This chapter summarizes the main points established in prior chapters and reviews how research questions factor into doing discourse analysis. The aim of the chapter is to help readers synthesize the different aspects of conducting discourse analysis research into a coherent set of principles. This is done by introducing a practical model for doing discourse analysis. After reading this chapter, readers will be able to recall the mains points of doing discourse analysis; be capable of using a model for doing discourse analysis to conduct research; know a number of practical tips for doing discourse analysis; and be able to construct research questions that are relevant to discourse analysis research.

Nuclear strategy as a concept defies easy characterisation. It is a contradiction in terms: such is the destructive power of many nuclear weapons that to employ them would not bring any tangible benefit, especially if the adversary could threaten nuclear retaliation. They hold so little political appeal that since 1945 nuclear weapons have not been used in conflict and are therefore effectively unusable as weapons. Moreover, the idea of a war in which only nuclear weapons are used might exist in theory but would be a remote possibility. Instead, the practice of nuclear strategy has been dominated by ideas and plans in which nuclear weapons might be used in the course of a war alongside conventional weapons. Thus, rather than a concept of ‘nuclear strategy’, a more accurate formulation would be a ‘strategy with a nuclear component’. Yet there remained utility in thinking in terms of ‘nuclear strategy’, particularly in relation to deterrence. This chapter will explore these complex dynamics in several ways. First, it will examine the strategic ideas underpinning use of the atomic bomb at the end of the Second World War. Second, it will discuss the different strategies nuclear states have devised in relation to other nuclear states. Finally, the strategies of non-nuclear states and nuclear aspirants when confronted with nuclear adversaries will be analysed.

Chapter 21 provides an account of the governing legal framework with respect to the gathering of digital evidence by US law enforcement authorities (LEAs) and the rules that bind US service providers – an issue that, given the quantity of data of interest in the hands of US-based providers, increasingly matters to LEAs around the world. It describes the general statutory and constitutional scheme governing data collection in the United States, with a focus on the federal level. It then examines specific questions with respect to cross-border cooperation, particularly in light of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, which seeks to better facilitate cross-border access to data, in specified circumstances, and in accordance with baseline procedural and substantive protections. The chapter’s concluding thoughts point to both the need for more attention to cross-border access to data and some of the lacunae in US law.

This book takes historical context and questions of temporality seriously in the analysis of professionalisation of politics. Doing so enables us to address not only how professionalisation of politics takes place, but also when and why it might arise at a particular historical juncture and not others. In this chapter, I outline a causal framework that elucidates the factors that have driven India towards the path of professionalisation—from incipient trends that emerged in the 1980s to full-fledged developments from the late 2000s onwards. This framework not only builds upon the arguments of several scholars who have explored the causal mechanisms behind professionalisation in other parts of the world, but also leverages the unique perspective that India can offer. As a developing country, India can provide a useful vantage point to re-examine insights in the existing academic literature that have almost exclusively been based on the experience of developed countries and, thus, fall into the trap of conflating professionalisation with modernisation (as noted in the previous chapter).

It is worth emphasising here that the problem with the existing academic analysis is not merely empirical narrowness. At a methodological level, hitherto scholars who have analysed the drivers of professionalisation have, on the whole, paid insufficient attention to delineating the scope conditions for their theories or have relied on weak logical reasoning that does not adequately clarify the necessary and sufficient conditions of causality. My analytical approach here is in alignment with Gary Goertz and James Mahoney (2012), who note that coherent causal explanations in qualitative research entail identifying a set of variables that, in some permutation or combination, are jointly sufficient for a causal outcome, but where each individual variable is neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome. Since we are interested in a group of variables to explain a causal outcome, an important implication of this approach is the acknowledgement of equifinality—the idea that there can be more than one pathway that leads to the outcome of interest (here, professionalisation). These multiple pathways emerge from the fact that our variables can combine and interact with one another in contingent and creative ways. Put simply, such a causal framework rejects rigid determinism and accommodates subtle variations from country to country.

This chapter reads Richard II’s garden scene in the context of early modern debates about sacramentalism and the created world. The garden scene reveals its awareness of these debates and the ways in which they occurred in genres both high (learned tracts, printed books) and low (oral cultures, cheap print). The gardener demonstrates his political and theological sophistication through his hands-on knowledge of gardening. In the same way, ordinary people off-stage participated in their culture’s most urgent controversies through popular genre that were frequently dismissed by their social betters.

The wars of decolonisation in Africa were contested by national liberation movements that, to varying degrees, all modelled their insurgencies on leftist theories of people’s war. At the same time, however, African national liberation movements never followed the precepts set out by the theorists of people’s war in a slavish manner. Instead, they adapted these precepts to local conditions and needs. Drawing on examples ranging from the Algerian war of independence to the armed struggle of the African National Congress against apartheid, this chapter explores the strategic practice of a disparate group of insurgent movements that sought to end decades and more of colonial and white minority rule in Africa. Focusing on their objectives, means, methods and priorities, the chapter argues that while people’s war was an important guiding principle for African liberation movements, from which they drew key lessons, it never represented an immutable blueprint for victory.

In the conclusion to the series, a series of significant observations are presented. In contrast to the pre-occupations of the field with theory and concepts, the practice of strategy shows a distinct picture. When heads of state, states, empires and other social groupings engage in strategy away from the abstract in concrete and real-life situations, it is messy, chaotic and largely ad hoc. First, core conceptual categories in the field hamper a proper understanding of strategy. The binaries of war/peace, rationality/emotion and state/non-state, as largely products of the nineteenth century, obscure rather than illuminate historical practices over the past three millennia. Second, four distinct patterns present themselves: (1) strategy as a utilitarian phenomenon with an alignment of means and ends, as the dominant perspective, holds explanatory power; (2) strategy as a performance offers a strong lens to look at the historical record as war and warfare are repeatedly part of a way of life; (3) opportunity offers a significant explanatory category; (4) practising strategy as an ordering or disordering exercise offers a way to look at reality, and is enacted as a process of making life difficult for an opponent. These findings form an invitation to reconsider the dominant perspective of strategy as stable and universal, attesting to the necessity of awarding more attention to deeds than words.

Chapter 7 follows a young adult college student who speaks Chinese as a heritage language and his girlfriend as they explore language, life, and race relations during the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to use the Chinese language to transform the very Chinese-American communities they grew up in and transcend the cultural identity that is assigned to them by society. It explores societal language ideologies regarding Americans of Chinese origin, cultural legitimacy and authenticity for second-generation Chinese immigrants both in the U.S. and in China, the relation between diaspora and domesticity, and the transformative role of Chinese as a heritage language in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the nonlinear nature of language shift.