This second empirical chapter describes the production of data from the wood samples generated during fieldwork, which consisted of attributing the precise calendar year of formation to each annual layer of wood grown by the tree (a ‘tree-ring’) in a process called ‘dendrochronology’. The main body of the chapter describes the work of creating an 800-year-long tree-ring chronology for Scotland. I show that the scientists studied were able to generate a tree-ring chronology that peers could accept as carefully dated by initially accepting a traditional belief and practice in dendrochronology (the so-called ‘principle of crossdating’) and then critically examining the applicability of this dogma to the Scottish context. This conclusion speaks to public discussions about the existence of ‘group-thinking’, ‘tribalism’ and dogmatism in climate science. In response to those who (mis)judge climate scientists against the ideal of science as a form of radical doubt, I argue for the positive function of trust, tradition and dogma in science.

The conclusion outlines how the different chapters in the volume have contributed to elucidating the concept of bioprecarity. This involves analysing the complex entanglements created by the relationship between the body, life, the production, maintenance and application of categories and intimate labour. These entanglements exist in a context of uneven distribution of power, which means that particular social groups and individuals are rendered more bioprecarious than others through their positioning as biosubjects. The volume shows that bioprecarity extends beyond contemporary, disenfranchised groups. It was also a key dimension of eugenicist histories, for example. At the same time, however, we also indicate that bioprecarity is sometimes co-produced by those who install it and those who seek to benefit from bodily interventions and intimate labour. This means that questions of biocitizenship need to be addressed more widely since biotechnologization will remain a fact of contemporary life.

Should central banks favour green assets in their operations? This question has caused an intense debate in the Euro area and the UK, focussed on corporate bond portfolios purchased by the Eurosystem and the Bank of England. It has been argued that their initial purchases supported economic activity that was not consistent with the stated targets of the EU and the UK governments to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Sustainability issues are not a primary objective for central banks, and their independence could be damaged by exceeding their remits. Nevertheless, the risks arising are highly relevant to their existing primary objectives. Furthermore, central banks and all other institutions must do what they can if society is to deal with the growing existential threat. That draws on their secondary objectives. We argue that: (1) Not only is it permissible for a central bank to be involved in climate mitigation activities, but existing mandates require it. (2) The expansion of central bank balance sheets gives room for more action. (3) All market operations are in scope. (4) Central bank staff do not need to make capital allocation choices between businesses. (5) There is no trade-off with monetary policy objectives.

The film that gave a boost to Reed's flagging reputation was Oliver!, by any standards an impressive musical, and true epilogue to a long and distinguished, though variable, career. As ever, a film musical that owes its origins to a stage version, especially one that was a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic, runs the risk of unfavourable comparison with other productions. Like the best musicals, Oliver! gives its audiences intense pleasures through narrative, character, star performers, as well as through its array of formal effects: music, dance, colour, décor, camera movement and so on. In this film brutality and kindness are constant companions. Oliver! is a film about not only the survival instincts of outsider figures like Fagin and the Dodger, skipping away into the sunset like Chaplin and the little boy in The Kid, but also the triumph of innocence.

This chapter is devoted to the Contes moraux, Comédies et proverbes, and Contes des quatre saisons, and looks at how Rohmer's decision to work by thematic series forces the viewer to intuit relations of complementarity, identity, and opposition that lend each cycle a complex, musical texture. Seriality forces the viewer to adopt a self-critical attitude and to refuse absorption in favour of active comparison. As it examines the internal dynamics and discursive model(s) of each of Rohmer's three major series, the chapter aims to problematise the notion that a classically inspired cinema of psychological refinements must be anti-modern or, worse, reactionary. Cast by some critics as a right-leaning bourgeois humanist, Rohmer can also be viewed, on the basis of his cycles, as the same manner of formalist that he and Chabrol considered Alfred Hitchcock to be: a consummate 'inventor of forms'.

This chapter argues that any critical or historical study of life-narrative, memoir, or autobiography by “gay Latino male” writers in the United States must attend to questions or problems unique to the intersecting fields of queer and Latinx literary studies. At the level of genre, such an analysis must address the decades-long influence of testimonio theory coursing through both Latin American and Latina/o/x literary studies as a destabilizing element in any discussion of genre as a tool for understanding literature, or “the literary” per se, especially in its grounding relationship to any claim to historical knowledge, through the modes of either fiction or nonfiction. At the level of gender, such an analysis must address the recent emergence of the self-interrogating mark of the “x” in Latinx (in the mid-2020s perhaps ceding finally to the “e” in Latine) as the refusal to accept the binary logic of gender as imbedded in the orthography and grammar of conventional Spanish. These considerations destabilize but do not disable the possibility of curating a collection of texts that have since the mid-twentieth century comprised an archive of “Gay Latino American Autobiography.”

This chapter considers inclusion and exclusion from the perspective of younger immigrants and second-generation members of a long-established religious minority community in the rural West of Ireland. Drawing on the narrative contributions of thirty-three ethnically and culturally diverse Muslim teenagers, it explores the complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in school and community settings. The discussion highlights barriers to inclusion faced by Muslim teens while attending school, drawing attention to issues such as dress codes, religious observances and language barriers as being particularly challenging. The discussion also outlines the challenges faced by Muslim teens in negotiating community membership, emphasising intergenerational conflict as an issue affecting daily life. Using a novel categorisation of migrant cohorts, the chapter offers a nuanced analysis which reveals Muslim teens as actively negotiating their positions as ‘insiders’ and/or ‘outsiders’ on an ongoing basis and from a range of available cohort positions. In doing so it highlights the variety of pathways to inclusion employed, as well as the risks of exclusion facing young immigrants.