Trousson, Raymond / Vercruysse, Jeroom (dir.), Dictionnaire general de Voltaire. (Champion classiques, references et dictionnaires 18) 1272 p. 2020:10 (Champion, FR) <670-9>
ISBN 978-2-38096-016-7 paper ¥7,064.- (税込) EUR 38.00

elhariry, yasser / Keller-Privat, Isabelle et al. (eds.), Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean. (Mediterranean Perspectives) 278 pp. 2025:5 (Palgrave Macmillan, UK) <745-893>
ISBN 978-3-031-84042-5 hard ¥34,811.- (税込) EUR 149.99

Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean examines the embodied praxis of hospitality-whether through the ritual modes of religious history, the pages of literature, the visual arts, dystopian narratives of the future, or the realpolitik of shelter and asylum. It moves beyond dominant transit tropes of aporetic exchange (in the lineage of Jacques Derrida). The volume offers a fractal view of Mediterranean studies as inflected by the lived, aesthetic, and philosophical histories of hospitality. This book brings together leading voices ranging from early-career to established scholars across the social sciences and the humanities to argue for a distinct focus on the Mediterranean pre/conditions and pre/histories of hospitality. To date, there has been no interdisciplinary intervention that takes up hospitality as a starting point to critical thinking about Mediterranean studies as an expansive, dynamic, and ever-evolving discipline. Against the inescapable backdrop of necropolitics and catastrophe, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean offers a rich, agentive alternative for Mediterranean worldmaking.

前近代ユーラシアにおける嘆願と権力関係
Zaret, David, Petitioning and Power Relations in Pre-Modern Eurasia. (The Past and Present Book Series) 176 pp. 2025:8 (Oxford U. Pr., UK) <745-719>
ISBN 978-0-19-895573-3 hard ¥23,654.- (税込) GB￡ 84.00

Petitioning was the main route by which the agency of subjects engaged the authority of rulers. Most studies explore it as a practice for sending requests to central and local representatives of state power in empires, kingdoms, and city-states. Yet the practice occurs in other fields of power, for example, in medieval papal governance, seigneurial regimes and other types of lordship, e.g., queenship. Petition-and-response was the inverse twin to command-and-obey, and just as inherent and indispensable for managing pre-modern power relations. Requests by petitioners were endlessly diverse. Petitions were the universal request form for subjects who sought assistance with every conceivable problem or opportunity. In addition to resolving conflicts with other subjects or officials, there were requests for appointments, promotions to higher positions or social ranks, exemptions, pardons, privileges, pensions, salary increases, charitable relief, and more. Some petitioners were docile and ingenuous; others were ingenious, even predatory petitioners whose initiatives reveal high levels of agency. This is the first truly comparative analysis of pre-modern petitioning across Eurasia. Across a wide range of historical case studies and cutting against the grain of the dominant, one-dimensional social science perspective on pre-modern power relations, David Zaret shows petitioning in pre-modern Eurasia to have been a dynamic tool of state, and not (as is often assumed) merely an instrument of protest or imitation of religious prayer. Comparative study shows the practice to have been remarkably uniform, and one whose ubiquity and prominence are astounding for its diverse socio-cultural contexts: there are Sumerian, Akkadian, and Aramaic petitions in ancient Mesopotamia, demotic petitions in Egypt when Pharaohs ruled, then Greek ones after imposition of Ptolemaic rule. Other contexts for the practice include Zoroastrian Persia, Hellenic and Roman cultures of benefaction, Christianity, Islam, Daoism, Confucianism, and the syncretic mix of Shinto and Buddhism in Japan. In so doing, Zaret bridges literatures of two fields and makes important contributions to both - historical research on petitioning, which is often confined to case studies, and theories of power relations, arguably the most heavily plowed field in social theory - to offer revisionist perspectives on the fluid nature of power and politics in the pre-modern world.

LePoire, David / Grinin, Leonid / Korotayev, Andrey (eds.), Navigating Complexity in Big History: Exploring Periodization Across Cosmic and Biosocial Dimensions. (World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures) 420 pp. 2025:5 (Springer, GW) <745-1059>
ISBN 978-3-031-85409-5 hard ¥30,169.- (税込) EUR 129.99

This book explores periodization in Big History against the background of complexity growth across the Universe, on our planet, and in biological, social, and cultural systems. It traces the accelerating rise in complexity throughout history and the major historical transformations involved in the evolution of life, humans, and civilization. It draws on concepts from physics and evolutionary biology to offer potential models of the underlying mechanisms driving this acceleration, along with potential clues to how it might end. In the editors' introduction (Chapter 1), the effort to periodize is placed within the historical context along with considerations from complexity science. Subsequent chapters explore various aspects of periodization and complexity by (a) identifying symmetrical cosmic and biosocial trends, (b) testing rigor and criteria for evaluating periodization, (c) attempting to integrate different approaches through multiple perspectives, (d) proposing different strategies for determining geometric patterns in terrestrial bio-social evolution, and (e) applying the traditional threshold model to gain insights into possible future pathways. A concluding chapter identifies commonalities, research gaps, and possible approaches to integration as the current state of the world system rapidly evolves, while also offering a deeper understanding of complexity dynamics and historical processes. Each chapter includes an extensive bibliography, allowing a deeper and more detailed examination of the issues covered.