The Introduction lays out the book’s arguments, organization, and significance. The basic arguments are: (1) there was more to the military than war; (2) there was more to government than civil officials; and (3) there was more to China than the Han majority. The story of the Wu family is told at three levels: (1) the professional and family lives of each generation of the men to hold the title Marquis of Gongshun, (2) broader events and trends occurring in Ming politics, society, economics, religion, and ethnic relations, and (3) periodic consideration of the big picture, that is, thinking about the Ming dynasty in its Eurasian context. Nearly all polities confront issues of ability and difference as they secure people of ability through means such as hereditary status, meritocratic evaluations, and patronage. Simultaneously, polities like the Ming dynasty developed institutional means to acknowledge and whenever possible leverage differences such as ethnicity, gender, professional training, and relation to the throne.

Housing is a defining issue of our time, driving a persistent affordability crisis, financial instability, and economic inequality. Through the Roof examines the crucial role of the state in shaping the housing markets of two economic powerhouses – the United States and Germany. The book starts with a puzzle: Free-market America has vigorously supported homeownership markets with generous government programs, while social-market Germany has slashed policy support for both homeownership and rental markets throughout the past century. The book explains why the two nations have adopted such radically different and unexpected housing policy approaches. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews with policymakers, it argues that contrasting forms of capitalism – demand-led in the United States and export-oriented in Germany – resulted in divergent housing policies. In both countries, these policies have subsequently transformed capitalism itself.

This chapter continues the story of Sofia’s water supply, beginning with the political turmoil that marred urban fabrics and economies across the Ottoman Balkans from the 1790s to the 1820s and ending in 1912 when, after a long series of failed attempts, post-Ottoman Sofia received its first modern water supply system. I emphasize the similarity in the predicaments that shaped the Ottoman and Bulgarian policies in the fields of urban planning, underground infrastructures, and natural resource management. I explain how a series of extreme human-made and natural phenomena, including banditry, war, and intensified seismicity limited the capabilities of the Ottoman authorities to accomplish their modernizing intentions. In post-Ottoman Bulgaria, the modernization of urban fabrics was seen as a statement of the superiority of the nation-state over its former imperial master. However, in a series of attempts to meet the water needs of the national capital’s constantly expanding population, the post-Ottoman authorities found themselves continually unable to come up with solutions superior to the water supply practices of their predecessors. The chapter argues that throughout the long nineteenth century Sofia’s water supply functioned within the bounds of the system established by the Ottomans.

In 1793, war between France and Great Britain plunged the United States – and the federal courts – into crisis. As the French Revolution reverberated around the Atlantic, the impetuous French foreign minister, Edmond-Charles Genet, launched privateering attacks against British commerce from the United States. The Washington administration tried to prevent Americans from dragging the nation into war, but partisan rivalry and a lack of federal law enforcement power stymied its efforts. Desperate to demonstrate the nation’s sovereign bona fides in the face of British complaints, the administration turned to the courts for help. It asked federal judges to resolve difficult and highly consequential legal disputes that the political branches were unable or unwilling to address. But the judges were not the acquiescent handmaidens in foreign affairs that modern commentators imagine. They balked at violating longstanding principles of international law, and they were wary of compromising the judiciary’s own institutional integrity by intervening in the affairs of state. In the midst of an international conflict of unprecedented scope, the founders’ confidence that the federal courts would ensure the nation’s peace and security seemed to have been mistaken.

This chapter turns to labelling memes, where some images may develop into full-blown Image Macros, while others remain non-entrenched. Here, the textual component is different from both when-memes and from the typical Image Macro memes. In typical labelling memes, parts of a depicted scene are labelled with words or phrases which do not describe anything in the image, but instead collectively call up a different frame. Well-known examples discussed include the Is This a Pigeon? meme, and the Distracted Boyfriend meme (DBM), showing a man turning over to admire an attractive passing woman (dressed in red), while the woman (in blue) whose hand he’s holding looks on indignantly. This scene of a change in attention and preference – a choice for a new and attractive opportunity – gets to be applied to unrelated choices and new preferences. Labelling itself can sometimes be visual again. Overall, we stress the constructional properties of DBM – with strong argument structure-like properties – alongside the role of embodied features (emotions and attentions expressed in facial expressions and posture) and the figurative, similative meaning often arrived at compositionally.

1. Reflect on the intersectionality of poverty and child labour as highlighted in the story. How do social and economic factors contribute to the perpetuation of child labour globally? 2. Considering the complexities of defining child labour, particularly concerning domestic chores and family-based work, how might this ambiguity impact efforts to address and eradicate child labour effectively? 3. Reflect on social constructs around children and childhood to develop actions that can give voices to children who are usually unheard and unseen. What are these constructs? 4. Think about actions that social workers can undertake to maintain a balance between promoting social protection of the most vulnerable groups of children while ensuring the agency of children and families. What would be priority actions for you? 5. Considering the diversity of experiences among working children, how can policies and interventions be tailored to meet the specific needs of individual children and their families? 6. Keeping in mind the attitude of society where a large number of people prefer to turn a blind eye to child labour, what can social workers do to evolve a society where the duty of care for children is the responsibility of every adult, regardless of whether the child is part of his/her family? 7. Reflect on the challenges faced in the reintegration and rehabilitation of rescued child workers, as discussed in the story. What strategies and initiatives could be implemented to support these children and prevent them from returning to work?

Chapter 3 explores the production of knowledge about Catholicism by people of African descent and their engagement with Iberian and their religious vernaculars. It is based on a small body of Inquisition records, largely relaciones de causas de fe, and one full proceso de fe, the sacrilege case of Felix Fernando Martínez in 1776. The only chapter that focuses on the Caribbean region, it demonstrates the importance of Catholicism in black material and oral culture, whether that be through embrace, questioning, or overt criticism of the Church, Catholic cosmology, and the saints. The religious knowledge production of defendants from the Caribbean, most of whom were free and described as mulato, does not suggest African intellectual genealogies alone. Rather, people of African descent were part of and constructed a vibrant and heterogeneous religious Caribbean and exchanged knowledge about the supernatural, especially Catholicism, with people of all ethnicities. Such speech, and on occasion acts, nevertheless was potentially dangerous to them in the transcultural Caribbean, evidenced by the violent sentences handed down, ranging from spiritual exercises, to forced labour and execution.

J. S. Bach’s tenure as Capellmeister in Cöthen, with its focus on secular music, afforded an opportunity to explore the violin and cello as solo instruments. While his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin represent the pinnacle of an established German tradition, the Cello Suites are among the earliest music composed for unaccompanied cello and may have been inspired partly by unaccompanied music for viola da gamba (pièces de viole). Bach’s Violin Solos and Cello Suites are both “opus collections”—sets of (usually six) pieces exemplifying his mastery of a particular genre or instrument. An obituary coauthored by Carp Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola illustrates the special importance the composer attached to these pieces. While Bach was best known during his lifetime as an organist, he had intimate knowledge and full mastery of the violin. There is no record of Bach playing cello, but his composition of virtuoso suites that draw a maximum musical effect from such minimal instrumental resources suggest an intimate knowledge of that instrument. Moreover, during Bach’s lifetime, an instrument called “viola da spalla”—considered a type of cello but played similarly to the violin—could have enabled a violinist to play the Cello Suites.

Negotiations in Paris provoke both optimism about an end to the American participation in the war and pessimism regarding the consequences of continued conflict in the south. The Harrisburg Seven call national attention to radical peace action. Nixon’s campaign against antiwar Senator George McGovern divides Catholics, a majority of whom vote for the Republican Nixon. The Christmas bombings call forth condemnation from antiwar Catholics. Some Catholic leaders call for amnesty for draft evaders while others oppose it. This raises the issue of national reconciliation. America’s exit from the war calls forth assessments about the conflict and its meaning.

Chapter 2 examines the circulation and application of medical and ritual knowledge in Caribbean and Pacific New Granada, including Venezuela and Panama, and is based upon Inquisition trial records and secular court cases. The chapter approaches healing and ritual as intimately connected and often inseparable activities for African-descended practitioners who were solicited by clients of all ethnicities. Where clients were also people of colour, they were often hired to perform work of community healing. The chapter outlines the gendered and racialised patterns of prosecution and punishment of defendants of African descent tried by the Inquisition of Cartagena de Indias. This is followed by an analysis of the mobility and exchange of healing knowledge in Caribbean and Pacific New Granada, an examination of the marketplace of ideas, and an exploration of the social worlds in which black specialists practiced. Case studies include that of three Kongolese bondsmen, who had hired Joseph and Thomas to poison his owner in 1740s Cartagena, and that of enslaved man Aja, who was accused by fellow bondspersons, other members of the cuadrilla on the gold mines of San Antonio in the Cauca valley mines (owned by the Convent of the Encarnación in the city of Popayán) in the 1770s.