In this chapter, the book is introduced by interrogating how a political community is constructed and with what membership boundaries, especially when it lies across borders, or at another level than the nation-state. I argue that the political belonging found at the local level and based on ideas of ‘indigeneity’ – whereby the individual is bound to a particular community and has access to a bundle of rights by virtue of the ‘first-comer’ or ‘early-comer rule’– informs and contributes to the making of other types of political belonging at different levels.

The opening chapter provides a historical overview of Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM), tracing its development through the convergence of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou dialects. It introduces the subsequent chapters, each dedicated to specific phonological aspects: vowels, consonants, tones, syllable structure, segmental and tonal mutations, tonal domains, rhythm, and the evolving accent patterns of younger speakers, particularly the iGeneration Taiwanese Southern Min (iTSM), which represents a distinctive phonological profile.

The chapter also introduces the Taiwanese Romanization notation system alongside the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the framework for data presentation throughout the study. Three robust TSM corpora, synthesized from earlier National Science Council research, provide the empirical foundation for the analysis. Statistical evaluations of the corpora support investigations into segmental transformations, tonal evolution, and prosodic patterns.

This introduction sets the stage for a comprehensive exploration of TSM phonology, encouraging readers to critically engage with the evidence and form independent interpretations. It prepares readers for a nuanced journey into the complexities of TSM phonology in the chapters ahead.

This chapter examines how the 2011 uprising disrupted the authoritative intellectual model, leading to an ideal of radical embeddedness – a position of unconditional solidarity with the people. Intellectuals, once expected to enlighten and guide, increasingly deferred to public sentiment, sometimes at the expense of critical intervention. Two intellectual orientations co-existed: a Bourdieusian model, which maintained analytical distance, and a Boltanskian model, which embraced radical egalitarianism. However, exile fostered self-perceptions of epistemic inferiority, particularly in trauma work aimed at global solidarity. While radical embeddedness strengthened solidarity narratives, it also weakened political influence, leading intellectuals to avoid institutional politics and produce politically hesitant interventions. The chapter argues that this shift neutralised secular democratic currents, leaving the movement vulnerable to competing ideological forces. Ultimately, while embedded intellectuals sought praxis, their deference to public sentiment limited their impact.

As one of the most prolific poets of twentieth-century Hispanic literature, Pablo Neruda’s influence affected diverse cultural and sociopolitical environments. His literary creation and participation in the public sphere led to the poet receiving prizes and awards of both modest and spectacular prestige. While some of Neruda’s awards prompted political controversies that revealed the peculiarities of his character, all of these honors extended his prominence as Chile’s chief poet in the World Republic of Letters. The acquisition of coveted international recognition was, however, of secondary importance to Neruda: His greatest achievement was his own people’s understanding and emotional identification with his poetry.

In June 1966, the International PEN Club held its annual conference in New York City. It was the first time in forty-two years that the United States had hosted the meeting, and there was much to celebrate. Pablo Neruda, who had repeatedly been denied visas to the United States since 1943 on the grounds that he was a communist, was one of the stars of the show. Throughout – and, indeed, long after – the conference, he made headlines, drew audiences, and made statements that had a lasting impact. He also earned the wrath of supporters of the Cuban Revolution, who attacked him for betraying the revolution by participating in the conference. This chapter discusses Neruda’s participation in the event, including the controversies that he sparked during and afterward, as well as his other activities in New York and his travels in the United States afterward.

Folk verse occupies a middle ground between formal poetry and colloquial speech, maintaining poetic structure while preserving natural speech patterns. It adapts the metrical hierarchy of traditional verse but constructs feet based on metrical beats rather than syllables. This form distinguishes between masculine and feminine rhythms, with the former being predominant and the latter creating a softer tone. Function words and medial immediate constituents (ICs) tend to share a beat, and beat sharing serves as a strategy to achieve a masculine rhythm. However, a strong beat or a final beat cannot be shared, often resulting in an unparsed shared beat. An unparsed beat does not participate in clapping, and line-initial unparsed beats reflect extrametricality. A notable feature of folk verse is its abundant use of interjections, which enhance its rhythmic quality.

Chapter 6 adopts a cross-national perspective to reassess the overall strength of the first wave of democratization outside of Britain and France. It argues that four states that scholars have long considered examples of vanguard democracies or “settled cases of democracy” in northern Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden) do not really fit this description. Belgium and the Netherlands were clearly competitive oligarchies on the eve of WWI. Denmark was indeed one of the most democratic states in Europe by WWI, but its path there had been marked by periods of militarism and rollbacks of suffrage. Sweden was not a democracy by any measure until after WWI. In each of these cases, elites ran clean elections that, because of counter-majoritarian institutions and suffrage restrictions, fell significantly short (outside of Denmark from 1901 to 1914) from the principle of one man, one vote.

The convergence of citizenship towards indigeneity implies that the instability of one can easily lead to the instability of the other. This chapter analyses how the two main political parties in Ghana capitalized on the blurred boundary between citizenship and indigeneity and how images of exclusion conveyed by the Aliens Compliance Order (that instructed all foreigners without residence permits to leave Ghana within 14 days) in 1969 strengthened the image of the NPP (New Patriotic Party) as seeking to exclude Ewe-speakers from the nation in the 1990s (in political campaigns) and the 2000s (including in the national debate about cross-border voting).

This chapter reveals the history of agrarian change in the Gulf, the social relations of farming and the struggles over land and water. It will show how the demise of the peasant existence was not linear, but rather that the management of the region’s agriculture was deeply political. This history is relevant to the central points of this book. The Gulf’s dependence on food imports, its adoption of international brands and methods, and acquisition of agricultural land outside of the country were predicated on the internal demise of this food system. These processes are the antithesis of the food sovereignty that is embodied in peasant production; they represent the manner in which the ruling class wrested control of food and agriculture, integrating it into their circuits of accumulation, and governed it to legitimise their rule.

This chapter presents a detailed examination of TSM consonants, highlighting several key points. TSM’s consonant system displays partial asymmetry in voicing characteristics, and unlike in English, aspiration is a critical phonemic distinction.

Consonantal phonological features are systematically organized into distinct classificatory categories determined by their specification of natural segment classes. The hierarchical feature taxonomy encompasses four principal domains: major class features, which delineate fundamental segment types; laryngeal features, which characterize glottal states and phonation types; place features, which specify articulatory configurations and locations; and manner features, which define the type and degree of constriction in the vocal tract.

The alveolar lateral [l] in TSM serves a dual function: it integrates the alveolar /d/ within its articulation and exhibits free variation with [z]. Nasal stop onsets and oral voiced stop onsets occur in mutually exclusive environments, indicating complementary distribution. The glottal stop [ʔ] differs from the word-final codas [p, t, k] in that it is omitted when followed by another syllable and does not undergo gemination at the onset of a vowel-initial suffix, unlike [p, t, k]. Furthermore, [p, t, k] codas are underlyingly voiced, distinguishing them from nasal stop codas. This dichotomy between onset and coda stop consonants constitutes a salient feature of TSM’s phonological system.

“Religion is a sixteenth-century word for nationalism,” a renowned historian once argued.1 Indeed, religion played a pivotal role in shaping not only individuals but also entire states during the early modern era, bearing a resemblance to the way nationalism operates in contemporary times. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, an era marked by significant turmoil, a tapestry of religiopolitical movements emerged, redefining sociocultural notions of belonging and loyalty across global communities. At the same time, religious commitments and allegiances, at both the imperial and individual levels, exhibited remarkable adaptability when faced with the continuously shifting socioeconomic and political dynamics of their time. This book explores the latter phenomenon: the agility of early modern states and their subjects.

The Introduction outlines the role of Syrian intellectuals in shaping meaning around the 2011 revolution and its aftermath. It traces how early hope and discursive agency among intellectuals gave way to political fragmentation, repression, and exile, leading many to reassess their roles. It explores how exiled intellectuals engaged in a war of ideas, navigating pressures from authoritarian regimes, shifting public expectations, and host society constraints. Drawing on cultural sociology, intellectual positioning, and social movement theory, the Introduction situates Syrian intellectuals within global debates on public intellectualism, examining how political upheaval transforms their influence. The book investigates how exiled intellectuals’ work – once invested in revolutionary hope – became dominated by trauma narration, reshaping their discursive impact but weakening political efficacy. Through qualitative research, it examines how their meaning-making processes evolved, with broader implications for intellectuals in failed, or stalled, revolutionary movements.