Food was the most important resource during the First World War. Without it, the massive armies on the Eastern and the Western Fronts, in Africa and in Asia could not have been assembled, let alone made to fight. And at the 'home front', which during the First World War came to be seen as integral to the war effort, food was crucial in maintaining production and morale. Any analysis of why and how the First World War was fought and won is incomplete without a consideration of how states, armies, communities, and individuals fought over the globe's supplies of grains, livestock, fertilizers, feeding stocks, and agricultural labour. This chapter will provide an analysis of the impact of this first global war on the worldwide food distribution system that had evolved since the Industrial Revolution. Its aim is to provide both an introduction to the reader on the impact of the First World War on food, and vice versa, and to provide essential contexts for both the chapters that follow and the data on changes in food supply and consumption, and its manifold effects on state, social structures, and health.

In this final chapter from the authors we consider in some ways the meeting of our previous ideas and cases with the hegemonic operation of capitalism as envisaged with moral imagination

This chapter embarks on a rigorous examination of the evolving social contracts within the Gulf states delineating their foundational role in facilitating the region’s pursuit of decarbonization, climate change adaptation, and socioeconomic diversification. The analysis delves into the intricate web of socioeconomic, political, national security, and sociocultural transformations inextricably linked to the ongoing economic restructuring within the region and assesses how these countries navigate this multifaceted transition amid a complex interplay of domestic and global pressures.

This chapter explores the role of the shifting geopolitical landscape as a critical moderating factor that shapes the relationship between energy transition and IER. It outlines two contrasting trends of globalization and deglobalization and presents a preliminary quantitative assessment of China’s evolving energy trade relationships. The chapter concludes with an exploration of IER under various geopolitical scenarios.

The analysis now comes to the question of world trade and current discussions about globalization in the Greco-Roman world. However, globalization is a modern phenomenon, tracing its roots back to the sixteenth century, but only really coming into its own during the long nineteenth century. So, if modern globalization is unsatisfying as a model, the chapter turns to C. A. Bayly’s concept of ‘Archaic Globalization’. Instead of the modern capitalist world system, it focuses on the demand of aristocratic and priestly elites for numinous goods and rare collectors’ objects, brought from afar to enhance their lifestyles. Roman urban and imperial society fostered such a culture celebrating the consumption of exotic diversity. Building on a recent surge of work on Greco-Roman trade from the Red Sea to Arabia and India, bringing pepper, frankincense, silk and other exotic substances into the Mediterranean, the chapter locates the Roman Mediterranean as one end of an interconnected chain of regional trading worlds extending from the Indian Ocean that serviced the need for numinous and spicy goods to enhance the rituals and conspicuous lifestyles of complex agrarian societies across Afro-Eurasia.

This chapter explores the globalization of factor markets, particularly focusing on capital and labour, and how international monetary regimes have influenced these markets throughout European history. It discusses the evolution of capital markets and the role of different monetary systems, such as the gold standard and Bretton Woods, in facilitating cross-border capital mobility. The chapter also examines the impact of migration on labour markets, exploring how the movement of people has shaped economic outcomes in Europe. It highlights the benefits of globalization, such as increased efficiency and economic integration, while also acknowledging the challenges, including inequality and labour market disruptions.

This chapter examines the historical evolution of trade and globalization in Europe, focusing on the forces that have shaped trade patterns over time. It explores the impact of technological advancements, such as improvements in transportation and communication, as well as the influence of political decisions on trade policy, including cycles of protectionism and free trade. The chapter also discusses the economic benefits and challenges of globalization, analysing how trade has contributed to economic growth while also creating winners and losers within and between countries. The chapter argues that while globalization has generally increased economic efficiency, its effects have been unevenly distributed.

Opening with observations about public anxieties around the effects of rapid social change on children, this chapter offers a model of child socialization developed within psychological anthropology that provides more nuanced ways of thinking about how children are shaped by particular social and cultural contexts and children’s active participation in them. Drawing from experientially close, child-centered ethnographies, this chapter challenges dichotomous understandings of social change that flatten the rich variability and connectedness of societies and obscure the complex historical trajectories and emergent dynamics that shape such variability and connectedness. Alternatively, Chapin and Xu argue that all human communities must contend with the often-conflicted processes of fostering both individuality and sociality in children’s development in locally appropriate ways. The final section of the chapter challenges the view of children as passive recipients of socialization processes, arguing instead that children are agents who actively contribute to processes of social change.

This chapter examines the contributions of psychological anthropology and allied fields to the study of mental illness and psychiatric treatment. The chapter begins by laying out a historical overview of the study of mental disorder through four theoretical threads that have been important to psychological anthropology: culture, self and subjectivity, emotions, and institutions. The second section of the chapter explores contemporary work on mental illness and globalizing psychiatric treatment in psychological anthropology, highlighting contributions that offer new, critical attentions at a moment when concepts of mental health and treatment are increasingly constituted at the scope and scale of the global. The final section of the chapter addresses the contributions of psychological anthropology to the growing anthropological literature on psychopharmacology and associated pharmaceuticals. The chapter highlights the vibrancy of the subfield’s contributions to the study of mental illness, treatment, and recovery in diverse, often rapidly changing, world conditions.

Global capitalism is in deep crisis. The current moment in world capitalism is defined by three key developments. First, the system has become universal through globalization processes that date to the late twentieth century. Second, the system is undergoing a new round of restructuring and transformation based on a much more advanced digitalization and financialization of the entire global economy and society. Third, the system faces an unprecedented and multidimensional crisis that points to the impending exhaustion of global capitalism's capacity for renewal. The crisis is economic or structural, one of overaccumulation and chronic stagnation. It is a crisis of social reproduction. It is political, a crisis of state legitimacy, capitalist hegemony, and geopolitical conflict. It is ecological, with the threat of the collapse of the biosphere. The ruling groups launched a vast counteroffensive from the 1970s and on against the working and popular classes to reconstitute the hegemony of capital as a transnational capitalist class emerged. The dialectical approach and radical political economy are the tools for analyzing and theorizing the crisis of global capitalism. The study points us in the direction of a renewal of Marxist crisis theory and offers a bold theory of global capitalist exhaustion.

While not ignoring individual differences, this book assumes that generalizations can be made across the different processes of school adjustment. Following a short overview of the history of schooling, this chapter discusses what the term “school” stands for and the essential features that turn any setting into “school.” The origin of the word is the Greek word scholē, which stands for “leisure.” However, in most modern schools the emphasis is on working hard and gaining knowledge. Interestingly, across the various formats, goals, and articulations of school throughout history, several aspects are common: institutional life, adults’ decisions, transfer of knowledge, skills acquisition, fluency in languages, delivery of values, exposure to social life, and invasion into students’ private life. The differences between schools appear in the level of intensity that each of the components gains within a given school, rather than a completely different conceptualization of what the term school stands for. Thus, these suggested universal components are of special importance to understand students’ school adjustment.

Globalization has become a profound and transformative force in modern societies. Increasing connectivity has disrupted traditional sociocultural ways of life while new cultural influences suggest new ways of living. The neoliberal underpinnings of globalization have exacerbated inequality and prioritized profit-seeking over environmental concerns. Accordingly, the negative consequences of globalization have challenged central human needs such as local embeddedness, contextual predictability, justice, security, and sense of safety. As a result, the overarching processes of globalization have given rise to perceptions of threats in different locations, triggering extreme psychological reactions that may manifest through violent means. Thus, violent extremism rooted in globalization emerges in response to increased feelings of uncertainty, insignificance, and injustice driven by accelerating connectivity. Whereas the manifestations of globalization-based violent extremism may vary in different contexts, a key characteristic is mutuality and interconnectedness. Events and ideas resonate across the globe, amplified within online echo chambers, leading to heightened polarization and enclave deliberation. To counteract globalization-based violent extremism, we must foster a sense of stability and belonging and promote tolerance at the local level. Additionally, developing deliberative competencies to navigate the complexities of an increasingly plural and fluid world is crucial in mitigating the challenges posed by contemporary globalized connectivity.

In this book, I have tried to make sense of legitimacy at the international level, especially in relation to international law. I have paid a lot of attention to international law, in particular aligned with the demands of legitimacy and justice. But international law is only one aspect of the forces and the ecosystem that shape international order. Therefore, alone it cannot engineer the change that the international system requires today. This change has to be part of a more comprehensive approach. Here is not the place to offer a full account of the areas on which research could concentrate in the future to further encourage justice and legitimacy at the international level. However, it is worthwhile to present a general overview of these areas. In particular, three domains offer a possible road map for facilitating a constructive path forward: globalization, emotions and passions in social life, and the geopolitics of tomorrow.

The changes at play in the contemporary world bring about challenges that are impacting political legitimacy. They make legitimacy at the same time more problematic and more relevant, at both the national and international levels. From this perspective, how these changes and challenges are going to be addressed in the coming years is likely to determine, to a large extent, the evolution of political legitimacy—nationally and internationally. Among the changes and challenges underway, and their associated events and trends, I highlight the following eight: (1) the challenge of integration and disintegration, (2) the economic and financial challenge, (3) the geopolitical challenge, (4) the normative challenge, (5) the technological challenge, (6) the reassessment of globalization challenge, (7) the crisis of democracy challenge, and (8) the governance challenge. I unpack them in turn and, for each of them, allude to their possible meaning and implications for political legitimacy.

This chapter addresses questions concerning history and international law. First, it focuses on what traditionally has been, until relatively recently, the relationship between international law and history, including the history of international law itself. Second, this chapter reflects on the globalization of international law and its ambiguous nature and results, combining empowerment and disempowerment. In particular, it highlights that the ambiguity of the globalization of international law has been on display not only with the connection between modern international law and Western power in the context of colonization but also with decolonization since, to a large extent, after decolonization, this connection has continued in the form of neocolonization. The chapter refers as well to the ambiguity of the globalization of international law in relation to the rise of the individual as an international rights holder in the framework of international human rights. Ultimately, international law has both alienating and emancipatory effects.