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This introductory chapter discusses theological and religious studies at the founding of the British Academy. The first section focuses on the rise of critical methods in British theology during the late nineteenth century. This is followed by an account of the founding of the British Academy and the changing agendas after 1902.

This chapter introduces the arguments of Boyarin, Lieu, and van Henten concerning martyrdom and identity construction among Jews and Christians, arguing that the death of Stephen should be considered through this theoretical lens. As supporting argument for considering Stephen alongside second-century martyrologies, it situates Acts as an early second-century text. Appropriating Castelli’s arguments concerning martyrdom in Christian cultural memory, it argues that scholarly assertions concerning the historicity of Stephen’s death are more indebted to the force of cultural memory than to the historical-critical method. While concurring with Penner that verisimilitude, not “historical accuracy,” is the coin of ancient historiography, it then moves to suggest that this is not a reason to abandon the historiographic project but rather to frame historical narrative differently, in terms of rhetoric and ethic, as has been long argued in biblical studies by Schüssler Fiorenza.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the purpose of the book, which is to present a system of critical appraisal to help with the evaluation of studies in the health and medical fields, and also with the carrying out of studies more effectively. The method emphasizes the central importance of cause and effect relationships. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

The examination of the critical method as applied in German Mahābhārata and Bhagavadgītā scholarship has shown that although German scholars claimed to take a scientific approach to the epic, their interpretations were at best tangential and at worst irrelevant to the text at hand. No German interpreter in a period extending one hundred years had succeeded in presenting a coherent, philosophically illuminating interpretation of the Mahābhārata. The histories they presented of the epic existed nowhere else outside their own minds. The problem in German interpretations of Indian texts is not simply one of the inevitable misinterpretations that beset every hermeneutic endeavor. Rather, the critical method itself entailed a number of problematic prejudices. This chapter seeks to understand the reasons why the Indologists themselves could not see these problems. It looks at the scientization of Protestant theology in the critical method; the secularization of Protestant theology in the study of the history of religions; and the institutionalization of Protestant theology in Indology. It examines how the historical-critical method participates in a tradition of projecting a universal history, most characteristic of Christianity; how the method makes use of a teleological narrative of history, where history moves from a state of immaturity (the Kantian Unmündigkeit) to an enlightened, free, and critical use of reason; and how this narrative was used to justify implantation of an alternative tradition of textual scholarship in place of the Indian commentarial tradition.

This chapter shows how European hegemony and aggressive Westernization in the former Ottoman Empire formed the backdrop for the next stage in the evolution of Arabic print culture: fierce debates over philology and the critical method. What was at stake was how to critically read the Arabo-Islamic heritage that was becoming accessible at an accelerating pace through the printing press—how to assess the authenticity of writings attributed to particular periods and authors and how to draw on these materials judiciously in order to reconstruct the historical and literary past. The site of these debates was the growing corpus of printed classical works. Even the opponents of the editing and publishing vanguard could no longer ignore the influence of this literature, and accordingly the divergent arguments were phrased overwhelmingly in the idiom of philology. The ensuing philological advancements were brought to bear not only on the juxtaposition of Orientalist and indigenous philology but also on substantial religious issues of the time, including grave visitation, theological tenets, and legal debates.

The jointly authored introduction defines biblical criticism (or the historical-critical method) broadly as the process of establishing the original, contextual meaning of biblical texts and of assessing their historical accuracy. Next it traces the history of biblical criticism in both the Jewish (rabbis, Rashi) and Christian (Church Fathers, Luther) traditions. Then it describes the emergence of biblical criticism with Baruch Spinoza and its development especially in liberal German Protestant circles (Ernst Troeltsch, Julius Wellhausen).

This chapter tackles a methodological problem posed by the premise of the book: if ‘security’ cannot be recognised by its ‘anti-political’ logic, then how can we know ‘security’ when we see it? The chapter sets out a methodology for identifying and analysing ‘security’ as a historical and contextual moving target, based on Michel Foucault’s notion of problematisation. This methodology is four things: first, empiricist - it analyses what people said and did when they articulated (security-related) problems and responded to them. Second, historical - it assumes that problematisations are specific to certain times and places and change over time. This negates any core logic or objective definition of ‘security’, leaving only historically specific problematisations of security. Third, reflexive - it reflects on the role of the critical analyst, who does not have an objective God’s eye view, but holds a particular position within history and a critical intent to challenge prevailing theoretical and political assumptions in the present. Fourth, the method of problematisation is a double move: it identifies and describes problematisations in context, and then amplifies and problematises them further for critical purposes. This makes the analyst an active player in the problematisation, not a disinterested observer.

This chapter provides an overview of the relevant demographic literature and introduces the people, setting, and methodology. In order to broaden our understanding of inequality, the chapter emphasizes the need to bring together research from sociocultural and biological subfields of anthropology and focus on the reproductive and health experiences of nomadic groups like the Bekaa Bedouin.

Chapter 6 at first introduces the design of the empirical study (research agenda, approach, and methods adopted) of newspaper coverage of economic inequality in four countries. It describes the key selections and methods which defined the corpus of empirical materials at the heart of the authors’ original primary research. It then provides a summary overview of key aspects of our empirical research findings. Next, there is a summary discussion of the overall findings from the authors’ corpus of news media materials and data collection strategies. The chapter proceeds to examine the particular arguments in Piketty’s book which are either highlighted or neglected by the coverage in the newspaper articles forming the corpus of primary materials. It then moves on to present overall assessments of the coverage of Piketty’s book by the selected news media in the four countries. The authors identify and discuss how individual newspapers in the sample tend to agree or disagree with the key themes and argument in Piketty’s book. Responses engaging with the methods and data informing Piketty’s research and publications are also considered. Next, the chapter considers the newspapers’ engagement with discourses on economic inequality and the authors’ stances on whether or not economic inequality is problematic for the economy and society. An initial summary overview of trends in the discussion of Piketty’s policy proposals is presented, and the chapter concludes with the importance of sourcing. The following tables/graphs and figures—unless otherwise declared—are derived out of our empirical project and refer to original data generated throughout the project.

Chapter 13 treats the early philosophical development of Wilhelm Windelband, focusing upon his movement towards a normative conception of philosophy and away from an early psychologism. Much attention is devoted to Windelband’s development of the concept of normativity and why he saw this as the decisive concept for the revival of philosophy. I argue against Klaus Christian Köhnke that Windelband’s conception of philosophy had little to do with the political developments of the 1870s.

Anesthesia became the only medical specialty to undertake systematic and dramatic improvements in safety over time. Evidence suggests that this process began through the fortuitous engagement of engineers in anesthesia work, supported by respected leaders in the field. The goal was not simply to solve a problem. The aims were too deeply understand the nature of the technology, the work, and the complex interactions that take place in work as carried out. Oddly, healthcare more generally failed to emulate these efforts. This state of affairs may be attributed to the substantive influence of non-clinical safety scientists in anesthesia, and also to differences in widely accepted methodological and investigative research approaches.

The introduction outlines the paradoxes in LDS conceptions of the past by introducing the narrative construction of a boundary between apostasy and restoration, a binary categorization that has defined Mormonism as set apart from other religious traditions. It introduces the collaborative project that generated this volume and summarizes the contributors’ assumptions about the narrative and ethical dimensions of historical representations and their method of dialectical and charitable conversation with the past.

Provides an overview of the main points of the book, discusses the role of medicalization in raising a deaf child, the implications of making neuroscientific claims that are not based on neurobiological limitations but instead on cultural assumptions, suggests policy adjustments and critical alliances moving forward