among others, this book features a wide range of ethnographic studies that provide new ways of looking at the concepts of 'locality' and 'site'. It shows that rather than taking key fieldwork processes such as globalization and mobility for granted, anthropologists are well-placed to examine and critique the totalizing assumptions behind these notions.

Ethnicity has been a key concept in anthropology and sociology for many years, yet many people still seem uncertain as to its meaning, its relevance, and its relationship to other concepts such as `race' and nationalism. In Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions the major anthropological and sociological approaches to ethnicity, covering much of the significant literature and leading authors, are outlined clearly and concisely.

"The standard of contribution is high . . . the reader gets a good sense of the cutting edge of historical research." – African Affairs