Central to all the cases studied in this book is a power struggle between business, workers and communities over rights, norms and resources. Business strategies erode community strength and divide communities and co-opt nationalist and development narratives. Business models reduce transparency and obfuscate their responsibility. Applying the fields of struggle lens, Chapter 5 explores the factors that enable some communities and workers to achieve remedy, however rare and minimal. As might be expected, success is driven by cohesion and solidarity within worker and community groups, as well as robust networks with sustained local and international networks of campaigners. Notably, the analysis also reveals that in the cases we examined where some remedy was achieved, elite business networks or key businesses in value chains espoused ethical and sustainable business norms, which were leveraged effectively by civil society networks to provide the basis for (albeit fragile) alliances between civil society and business networks against errant businesses harming communities and worker groups. Non-judicial mechanisms, as interventions in these struggles, were most helpful when they not only added their normative weight to the grievance but also reshaped the boundaries of the field to integrate and legitimate supportive allies.

This chapter examines the urban evolution of cities in the Eastern Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, focusing on their transformation from classical urban centres to more utilitarian and fortified settlements. It argues that rather than experiencing outright decline, cities in the East adapted to changing political, economic and religious realities. Archaeological evidence demonstrates a marked shift from monumental civic spaces to structures that emphasised military defence, religious identity and practical urban needs. The author discusses key aspects of urban change, including the gradual abandonment of traditional agoras, the decline of monumental temples and the repurposing of public buildings for Christian churches and administrative centres. The chapter also explores the impact of imperial policies on urban planning in reshaping cityscapes through large-scale church construction, fortification efforts and infrastructure projects. The increased militarisation of cities, with the establishment of fortified kastra and urban defences, is another major theme. Regional variations are examined, showing that while some cities, such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki, thrived under imperial patronage, others faced economic stagnation and contraction. The chapter concludes that while Late Antiquity brought profound transformations to urban life, cities in the East remained resilient, adapting to new social and political realities rather than simply collapsing.

After the Hannibalic war, the leading military role of consulars diminished, though it did not disappear. A significant number of consuls kept their imperium as proconsuls, but only a very small minority held the consulship again. A number of them held intermediate positions as military tribunes or military legates under the command of magistrates with imperium. Consulars played a leading role in international diplomacy and the organisation of newly conquered territories as members of senatorial embassies, especially in the Greek world. Ex-consuls were also common as heads of commissions in charge of implementing the agrarian policy promoted by the Senate during the second century BCE, both for the foundation of Roman and Latin colonies and for the individual distribution of land. The censorship became the coveted culmination of a political career for many consulars. The Senate was the arena in which consulars assumed a leading role in political debate. In contrast, their intervention in popular assemblies was rare. As in previous periods, many consulars were members of priestly colleges. While most of them entered the colleges (long) before they became consuls, others did so at an advanced age after their consulship.

In Chapter 5 we present the pitfall of using one’s research to prove a pre-held conviction. As a case study, we present historical diplomatic correspondence between representatives of China and the US in the time of colonialism. We argue that it is not productive to attempt to demonstrate how evil colonialism was, which is a frequent research goal in spite of the fact that the evil nature of colonialism is an accepted truth. Rather, we believe that it is more productive to look at exactly how the coloniser used language in order to coerce representatives of the colonised country to fulfil their demands.

In this chapter we identify some aspects of Indigenous epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) and apply them to the re-imagining of social work, grounded in contributions, experiences and knowledges shared by Indigenous scholars in the field. Social work has too often been part of the colonial project rather than the decolonising project, though in the twenty-first century the decolonisation of social work has emerged as a more important agenda. This chapter is concerned with Indigenous ways of knowing and being as representing important alternatives to Western modernity. We argue that to achieve re-imagining of social work requires social workers to adopt an epistemological shift that centres and values Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies as core, consciously and intentionally removing them from the margins that they have occupied in social work education and practice. We start the chapter with some notes on its authorship. We then briefly describe colonialism’s stifling of Indigenous epistemologies, after which we explore Indigenous ways of knowing and being and how they inform the re-imagining of social work.

This collection of essays is one in a series of books on urban planning and sustainable development in Africa, bringing together scholarship from different disciplines in urban studies, planning and social sciences across different regions of the continent. It is aimed at readers from urban specialisms in spatial planning, human geography, environmental law and other social sciences, and professionals and policymakers concerned with urban development, land use planning and informality governance. Urban planning has emerged over the past half a century in Africa through colonisation, influencing urban policies, practices, discourses and institutions in the continent’s cities. Today, it remains the bedrock for realising sustainable development ideals across the continent’s growing cities, yet current practices indicate otherwise. A narrative is presented on why urban planning needs to be reimagined in Africa and its association with sustainable urban development, involving complex policy developments during colonial and post-colonial times. The case of African cities is discussed, having acquired importance because of their particular history of colonisation and growth in urbanisation and population as well as experiences of climate change. The chapter contributions in this book are then outlined together with how they contribute to evolving ideas on urban planning and sustainable development in Africa.

Urban planning in Africa is linked to elements of colonisation, production of informal spaces and socio-spatial segregation. Discussing it often provokes considerable emotions. How do urban planning histories fit into current planning practice? What constitutes reimagined urban planning in African cities? And how do current urban planning practices promote or limit urban planning reimagination and sustainable urban development? This chapter addresses these questions by highlighting the importance of planning histories in framing current planning theory and the production of urban spaces in Africa as well as their implication for sustainable urban development. The chapter shows how pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial planning narratives continue to dominate and frame twenty-first-century planning practice across African cities. Drawing from published literature, policy documents and international reports, the chapter advocates for a participatory narrative in deconstructing planning,and promoting inclusiveness and spatial integration toward a reimagination of urban planning in Africa.

Colonisation and colonialism have denied legitimacy to the Indigenous world views and ways of knowing and being described in Chapter 4. In this chapter, we turn our gaze on the coloniser and consider the influence of colonial cultures and the ways in which they need to change so that other ways of knowing and being can flourish. We start our discussion with an example of the unacknowledged nature of colonialism in modern Australian society. We then argue that decolonisation is essential, not only for social work with Indigenous or culturally diverse populations but for all social work practice.

This chapter examines eighteenth-century textual records about the Australian colonies, from the early British press reports of the establishment of the penal colony at Port Jackson to the accounts of religious personnel such as the first colonial chaplain Richard Johnson. It reveals how convicts and Indigenous people were represented in texts designed for metropolitan audiences. The isolated voices of evangelical reformers provided rich accounts of the problems and failures of the penal colony. They questioned the morality of the military governance of the penal colony and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Evangelical accounts from New South Wales became part of a global knowledge economy and a thriving print culture; they provided evidence that thickened, and at times contradicted, official accounts that circulated in the British media.

Australian novelist George Turner’s 1987 novel The Sea and Summer is one of the world’s first climate fiction novels, although James Edmond’s 1911 story, ‘The Fool and His Inheritance’, is a precursor to the genre. The early emergence of Australian climate fiction is not surprising given the country’s vulnerability to anthropogenic climate change. This chapter investigates the 35-year history of Australian climate fiction through an analysis of six novels, contemplating how environment, history and culture shape the use of genre, form and theme. It examines slow violence and flooding in The Sea and Summer; the intertwining of colonisation, environmental destruction and dispossession in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013); the use of the uncanny to explore the impact of ‘settlement’ in Jennifer Mills’s Dyschronia (2018); the effect of a changing climate on generations in James Bradley’s Clade (2015); and the psychological ramifications of the 2019–20 bushfires, evident through motifs of missing bodies and an invisible menace in Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (2020) and Inga Simpson’s The Last Woman in the World (2021). These novels, which are shaped by their production in a country with a fragile environment and a history of colonisation, offer varying visions of hope and despair.

The chapter focusses on post-1721 developments, analysing the Dano-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede’s struggle to fit the new observations he made in Greenland into the framework of established ideas promoted in the texts he had read prior to his arrival. The transition from reading about Greenland in books to observing the land in situ led to a crisis of representation as the archive of knowledge that had been stored up over the centuries became difficult to reconcile with experience. The most significant error perpetuated in several texts was the idea that the Eastern Settlement was located on the east coast. Rather than dismiss the many expeditions that sought to reach this fabled settlement as irrelevant to the colonial project that eventually developed on the west coast, the chapter proposes that the search for the settlers and their resource-rich lands is significant for understanding Denmark’s political, religious, and commercial ambitions in Greenland. Attention is also paid to the maps Egede drew of Greenland as they are visual records of how traditional perceptions were allowed to coexist with new empirical data.

Countries in the Minority World that have made the most substantial contributions to the climate emergency must accept that they should also make the most significant contributions to its solutions. It is reasonable and right that governments in the Minority World should assume responsibility for their actions and make amends. Indeed, it is only fair and decent that they do so after centuries of robbing the Majority World.

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations documents the lives and experiences of everyday people through the lens of human movement and mobility from 1400 to 1800. Focusing on the most important typologies of preindustrial global migrations, this volume reveals how these movements transformed global paths of mobility, the impacts of which we still see in societies today. Case studies include those that arose from the demand for free, forced, and unfree labor, long- and short-distance trade, rural/urban displacement, religious mobility, and the rise of the number of refugees worldwide. With thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, this authoritative volume is an essential and detailed study of how migration shaped the nature of global human interactions before the age of modern globalization.

By 1837 the British government had been sending convicts, soldiers, and livestock entrepreneurs to Australia for almost fifty years. A committee of its own House of Commons, inspired by humanitarian principles, now reported the devastating effects on the indigenous inhabitants. Evidence of ‘extermination’ and ‘extirpation’ meant that the best minds of the Colonial Office were already exercised by the devastation of indigenous peoples inflicted by settlers who might have no clear aim of damaging them. When British government was extended to New Zealand, it was soon evident that Māori, for centuries sharing a largely common language and history, had a more effective capacity to resist than Aboriginal Australians, for millennia divided into hundreds of separate peoples and languages. In all Australian colonies and New Zealand, the determination of immigrants to ‘make productive’ land they knew belonged to others created disaster. Within twenty years of settlement, the Aboriginal population of Victoria declined by eighty percent. As the British spread over the whole continent, countless nations were extinguished. Across the Tasman the indigenous population was halved and the ‘passing of the Māori’ was still openly discussed even as adaptation, intermarriage and parliamentary representation saved it from genocide.