Chapter 2 continues the thread from Chapter 1, moving from objections against Kant in animal ethics to broader concerns in environmental philosophy. I begin with problematic passages from Kant’s critical texts such as the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Pure Reason. While Kant does not discuss the environment, the standard interpretation of Kant suggests that nature has no intrinsic value and that environments are of mere instrumental worth. Environmental philosophers are warranted to suspect that Kant’s critical philosophy may be a nonstarter given its apparent dualism and anthropocentrism. Next, I examine three camps of Kant defenders who challenge these suspicions. Some commentators defend Kant’s system, others modernize him, and some synthesize Kant with other philosophers such as Aristotle. I assess the merits of their arguments, ultimately recommending a move beyond the standard reading to address the climate crisis.

Georas analyzes different dilemmas that arise when we use robots to serve humans living in the digital age. She focuses on the design and deployment of carebots in particular, to explore how they are embedded in more general multifaceted material and discursive configurations, and how they are implicated in the construction of humanness in socio-technical spaces. In doing so, she delves into the "fog of technology," arguing that this fog is always also a fog of inequality since the emerging architectures of our digitized lives will connect with pre-existing forms of domination. In this context, resistive struggles are premised upon our capacity to dissent, which is what ultimately enables us to express our humanity and at the same time makes us unpredictable. What it means to be human in the digital world is thus never fixed, but, Georas argues, must always be strategically reinvented and reclaimed, since there always will be people living on the “wrong side of the digital train tracks” who will be unjustly treated.

Prefaced by an extended ethnographic account of Fidel Castro’s charisma as it emerged in the days of national mourning that followed his death in 2016, Chapter 9 concludes the book’s morphological argument by drawing out its implications for two forms of comparison that contribute to its development. The first concerns the analogies and contrasts between political and religious concepts and practices, which feature throughout the development of the book’s morphological analysis and are viewed here in relation to the broader discussion about ‘political theology’. The second returns to the comparative anthropological framework with which the book begins, namely the varied ways in which the distinction between nature and culture can be made, locating revolutions in this comparative frame.

Focusing on the first decade after the abolition of slavery, Chapter 2 compares the circumstances of Indigenous and Indian indentured peoples in the empire to consider how British subjecthood itself functioned as an imprecise category in the early to mid nineteenth century. As Britain sought to activate ‘moral colonisation’, Indigenous and indentured peoples were brought together in an imperial design to secure new kinds of colonial subjects whose interests would be protected by strategies of liberal governance. Parallel exceptional laws and bureaucracies were established to defend the place of Indigenous and indentured peoples as subjects of empire, with the aim of better regulating their treatment by British colonists and colonial masters. Ultimately, these special bureaucracies worked less to secure their rights than to expose the precarity of those rights. But if colonised people’s status as legally protected British subjects was made precarious by special laws, that status was also made precarious by the unreliability of their own allegiance to the empire.

Based on international standards, the EU Directive on Working Time, implemented in the Working Time Regulations, places limits on the working week, mandates rest periods each day and each week, and provides for paid annual leave. These rights are subject to various exclusions for certain types of employment, permit some opt-outs by terms in the contract of employment, and also permit collective agreements to modify the rights. The chapter considers these various matters, and concludes by examining the weak remedies provided by health and safety inspectors and some civil claims.

Utilizing Safia Elhillo’s poetry as a case study, this chapter explores the role of literary institutions in redefining African poetry. Elhillo, a Sudanese-American poet, challenges traditional geographic and cultural boundaries within the African literary canon through her collection The January Children. Her recognition by prestigious literary prizes, notably the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, exemplifies the expanding scope of what constitutes African poetry. This analysis highlights how institutions, by honoring diasporic poets, have historically configured the African literary tradition to be inclusive of diasporic and transnational experiences. The chapter argues that the essence of this inclusion of diasporic poetry lies in an African imagination that intertwines experiences from varied locales with the specifics of African realities as they migrate across national and continental borders. By examining these dynamics, the chapter underscores a significant shift in the literary canon, showcasing the evolving, multifaceted nature of African literature in a global context.

History is a product of the time in which it is written. This should not surprise us since each generation has its own interpretation of the past, which is easily impacted by the events of the present. Writing the history of the Nazi-Soviet War in the 2020s against the backdrop of resurgent warfare in Eastern Europe – war that draws so directly from interpretations (many of which are disputed) of the period 1941–1945 – makes our task unusually complex but all the more important. The temptation to use and abuse history is nothing new, but amid an active information war the value of first-rate scholarship and established expertise cannot be overestimated. To that end, I am deeply appreciative for the time and support of so many leading scholars.

Let N be the normalizer of the diagonal torus $T_1\cong {\mathbb{G}}_m$ in $S{L}_2$. We prove localization theorems for $S{L}_2^n$ and $N^n$ for equivariant cohomology with coefficients in the (twisted) Witt sheaf, along the lines of the classical localization theorems for equivariant cohomology for a torus action. We also have an analog of the Bott residue formula for $S{L}_2^n$ and N. In the case of an $S{L}_2^n$-action, there is a rather serious restriction on the orbit type. For an N-action, there is no restriction for the localization result, but for the Bott residue theorem, one requires a certain type of decomposition of the fixed points for the $T_1$-action, which is always available if the subscheme of $T_1$ fixed points has dimension zero.

The eighth chapter looks into ‘Concepts of Divinity in the Bhagavad-gītā’; The Gītā is rich with theological descriptions of divinity, whether these refer to the supreme as Kṛṣṇa or the personal God, as Brahman or the impersonal divinity, as the universal person, as the avatāra, as an internalized concept or the witness in the heart and as immanent concepts of divinity revealed through nature. This chapter offers a critique within the realm of philosophy of religion and argues that definitions such as pantheism, deism and theism do not grasp the personalistic themes of the text. A personalistic way of reading the Gītā is suggested, and as such, the concept of ‘the person’ is discussed and an alternative definition of personhood, one that befits the Gītā, is offered. It is also argued that as the Gītā considers itself to be poetry (Gītā means poetry or song), the Gītā’s poetic aspects should also be considered, and not just the philosophical ones. A critique of direct language is offered, and it is pointed out that as opposed to poetry, it is difficult for direct and philosophical langue to grasp personal expressions. The chapter offers a new categorization according to which the concepts of divinity are divided according to the three metaphysical levels underlying the book.

This chapter examines the evolution of US–Russian relations from the establishment of diplomatic ties during the Napoleonic Wars through the 1840s, highlighting the complexities shaped by both international and domestic factors. Amid conflicts with France and Britain, American leaders navigated perceptions of the Russian Empire, using Russia as a lens to critique domestic political agendas. The chapter discusses how the early nineteenth-century uprisings, including the Decembrist and Polish rebellions, prompted both nations to evaluate their political ideologies and roles on the global stage, often reflecting mutual fears of foreign intervention. Despite initial goodwill and diplomatic engagement, notably through the 1832 Commercial Treaty and the appointment of Russian minister Bodisco, relations became strained due to the changing political landscape and US concerns over Russian expansionism. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the interplay of shared interests and political ambitions laid the groundwork for a nuanced relationship, illustrating how the two powers sought to navigate their identities and aspirations amid broader international shifts.

Although the research literature refutes the standard wisdom that schools kill creativity, there can still be some unfortunate exceptions. Some artists felt that their creativity not only did not help them do well on the standard metrics of traditional school performance, but it may have even impaired their scores. Other artists encountered truly terrible teachers who were rigid, intolerant, and prone to punish too much question-asking; a few even sucked the joy out of their art (at least temporarily).

This chapter nuances the widespread view that human rights became the world’s global morality in the post–Cold War era. Investigating examples from international human rights law and intellectual history, it demonstrates that economic and social human rights did not come to enjoy the same status as civil and political rights. The mid-1970s to the 1980s was a period of frustration for economic and social human rights. Within a few years, hopes for a more egalitarian international world order with international obligations to promote economic and social human rights were shattered. Major factors were the dynamics of postcolonialism, the global Cold War and state power logics, and neoliberalism. Partly as a testimony to this, intellectuals such as Amartya Sen were concerned with basic rights. The post–Global Cold War period was marked by a premature sentiment of human rights triumphalism, though there were important efforts to strengthen economic and social human rights. As witnessed from the backlashes against these rights in the twenty-first century, their wider legitimacy and influence has remained much weaker than their advocates have hoped for.