People of the Global Majority’s descriptions of White Mindfulness spaces often include discomfort, not belonging, and feeling unsafe. These accounts capture exclusions rooted in acts of Othering which have long-established origins in colony and empire. This chapter explores how these roots endure and present in societies premised on systemic racism and show how they persist in White Mindfulness institutions. Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism frames an understanding of Othering that occurs as much through colonial violences and wars as through cultural domination and appropriation. His concept of latent Orientalism, critiqued as much by other postcolonial scholars as by conservative authorities, frames a discussion of the layering of exclusions that occur within White Mindfulness. Homi Bhabha’s concept of subversion invites consideration of disruptive acts within Orientalist settings and the mindfulness world. Latent Orientalism describes the colonial gaze which Toni Morrison, referencing writing, explains through the White gaze and which bell hooks, drawing on film, defies with her concept of the oppositional gaze. This discussion centres the dominant norms and narratives that shape the world. Their predominance and invisibilisation form the crux of interrogation in this book. They undergird the master’s tools acting as the sea within which societies form and swim. Insights gained in this chapter explain how ‘good intention’ can incur wrongful action.

At a time when women were beginning to find opportunities for voluntary public work under the aegis of philanthropic bodies, it became possible for them to take on leading roles in the new field of animal welfare. As well as being the foremost sponsors of charities like the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, women themselves founded the majority of animal refuges. They included the Battersea Dogs’ Home initiated by Mary Tealby, which overcame misogynistic prejudice to become a prominent state-subsidised institution – arguably by compromising its original home-making ideals. Sir Arthur Helps in Some Talk about Animals (1873) discerned the differences between male and female attitudes to animal suffering – women being much more impulsively compassionate. The book’s dedicatee, Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, was the most influential of all female animal advocates in the Victorian era, as leader of the newly created RSPCA ladies’ committee, as a very generous donor to animal causes, and as a frequent letter-writer to the press. The statue of a dog, ‘Greyfriars Bobby’, which she commissioned, was a celebration of canine fidelity; it invested animals with the moral faculties that justified human solicitude for them.

Chapter 3 focuses specifically on the ambassadorial entries of Jerzy Ossoliński into Rome (1633) and Łukasz Opaliński into Paris (1645), framing them as performances in which the idea of Poland Lithuania had to be pinned down and manifested in material and visual terms, particularly through the flamboyant display of costume. These two events are no random choice of materials for study. Indeed, they generated a profusion of textual and visual representations that circulated across Europe, propagating the notion of Poland Lithuania as a mighty military power, victorious against the Turks and committed to the defence of Christendom. Simultaneously, however, European commentators pointed to the Ottoman overtones of Polish costume, comparisons that would later be used by modern historians to support interpretations of early modern Polish culture as a unique, quasi-Oriental formation, on the whole distinct from the rest (i.e., the West) of Europe. Albeit an attentive study of primary sources, this chapter does not undertake the antiquarian scrutiny of lesser-known material but rather examines critically the visual, material, and textual expressions embraced by Polish ambassadors as they embodied their monarch’s realm. The aim is to redress the validity of ‘Orientalism’ as an analytical model for studying the transcultural aspects of early modern Polish culture.

Continuing the decolonisation theme of Part III of the book, this chapter dives further into everyday norms that shape psyches and outlooks. Referencing Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression, it shows how deep the waters of racism and sexism run. Dominant lenses and narratives that inform popular discourse reside deep in the tissues of society. Everyday notions of temporality are marked in similar ways. This chapter discusses White Mindfulness’ notions of ‘present moment awareness’ and ‘being rather than doing’, which rest within a linear depiction of temporality. Drawing on queer theorists, Indigenous authors, and global South philosophers, linear progressions of time are disrupted by perspectives that locate experiences in much broader contexts of pasts that are present, and futures that engage imaginations and worldmaking. Different queer theorists emphasise different aspects of temporality, although they always emphasise agency, with some adopting a more intersectional approach than others. Indigenous knowledges show a richer depiction of an unbounded ‘self’ that is a living part of much larger cosmologies in which concepts of power-with defy linearity. Global South perspectives also transgress constructed boundaries of time and the ‘self’. These perspectives, which include concepts of conjuncture and contingency, trouble notions of ‘presentness’, inviting a richer discussion of what White Mindfulness is asking of its audiences. The multiple perspectives demonstrate a richness of difference that embraces expanded understandings of being and doing as compatible ways of navigating the world. These liberatory frameworks also explain why White Mindfulness readily attracts some audiences more than others.

Opening with Toni Morrison’s explanation of how racialised systems and institutions recycle themselves, this chapter discloses the underbelly of White Mindfulness. It expands on the social forces that shape the Mindfulness Industry and explains how, given its disengagement with these deep societal dynamics, it comes to slot seamlessly into the US and UK. An insistence that all practitioners share a common humanity disguises an infusion in postracialism, neoliberalism, and whiteness that keep People of the Global Majority socio-politically and economically marginalised. This unquestioning of dominant narratives and norms partly explains White Mindfulness’ success and may account for an intransigence around change. Discussion of attempts at diversity and inclusion reveal tactics like spiritual bypassing that entirely evade transformation and reinforce the status quo. More importantly, social normativity exposes the invisibilisation of whiteness and postracial neoliberalism to those captaining the White Mindfulness ship. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included, diversity is addressed from all angles, most especially its co-option in making institutions believe they are allies of anti-discrimination. Ahmed’s work helps address the question ‘inclusion into what?’ by showing how easily diversity work becomes non-performative. Still, entering White Mindfulness spaces, while remaining tethered to the margins, presents prospects for subversion. In this context, Lorde’s master’s tools point to the requirements for real transformation and question whether diversity is a soft option compared to decolonisation.

This chapter elucidates the book's conceptual devices to study the reproduction of inequalities in contexts of globalized precarity. It begins with the rationale for the comparison: Abidjan and Berlin are not compared as urban sites as such; rather, the research compares economic practices. This enables reconsideration of how work matters for reproducing socio-material (in)securities in relational mechanisms. Subsequently, the chapter conceptualizes work as economic practice and situates economic practices in social inequalities. More precisely, it focuses on three social mechanisms as entry points to studying how inequalities are reproduced: social closure or opportunity hoarding, domination and exploitation. These three conceptual lenses structure the presentation of the findings, presented in the three subsequent chapters, which delve into the young men’s everyday lives and making do as airtime sellers and food delivery riders.

Chapter 1 introduces the phenomenon of “democratic drain” – the steady depletion of democratic political capital in migrant-sending countries worldwide, derived from the departure of citizens who hold more liberal democratic values than the countrymen they leave behind. It contextualizes democratic drain in the more established understanding of “brain drain,” outlines its analogous consequences, and identifies the dissidents and “demigrants” that drive it. Just as brain drain can leave countries poorer and less productive, democratic drain can weaken the prospects for liberal democracy and reduce barriers to democratic backsliding by authoritarian governments. After a brief discussion of the thorny implications of “democratic drain” for international development and democracy promotion, this chapter previews the book’s findings and content.

The introduction sketches out the existing historiography of the nineteenth-century animal protection movement, which evinces many conflicting approaches and shortcomings. In particular, historians have generally failed to appraise women’s key contributions to the movement, and, more generally, to analyse gendered differences in attitudes to animals. Traditions of thought on man’s responsibility to the ‘lower’ species were religiously inspired, but also strongly influenced by social and political factors, and by assumptions about the priority of human interests. They came under scrutiny for the first time when legislation was proposed in the early 1800s to make cruelty to animals, especially bull-baiting, a criminal offence. The resulting debates in the British parliament, dominated by William Windham’s speeches, threw up philosophical difficulties which would haunt animal protectionists for the rest of the century. They also revealed disproportionate female support for protection, and the ridicule that this already attracted.