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Elsevier

Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

  • Human Reliability

    With Human Factors
    • 1st Edition
    • Balbir S. Dhillon
    • English
    Human Reliability: With Human Factors focuses on human reliability during system design. The book is organized into 13 chapters, wherein Chapter 1 presents histories of human factors and human reliability along with selective terms and definitions. Chapter 2 shows basic reliability mathematics and concepts. Subsequent chapters then elaborate on human reliability, human errors, six human reliability analysis methods, and reliability evaluation of systems with human errors. Other chapters elucidate human factors in maintenance and maintainability; human safety; human reliability data; and human factors in quality control, design, mathematical models, and formulas. Applications of human factors engineering are also addressed. The text will be valuable to human factor engineers and specialists, reliability and maintainability specialists, system and design engineers, industrial engineers, quality control engineers, and students.

  • Rural Change and Public Policy

    Eastern Europe, Latin America and Australia
    • 1st Edition
    • William P. Avery + 2 more
    • English
    Rural Change and Public Policy: Eastern Europe, Latin America and Australia examines rural change and related public policies in three contrasting areas of the world to identify common problems and gain insight and understanding of the change process. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 15 chapters. Part I provides a conceptual background useful in examining rural development issues in an international perspective, focusing on economic development, usually the central question in public policy deliberations on rural areas. This part also emphasizes the interdependence between rural and urban areas as well as the importance of rural-urban regional inequity considerations. Part II deals with the critical role of government in influencing and directing rural change, while Part III surveys some of the changing attitudes and attitudinal responses of rural residents experiencing social, political, educational, and/or economic change. Part IV considers the broad issue of rural workers and employment opportunities, a critical issue in rural societies. Part V looks into the problems of land utilization and land tenure.

  • Nonconscious Social Information Processing

    • 1st Edition
    • Pawel Lewicki
    • English
    Nonconscious Social Information Processing presents a research program concerned with the processing of social information. It cannot be considered a typical social psychological research program, however, because it is not aimed at explaining any specific social psychological phenomena, nor are the cognitive processes studied specific to the processing of social information. The program explores complex or ""high level"" processing of information that is not mediated by conscious awareness, and social cognition seems to be an appropriate area in which to investigate this kind of processing. The research program began with observations which suggest that nonconscious acquisition and processing of information play a major role in human development and adjustment. The first two chapters discuss these observations and present preliminary theoretical assumptions. The subsequent chapters contain reports of 34 experiments on nonconscious information processing. The book is addressed not only to personality and social psychologists, but also to cognitive psychologists concerned with information processing in general. The former may find this research relevant because most of the experiments describe some mechanisms of acquisition and utilization of social information—problems they are working on themselves. The latter may want to ignore the specific stimulus material (i.e., social information) employed in most of the experiments and focus on the general nature of the cognitive mechanisms studied.

  • Networks of Collective Action

    A Perspective on Community Influence Systems
    • 1st Edition
    • Edward O. Laumann + 1 more
    • Peter H. Rossi
    • English
    Networks of Collective Action: A Perspective on Community Influence Systems develops a theoretically informed research framework for the structural analysis of social systems. To this end, special attention is given to two fundamental issues in structural analysis: First, how does one most usefully define or identify the elementary units, be they individuals, corporate actors, or population subgroups, that comprise a given social system, and in what ways should these elementary units be characterized or differentiated from one another? And, second, what are the relational modalities by which these actors are linked to one another in ways that are relevant to understanding how their individual preferences and behavior are coordinated or integrated with one another for purposes of collective action (i.e., to achieve collective goals)? The book is organized into three main parts. Part I describes the research site and its environmental context, and then makes a structural analysis of the internal social and value differentiation of the population subsystem. Part II focuses on the elite subsystem and on its role in resolving specific community controversies. Part III turns to a topic often neglected in studying democratically legitimized influence systems: the systematic theoretical and empirical characterization of the relationships between the elite and the population subsystems in the community.

  • Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases

    The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy
    • 1st Edition
    • Robert E. Harkavy
    • English
    Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy explores the geopolitics of the major powers' overseas basing systems in relation to global strategies and changes in the international system in three fairly distinct phases: the interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods. This book links the great powers' competition for overseas bases to several streams of more or less contemporary international relations theory. This monograph consists of seven chapters and opens with an introduction to the diplomacy of basing access, followed by a discussion on the different types or purposes of basing access as they have evolved over the past several decades in response to changes in diplomacy and military technology. The major powers' overseas basing-access networks in the consecutive interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods are then reviewed, along with the earlier corpus of geopolitical theory, specifically as it relates to basing diplomacy. Emphasis is on the conflicting assumptions about what reciprocal strategic advantages and disadvantages inhere to the geographic positions of the United States and USSR. The final chapter considers a number of ""functional"" areas of world politics that are closely intertwined with basing diplomacy, and relates the competition for facilities to raw materials access, surrogate wars, strategic deterrence, arms control, balances of payments, arms sales and aid, alliances, and other such staple concerns of international relations. This book will be of interest to political scientists, military and government officials, diplomats, and policymakers.

  • Transportation Planning, Policy and Analysis

    Urban and Regional Planning Series
    • 1st Edition
    • D. N. M. Starkie
    • English
    Urban and Regional Planning Series, Volume 13: Transportation Planning, Policy and Analysis is a review of selected policies affecting the administration, urban transportation, and proposals regarding transport improvements. The book discusses the inter-relationship of transport policy and analysis of transportation planning. The text outlines the development of transportation planning considering the constraints placed upon studies made in the transportation system. The author describes the planning process as evolving, with the nature of the problem changing along with the passing of time. The author reviews the administrative framework and the polices affecting urban traffic and public transports. He evaluates the policy-decision mechanisms influenced by ""maximization subject to constraint."" The author then presents some mathematical simulation models of transport, and then emphasizes that actual testing and experimentation of a model are needed to overcome any cardinal weaknesses. The book also cites the SELNEC and Tyneside studies where their major component is on road expenditure, which studies regarded as not very cost-effective. The author then cites legislations and development proposals that transportation plans should be integrated with land use planning and traffic systems. The author also discusses why developments in transport planning analysis is a political decision. City administrators, officials of traffic and engineering departments and bureaus, civil engineers, and urban developers will find this book of interest.

  • Liberty and Politics

    Studies in Social Theory
    • 1st Edition
    • Owen Harries
    • English
    Liberty and Politics: Studies in Social Theory is a collection of papers that describes the conservative stance in dealing and preserving liberal and democratic values and institutions. The book deals with education, political, and social theory and presents the philosophy of Harry Eddy who was a realist, pluralist, and libertarian. One paper defines the nature of tradition as a series of acts of which the enactments of a tradition involve certain regularities of conduct. Other papers then discuss ethics as the theory of history and as an ethic of responsibility different from moral cynicism and moral futurism. One paper confronts the points of teaching sex education so as to correct sexual myths, to help pupils make appropriate decisions regarding sexuality, and to prepare them for love and responsibility. Another paper then discusses socialism, liberty, and the law where the author acknowledges the need for deeper thoughts over ideology and for acceptance of complexity over ""black and white"" thinking. The book then presents one author's reflection of The Gulag Archipelago that it offers something new and different from those of Nazism and Stalinism. The text will prove a stimulating reading for political scientists, historians, students and academicians in education and humanities, and for the general readers who like social history and political ideas.

  • Progress in Behavior Modification

    Volume 20
    • 1st Edition
    • Michel Hersen + 2 more
    • English
    Progress in Behavior Modification, Volume 20 covers the developments in the study of behavior modification. The book discusses the guidelines for the use of contingent electric shock to treat aberrant behavior; the motor activity measurements and DSM-IIII; and the innovations in behavioral medicine. The text also describes the behavioral interventions as adjunctive treatments for chronic asthma; health behavior change at the worksite, with regard to cardiovascular risk reduction; and the role of behavioral change procedures in multifactorial coronary heart disease prevention programs. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and people involved in the study of behavior modification will find the book invaluable.

  • Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations

    Studies in Population
    • 2nd Edition
    • Ansley J. Coale + 2 more
    • English
    Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations, Second Edition maintains the tradition of research on the analysis of fertility and mortality as related to population growth and composition. The tables presented are two principal forms: model life tables and model stable populations. The included models are models of mortality and age composition; "west" model life tables and stable populations; "north" model life tables and stable populations; "east" model life tables and stable populations; and "south" model life tables and stable populations. People involved in the study of population growth and composition will find the book useful.

  • Renewable Resource Utilization for Development

    Pergamon Policy Studies on International Development
    • 1st Edition
    • Robert P. Morgan + 1 more
    • English
    Renewable Resource Utilization for Development is a six-chapter text that covers the United States initiatives in field of appropriate, light-capital technology for renewable resource utilization. These initiatives include steps, policies, and programs that the U.S. government might take, adopt, or support to aid developing countries in utilizing appropriate technology for renewable resources for the benefit of the poor majority. The first two chapters describe the technology, advances, design, and utilization of wind energy and biomass. The next chapter focuses on two applications of direct solar energy, namely, solar drying of crops and timber. Another chapter highlights the optimum processing and use of rice bran, which is an important postharvest and rural development problem for rice-growing developing countries. The final two chapters discuss the utilization of material and products based on agricultural wastes and natural fibers. These chapters also deal with the organizations and mechanisms for implementing the initiatives and with possible next steps to the U.S. initiatives. This book is of value to economists and environmental pollution control researchers.

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