This brief conclusion summarizes the main thesis of the book, noting that both conservative and progressive critiques of social media lack strong empirical justifications, and that many if not most of the regulatory proposals directed at social media are not only likely to be found unconstitutional, but are also wrong-headed. It then argues that it is time we all accept that the old, pre-social media world of gatekeepers is over; and further, that this development has important, positive implications for the democratization of public discourse in ways that free speech theory supports. Finally, the Conclusion analogizes the modern hysteria over the growth of social media to earlier panics over changes in communications technology, such as the inventions of the printing press and of moving pictures. As with those earlier panics, this one too is overblown and ignores the positive potential impacts of technological change.

This chapter introduces the fundamental premise that achieving a healthy society requires moving beyond access to clinical care and addressing the broader social determinants of health. While access to quality health care is essential, factors outside clinical settings – such as economic stability, education, social equity, and the built environment – account for 80 percent of health outcomes. The chapter explores health equity and justice, distinguishing these concepts from equality and advocating for systemic changes to address underlying inequalities. Various global health care models (Beveridge, Bismarck, National Health Insurance, and Out-of-Pocket) are presented, highlighting the fragmented nature of the US system. The 6Ps framework (patients, policy makers, providers, pharmacies, pharmaceuticals, and payers) is introduced as a tool to analyze and optimize health care policy. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the interplay between diversity, health, and policy, illustrating the importance of inclusivity and justice in creating equitable and effective health systems.

This chapter reexamines the theoretical contributions of an early anticolonial and ecological sociologist, Radhakamal Mukerjee, as a way of (1) provincializing early twentieth century Anglo-American social thought and (2) integrating anticolonial and ecological theorizing in the social sciences. It shows that Mukerjee engaged in a uniquely promiscuous form of scholarship that drew eclectically, yet rigorously, on both Anglo-American mainstream and Indian sources of knowledge to address the ecological challenges of his time, largely rooted in his observations of the social and ecological devastation of British colonialism in India. Further, Mukerjee was an active, if underrecognized, critic of metropolitan thought and epistemologies, especially in economics and sociology. If we take planetary environmental crisis to be one of the core challenges of the twenty-first century, a reconsideration of Mukerjee’s claims, often involving thinking in totalities of interconnectedness between humanity and nature, may help us rethink our own theoretical dilemmas.

What is classical relief? Can “relief” ever be spoken of as a single category? Is it a “medium” in itself? If so, what exactly does it “mediate”? And how does the notion of artistic medium (which art history tends to use in relation to materials) relate to the more theoretical concept of “media” as tools or channels for the storage and transmission of information? This chapter attempts to crack open such questions by examining the terminology that is applied to relief work in Greek and Roman texts, focusing in particular on the problematic term typos, which is applied to relief sculpture, repoussé metalwork, terra-cotta moldings, engraved gems and (perhaps) sculptors’ models. Developing J. J. Pollitt’s foundational chapter on typoi in The Ancient View of Greek Art, it explores how technologies of making, materiality, and dimensionality contribute to the particular instability of the typos as a category of object and, in turn, the peculiar ontology of relief as a category of ancient art.

This chapter examines how ancient Egypt was represented across Michael Field’s oeuvre, contextualising such depictions via the wider literary culture of the fin de siècle, from the aesthetic and decadent movements to popular fiction. In comparison to the classical world, which held a more privileged place in education and literature, Egypt symbolised the exotic, dark, and ‘other’. Through close readings of Michael Field’s Egyptian sonnets, their verse drama Queen Mariamne, and references to Egypt in Bradley and Cooper’s diaries, the chapter explores the erotic allure of ancient Egypt and the limits – in Bradley and Cooper’s minds – to its queer potentialities. It also investigates how mummified remains, goddesses, and figures like Cleopatra VII were used to navigate themes of power, desire, and gender, ultimately positioning Egypt as a fertile ground for reimagining gender fluidity, femininity, and transgressive sexuality around the turn of the century.

This chapter examines how exchange participants resolve uncertainties in corrupt transactions by focusing on the buying and selling of government positions, a typical form of corruption in China. Drawing on sixty-two in-depth interviews, this chapter suggests that corrupt transactions are highly embedded in strong-tie relationships, the power structure of which is often imbalanced. Exchange participants who are connected through strong ties have a strong incentive to cooperate and exchange favors because the cost of losing “hostages” (e.g., ganqing – deep feelings of emotional attachment – and human capital investment in maintaining exchange relations) and mianzi (“face,” which is used to describe reputation and social esteem) is high and difficult to recover. We also find that favor-seekers, who are often low-power actors, develop power-balancing strategies, such as bribe payments and disclosing compromising information, to win exchange opportunities and lower the risk of exploitation by high-power actors (power-holders who are favor-givers). Given that corrupt intermediaries are commonly brought in when a strong tie between favor-seeker and favor-giver does not exist, this chapter also empirically examines how corrupt exchanges involving intermediaries are governed. We find that face functions as a primary assurance and enforcement mechanism regulating corrupt transactions facilitated by intermediaries.

An overview of the global energy balance, atmosphere–ocean circulation, the Hadley and Ferrell Cells, and heat and moisture budgets forms the introduction to an examination of Southern Hemisphere circulation. The chapter is a primer for paleoclimatologists working on the natural archive from the tropics to the poles. The major circulation characteristics of the Southern Hemisphere are defined in descriptive terms. Low-latitude circulation is viewed through the tropical zonal pressure gradient and Walker Circulation; tropical easterlies, near-equatorial trough, and westerlies; the Intertropical Convergence Zone over the ocean basins, the Maritime Continent, Africa, and South America; and tropical/subtropical monsoons. The mid-high latitudes are explored through the mid-latitude westerlies, circumpolar trough, Antarctic coastal easterlies and coastal-slope winds, and the annual and semi-annual oscillations in pressure and temperature. The major climate modes, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole, ENSO diversity, tropical–extratropical interactions, the Pacific–South American modes, and the Southern Annular Mode are described in terms of air–sea interactions.

The negotiated South African revolution of the 1990s inaugurated a marked shift toward strong constitutionalism: the post-apartheid Constitution comprised an extensive Bill of Rights, including substantial socioeconomic rights and constitutional duties for far-reaching redistributive measures, and established an independent judiciary under the auspices of a new constitutional (rather than, as before, parliamentary) supremacy. This way, South Africa quickly turned into a paradigmatic case of “juristocracy” (Hirschl 2004) and became imbued with an iconic indexicality for the enormous hopes for transformative justice that came to be vested in the law during the post-cold war era. Based on this progressive Constitution, the government immediately embarked upon a massive land reform in order to address persisting racial inequalities regarding access to and control of the land. Aiming at “putting land rights in the right hands under the rule of law,” as the former minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs put it in 2007 in contradistinction to ongoing extralegal land occupations in neighboring Zimbabwe, South African land reform exemplified a profound belief in “transformative constitutionalism” that was advocated as the solution to many of South Africa’s pressing political concerns. However, growing criticisms of the limited impact and slow pace of South African juristocracy in general and of law-based land reform in particular have substantially altered public discourse over the past decade, revealing a more complex and ambiguous dialectics of reckoning to be at play. Transformative constitutionalism is increasingly also portrayed as being part of the problem – or at least as suffering from “a dis/empowerment paradox” (Mnisi Weeks 2022) – that needs to be overcome in order to finally transform South Africa, which remains one of the most unequal societies in the world, in substantive and meaningful ways. This contested development is paradigmatically exemplified in the recent constitutional amendment process, designed to allow for “expropriation without compensation” in order to fast-track South African land reform, as its advocates claim. This chapter charts the contested terrain of this complex dialectic of juristocratic reckoning in order to evaluate the potentials and pitfalls of a continued project of transformative constitutionalism that increasingly has to operate in an era in which South Africa’s moment of iconic indexicality seems to be passing.

This chapter introduces the main themes of the volume, Anticolonialism and Social Thought. It provides a brief overview of the history of anticolonialism and argues that anticolonialism in history generates social thought and social theory.

Michael Field and Oscar Wilde moved in overlapping cultural and social circles from the mid-1880s to his imprisonment in May 1895. Their mutual acquaintances included Bernard Berenson, John Gray, Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon, Robert Ross, and William Rothenstein. Bradley was eager to befriend Wilde at one of Louise Chandler Moulton’s ‘at-homes’ in 1890. In 1891, the coauthors paid a visit to Wilde’s family residence. Later, they sought his advice on their only staged drama, A Question of Memory (1893). They maintained, too, a strong interest in Wilde’s comedies. Still, Bradley, Cooper, and Wilde never became close friends. Nonetheless, after Wilde’s demise in late 1900, Michael Field respected his legacy, attending the double bill of Salome and A Florentine Tragedy in 1906, choosing to remember him positively.

The background of a relief sculpture is often seen as a stable plane from which the foreground figures emerge. But this is a viewer’s perspective, possible only once the carving is finished. In this chapter, I consider sculptural relief through the lens of stone carving processes in order to better understand the nature and possibilities of the background. In part one, I consider how stone relief sculptures were carved. Carving generally moved from outside in and from front to back; the background was not finalized until quite late in the process, often long after the foreground figures were finished. In part two, I focus on a marble calyx krater from Villa A at Oplontis. Reconstructing its carving not only highlights the skill required but also connects this krater to the larger play of remediation in the villa. Considering the background thus helps us understand sculptural relief in new ways. The background is not a stable plane for the articulation of the foreground figures; rather, the foreground anchors the background. Within sculptural relief, the background has a unique status; it is a place of potential, instability, and dynamic change.