This chapter deals with liberal writings on Western culture, perceived as a source of inspiration and not only as a reservoir of conspiracies; on globalization, which was defined as a lever for Arab economic modernism; and on peace and coexistence with Israel, presented as an essential component in the promotion of Arab humanism.

This chapter continues the work of building the analytical framework. Rather than pulling apart systems to appreciate their differences, as in Chapter 2, this chapter explains how systems must be seen together as human settlements. This settlements perspective illuminates two important sets of divisions that may hinder the development of healthier spatial contracts – the divide between urban and rural, and that between formal and informal.

The status of the woman within a newly formed family unit is dependent on a number of factors, the most important of which are her economic power and her position within the marital relationship. This chapter explores the legal structures underpinning women's status within the family unit. The improvement in their economic status had profound effects on women's social standing. The combination of a change in the marriage ceremony and a more exacting social attitude brought about a complete transformation in the financial status of women. The twelfth century witnessed fundamental changes in the status of Jewish women as far as their relationships with their husbands and within the family is concerned. In all areas where Jews lived among Christians, they adapted their patterns of family life to the life style of their environment.

This chapter summarizes the key contributions of the book. It highlights the way the text operates as three interlocking frameworks: an intellectual framework focused on an understanding of the relationship between collectively produced systems and human agency; a political framework which insists on the need for these systems to become the centre of politics; and an analytical framework which understands systems in context, with a focus on exploitation. It further demonstrates the utility of these frameworks by briefly analysing two current cases: the push for universal basic income globally, and the focus on the Green New Deal in the United States. The chapter also lists ten areas where future work is needed.

This chapter mentions four general shifts or 'settlements' in the intellectual landscape of theory itself. Firstly, theory has become less willing than hitherto to suspend disbelief in the face of vast and speculative intellectual claims. Secondly, there is evidence of a turning away from the dominant materialism epitomised by British cultural materialism and American new historicism. Thirdly, there has been a marked shift away from the 'linguistic sublime'. Finally, a new kind of cultural critique has arisen in response to extreme events such as 9/11, and the global pessimism which is the product of apparently intractable problems such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the spread of religious fundamentalism, and the relentless progress of environmental deterioration. The chapter looks at five areas of development which beginning-theorists might usefully be aware of: presentism, new aestheticism, cognitive poetics, consilience and 'conciliatory' approaches to literary studies, and posthumanism.

Chapter 2 examines the intellectual origins of the philosophy of Personalism, which was adopted as the official state doctrine of the first South Vietnamese state, or the First Republic (Đệ Nhất Cộng Hòa Việt Nam, 1954–63). Contrary to the caricature of this doctrine as an incoherent and reactionary religious ideology, Personalism was in fact a theoretically rigorous form of Marxist humanist theology, one that appealed, moreover, to anti-colonial leaders from throughout the developing world. The reading of Personalism proposed in the chapter, which focuses on the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier’s Marxist critique of capitalism and liberal democracy, will provide the broader theoretical framework for this study and its attempt to reinterpret the war from a South Vietnamese perspective.

The mainstream British film career of Norman Wisdom lasted from 1953 to 1966, during which time he was a box office success and frequently a figure of critical derision. This chapter details the origins of his stage and screen character ‘the gump’ and how Wisdom’s talents came to be overlooked by the critical Establishment of the day. It further examines the comedian’s need for a straight man for his pictures to succeed and how Wisdom’s routines, with their roots in Victorian music hall, also needed to function within the context of a rigidly hierarchical society. The chapter concludes with his most atypical work for William Friedkin and Stephen Frears.

The theme of this chapter is that historians of philanthropy have started out with a definition of what ‘philanthropy’ is, even if the word was never used in their centuries, and proceeded from there. Prime examples are the two major histories of philanthropy in England, dating from the 1950s and 1960s, W. K. Jordan’s Philanthropy in England 1480–1660 and David Owen’s English Philanthropy 1660–1960. For the nineteenth century there is one history that excludes anything where the gifting of private money was not vital, another that includes social reform movements, and yet another that defines philanthropy simply as ‘kindness’. None of them are alert to what contemporaries thought of ‘philanthropy’. I go on to consider the ways in which in recent years historians have turned to the anthropological model of gift relationships to understand philanthropy and how concepts of ‘civil society’ have generated new thinking.

The argument from Kingdoms and Communities explains much of Susan Reynolds's approach to medieval history, both in that book and in Fiefs and Vassals. The interpretation of early medieval law as 'essentially formal and ritualised depends on assuming that it must have been, because primitive law must by definition be formal and ritualised and because the early Middle Ages look primitive'. Mentalities have been treated as entities with a distinctive life of their own. This chapter discusses a case which came before the royal judges in the court of King John in 1213, when the prior of Durham's attorney produced a charter with a broken knife attached to it instead of a seal. Legal practice in the recording of contracts differs from one society to another, as it is rooted in particular cultural traditions which are sanctioned by custom, though changes may come fast when a new technology obtrudes itself.

Patience is a poem that combines discussion of a moral quality with biblical narrative, in the case of Patience, one narrative only, the story of Jonah. It is reader-friendly and engaging. In both poems human beings are at odds with God, but the outcomes are very different. Patience sets out to explore the meaning of the virtue of its title. Through its God, the poem exemplifies and explains a more spiritual view of patience which the narrator gives no sign of understanding. The reader is led to suspect that his total lack of comment on Jonah's second lesson indicates that he is not only out of sympathy with Jonah but himself does not understand God's forgiveness of the Ninevites. Patience does not end with a prayer, a confirming sign, perhaps, that its narrator is meant to be seen as not attuned to spiritual matters.

Cleanness combines discussion of a religious virtue with retelling of stories from the Bible. Its three main stories are from the Old Testament, and they centre on Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar's feast. All three have a number of episodes. The overarching structure of the poem is based on the pattern of alternating passages of discussion and narrative. The discussions not only link the narratives to each other and reiterate the importance of cleanness; each also draws attention to a particular aspect of cleanness which the story it introduces highlights. Cleanness offers only an abstract discussion of penance, and a shadowy instance of it in action, showing it not as forestalling God's punishment but following it. It uses its considerable length not to develop its opening message, examine it, or move on from it, but to drive it home.

This chapter draws primarily on periodical literature to show the meanings attached to philanthropy in the second half of the eighteenth century. Philanthropy was a feeling of love for humanity that brought pleasure, even rapture, to those who experienced it, all the more so as it was envisaged as universal in extent, covering all humans in the globe. The word was not used to describe what are often considered to be the hallmarks of eighteenth-century philanthropy, the voluntary hospitals, the Marine Society and other institutions. There was criticism, for example by Adam Smith, of the claim that mere humans could love all other humans, even some suggestions that misanthropy was more characteristic of humanity than philanthropy. But in the vast majority of references philanthropy was a sensation experienced in the body; it was not something that urged you to do anything or to spend money.

This chapter is about the wider institutional context of public decision-making, which may need to be reformed if think is going to work. Thinking requires linking, and only makes sense if the ideas that citizens come up with are reviewed and judged openly by policy-makers. Why participate if no one is listening? The chapter presents findings about how citizens link to government and reveals the extent of the gap between citizens and local representatives. It may be the case that the difficulty of linking elites to citizens is the central limitation of the think strategy. The chapter reports the results of an experiment that tested how responsive policy-makers are to requests from a citizen’s interest group.