Description

This book is organized into six key sections, followed by Edward Eigen's excursus on the continuist traditions of history and science. Eigen's argument can be described as an apt response to the interpretive problems that beset this book. To a great extent, the stories told here also present tests for historians' ability to write about the inherent dysfunction that inevitably accompanies institutional functioning. Institutional histories tend to be written in the shadow of master narratives: institutional schisms or failures are routinely ascribed therefore to the failure to craft grand narratives. The fact that schism does not necessarily entail catastrophic failure, or that bureaucracies, departments, or institutional bodies can handily "muddle along" for …

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