The counter-movement against commodification in the 1930s and 1940s reached a milestone on 1 October 1949 when Mao Zedong announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This chapter begins by outlining the fundamentals of the regime of marginal labour precarity in the Mao era, which took shape between 1949 and 1956 out of the ashes of the Republican era and remained in effect throughout the Mao era. It then narrows the focus to the period between 1949 and 1957. During this period, boundaries among labouring people took shape and were redrawn by swings in the industrialization path between centralization and decentralization, and in labour policy from promoting permanent employment to constraining its expansion and then to promoting the labour contract system.

The chapter details recent and future climate changes, primarily caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. This period of time is now commonly referred to as the Anthropocene. The chapter begins with a critical discussion of the hypothesis that anthropogenic activities have already begun to significantly impact the global climate since the mid-Holocene. The climate changes observed during the last century and their attribution to human activities are presented. The concept of anthropogenic emission scenarios and projections of future climate change are then described. The results of several future model simulations are shown, and the most robust aspects of future climate change projections and their potential impacts on natural systems and humanity are discussed. Finally, the possibility of predicting the very long-term future (beyond the current millennia) is discussed and possible scenarios are presented.

Chapter 4 shifts the focus from why the US fears the ICC to when it opposes the ICC. The basic idea underpinning this portion of the book is that even though America’s fear that the ICC might someday target its troops is a constant, US policy toward the Court is a variable. I start by generating a typology of three broad strategies that the US might pursue in response to ICC investigations: opposition, assistance, and neglect. I describe what makes each strategy conceptually distinct and highlight the specific tactics associated with them. I then explain why the US might pick one strategy over the others. My theoretical framework calls attention to the interaction of two key variables: (a) whether the ICC investigation threatens US troops and (b) whether the ICC investigation advances broader American foreign policy goals. An analysis of each US presidential administration’s policies toward the ICC provides strong support for the theoretical framework.

This chapter focuses on aspects of the philosophy of science, in particular the twentieth century views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. It briefly covers earlier aspects, including Francis Bacon and William Whewell who highlighted the need for, and influence of, subjective factors in science. In discussing Popper, it considers inductive and deductive reasoning and his falsification approach, while discussion of Kuhn focuses on his view of scientific paradigms, normal science, anomalies and crises, and paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions. It highlights both Popper’s and Kuhn’s views using neuroscience examples, including chemical synaptic transmission, animal electricity and adult neurogenesis. The conclusion is that there is no formal scientific method, no formula for discovery: scientists use, and need to use, a diversity of approaches.

Carers often interfere with the choices of people living with dementia. On neo-republican and (most) relational egalitarian views, interference can be justified if it tracks a person’s interests: if it does not lead to a relationship of domination. The kind of environment-shaping interventions carers often choose to pursue, however, would be considered infantilising or objectionably paternalistic in other cases. This chapter defends what it calls the indirect-first approach to dementia care, arguing that it offers the best prospects of avoiding domination.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods provide rigorous ways to establish and assess causality, though their understandings of causality and techniques for doing so differ. Qualitative and quantitative techniques are generally complementary rather than substitutes or opposites. Common quantitative tools include cross-tabulation, regression, and logit/probit models; which is appropriate typically depends on the level of measurement of the dependent variable. Common qualitative tools include two within-case techniques, process tracing and analytic narratives, and three between-case techniques, case control, structured focused comparison, and content analysis. “Intermediate-N” techniques exist for research questions whose number of cases is greater than that typically used for qualitative analysis but below the threshold for successful quantitative analysis, along with Big Data approaches for extreme-N analysis, content analysis techniques for corpora, and mixed methods approaches.

This chapter details the potential applications of corpus linguistic research in the study and mitigation of misogyny. The chapter begins by introducing the MANTRaP (Misogyny ANd The Red Pill) project and the work done in this project to examine language used across the online manosphere – a ‘loose online network’ of communities united by a shared anti-feminist ideology (Marwick and Caplan, 2018: 543). This chapter discusses findings from various studies conducted by project team members on corpora collected from online manosphere communities to examine, among other things, anti-feminist discourse and representations of gendered social actors. Following an overview of the academic work done by project team members, we then discuss practical applications and impacts of this research for the purposes of safeguarding children and young people from potential online harms. This discussion centres on various aspects of our work with a number of organisations involved in such safeguarding. In particular, our discussion centres on our contributions to the safeguarding efforts of these organisations through raising awareness with relevant stakeholders, producing and delivering safeguarding materials and training, and consultancy work for software companies providing safeguarding and monitoring solutions to schools. In the discussion, we also reflect on the formative work with non-academic stakeholders that leads to tangible impacts as well as the real-life implications of the applications emerging from this work. These include an increased public and academic focus on the communities researched and the language used in those communities and the use of research findings in safeguarding software designed for the online surveillance of children in schools.

Stephen Engstrom argues that judgments that amount to knowledge constitute the end of the faculty of understanding. This implies that true judgments and false judgments are not on par in relation to the attainment of this end. False judgments are incomplete realizations of the understanding whose explanation requires reference to a factor that prevents it from attaining its end. Engstrom takes this to show that truth is essential to judgment (and belongs to its form) whereas falsity is not. This is reflected in our original, a priori understanding of judgment, according to which the capacity to judge is the capacity to know (rather than the capacity, say, to judge either truly or falsely). In an appendix, Engstrom relates this account to the notion of objective validity.

Disease surveillance, particularly of infectious diseases, has a long history. There are many book chapters and articles providing detailed accounts of systematically collated health information [1]. Conventionally, modern health surveillance commences with John Snow’s observations of the epidemic of cholera in London’s Soho district in 1854 [2], culminating in the iconic (but probably ineffective) removal of the handle from Broad Street pump. It is significant that although Snow did not know that the Vibrio cholerae bacterium was the causative organism, surveillance played a part in resolving the epidemic. Disease surveillance has a crucial role in evaluating and shaping responses to major public health problems, as was clearly demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Not all causes of untimely death or ill health are due to the disease of interest, but surveillance provides a firm foundation for public health interventions of all types [1].

Much of the book’s narrative is dedicated to trace the complex interactions between China and Europe since the sixteenth century, but how did these interactions affect Chinese cartographers and Chinese cartographic practice? The focus of this chapter moves to the perspective of Chinese cartographers, their attitudes and uses of world maps, as well as hybrid world maps created using Western techniques and Chinese elements. The chapter demonstrates that Sino-Western world maps prompted different responses, ranging from rejection to enthusiasm and adoption. Chinese cartographers incorporated elements from these maps, cited them in their own work. Beginning with the Qianlong period of the Qing, cartographers started working with Western cartographic techniques in producing new types of maps.