In this chapter, I set the stage for understanding how the Shepherd conceptualizes God as an enslaver and the role of the holy spirit in the maintenance of the enslaved–enslaver relationship. I begin by demonstrating how the Shepherd portrays the holy spirit as a somatic entity sent by God that dwells within the bodies of God’s enslaved persons and is called “the enslaver who dwells within you,” who is capable of influencing behaviors, reporting back to God, and leaving the body if frustrated. The human body itself is imagined to be a porous entity in which various spirits, including the holy spirit and other passion-causing spirits, can dwell. I explore how the Shepherd portrays the body of God’s enslaved persons as a vessel with a limited amount of space, within which spirits compete for room and control and upon which God’s enslaved are encouraged to act obediently in order to remain under the purview of the enslaving holy spirit.

Descartes and Kant strike us as the necessary poles of a historical and philosophical process that has constantly put the deaf at the center of theories of language. While Descartes grants the deaf intellectual abilities that match other men’s, Kant pronounces in 1798 a radical verdict, asserting that the deaf from birth are bound to remain deprived of any rational capacity. Why does Kant pronounce such a verdict, at the very time when l’Abbé de l’Epée trains with success the deaf and dumb to talk in Paris, when Samuel Heinicke also succeeds through others paths in Leipzig? I shall argue that this radical shift paradoxically stems from a philosophical breakthrough within the philosophy of language, that is, the unprecedented claim that language is decisively involved in the exercise of crucial mental capacities. Because language was deemed by Cartesians to have secondary and accessory functions, its correlation with the exercise of mental capacities had to be reclaimed by anchoring the conditions of all intellectual performances in the material properties of the phonic medium. This principle provides us with a tool to rationally explain Kant’s claims in the Anthropology.

How the Shepherd conceives of human–spirit relations leads me to examine two examples of the consequences of this entanglement of spirit possession and enslavement. I point first to how the holy spirit in the Shepherd functions similarly to the Roman enslaved overseer (vilicus) who represents the physically absent enslaver and surveils other enslaved persons. The Shepherd solves the problem that despotic writers (e.g., Cato, Columella) lament regarding how to guarantee that the vilicus is not mistaken for the absentee enslaver: God becomes both the enslaver and the vilicus, the ever-present surveillance over the enslaved through spirit possession. I also focus on one tricky passage in the Shepherd, a parable about an enslaved person working on a vineyard and its complex layers of interpretations offered by the Shepherd (Similitude 5), to better understand how the Shepherd conceptualizes the relationship between the holy spirit and the flesh that it treats as a vessel. I show how the Shepherd views enslavement to the holy spirit as a necessary risk for the enslaver, since the spirit can be polluted and defiled if the enslaved body in which it dwells is not constantly maintained.

Kimberly Hope Belcher surveys an impressive number of authors and theories who have engaged with the broad human phenomenon of ritual. For it is evident that both classical ritual studies and more recent approaches have enormous potential for engaging in a dialogue with scholars of Christian liturgy and liturgies.

In "What can be learnt from global traditions of oracy?" the prominent anthropologist Karin Barber explores the intertwined nature of orality and literacy across cultures. Despite the high value placed on literacy, she observes, orality remains a vibrant skill and creative domain in many societies. Recent studies emphasize the coexistence and mutual influence of oral and written traditions, demonstrated through examples like Italian commedia dell’arte and Afghan refugee poets. The chapter focuses first on the Yorùbá culture of Nigeria, where oral traditions shape individual identities and social interactions alongside a vibrant written literature. Further examples from Kenya and the Basque country highlight how informal oral genres integrate into education, fostering creativity, language skills, and cultural preservation. Overall, the chapter underscores oracy’s educational value and cultural significance across contexts, offering insights applicable to promoting oracy skills in the UK.

The different needs, concerns, and preferences of the professions constituting the multidisciplinary team (MDT), including medicine, psychology, nursing, and social work, reflect the hybrid nature of psychiatry and the knowledge and skills required for clinical practice.

Neuroscience has evolved at impressive speed over recent decades. Many of its findings have relevance to psychiatry but are rarely directly translatable into clinical practice. Improving understanding of the psychological dimension of mental illness has led to new treatments with similar efficacy to medications. Our current approach to treating mental illness has also benefited greatly from insights from sociology and anthropology. The value conflicts relating to liberty and personal autonomy versus the medical value of restoring health and societal values around managing risk have led to the development of legal frameworks to aid clinical decision-making. These are, however, far from perfect, and values-based practice (VBP) principles could meaningfully contribute to improving them.

Although traditionally medicine sat at the top of the hierarchy in the MDT, this hierarchy has become more horizontal in recent decades. Close working together with social care is key, but there are pros and cons for both integrated and separate services. Values-based practice can ease some of the tensions in MDT working.

This chapter examines Augustine’s sermons given on the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost. The homilies given on the Ascension highlight Augustine’s Christology, particularly the Ascension as disclosing Christ’s presence and the totus Christus. Augustine’s sermons on Pentecost and its vigil emphasize the unity of the church, imaged in the speaking of tongues in Acts 2, through the giving of the Holy Spirit. The sermons on Pentecost also unpack, through the image of the new wine and drunkenness in Acts 2, the newness and continuity of Pentecost as the fulfillment of the law in the Spirit’s gift of charity.

In the post-World War II era, international lawyers have occupied the front seat in the study of international organisations (IOs). During the past decade, this disciplinary hierarchy has grown to feel increasingly unsatisfying. This chapter offers an anthropological take on the study of IOs building both on the past decade of anthropological work and my ethnography at the UN Human Rights Committee. IOs are frequently accused of ineffectiveness embedded in endless paper-pushing techniques. In this chapter, I engage with these criticisms and ask: can we find another perspective from which to assess effectiveness? What happens if we stop investing our analytical attention in what we think IO operations and their desired ‘impacts’ should be and instead engage in non-normative inquiries into what IOs actually do? I explore what can we learn about IOs’ visions for world improvement by focusing on the legal technicalities and material forms that define their operations. I propose that, instead of a hindrance or distraction, these forms embody ‘standards for a better world’ that are an essential component of IOs’ civilising mission.

This chapter begins the constructive heart of the book, retrieving concepts from the Christian theological tradition to thematize the meaning of conflict as a feature of creaturely life. An initial exploration into Thomas Aquinas’s theological metaphysics of creation shows the importance of attending to the specific features of human being and action that distinguish human relation from divine relation. I then analyze three central components of human creaturehood – namely, finitude, contingency, and embodiment – and show how each gives rise to conflict as an aspect of creaturely goodness. Conflict, I argue, arises simply when embodied persons pursue their diverse desires, goods, and courses of action in a finite and contingent world shared with others. I conclude the chapter with a reflection on an instance of profoundly ordinary conflict, showing how the kinds of human relationships we tend to prize most are animated by the negotiation of conflict, as well as how personal, relational, and social maturity come by way of these negotiations.

In this chapter I suggest that anthropology’s project of the reflexive and explicit “comparison of embedded concepts” provides useful tools for Ottomanists. Reflexivity and explicit comparison, especially with the present, would bring debates usually left to historiography – concerning comparison, theory, and archives – to the fore, highlighting the contributions of Ottoman history to rethinking our present. Given my emphasis on comparison with the present, I begin with a consideration of presentism and argue that all histories involve an often-unspoken comparison with the present and our contemporary concepts. I then introduce how anthropological comparison operates, especially in making comparison explicit and reflecting on the anthropologist’s position and process. I end with an initial place where Ottomanists could put this reflexivity and explicit comparison to use: a more explicit discussion of how each historian constructs, accesses, and approaches their archive while reflecting on what counts as an archive.