Introduction

Some of the most pressing debates in development studies have concerned the relative merits of states and markets, or the means by which markets might be regulated by a range of public institutions from the local to the global scale. These debates have taken shape, most famously, in the contrasting cases of sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, and they have an obvious and continuing relevance in countries as diverse as Brazil, Nigeria, India and China. Yet if debate on these issues continues to be fierce, there appears to be general agreement that ‘strong states’ or ‘free markets’ need to be kept in check by vibrant civil societies. Indeed, it is a common proposition in development studies that this hazy zone of ‘freedom’ between the family and the state is a source of unparalleled strength for ordinary men and women, and a source of development itself and even economic growth.

Robert Putman has made this claim as strongly as anyone. His suggestion that economic growth is promoted by a prior build-up of social capital – of people's engagements with a dense network of civic associations – has become a staple of World Bank thinking since the mid-1990s. Even where the causal propositions of Putnam are refused, it is clear that the virtues of civil society are widely admired. Arturo Escobar looks to civil society as a breeding ground for oppositional movements and experiments. It functions for him, and perhaps also for Ashis Nandy in India, as a potential zone of resistance to the dehumanizing claims of developmentalism.

The comets which passed their perihelia in August, 1862, and January, 1866, will ever be memorable in the annals of science, as having led to the discovery of the intimate relationship between comets and meteors. These various bodies found revolving about the sun in very eccentric orbits may all be regarded as similar in their nature and origin, differing mainly in the accidents of magnitude and density. The recent researches, moreover, of Hoek, Leverrier and Schiaparelli, have led to the conclusion that such objects exist in great numbers in the interstellar spaces; that in consequence of the sun's progressive motion they are sometimes drawn towards the centre of our system; and that if undisturbed by any of the large planets they again pass off in parabolas or hyperbolas. When, however, as must sometimes be the case, they approach near Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, their orbits may be transformed into ellipses. Such, doubtless, has been the origin of the periodicity of the August and November meteors, as well as of numerous comets. In the present paper it is proposed to consider the probable consequences of the sun's motion through regions of space in which cosmical matter is widely diffused; to compare these theoretical deductions with the observed phenomena of comets, aerolites and falling stars; and thus, if possible, explain a variety of facts in regard to those bodies, which have hitherto received no satisfactory explanation.