Chapter 1 revisits Goethe’s endorsement of a “free trade of sentiments and ideas” in the light of the free trade discourses of his age. First, I dissect these discourses’ complexity and doctrinal incoherence in eighteenth-nineteenth-century British, French, and German political economy. Then I explore the ambivalences in Goethe’s vague suggestion about a free trade world literature by addressing his peculiar attitude to commerce, his reminiscences of the administrative economics of Cameralism based on the heritage of the self-sustaining Aristotelian household, his aversions to modern finance, and his nostalgia for the medieval trade fair. Based on these decidedly antiquated considerations informing his understanding of the mediums, sites, and agents of commercial and intellectual exchange, I suggest that as opposed to Marx’s approach to world literature as an offspring of modern industrial capitalism, Goethe’s views were bound up with pre-modern merchant capitalism.

This interleaf comprises a journey through peri-urban Kiambu, a glimpse of its terrain and inhabitants, as well as an arrival at the homesteads of Ituura, where the book’s narrative is set.

Social scientists’ writing, in general, is directed at their academic peers. Not all social scientists seek wider forms of influence, but between the early 1960s and the late 1980s those that did so had access to a mass-circulation weekly, New Society, designed specifically, in the words of its long-time editor Paul Barker, to ‘bridge the gap between thinkers and policy makers’. Our chapter examines how social scientists conceptualised writing as a practice in Britain between the 1960s and the 1980s, asking how they understood the challenge of writing to influence a non-specialist audience – whether that be Barker’s policymakers or the wider public. To do so, we draw on two main sources: the UK Data Archive’s ‘Pioneers of Social Research’ interview collection, and the pages of New Society (1962–88) itself. We use the ‘Pioneer’ interviews to explore why social scientists were drawn to write for New Society and how they viewed such writing, and we offer case studies of three frequent New Society contributors: the planner Peter Hall, and the sociologists Ann Oakley and Ray Pahl. We ask what techniques each social thinker developed to popularize their ideas and examine how their contributions interacted with the broad format of New Society.

This chapter explores the theoretical themes of the book: art, politics and anti-racism; emotion and affect in art and politics; Latin American racial formations. It outlines the research project on which the book is based: Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA).

This chapter examines the ‘parliamentary novel’, a genre developed in the mid nineteenth century by Benjamin Disraeli and Anthony Trollope, as more Britons gained the right to vote. These novels often served to educate new voters about the virtues of the parliamentary system, portraying statesmen as noble figures and reinforcing traditional parliamentary ideals for an industrial society. The chapter surveys this genre, focusing on authors with first-hand experience in Parliament or close connections to MPs. It traces the genre’s evolution, particularly its post-1945 transformation from respected literature to what Gerald Kaufman labelled ‘trash’. While considering broader works by authors like Jeffrey Archer and Michael Dobbs, the chapter centres on Maurice Edelman and Edwina Currie. The motives behind these novels varied, but male authors in the genre’s classic period typically aimed to celebrate Parliament. However, as female authors emerged in the 1990s, they shifted the genre’s focus from glorifying male heroes to critiquing both these figures and Parliament itself, reflecting a growing scepticism towards male-dominated politics and altering the genre’s original celebratory purpose.

Chapter 5 explores the construction of women, especially young women, as dubious and untrustworthy figures in male discourse, a source of cynicism and doubt about kinship’s future. It captures men’s fears about ‘greedy’ women and ‘gold diggers’ who only want to marry men in order to expropriate their wealth. At the same time, the chapter explores counter-discourses of young women getting by in a world of male failure, their relations with their male kin, and their ambitions to become successful ‘hustlers’ in their own right. Speaking to regional literature on love, marriage, and youth relationships, it explores the gendered tensions created by a world of masculine destitution, illuminating male fears about the capacity of women to exploit their ‘in-betweenness’ to acquire patrilineal land.

Chapter 1 introduces the region of Kiambu in detail, establishing the stakes of moral debate over wealth amongst men in the region. While an older generation preaches the labour ideology (the notion that hard work will bring success) that allowed them to prosper in the aftermath of independence, it has been undermined by dwindling land holdings and opportunities for ‘off-farm income’, creating a crisis of hopelessness as young men wonder if they will ever reach the ‘level’ of their elders. Framing the study of masculine destitution to follow, the chapter discusses the legacies of the ‘Kenya Debate’, a regional debate in political economy about the relative prosperity of Kenya’s peasantry after independence. It argues for a processual, non-static approach to economic change in central Kenya, allowing us to see how class divides have been opened across generations due to population pressure on land. Its subdivision within families exerts stronger pressure on young family members who find themselves in the situation of being virtual paupers – land poor and ‘hustling’ for cash.

Chapter 4 discusses the integration of child labor into the capitalist relations of production in the Imperial Arsenal. It connects the militarization of labor with industrial and urban modernization in the context of migration crises throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. It analyses how children were forcefully drafted before the Tanzimat and how child labor was central to the transition from tributary to military labor. It then explores how children served to the efforts to maintain military labor in the Arsenal. As the flow of refugees to Istanbul increased in the 1860s, the demanding need for industrial production and the failure of previous schemes of coercion merged with an emerging middle-class consciousness among urban elites who desired to convert the orphaned and refugee children into industrious citizens. The chapter narrates the formation of naval-vocational schools and boys’ companies and battalions within this context and introduces wages and profiles of Muslim and non-Muslim children throughout the different phases of their employment in the Arsenal and the Yarn Factory.

This chapter explores whether there is a link between racial rhetorical representation and legislative behavior. We take a more nuanced examination of the link between rhetorical outreach and legislative activity than previous research. Rather than treating all discussions about a topic as being the same, we explore whether proactive (as measured by low-profile racial outreach) and reactive (as measured by high-profile racial appeals) rhetorical representation differ in their correlation to legislative activity. This allows us to better understand whether some forms of rhetorical outreach provide more accurate information to voters about the member of Congress’ legislative intent. Using our rhetorical outreach data and 18,025 primary sponsored bills, 417,925 co-sponsored bills, 108,255 statements from congressional hearings, and 1,300 unique voting scores, we find strong evidence that elected officials who engage in racial rhetorical outreach also engage in racial legislative actions across all of our measures. We also find that both high- and low-profile forms of racial rhetorical outreach are consistently significant correlates of legislative activity. However, elected officials who engage in more lower profile (i.e. proactive) forms of racial outreach are generally the most likely to advance Black political interests through the primary and co-sponsorship of legislation. Overall, racial rhetorical representation provides an accurate picture of how legislators behave in elected office. However, some forms of racial outreach provide a clearer signal of legislative priorities than others. While legislative communications are aimed at winning votes, they also are communicating to each other and forming alliances. While it is not guarantee that these bills will turn into laws, racial rhetorical representation is linked to other forms of substantive representation.