In today’s world of increasing spatial inequalities, geopolitical tensions and global shifts in value chains, having a solid grasp of the spatial and multi-scalar dynamics that condition transition dynamics is of ever more importance. Initial theories of sustainability transitions have been criticised for being insufficiently equipped to assess the benefits, conflicts and unevenness that are constituted by the territorial contexts in which transitions dynamics and pathways unfold. Questions how sustainability transitions emerge across places and scales were largely off the radar. Interest and engagement with geographical dimensions of sustainability transitions grew however quickly into a prominent sub-field, characterised by a fruitful trading zone populated by geographers, transition scholars and other social scientists seeking to better account for place specificity, multi-scalarity, and spatial unevenness. This chapter outlines the contours of the Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GeoST) wider theoretical research agenda and ongoing debates, framing these specifically around conceptualisations of place and scale.

High emigration and a low marriage rate caused population to fall to slightly more than half its 1841 level by 1901. Throughout these years schools, churches, shops, post offices and railways modernised rural and urban Ireland. The Irish Republican Brotherhood/Fenians rising of the 1860s, though unsuccessful, focused attention on Irish grievances. However, the land agitation 1879–1891 was led by parliamentary nationalists, the Home Rule party under Parnell, and managed to convert the British Liberal party under William Gladstone to this cause in 1886. Unionists all over the country resisted, but their campaign was concentrated more in the north-east, where unionist sympathies existed at all social levels. By 1903 landlordism had been abolished but the nationalist-unionist struggle was only beginning.

Shipbuilding and textile/garment industries were huge employers in the north-east. Elsewhere food-processing, textile/apparel, and mining and quarrying, held their own but did not expand. Agriculture was the biggest single employer. The rise in white-collar and government jobs for the sons and daughters of the small farming and working class offered the greatest opportunity for social mobility in this period. English was needed for employment, education, and emigration, and the Irish language declined further.

This chapter examines John’s legacy after his death, both at Fécamp and in the wider medieval spiritual landscape. The chapter first shows how John’s students and followers at Fécamp elaborated on the seeds of affective devotion that John’s Confessio theologica planted: a cult to the precious blood of Christ was established at Fécamp; John’s students Maurilius of Rouen and Gerbert of Saint-Wandrille wrote affective prayers to a crucified Christ; Guibert of Nogent, a Norman monk, wrote his own memoir in the style of Augustine’s Confessions thanks to John; and, most famously, Anselm of Bec wrote his prayers and meditations, following in the steps of the greatest Norman abbot of the generation before him. This chapter moves on to discuss how John’s Confessio theologic’s ideas changed in the hands of the Cistercians, and how they circulated in the later Middle Ages, often misattributed in manuscripts to Anselm or Bernard or Francis. This chapter concludes by making clear the parts of John’s Confessio theologica’s devotional method that served as the foundation for later medieval affective devotional practice, and the parts of John’s ideas that abandoned in later iterations of affective devotion practised by Cistercians, mendicants, mystics, and the laity.

This chapter more fully defines strategy. This involves identifying strategy as a process, and examining how strategy functions throughout various levels (tactical, operational, strategic, grand strategic). The final section of the chapter discusses the many challenges that make strategy so difficult. These challenges include strategy’s multidimensional nature, disharmony amongst its levels, nature of war, paradoxical logic, friction, the polymorphous character of war and human involvement. The chapter concludes with some steps that can be taken to deal with the challenges.

This chapter demonstrates Irishmen fighting in the same uniform as their British comrades also experienced similar psychoneurotic afflictions. However, it was how such instances amongst Irish troops were perceived which was unique. This chapter establishes that the British military establishment believed the Irish Tommy was especially susceptible to war neuroses. This discernment was a continuation of long-held anti-Irish perceptions amongst Britons that the Irish were immature, emotionally volatile and susceptible to mental illness. This assessment had helped to legitimise British imperialism in Ireland. Simultaneous to the continuation of such anti-Irish prejudices, however, this chapter also offers a considerate analysis of the Ministry of Pensions’ early rehabilitative attempts in Britain and Ireland between 1914 and 1921. Exclusive in-patient and out-patient treatment was provided in Ministry hospitals throughout the United Kingdom. This infrastructure was far more progressive and innovative than has been previously assumed. Infrastructure in ‘South Ireland’, however, was fatally compromised. The region experienced far higher waiting lists for neurasthenic pensioners awaiting in-patient and out-patient treatment in the United Kingdom. Ministry of Pensions officials in London attributed these inflated figures to the supposition that the Irish were predisposed to mental illness.

How can we learn about God from the study of nature. What do we learn from the writings of Cicero and the Stoics, Maimonides, and William Blake – and today from the red shift, the anthropic principle, and the challenge of the multiverse?

Pakistan’s seventy-five-year economic history can be divided into three distinct periods. The first decade after 1947 was a period of low growth, but one in which a functioning state was set up from scratch and rapid industrialization occurred. The 1960–1990 period saw high economic growth but high costs, including the secession of Pakistan’s eastern wing (now Bangladesh), the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the ensuing civil war, which spilled over into Pakistan. Between 1990 and 2022, growth halved, primarily due to the continuing conflict in Afghanistan – this time with the US- led invasion after 9/11 – coupled with poor economic management in dealing with recurring balance-of-payments crisis and frequent recourse to the IMF. The key factors responsible for these changes are identified through ten turning points, which capture major events both internal and external and the ensuing structural changes, including in the composition of the ruling elite. Failure to undertake economic reforms was a key factor in Pakistan’s overall disappointing performance after a promising start.

How did a man go about repenting sex with men? Byzantine monks hearing confession drew guidance from the Kanonarion, a penitential manual developed between the sixth and ninth centuries. Unlike sermons that tended to lump together a range of sins between males, the manual separates the penetration of men (arsenokoitia) from the corruption of boys (paidophthoria), and identifies mitigating circumstances, such the penitent’s youth or poverty, or if he was raped. The penances for sex between men were, perhaps surprisingly, the same as for adultery and fornication, and less than for murder or the corruption of children. The Life of Nephon celebrates a repentant sodomite who became a holy man. If Byzantine pastoral care sought to produce the repentant sodomite, the Life of Nephon presents such a subject as a cultural hero. While this material hardly offers a model for contemporary LGBTQ+ liberation, the construction of the repentant sodomite, an identity that Symeon the New Theologian claims for himself, provides an important Byzantine chapter in queer history.

The first specialized psychiatric and geneticcounselling services for deaf people, offeredpartially in sign language, were established at theNew York State Psychiatric Institute in the late1950s. They were part of a larger mental health careproject for deaf people, led by psychiatricgeneticist Franz Kallmann. The project was acollaboration with local deaf communities that makesvisible a surprising confluence of eugenictraditions and minority movements, science, andactivism. It was a turning point in the treatmentand perception of deafness in the US, redefining itas a ‘stress-inducing’ psychological condition, andthe deaf as a neglected social minority. Tyingtogether the history of psychiatry, psychology, andgenetics, this chapter shows how Kallmann and hisco-workers reframed older eugenic paradigms in thelanguage of 1960s health and civil rights activism,reframing family and genetic counselling as a healthservice to which deaf people were entitled.

Gay American autobiographical writing since the year 2000 became “post-gay,” where “gay” denotes a distinctive, unitary gay male cultural tradition. Post-gay means gay plus: the “post” signifies the movement toward an intersectional model of identity, where other dimensions of culture are integrated with sexuality, and sexual cultures – such as elite gay culture – are transformed by their intersection with black, brown, yellow, and other colors of the rainbow. The 1990s saw the explosive visibility of what was then called the “lesbigay” community in all areas of American public life. That tide ebbed during the second Bush administration, in the backlash against LGBT rights. But the cultural work progressed apace, becoming socially diversified. The first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen the proliferation of gay US voices. Not simply de-pathologized, and not simply decriminalized, self-consciously gay autobiographical writing has multiplied into as many niche segments as the overall population. These include hyphenated queer Chicano authors, memoirs about drug addiction, and pre-Obergefell gay marriage chronicles, among other intersectional narratives.