The silent film Grass (1925), which follows the seasonal migration of members of the Bakhtiari tribal confederation and their herds, shows mobile pastoralism as a changeless, remote, environmentally driven, and primitive way of life. An anthropological and historical analysis of the film explores problematic conceptions that still underlie the contemporary study of historical and ancient pastoralism.

This chapter extends the conceptual framework laid out in Chapter 2 to a series of basic questions about various dimensions of ancient and historical pastoralism, using constellations of methods reviewed in Chapters 4 and 5. Answering these questions on the basis of empirical archaeological data also builds a broader basis for comparing ancient pastoralism to historically and ethnographically documented practices, providing the means to generate stronger ethnographic analogies for archaeological interpretation, as discussed in Chapter 3.

Various biomolecular methods increasingly augment foundational methodologies for the study of pastoralism, including isotopic analyses, analyses of ancient human and animal DNA, identification of milk proteins, and residue analyses that identify animal carcass fat and milk fat. Although the results of biomolecular analyses can significantly expand the evidentiary basis for the archaeology of pastoralism and have in many ways revolutionized the field, they are not some sort of panacea that can easily solve all of the conceptual, interpretive, empirical, and disciplinary problems laid out in Chapter 1.

Twentieth-century scholars defined “pastoral nomadism” as an environmental adaptation inherently linked to specific political, social, and economic traits: long-distance mobility; tribalism, social egalitarianism, and dependence on sedentary agricultural communities; economic specialization in pastoralism; and “marginal” land. To resolve conceptual conflation and promote the writing of histories of pastoralism, archaeologists require a new framework that draws on anthropological ideas about mobility, political complexity, intensification of production, and pastoral landscapes.

Railway infrastructure defines the narrative parameters of two texts by Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South and ‘Cousin Phillis’. Focusing on small-scale interim stations, and the construction of new lines, this chapter examineslogistical options that even dormant railway infrastructure can bring to stories otherwise concerned with being-in-place. This infrastructural reading of North and South focuses on a scene set at Outwood Station, a small but well-connected hinge between North and South. It shows that proximity to physically iterated railway infrastructure reconnects the narrative to a broad system of global exchange and mobility. In ‘Cousin Phillis’, meanwhile, Gaskell’s civil engineer narrator lays both railway lines and plot lines but neither quite coheres into a functioning, connective system. This chapter traces the uneven degrees of narrative integration in Gaskell’s works back to their differing publication intervals, with North and South’s weekly serialisation providing far greater opportunity to situate its local plot within global circulation than the monthly release of ‘Cousin Phillis’.

Daily life in cities is often about balance and compromise. Urban densities facilitate things being in close proximity and provide convenience for residents, but they also create an opportunity for traffic congestion and increased social and environmental inequity, and the possibility of lower-density suburban sprawl. To promote urban sustainability, a careful balance of economic development, ecology, and equity is required. In this chapter, four examples of urban sustainability crises and the dramatic response to them are examined. The cases include Miami, US; Oslo, Norway; St. Georges, Grenada; and Shenzhen, China. In each situation, the sustainability crisis emerges from a deeply set awareness of diminishing environmental quality of life and a feeling that the residents’ sense of place is under threat. The drivers of this threat are deeply embedded in social and economic factors. In each city, the policy switch to enhanced sustainability results from an aggressive, multi-scalar effort to alter and redirect the pattern of urban spatial development.

Knowledge about colonial warfare’s violence was transferred between empires in complex ways. Though differing in degree and over time, British, German and Dutch actors were willing to observe and learn from the colonial wars of others. Writings on colonial warfare became increasingly transimperial in scope from the 1890s onwards, even if this came too late to shape practice and was often distorted by authors’ own agendas and national stereotypes. Observer missions in foreign colonial campaigns were also regular, though their focus was seldom on colonial violence. Whether actively transferring or not, these modes of observation fed knowledge into an ‘imperial cloud’ (Kamissek/Kreienbaum) and reveal that the practitioners of colonial war rarely found the violence of others conspicuous, a fact which gives the lie to exceptionalist historiography. Actual transfers mainly took place through the intra- and transimperial mobility of European and non-European, mostly non-elite, individuals. They lived in frequently highly transnational colonial societies, and a striking number moved from one colonial frontier to the next, forging recurring connections I denote as the ‘routes of violence’.

Chapter 4 focuses on a central demand of disability rights activism—accessibility. In both Korea and Japan, the built environment has grown markedly more accessible, in part through non binding measures. But by combining contentious and institutional tactics, disability rights advocates have pushed to make standards and regulations mandatory and to give disabled persons (the users of barrier-free features) a seat at the table in policy design, implementation, and evaluation. National governments and localities in both Korea and Japan have gradually responded by making accessibility policy more formal and participatory, though gaps remain.

This chapter explores the challenges faced by the Belgian colonial administration in controlling mobility within and across the borders of Rwanda and the Belgian Congo. After Rwanda had become an official mandated area of Belgium, efforts to regulate movement became integral to economic and labor control. The chapter then sets out to explain the inherent contradictions of this asymmetrical labor system englobing both shores and hinterlands of the Lake Kivu region in which Rwanda came to serve as a labor reserve supporting Belgian economic interests in Kivu, and further away in Katanga. The need for labor in the Belgian Congo became one of the main factors explaining its persistent interconnections with Rwanda during the colonial period; the deep-rooted historical ties between the societies around the Lake another.

These interconnections also amplified and altered pre-existing patterns of mobility. This caused problems for the Belgian administration at both sides of the border as they needed to control mobility without damaging the colonial labor market. The chapter shows that they often prioritized economic benefits over their own rules and regulations, and the interests of the Belgian Congo over those of Rwanda. Here as well, chiefs played ambiguous roles, in regulating the movement of commoners and mobilizing labor. The system fostered competition among chiefs for both people and their labor. It incentivized chiefs to closely monitor their subjects, imposing a heavier burden on ordinary people and prompting them to seek better conditions elsewhere.

This chapter examines travel and communication in Late Antiquity, analysing the complexities of movement across the Roman and Byzantine worlds from the third to the eighth century. Rather than viewing this period as one of declining mobility, the chapter argues that travel remained vital, though its dynamics shifted due to political, economic and religious transformations. A major focus is on the infrastructure that supported travel, including roads, bridges, way stations and ports. The cursus publicus, the state-run courier system, is highlighted as a crucial mechanism for imperial communication and administrative efficiency. Trade networks, both maritime and overland, played a fundamental role in sustaining long-distance movement, with Mediterranean seaports, river transport and caravan routes facilitating commercial exchanges. Religious travel, particularly pilgrimage and episcopal councils, became increasingly significant after the rise of Christianity, with the movement of monks, clergy and pilgrims contributing to the spread of religious ideas and artistic traditions. The chapter also addresses migration, discussing the movements of soldiers, officials and entire populations in response to military campaigns, economic opportunities and political upheavals. In this way, this contribution demonstrates that mobility remained central to the late antique world, shaping social, economic and cultural interactions across the empire.

This chapter “deprovincializes” the histories of Lake Kivu’s societies in the “frontier”, (present-day Rwanda and Congo), during the second half of the nineteenth century. It challenges the dominant narrative of the “greater Rwanda” thesis, which argues that colonial border-making “amputated” Rwanda from a significant portion of its territory. The chapter shifts the attention to the societies Rwanda claimed were part of Rwanda since centuries. The chapter shows that while the Nyiginya kingdom – Rwanda’s antecedent – indeed increasingly sought to exert control over and integrate some of these societies, especially under mwami [s. King] Rwabugiri, their control was incomplete, at times impermanent, and often contested. Such complexities are overlooked when considered from a state-centric, often ideological perspective premised on the stability of a centralized authority. The histories and memories of local communities within the region defy these narratives and provide critical alternatives to what has been largely accepted as mere prologue. These questions are not merely a matter of historical debate, they remain crucial for understanding contemporary debates. While the geographical complexity of this chapter makes it a challenging read, it is foundational for understanding the historical continuities and contradictions throughout the book.

To demonstrate the complexities and contradictions laid out in the previous chapter, Chapter 5 zooms in on a colonial scheme to “transplant” – colonial lingo – Rwandans to Masisi (nowadays in North Kivu) to provide labor for the colonial plantations there. Commonly known as “le MIB” (Mission d’Immigration des Banyarwanda), a name that it only started to carry in the second phase, this chapter focuses on the first phase of this scheme between 1937 and 1948. This scheme is often seen as one of the origins of North Kivu’s endemic conflicts, but many details remain shrouded in vagueness. In the first chapter of this book focusing on this scheme, the motivations and experiences of Rwandan immigrants within the broader context of historical mobility and court politics are analyzed. In doing so the chapter argues that many migrants, especially those from the northern extremities of Lake Kivu, were “willing migrants,” exploiting colonial policies for personal interests. It demonstrates that at least for a considerable part of these migrants, labor mobility was not solely a result of colonial initiatives or coercion but also rooted in nineteenth-century patterns of mobility, and often based on previous connections. In doing so, it adds nuance to simplistic narratives of longstanding antagonisms between “autochthons” and newcomers.

Mobile learning, including MALL (mobile-assisted language learning), is coming of age against the backdrop of an increasingly mobile, increasingly superdiverse world. This chapter presents an updated, more detailed version of the Pegrum’s 3 Mobilities Framework to guide educators in designing appropriate forms of mobile learning for their students. It offers examples at each of the levels of the framework, which are drawn, as appropriate, from across the Global North and the Global South: Level 1 – mobile devices (inside the classroom), Level 2A – mobile learners (inside the classroom), Level 2B – mobile learners (outside the classroom), and Level 3 – mobile learning experiences (outside the classroom). While reminding educators that their designs must always suit their intended learning outcomes, their students, and their contexts, the chapter demonstrates that it is at Level 3 that mobile learning most closely accords with the needs of mobile people in a mobile world.

Literacy is the ability to make use of visible language, and it is fundamental to language education. This chapter focuses on what teachers should know about digital technologies but begins with broad background and context related to multiliteracies, metaphors, and cultural dimensions of technology use. It then focuses on four key areas where teachers play an important role in the development of their students’ language and literacy abilities via technology: autonomy, mobility, creativity, and communities. It then discusses two controversial areas of current pedagogical research and practice: artificial intelligence and machine translation. It concludes with a call for greater attention to two additional areas highly relevant to language development: literacies related to film and digital communication in the context of study abroad.