The epilogue examines the persistence of the term ‘achievements’ in Egyptian governmental media today, which is indicative of the concept’s resilience. This persistence raises an important question around the social and historical reasons undergirding the continuity of achievement praxis. Why are cultural and media institutions reproducing the achievement state in Egypt? The answer would seem to be that the current bureaucratic apparatus inherited, via institutional means, certain ways of thinking and working established after the 1952 revolution. This simple answer belies my ethnographic experience, because contemporary bureaucrats – with few exceptions – have a very faint sense of the history of the bureaucratic apparatus prior to their own entry into the workforce. A more likely answer, I suggest, is that the institutional context within which bureaucrats work did not change in some identifiable ways since 1952. The continuity of achievement praxis is tied to the institutional environment in which it thrives, rather than a conscious will among state officials transmitted across generations.

Building on Chapter 1, Chapter 2 presents an in-depth case study of the fourth major organic farming movement in interwar Germany, biodynamic agriculture. With its Demeter and Weleda brands, this was the organic current that was most successful in garnering consistent support from Nazi patrons, and it remains the most high-profile form of organics in Germany today. Early biodynamic proponents particularly emphasized the ecological dimension of their work, framing their approach as the way to “heal the earth” from environmental harm. In part because of pre-existing ties to several groups of Nazi activists, the biodynamic movement flourished for much of the Third Reich until falling prey to intra-party disputes in 1941. Leading biodynamic figures worked closely with life reform officials within the Nazi apparatus, illustrating the active connections linking multiple strands of environmental advocacy across far-flung sectors of the regime. Through a detailed critical account based on previously unused archival sources, the chapter carefully delineates the reasons for the rise and eventual fall of the Reich League for Biodynamic Agriculture, concluding with a differentiated assessment of the space available for grassroots environmental initiatives in Nazi Germany.

This chapter delves into everyday administrative work at the Ministry of Culture, with a specific focus on the Mass Culture Institute, the ancestor of the current General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Based on the personal papers of Saad Kamel, this chapter provides a brief institutional history of the Institute and the low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats who worked to accomplish its mission of cultivating the rural masses. This mission was influenced by diverging ideas about Arab socialism after the socialist turn of 1961. Thus, this chapter contributes to an intellectual history of Arab socialism, by showing how the Mass Culture Institute enacted a grounded version of ‘the socialism of culture’ (ishtirakiyyat al-thaqāfa). Moreover, the chapter explores the key relationship between responsibility and achievement at the Mass Culture Institute. Low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats are constantly concerned by what falls under their responsibility, which is managed by both avoiding to take responsibility for problems and seeking to take credit for achievements (however small). These everyday achievements embody, on a smaller scale, the postrevolutionary state project.

The Epilogue begins with a critical consideration of the post-war careers of individuals featured prominently in previous chapters, tracking their contributions to the re-emergent German environmental movement after 1945. That movement failed to confront its links to the Nazi past for decades on end, leaving a distorted and misunderstood legacy that awaits resolution even now. Extending both the chronological and geographical framework, the Epilogue outlines significant new material on non-German examples of far right appropriation of environmental ideals over the past century, including Italian and British examples. These comparative cases are essential to understanding that the themes at the heart of the book are not a German peculiarity, while placing the specifics of the Nazi era into broader historical context. Last, the Epilogue points to the persistent political ambivalence of ecology. Environmental activists today are justifiably concerned that tying their predecessors to Nazism could discredit the politics of nature as a whole and play into powerful anti-environmental currents in contemporary culture. Historical perspective allows for a more informed approach to such charged questions. If guarding against a resurgence of neo-Nazism means paying closer attention to its history, honoring the environmental movement’s future requires taking an honest look at its past.

Analysing fascism in India has been rather unnecessarily polarized, both by Marxist approaches overemphasizing economic causality and by non-Marxist approaches overemphasizing ideology, politics, organizational aspects, and social psychology.1 This difference is important in the historical condition and context in which an analysis of the current regime in India is being made. Whereas Antonio Gramsci defined fascism on an international scale as ‘an attempt to resolve problems of production and exchange with machine-guns and pistol shots’, in India, the rise of an authoritarian regime with fascist tendencies is certainly not a result of the nation being caught up in an international war. It could be more significant to examine the social reality that lends consent to the authoritarian model of politics and governance and how the forms in which it surfaces exhibit fascist tendencies (Gramsci 1984).2 The fascist regimes during the Second World War were different from the post-war ones, specifically with reference to the experience of developing nations like India. In this context, the distinction between fascist movements and fascist regimes is important, and there seems to have been a right-wing extremist movement pushing for the rise of a regime in India (Dimitrov 1984; Reich 1980; Koves and Mazumdar 2005). If Narendra Modi's regime cannot be characterized as a fascist regime, it certainly has been an authoritarian one with fascist tendencies, and what needs to be explained is how such a regime manages to manufacture popular consent.

This chapter examines how achievement books produced by Egyptian state institutions have narrated and re-narrated the 1952 revolution. These books were centrally published by the Information Department, a crucial yet seldom studied organ in the emerging Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, as well as public relations units across different ministries. After a brief institutional history of the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance as a whole, in which I demonstrate how ‘culture’ and ‘media’ were originally intertwined in administrative terms, I argue that the state’s achievements were narrated according to a changing conception of the revolution between 1954 and 1970. This rhetoric cemented a distinctive version of history among Egyptian bureaucrats, in which long lists of achievements came to articulate the bureaucratic corps’ contributions to the revolution. Moreover, it aimed to counter colonial propaganda via a systematic presentation of ‘the true Egypt’ in numerous European languages. In short, achievement books recorded, disseminated, and embodied the revolution’s accomplishments for a domestic and an international audience.

This chapter examines China’s evolving governance of international marriages through the lens of sovereign concerns, focusing on border stability, population management and national security. It explores how material and affective processes inform the regulations and representations of marriage migration to China. The discussion shows how the Chinese state continually revises its administrative and legal framework for international marriage, and also highlights the historical, racialised and gendered forces embedded in this process. The argument contends that the regulatory framework of marriage migration is shaped by shifting ‘structures of feeling’ that define belonging in Chinese society. These intersecting spheres of state affective and regulatory practices reveal new power dynamics and inequalities in China’s relations with the outside world.

The digital realm has become a crucial space for foreign women in China to express emotions, explore entrepreneurial ventures, and seek community and support. This chapter discusses the main themes and evolving conversations within several WeChat groups created by post-Soviet wives living in China. The chapter centres on how these women navigate both digital and physical environments while managing racialised and gendered expectations around family life and social interactions under China’s patriarchal immigration policies. I explore how personal experiences and emotions shared in one-on-one conversations echo the collective subjectivities and shared sentiments fostered within these online communities. Additionally, I consider how these online interactions reflect broader geopolitical dynamics, including national borders, racial hierarchies, citizenship laws and broader structures of feeling. These affective, networked, publics form a loosely connected web that offers the women a sense of belonging and solidarity amid the constraints of their lived circumstances.

This chapter examines how the migrant women navigate the patriarchal norms and cultural expectations that commodify them as objects of Chinese national desire, positioning the bodies of white women as social capital within the Chinese marriage market and immigration system. These women’s presence is valued as a means to enhance the social standing of their Chinese husbands and their families, with their reproductive potential seen as a resource for nurturing future Chinese citizens. I argue that, despite their roles as wives and mothers, foreign women often remain as guests within their own families, as their ‘uterine power’ isn’t sufficient to guarantee their inclusion and form of belonging. To protect themselves from patriarchal pressures, these women draw on maternal instincts, social networks and strategic navigation of citizenship policies and bureaucratic loopholes, creating a delicate balance of autonomy within a system that otherwise seeks to subsume.

The Introduction frames the book’s research within the local histories and sociopolitical dynamics of the Chinese–Russian border region, which have fostered the creation and popularisation of the ‘Russian brides’ village myth in Northeast China. It explores how Chinese–Russian marriages have come to symbolise an idealised form of transnational union in Chinese media narratives. This chapter also outlines the book’s theoretical and methodological approaches, introducing the concepts of hyperreality and intimate and embodied geopolitics. It provides a roadmap for its central arguments, guiding the reader through its interdisciplinary analysis.