Local societies were also influenced by other kinds of landowner, who may have been absentees or have had a wide spread of interests beyond that of a single local group. This chapter treats the ways in which outside authorities, office holders and aristocrats intervened in local society. On the one hand, members of these elites were themselves part of local societies; on the other, office holders acted as mediators linking local societies to higher levels such as the kingdom, the county or distant landowners. They therefore occupied a double position: they were themselves members of a local society and at the same time they were legitimised and commissioned by outside authorities. Numerous different types of secular office holder, from both the public and the private sphere, are referenced. However, the frequency of their appearance varies: lower-level office holders are extremely well documented in some parts of northern Italy, are less common in the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon world, and are rare in the Iberian peninsula.

The shoots of Irish language journalism are to be found in material in many Irish, American and European newspapers in the latter years of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. The framework for print media as an element of Irish revival has two core elements, the creation of an Irish language reading public and the creation of a journalistic platform. A minority language media platform was thus created by journalists and writers and the Irish reading public, who set out initially to fully restore the language and its use in public discourse in Irish society. The material in Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge compared favourably with a contemporary English language journal published in Dublin, Hibernia: A Monthly Popular Review, which served a very specific readership. The fact that Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge remained in print, albeit irregularly from 1882-1909 is quite significant.

This chapter describes the financing and building of Indian railways, the largest infrastructure investment of the colonial state, and assesses their economic effects. Due to the poor quality of pre-rail transport, railways integrated markets, reduced price dispersion and increased incomes in colonial India. Net earnings as a share of capital were low in the first wave of railway construction and operations because of moral-hazard problems. As the Government of India took ownership of railways from private British companies, working expenses decreased and net profits improved with no negative effects on productivity. Yet the government did not always maximize their railway profits, opting to purchase more expensive British locomotives over cheaper alternatives. Despite these shortcomings, railways were a unique sector of the colonial economy. By the twentieth century, railways were delivering significant tax revenues to the Government along with higher incomes to the country.

This first empirical chapter, entitled ‘Fieldwork’, discusses the work of creating samples during fieldwork expeditions in the Scottish Highlands by the members of the ‘Scottish Pine Project’. The main body of this chapter is structured around a typical day of fieldwork. I show that the production of credible samples was simultaneous with the constitution of a cohesive and exclusive community of fieldworkers who maintained their trust relations through participation and examination of each other’s work, year after year, in the rituals of labour and recreation in the field. This conclusion bears some relevance to public debates about openness in climate science. Given the meticulous work and personal investment and sacrifice required to produce samples, and the fact that restricting access to data was the means by which the scientists studied protected junior researchers and incentivised good teamwork, it is not surprising, I conclude, that scientists might actively oppose or find it practically impossible to comply with transparency laws, as secrecy and exclusivity play a normal and functional role in science.

In the narrative cinema, style is often assumed to lie on the side of visible excess. It is the domain of the provocateur, the virtuoso, the formalist, the mannerist. This chapter presents the interdependence of film style and technique in the director's pursuit of cinematographic realism. It explores how sound and image are configured, and to what effect. And what is the production process envisaged from screenplay to shoot. In addressing cinematography, mise en scène, sound design, and music in synoptic fashion, the chapter shows why Rohmer's deceptively prosaic mode of presentation is ultimately so effective in sustaining and critiquing cinematic illusion at one and the same time. The filmmaker's practice runs slightly against the grain of the institutional mode of representation (IMR), prompting viewers to listen and look at the texture of a film and question assumptions about how film language works in its classical and modernist guises.

To make a start on understanding what a ‘Hegelian theodicy’ might be, this chapter begins by examining Hegel’s brief but obscure discussion of the ‘Idea of the good’ towards the culmination of the Science of Logic. By expounding the notion of autonomous volition, this section not only contains an explicit critique of Kantian theodicy and its paradoxical consequences, but contains some of Hegel’s own most theodical language, outlining how overcoming the Kantian standpoint enables a correct understanding of the relation between what is and what ought to be. Claiming that the Kantian paradoxes result from the will’s taking a faulty stance towards itself, he notes that he has already explained how the will undergoes the necessary process of self-correction in the final section of the chapter on ‘Spirit’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In order to be in a position to take up this hint, the chapter then turns to explaining the method of the Phenomenology, understood both as a preparatory theodicy, a propaedeutic to ‘true science’, and as a text that exemplifies ‘Hegelian theodicy’ in its own right.

This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its model of logical context. Against readings that see it as purely anti-contextualist, the chapter shows how logic functions as a form of context in early Wittgenstein. Through biographical and historical context, it demonstrates how the Tractatus emerged from and responded to specific intellectual environments, while setting up the book’s broader argument about parallel developments in anthropology and philosophy.

Usher syndrome – congenital deafness and progressivevision loss – is often portrayed as one of the mosttragic disabilities imaginable. This notioncertainly drove psychologist McCayVernon, who in thelate 1960s initiated a campaign to raise awarenesswith the goal of the eventual eugenic eradicationvia early screening, counselling, and, if necessary,‘therapeutic’ abortion. Over the course of the 1970sand 1980s, the definition of Usher syndrome changed,not least because of the input and experiences ofpeople living with it. In the 1960s, professionalsdefined it as a severe psycho-neurological disorderthat caused psychiatric and emotional disturbancesalongside the hearing and vision loss. Encounterswith individuals with Usher syndrome who livedindependently and were successful professionalschallenged this paternalistic definition. Patientadvocates shifted attention from eugenic preventionto improving quality of life, yet also used geneticmotives to argue for their identity and worth. Bythe 1980s, both advocates and professionals focusedon the emotional impact of living withdeaf-blindness for the affected individuals andtheir families.

This book argues that sailortown was a distinctive and functional working-class community that was self-regulating and self-moderating. This is perhaps even more remarkable given that the sheer size of the international seafaring workforce that stepped ashore on Ratcliffe Highway placed sailortown’s transient nature on a different level to the traditional slum. While the bourgeois observer viewed the district as chaotic and dangerous, to the international sailor, Ratcliffe Highway exhibited the recognisable characteristics of an urban–maritime culture associated with sailortown. This culture infused the locality and informed sailortown’s own micro-economy of the merchant shipping industry, sailor leisure, and boarding facilities. In understanding how sailortown functioned, this book has viewed Ratcliffe Highway through the prism of a contact zone. Pratt’s definition of contact zones as ‘spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other’ captures the complex cultural exchanges within these waterfront cosmopolitan communities. Sailortown was undoubtedly a transient district and a space of ‘heightened interaction’ that you would struggle to find in any other urban context. Its compact district fostered a space in which differing subaltern cultures met, sometimes negotiating and at other times clashing with one another.

Innovation systems take a holistic approach to understanding innovation dynamics, emphasizing the role of actors, institutions, and networks as key structural components. These interact to create feedback loops that can either accelerate or hinder innovation. Initially, innovation systems focused on national competitiveness and remained technology-neutral. The introduction of technological innovation systems (TIS), the focus of this chapter, shifted attention to the emergence of specific technologies, particularly sustainable ones that face market barriers. This made TIS a foundational framework in sustainability transitions research. A major milestone in its development was the introduction of TIS ‘functions’, which capture key system dynamics. Over time, TIS has evolved, incorporating factors like geography, policy, and system interactions. Scholars continue to expand the framework, exploring missions, life cycles, and destabilisation. These advancements increasingly integrate technological and social innovation, offering insights into the transition towards more sustainable futures.

This essay draws conclusions from a quantitative analysis of the thousands of lead tablets from Dodona published by Dakaris, Vokotopoulou and Christidis in 2013. It argues that the use of lead tablets in the divination process grew rapidly in the fifth century due to the increased availability of lead in particular from Attika. The tablets would have been left in visible locations after use before being cleared away to be ready for reuse after a period of time. This practice of displaying low-value metal objects is compared to the modern phenomena of coin-trees and love-locks. The use of tablets appears to decline rapidly through the fourth century, with few inscriptions dating to the period after 300 BCE. A number of explanations are offered: the monumentalization of the sanctuary in the third century making the practice of leaving tablets on display less acceptable; the changing role of the sanctuary leading to a change in clientele and consultation practice; and the need for lead for the construction of the large stone buildings resulting in the melting down of lead tablets, with more recent tablets being disproportionately affected.