This chapter considers the influence of ethnomethodology on qualitative research methodology, one of the main areas of mainstream social science where it has had an impact. The reception of Cicourel’s (1964) book Method and Measurement in Sociology is discussed, and also how conversation analysis shaped the work of many discourse analysts and some ethnographers. Cicourel’s argument is outlined: that sociology needs to be re-founded methodologically on an empirical theory that respects the complex and contingent character of human action and communication, along lines suggested by ethnomethodology. His early work encouraged the rise of qualitative research and reflexive attention to the processes by which data are produced; though these developments often tended to go in directions that were at odds with his conception of rigorous analysis. Later, conversation analysis encouraged the use of electronic recordings and transcriptions as data, raised doubts about the traditional uses of interviews, and encouraged the micro-analysis of patterns of social interaction. Furthermore, like Cicourel’s work, it facilitated the spread of social constructionism. It is argued that these effects have been beneficial in many respects but more negative in others.

The Afterword celebrates the communal practice that is riddling—whether composing, solving, interpreting, or editing. It aims to draw together the individual voices of the riddles and of the chapters of this volume into a communal unity that celebrates diverse methods and perspectives. This book’s sections—Words, Ideas, Interactions—arguably move, flow, collapse inward, and reconstitute themselves through the act of interpreting, just as the riddles themselves invite constant re-reading and re-interpretation of clues and solutions. Hence, the Afterword also maps out possible directions for future work in the field of riddle studies: more engagement with the Latin collections and comparative work on Scandinavian and Celtic riddle traditions, as well as critical engagement with identity, especially identity informed by disability, race and gender theories. Finally, it suggests that the insights into daily life offered through the riddles’ subversive concealments and manoeuvrings make them ideal texts for the study of identity in all its complexity.

The concluding chapter begins with an examination of Canadian author Yann Martel’s What is Stephen Harper Reading? book club project, in which he sent literary texts to now-former Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper once a fortnight. This public act of citizenship was intended to expose Harper, who was responsible for CAD 45 million in cuts to arts, culture, and heritage funding, to the importance of literature and the arts. The chapter closes with a reflection of how the texts and authors under study in this book have explored only a few ways in which citizenship can be encountered, acknowledged, critiqued, troubled, and queered by readers who have the power to collaborate in the continuing struggle for recognition, rights, and representation in North America and around the world.

The conclusion considers the future of death, which involves its possible elimination due to advances in medical science, and addresses the way in which resuscitation science is challenging death’s ostensible fixity and irreversibility. Examples of human longevity and immortality in modern drama are briefly discussed, and a short account is given of a piece of devised theatre by Unlimited Theatre, which premiered in 2014, entitled Am I Dead Yet? The chapter ends with a combination of performative writing and critical commentary that reflects on the whole study.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book draws on a wide range of theoretical influences in relation to particular trends in performance practice in the 1990s and 2000s, a re-examination of the discourse of Derridean poststructuralism. It traces the artistic and philosophical developments that laid the ground for the sustained twentieth-century interrogations of theatrical representations of the real, and examines the emergence of the discursive act which aligned the narrative of radicalism exclusively with such interrogations. The book analyses the representational strategies of characterisation employed in various performance models, including work by Forced Entertainment, the Wooster Group, Katie Mitchell, Roland Schimmelpfennig and Howard Barker. It explores performance environments that break down the dichotomy of performer/spectator and seeks to replace mediated representations with experiential realities.

This chapter analyses the external dimension of European Union (EU) counter-terrorism, a crucial aspect in the fight against international terrorism, which has been much and hotly debated. The external dimension of the EU counter-terrorism policy represents an important element in the possible construction of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), as making the EU secure depends at least to some extent on successful co-operation with countries outside the EU. The chapter demonstrates that the EU institutions, in particular the Commission and the Council Secretariat, have played an active and significant role in the policy developments, the role of Supranational policy entrepreneur (SPEs), albeit to different degrees across policy areas. It focuses on four major aspects of EU-US counter-terrorism co-operation relating respectively to intelligence, police and law enforcement, the financing of terrorism, and justice.

The ultras’ performance is not restricted to ninety minutes at the weekend. It lives through regular interactions throughout the week through the traditional media, conversations and social media. The last of these has become an important public sphere where the way fans and ultras should act or react are debated and discussed. Social media is an important site of the ultras’ performance as the visual style permits groups to create a lasting image of themselves that extends far beyond the stadium and can be spread across the world.

This chapter examines how a combination of approaches from anthropology and data science disciplines has supported my exploration of lives lived at similar intersections. It describes work I have done at two research sites. One, through self-tracking and the quantified self, is focused internally. The other, with a community of startup developers in Jamaica, is focused on struggles to realise the potential of the global knowledge economy from its margins.While differing in their geographies and scales, both spaces allow for an interrogation of the potential of combining data science and ethnography: its new methods, modes of inquiry and modes of expression. For both myself and those I work with, data acts a conduit across borders of nation, history and flesh, promising new existential and epistemological models, and a means of affecting personal and national transformation. Its analytical lines offer the ability to connect and communicate, to modulate ideas of difference, and to help construct new identities. I discuss the uneven realisation of this potential, and how the attempts at its operationalisation reveal productive complications and reformulations at the convergence of engineering and ethnography.

The Oldham group had ambivalent views about social inequality. Britain was seen as an unfair ‘plutocracy’ that betrayed the nation’s Christian traditions, and breaking the power of ‘privilege’ and reducing disparities in wealth and educational opportunity were seen as prerequisites for a more Christian society. But ‘mass’ society was also seen to threaten principles of excellence and moral and cultural standards. These tensions between egalitarianism and elitism were apparent in discussions about the need for a culturally guiding elite in a new planned society and about educational reform. The discussions around a Christian ‘elite’ or ‘clerisy’ remained inconclusive, but the group’s thinking influenced discussions about educational reform. Some group members were involved in consultations with minister of education R. A. Butler during the drafting of what became the 1944 Education Act, and played prominent roles in early post-war debates about university education policy.