Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of the foundational importance of classical education in Roman society and politics, and how it served as a basis for both office-holding and elite Roman identity and self-fashioning. The chapter also provides a prosopographical sketch of the teachers and students that are visible in the historical record from the fourth to early sixth centuries in Gaul, showing that identifiable teachers and students begin to fade from the sources from the later-fifth and early-sixth centuries. It discusses the marked shift in the visibility of these individuals, the changing nature of our sources for education throughout the period, the limitations of our sources, and what we can learn from those limitations. The chapter argues that, while classical education largely disappears from the historical record by the early sixth century, this by no means indicates that classical education ceased to exist entirely. Rather, it shows that classical education was no longer a ‘public’ institution as it had been under the Roman empire, and that it did not occupy that specific place within politics, society, and culture that allowed it to be visible and take a prominent place in the technical and literary texts of the period.

Discoveries in late 20th-century paleoanthropology strongly support an early Out of Africa model. Well-dated sites like Dmanisi and Atapuerca, at Europe’s eastern and western gateways, have provided significant human remains and evidence of early activity. Subsequent findings have filled chronological gaps, confirming that between 1 and 1.5 million years ago, Europe was a key region for human evolution.

However, while these sites are invaluable for reconstructing early human life, many records remain scarce, fragmented, or found in low-resolution contexts, limiting broad interpretations. Two Iberian Peninsula sites stand out as exceptions: Gran Dolina TD6.2 and Pit-1 at Barranc de la Boella. These sites have yielded high-resolution data, allowing for detailed reconstructions of Early Pleistocene foraging behaviors in Europe. Additionally, lower-resolution but complementary records contribute to assembling the broader evolutionary puzzle.

Chapter 10 charts Emerson’s long engagement with Hinduism, from his college years, when he rejected what he thought of as “Indian Superstition,” to the presence of the Vishnu Purāna and Bhagavad Gīta in some of his greatest essays. In “Plato, or the Philosopher,” Emerson draws from these works the idea of a fundamental unity – “The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu” – and credits Plato with absorbing, enhancing, and representing the “unity of Asia and the detail of Europe.” Emerson’s Plato is a representative of Emerson himself, a man who made lists of opposing East-West properties and tendencies on the same pages where he recorded passages from the Vishnu Purāna. Emerson finds a skeptical strain within Hinduism, particularly in “Illusions.” But he also weaves in the contrary vision of deep, but momentary, insight: “by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little.”

In modernity, large-scale group-based identity formation has arisen chiefly through religion, nation, and/or a political state. The digital transformation of society, however, has changed group-based identity formation. This chapter explores the connection between the evolving nature of identity formation with a parallel evolution in the social construct of money. We associate the power to create money (and taxation) with the sovereign state. In this way identity, money, and tax come together. What happens when they come apart? Identity may become attached to the creation of private money, raising the normatively unappealing prospect of ‘private taxation’. This chapter proposes a different path that would allow individual taxpayers to elect to allocate some fraction of payments on domestic tax liabilities (calculated under typical domestic tax rules) to the state of their choosing, in virtue of which they would receive a one-to-one credit offsetting domestic tax liability. Such a mechanism would allow taxpayers to ’vote’ directly with their tax dollars, thereby allowing individuals to associate with non-geographically proximate groups through the civic duty to pay taxes – but within the framework of fiat currency and sovereign state taxation.

Chapter 4 examines three works: the Falucho monument, both in its creation and in its initial location in Buenos Aires and its subsequent relocation; the portrait of Eusebio de la Santa Federación, a jester by Juan Manuel de Rosas, which differs from other images of the same figure; and the representations of Tía Rosa, a pastry seller on the streets of Buenos Aires in the nineteenth century. It should be noted that, during this period, portraits of Afro-Argentines are rare and limited to military personnel, especially toward the end of the century. These three portraits depict a common soldier, a female pastry vendor or a cook, and a buffoon. So the question is why three people were portrayed who had trades or fulfilled roles effectively but not exclusively performed by a large part of the Afro-Argentine population. This assignment of social and labor roles, similar to those they were forced to perform during slavery, became stereotypical. This operation circumscribed Afro-descendants to the past, banishing them from the present in which the images were produced, and hence from the future as well.

This chapter surveys the awards and professional affiliations that Clara Schumann received during her career and considers the significance of these recognitions for Clara’s reputation. The honours Clara earned across her career reinforced her stature as one of nineteenth-century Europe’s most famous and influential musicians, as well as one of its most prominent pedagogues. To illuminate her multifaceted career, the chapter spotlights recognitions chronologically in four pivotal locations, from her anointment as a Royal and Imperial Chamber Virtuosa in Vienna to Honorary Member of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Society (among others). She also became an esteemed teacher in England and Frankfurt. In examining such honours, this chapter situates Clara’s reputation within nineteenth-century Europe’s cultural industries and its institutions while shedding light on some of their mechanisms and tendencies.

This chapter examines how the European Union, despite positioning itself as a global leader in combating tax avoidance, has become a central facilitator of corporate tax arbitrage. Through a combination of legal fragmentation, market integration, and judicial rulings favouring corporate mobility, the EU has unintentionally fostered a ‘law market’ enabling multinational corporations (MNCs) to exploit regulatory and tax differentials across member states. The chapter traces how European conduit jurisdictions – particularly the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland – emerged as key nodes in global tax planning strategies, especially for US-based MNCs. Drawing on evidence from the CORPLINK study and UNCTAD, it shows how these jurisdictions act as hubs for intermediary subsidiaries, structuring global investment chains that reroute value creation, treasury functions, and tax obligations through Europe while bypassing both source and residence countries. Moreover, the chapter highlights how the EU’s internal legal order – especially the subsidiarity principle and European Court of Justice rulings -accelerated the ‘Delaware effect’ of regulatory competition. The paradox is stark: while promoting tax reform and transparency, the European Union has simultaneously entrenched a structural role for European states as gatekeepers of global arbitrage, particularly in how foreign direct investment reaches and exploits developing economies.

The chapter describes the basic terminology used in the book, the composition of the Earth system and the principles of climate dynamics. It details the main components of the Earth system (atmosphere, ocean, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere and solid Earth) and processes relevant to understanding climate dynamics. The concepts of climate, climate variability and climate change are discussed in the context of Quaternary climate dynamics. The global cycles of energy, water and carbon and their importance for climate evolution and variability are presented. The chapter introduces the mechanisms behind different types of radiative forcing, climate feedbacks and climate sensitivity. The difference between equilibrium and transient climate responses to different climate forcings is specified. The frameworks of stability and instability are introduced and discussed in application to climate. The relationship between the stochasticity of the Earth system and the predictability of climate change is presented.

This concluding chapter first summarizes the main findings of this book, based on which it discusses the continuities and discontinuities in the transformation of labour precarity before and after 1949 and in the Mao era and after. It then engages with the paradoxes and debates introduced in Chapter 1 and discusses this book’s implications for labour movements and policy. Next, this chapter compares labour precarity in China with that in socialist and transitional economies and in traditional advanced capitalist economies after the Second World War to depict global trends in this regard. This chapter concludes by revealing the limitations of this book, and putting forward speculations for future changes in labour precarity and suggestions for future research about precarious labour in China.

This chapter argues that Augustine adopts a second-person perspective, which “is characterized by dialogical speech, shared awareness of shared focus with the second person, and an orientation to love that other person.” This perspective shapes his understanding of the moral life; it gives pride of place to second-person relations, whether in the virtuous love of God and neighbor or in the disordered friendship without which Augustine tells us he would not have stolen the pears. Examining three virtues – humility, mercy, and charity – the chapter shows how each of them can be understood only in terms of proper relatedness to some other person. Since these virtues are prominent in the Confessions but altogether absent from the Nicomachean Ethics, a close look at them reveals the considerable differences between an Augustinian and an Aristotelian approach to the virtues. It also sheds light on how to read Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ considerable inheritance from Augustine goes largely ignored by scholars focusing on Aquinas’s Aristotelianism. Attention to Augustine is accordingly crucial for a more balanced understanding of Aquinas; it also holds promise for future work in virtue ethics.

I demonstrate the analytical value of socially and historically embedding corruption through a case study of corruption in the Cambodian land market. I proceed by taking three types of corruption commonly associated with the formal process of land registration by scholars and civil society groups – the violation of regulations and procedures (a corruption of the rules), patronage practices (a corruption of politics), and rent-seeking (a corruption of bureaucracy) – and embed these practices in the processes and situations in which they take shape. I then discuss the difference embedding makes compared to a utilitarian account of corruption (the one that scholars and civil society groups writing about the case tend to deploy). Embedding changes how we understand corruption: We see corruption as an emergent practice as opposed to being a universal one. We see that, in Cambodia, corruption is systemic as opposed to being isolated to certain individuals or agencies. We see that corruption can be a way of building bureaucratic capacity as opposed to being purely self-interested and anti-organizational.

This chapter sets the scene in urban Penang at the time of research through a consideration of public discourses about marriage and gender relations. It examines newspaper accounts, public events, debates, exhibitions and theatrical productions in Penang’s capital, George Town. Alongside interviews with lawyers, these public discourses show how discussions about what are perceived by many as ‘dysfunctional relations’, including child marriage, polygamy, the conversion of minors to Islam, divorce and LGBTQ rights, have the capacity to expand and take on a life of their own at moments of national tension. The chapter illuminates the dense connections between kinship, gender, ethnicity, religion and law. Stories about child marriage at different political moments – to take one example – condense ethical and political concerns and contestations in times of radical change.