This chapter examines the ways in which Victorian industrial novels, which emerged on the British literary scene in the early 1840s, revealed – and in many ways concealed – the imperial and racial structures that were fundamental to nineteenth-century industrial capitalism. Also termed “condition of England” novels, these narratives critiqued current social hierarchies while guarding themselves from appearing to promote working-class revolts. In addition, they had to negotiate how (or whether) to represent the extent to which British imperialism fueled industrialism’s acts of dehumanization and violence. Focusing on industrial novels written by authors including Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Gaskell, the essay explores two central ways in which these texts addressed these connections to race and empire: first, through representations of British factory workers in terms that evoked transatlantic slavery and imperial otherness; and second, through British spaces and colonial objects that called forth the imperial stories and identities often suppressed in industrial novels.

This chapter delves into the various physiological measures that can be used to gauge the thriving status of animals, emphasising the importance of routine veterinary examinations, body condition scoring, and quality of life assessments. It discusses the integration of these measures into a comprehensive animal welfare strategy, ensuring that each animal receives the necessary care tailored to its specific physiological needs. The chapter also highlights the implications of these practices for improving animal welfare, advocating for a science-based approach to animal care that aligns with the latest research and ethical standards in the field. This abstract provides a concise overview of the chapter’s focus on the critical role of physiological health in the overall welfare of animals, underscoring the necessity for ongoing research and adaptive care practices to enhance the quality of life for animals in human care.

Complementing the presentation of the Gaussian free field (GFF) with zero boundary conditions in Chapter 1, and on manifolds in Chapter 5, we devote this chapter to studying further variants of the field. The main example is the GFF in two dimensions with Neumann (or free) boundary conditions. We give a rigorous definition of this field as both a stochastic process indexed by suitable test functions and as a random distribution modulo constants. As in Chapter 1, we show the equivalence of these two viewpoints; however, in this case, further analytical arguments are required. We describe the covariance function of the field, prove key properties such as conformal covariance and the spatial Markov property, and discuss its associated Gaussian multiplicative chaos measures on the boundary of the domain where it is defined. We also cover the definition and properties of the whole plane Gaussian free field and the Gaussian free field with Dirichlet–Neumann boundary conditions, building on the construction of the Neumann GFF. We further prove that the whole plane GFF can be decomposed into a Dirichlet part and a Neumann part. Finally, we show that the total mass of the GMC associated to a Neumann GFF on the unit disc is almost surely finite.

This chapter continues to study social media platforms but with a focus on the relationship between citizens and companies, particularly the co-production of data that serves as an important company instrument in the state–company partnership. It reveals inequalities in data production among citizens, systematically varying in terms of geographical distribution, privacy concerns, motivations, and choice. It differentiates different types of user behavior – discussing (producing political content and metadata) and lurking (producing metadata). Based on the China Internet Survey (CIS) 2018, it finds that Chinese users have similar motivations to users in other contexts, thus contributing to data production as privacy concerns remain less important compared to other motivations. This conceptualization of co-production rests not only on user participation on platforms, but also on the role of platform architecture and technological infrastructure that afford users’ choices. Through examining the role of the Great Chinese Firewall, the chapter finds that only about 12 percent of internet users jump the firewall to seek political information. A comparison of the three most popular platforms regarding their technological design show that Weibo and Baidu Tieba facilitate the production of political content more effectively compared to WeChat.

This section draws on previous chapters to compare Zimbabwe to other resource-wealthy states in Southern Africa, particularly Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia. In all these states, resource sector policy has been essential to these states’ historical and institutional development. However, this chapter looks at how, even given many advantages and a level of development that was once ahead of these states regarding state capacity and democratization, Zimbabwe has fallen distinctly behind these other states. An overview of the resource sector shows that timing matters as other resource sectors are far more institutionalized than Zimbabwe and, while often leaving much to be desired, have not led to the same level of institutional and political decline. While these other states have had many of the same challenges and have had extreme difficulties, Zimbabwe has nonetheless been at the far end of the bell curve when it comes to resource curse dynamics.

This chapter draws on conceptualizations of the romance form by Northrop Frye and Fredric Jameson to provincialize them and delineate the imperial romance and its formal and functional specificities. It argues that the imperial romance is a colonial scripture, that is, a ritualized site for the articulation and performance of colonial ideology. It reads Philip Meadows Taylor’s “mutiny novel” Seeta (1872), set in India, and Henry Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885), set in Africa, to illustrate how these texts rearticulate categories of “good” and “evil.” It also underlines how these texts articulate and resolve colonial anxieties, especially around racial miscegenation. In underlining the imperial romance as a key site for the symbolic resolution of real contradictions of colonial life, the essay illuminates its ritual (and utopian) function that reaffirms and perpetuates colonial ideology.

This chapter examines ways in which languages express three basic sentence types: statements, questions and commands. It provides conlanging practice, a set of guided questions facilitating the incorporation of various sentence types in a conlang, and describes statements, questions and commands in the Salt language. The chapter ends with a list of resources and references to explore further.

There are three regulatory regimes already governing digital markets: the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act, and Section 19a of the Gesetz Gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen. These three regulatory regimes rely on distinct approaches to regulate digital markets, and each pursue its own objectives. This chapter explains why the DMA should be viewed as a rules-based platform-focussed approach, the DMCCA is a principles-based sectoral approach, and Section 19a GWB is an ecosystem and competition-law based approach. The chapter sets out the perks and drawbacks of each of these regulatory approaches and explains why they each independently may not be sufficient to restore competition in the digital network industry.

Ch. 1 The secular “immanent frame,” of Western cultures requires a corresponding “transcendent frame” equipped with a “soft” Metaphysics, so that moral arguments and the religious life can be supported.