Acknowledgements
This book was a while in coming. It has its origins in a midcareer fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation in 2013–2014 (Grant RA2401), which started me thinking about this topic in depth and realising its scope. Along the way, a book I was previously committed to write and a four-year period of departmental headship gave me further reasons to take my time. But at last, a period of sabbatical granted by the Subject Area of Sociology and the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, along with the strictures of a pandemic, gave me the chance to write it.
Academic work is always heavily indebted to a wider community of scholars who test one’s ideas through criticism and feedback. I am grateful for the opportunities to present ideas from various parts of this book in conferences and workshops at the University of Chicago Center of Beijing at Renmin University, Zhejiang University, Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture at International Christian University in Tokyo, University College Dublin, the University of Warwick, Girton College at Cambridge University, and the University of Edinburgh. In these events and other contexts, I have particularly benefitted from comments from Arianna Andreangeli, Julie Brownlie, Raul Carstocea, Phil Cerny, Simon Clarke, Graham Crow, Will Davies, John A. Hall, Iain Hardie, Geoffrey Hodgson, Poul F. Kjaer, John Levi Martin, James McAlister, David McCrone, Lindsay Patterson, John Scott, Liz Stanley, Yanfei Sun, Tobias Werron, Andreas Wimmer, Naoki Yajima, and Dingxin Zhao. I am grateful to these people and the anonymous reviewers of articles and book proposals for their critical feedback. For the book itself, I have benefitted especially from the careful reading of a draft by Graham Crow, which improved my writing and gave me further things to think about, and from the intellectual support and encouragement of John A. Hall, who also read a draft and whose criticisms prodded me to state more fully in the Conclusion my worries about the state of domesticated competition in the present. I’d also like to thank the CUP editorial team, John Haslam, Toby Ginsberg, Shaheer Husanne, and Emma Lockley, for their guidance and support. As usual, despite all these contributions, only I am accountable for the book’s contents and arguments.
Finally, the steady patience and love of my family, Lovel, Iskra, and Gale, have helped me keep the world in perspective despite its twists and turns, and despite immersing myself in the writing of another book. I come up for air because of you.
