Queen Victoria’s love of dogs was well known in her lifetime. Her public displays of fondness in paintings and photographs presented pet ownership as respectable and admirable to all social classes. Her favourites were more than family pets – they were family members. The mutual bond of affection and devotion was an exemplar of family values. She enjoyed the company of pets throughout her life, and they were solace in the long years of mourning after Prince Albert's death. The Queen supported measures against animal cruelty, publicly as patron of the RSPCA, then privately lobbying to control vivisection. His diaries record that she owned 640 dogs belonging to thirty-two breeds.

This chapter examines the ways in which barristers signpost new topics and topic changes when they cross-examine vulnerable witnesses in criminal trials. Topic signposting is recommended in professional good practice guidelines and toolkits when questioning vulnerable witnesses to avoid the rapid changing of topics that can be seen in traditional cross-examination. Rapidly changing topics can potentially confuse or disorient vulnerable witnesses and topic signposting is thought to help in focusing witness attention and give them time to adjust to new topics. Drawing on transcripts of 56 cross-examinations in criminal trials across the UK and Ireland, the analysis in this chapter explores the extent to which barristers are using topic signposting when questioning vulnerable witnesses, what the most common forms of signposting are, and whether it helps witnesses give their best evidence. The chapter also reveals instances in which topic signposting can give rise to unexpected difficulties in interactions with vulnerable witnesses.

This chapter presents an overview of recent trends and developments in research on close relationships. It is a sequel to the chapters that appeared in earlier editions of this Handbook (Perlman et al., 2018; Perlman & Duck, 2006) and thus reviews the developments in relationships research from 2016 to mid-2023. Drawing on data from a survey of authors of articles published in Personal Relationships and the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and a bibliometric analysis of these papers, we discuss the scholars who relationship scientists perceive as eminent and who they feel are emerging as influential. We use these data to highlight the major theories, methodological trends, and substantive foci that have been the foundation of relationships research since 2016. Comparison with earlier versions of the chapter reveals stability in the field’s preoccupations but also demonstrates how it has responded to contextual factors within and outside of academia.

Romantic love seems to be a nearly universal phenomenon, appearing in every culture for which data are available and in every historical era. This chapter first reviews research on how ordinary people construe love. Then it turns to how researchers have understood and measured love, organizing its discussion around the theme of types of love. Next it covers the course of love with a focus on falling in love. It then reviews several approaches that have been particularly influential in specifically focusing on understanding the dynamics of romantic love, especially with regard to passionate love. It concludes with a brief review of the work on other kinds of love in relationships. The authors hope that this review has conveyed their view that the study of love is both important and a thriving scientific endeavor, offering both a solid foundation and vast opportunities for significant future work.

Couple conflict has received significant attention in couples research, chiefly because poorly managed conflict raises risk for a host of negative outcomes including relationship dissatisfaction, divorce, domestic violence, occupational impairment, and poor child well-being. Effective conflict management is a central target of couple therapy and relationship education. In this chapter, we define couple conflict, describe the frequency and common topics of conflict, and provide examples of how researchers measure conflict. We then describe different ways that couples manage conflict, highlighting effective and ineffective conflict management behaviors and how they affect relationship functioning. Next, we describe conflict and conflict management among historically underrepresented couples. Last, we present information on relationship interventions that target couple conflict and describe future directions for research on couple conflict.

Failing to impose himself in Vichy, Déat sought his political fortunes in occupied Paris. This chapter covers Déat’s time in Paris, where he founded the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) in 1941. After an inauspicious start during which Déat struggled to maintain control of the organization, the RNP came to represent the collaborationist “left” within the field of collaborationism. However, the heteronomous logic of this field, in which the different collaborationist movements competed for German recognition by emulating Nazism, meant that over time the different movements shed their specificity and converged around a common vision of collaborationist fascism. It was through this spiral of radicalization that Déat came to adopt positions, like antisemitism and support for “totalitarianism,” that had been foreign to him just a few years prior. The collaborationist fascism of the RNP was thus not reducible to the neo-socialist past but was an emergent effect of the field of collaborationism.

Research has advanced our understanding of the role of self-disclosure in the initiation, development, maintenance, and ending of relationships. In this chapter, we review theoretical and empirical milestones in our understanding of self-disclosure, particularly its role in relationships. We show that research on self-disclosure has shifted from a focus on the individual to a focus on the interpersonal nature of disclosure processes. Self-disclosure occurs between people and triggers a cyclical process that is specific to a particular relationship with a particular partner. Self-disclosure processes fluctuate over time. They shape, and are shaped by, relationships. We propose that self-disclosure serves as a seismograph of relationship quality. It is essential in interdependent relationships and key to unraveling how people perceive the quality of their relationships. Throughout the chapter, we identify unanswered questions that offer promising avenues for future research.

The introduction outlines the genesis of the work and it offers a critical overview of the scholarly and public debate on humanitarianism. In particular, it discusses the idea that the end of the 1990s opened up a new era for humanitarianism, marked by its subordination to the foreign policy of Western powers. The introduction also explains the periodisation proposed (from the anti-slavery movement to the end of the Cold War) and the structure of the book. The last section focuses on overlaps and differences between the history of humanitarianism and the history of human rights.

This chapter is devoted to developing and clarifying one of the most unique and important constructs of attachment theory: the internal working models (IWMs) by which relationships influence other relationships and personality. We begin by describing how IWMs develop, discuss different definitions and conceptualizations of IWMs associated with different developmental stages, and then offer a new way of thinking about IWMs as both implicit and explicit representations that function at different levels of awareness. We then discuss factors that promote stability and change in IWMs, highlighting how earlier experiences with attachment figures may shape subsequent IWMs associated with other attachment figures. We next present a framework outlining the conditions under which IWMs associated with specific attachment figures earlier in life can become “activated” to influence how people think, feel, and/or behave with their current attachment figures. We conclude by proposing several promising directions for future research.

Social networks have always influenced the day-to-day interactions of people, and our chapter highlights the latest research on the significance of these noteworthy social ties in people’s personal relationships. We attend to both romantic relationships and friendship connections, focusing on themes of network effects in relationship formation, maintenance, and dissolution. The findings we review underline the notable ways in which the social environment shapes our closest connections and often strengthens them. We also discuss the extension of network science to investigate marginalized relationships, such as those of sexual minorities, and note the potential for social networks to have a “dark side” in which social connections become problematic. We then address emerging scholarship regarding the positive and negative links between COVID-19 and social networks. Finally, we consider future avenues for research on this notable topic.

This chapter focuses on the production of official records of police–suspect interviews in England & Wales, and the flaws in their current use as criminal evidence. It reveals the importance of the administrative processes undergone by an interviewee’s words post-interview, revealing how they shape – indeed, create – the resulting evidential product, especially through the institutional practice of summarising parts of the interaction. The journey from ‘live’ interaction in an interview room to an official evidential record is largely taken for granted within the legal system, with little-to-no internal or external scrutiny; this chapter argues that it should instead be recognised as a substantial contribution to – and transformation of – the resulting evidence, with all the dangers that potentially entails. Using data from the ‘For The Record’ project, including interview recordings and official police records alongside focus groups with practitioners, it demonstrates the importance for practitioners and researchers alike to pay closer attention to the format of the data they are examining, and to actively reflect on and seek out the many voices and actors which have shaped it.

A short introduction offers an overview on the first part of the book, which opens with the earthquake of Lisbon (1755) and it analyses a long time frame (until the end of the nineteenth century). The different chapters reconstruct the emergence of a new ‘culture of sensibility’, the establishment of the anti-slavery movement and the development of relief activities in the colonial territories, at the will as much of the missionaries as of the administrators sent from the metropolises. Through these events and processes, the practices, knowledge and experience accumulated in Western societies that later encouraged the setting up of the contemporary humanitarian system. The first part of the volume examines the ‘archaeological’ phase (in Foucault’s sense of the term) of the development of that system.