The Prologue establishes the author’s personal journey of discovering Nordic capitalism as a transformative lens for understanding market economies. Through firsthand experiences living and working in Nordic countries, it reveals how encountering their universal social services, tax systems, and union participation challenged fundamental assumptions about capitalism formed as an American MBA student and corporate employee. The chapter positions Nordic capitalism as a practical alternative to American neoliberalism when mounting sustainability challenges demand new paradigms, likening the present moment to a potential Kuhnian “scientific revolution“ and paradigm shift away from neoliberal ideology. It introduces key features distinguishing Nordic capitalism, including democratic accountability, stakeholder cooperation, and market alignment with sustainability goals. The Prologue frames the book’s investigation of Nordic capitalism not as a pursuit of utopian ideals, but as a pragmatic exploration of proven approaches for evolving capitalism toward sustainability, an approach that provides hope in a challenging world.

Several themes shape the historiography of economics in western India in colonial times, including the history of ryotwari land tenure, international factors like the growing engagement of agriculture with the world markets via cotton exports, dependence on monsoon agriculture and the outbreak of famines and epidemics, and the industrialization of Bombay and Ahmedabad. Although these processes may seem disparate, there were also deep connections between them. The chapter offers an economic history integrating these processes, and shows how western India in the colonial period saw significant innovation and entrepreneurship in industry, in the broader context of an economy that remained largely agricultural, with low productivity and high risk.

Despite the neoliberal wave solidarity capitalism has remained important in Europe. Since it was impossible to tame capitalism globally, promoters of solidarity turned to the European Union, and strove to strengthen its ‘flanking’ welfare state. The early 1990s brought a first peak of international awareness regarding environmental protection and interest in social Europe, but that was shattered by a neoliberal reaction from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. Since then, social and environmental policies have been on the rise again, only to be challenged by the Russo-Ukrainian War. Three expressions of solidarity will be examined. The first deals with the legal regulation of globalisation through social legislation and trade regulation. The second involves financial redistribution towards the neediest, with transfers to poor regions (cohesion policy), and later with specific measures during the Covid-19 crisis (2020–21). The third addresses the rising importance of environmental regulation in general (air and water pollution, biodiversity, etc.), especially with regard to climate change (Kyoto Protocol, 2015 Paris Agreement), despite the lobbying of the ‘Merchants of Doubts’.

The Introduction outlines the significance of the book within the context three fields of scholarship: British imperialism in China, law within the British Empire and Borderland studies. It provides an introduction to the British imperial presence in Xinjiang and Yunnan, an explanation of sources used and an outline of the chapters of the book.

This chapter shows how John’s Confessio theologica was both of a piece with traditional monastic texts and ‘new’ on the monastic scene. In his Confessio theologica, John both built on reform and devotional precedents long-established in the monastic sphere, and developed a distinctive focus on reforming his monks’ interior, emotional practices that was substantially his own. To do this, I first explore John’s sources for the Confessio theologica in this chapter. I start by tracing the age-old monastic precedents that John draws on in his Confessio theologica, precedents that scholars often cite but rarely examine. I also trace more rare sources of John’s, books that he encountered in his childhood monastery in Ravenna, under the guidance of monastic reformer Romualdus of Ravenna, or his time at Cluny or at Saint-Bénigne de Dijon, under the guidance of Odilo of Cluny and William of Volpiano. After carefully tracing his pedigree, I then highlight what is source-less in John’s Confessio theologica, showing which ideas are truly John’s own.

Anglican Gothic fiction proceeds beyond broad anti-Catholicism to consider theological problems. To some Anglican writers, the novel appealed as a more attractive vehicle for these ideas than religious tracts. In Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Maturin articulates in novel form the ideas of an earlier sermon, which argues that specific, false doctrines of Catholicism lead to damnation. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray approaches idolatry as obstructive because it places objects between the believer and paths to salvation. Both in Carmilla and in short fiction, Sheridan Le Fanu asserts what he believes are central topics for Victorian religious debate: the implications of science for theories of the natrural order, and damnation and persecution as realities of a spiritual life.

This chapter discusses the landmark Mono Lake litigation that finally reached the California Supreme Court, National Audubon Society vs. Superior Court – the case that turned the tide for the survival of Mono Lake, through public trust reasoning that would go on to foment a quiet revolution in environmental law. The chapter reviews the basic elements of the litigation, introducing the parties, their commanding legal avatars, and their overall positions before unpacking the specific arguments that made it to court. Then it highlights the most important doctrinal features of the landmark decision, including its affirmation that environmental values are protected by the public trust doctrine, its application of the doctrine to the upper reaches of the watershed, its assertion that public trust obligations extend over time, and its understanding of the legal nature of the doctrine itself. In casting the doctrine as a nonwaivable obligation to protect environmental values for future generations – a quasi-constitutional constraint on sovereign authority – the decision set the stage for its recognition as a tool of environmental law, and perhaps even a framework for environmental rights.

Chapter 3 explores event-related potentials (ERPs), one of electroencephalography’s most powerful analytical techniques for investigating cognitive processing. The chapter traces ERPs’ evolution from Pauline and Hallowell Davis’s pioneering work in 1939 through its exponential growth as a research methodology. It explains how ERPs extract meaningful neural signals by time-locking and averaging EEG segments surrounding stimulus presentations, thereby revealing characteristic voltage deflections that correspond to specific cognitive processes. The text examines key ERP components, including C1, P1, N1, P2, N2, and P300, detailing their temporal progression, neuroanatomical origins, and functional significance in the processing hierarchy. It evaluates ERPs’ exceptional capacity to discriminate between processing stages occurring within milliseconds of each other, from early sensory encoding through attention allocation to semantic processing. The chapter addresses methodological considerations essential for robust ERP research, including experimental design principles, artifact reduction techniques, and the interpretation of scalp topographies. By analyzing ERPs’ comparative advantages, including millisecond-precise temporal resolution, ability to track covert processing without behavioral responses, and sensitivity to processing stage differences, alongside their limitations in spatial localization and specific experimental contexts, the chapter positions ERPs as a vital methodology for understanding the sequential unfolding of perceptual and cognitive processes in the human brain.

This chapter explores the work of the Anglican Sisters and the second team of Sisters of Mercy in the context of the woman’s movement and the many new sisterhoods founded throughout Europe in the nineteenth century. Sisterhoods provided an important channel for nineteenth-century ladies to find interesting and challenging work without compromising their social status by accepting a salary. Secular ladies could do volunteer social service and nursing part-time because such work was considered traditional Christian philanthropy, but as religious Sisters they could work full-time and have a real career. This was a major drawing card and attracted many able women who wanted to make better use of their talents. The Bermondsey (London) Sisters of Mercy were expert trained nurses whose exceptional Mother Superior, Mary Clare Moore, took a very different approach to nursing in the East from that of Mother Francis Bridgeman. Moore became one of Nightingale’s principal supporters and a close personal friend. Anglican sisterhoods, dissolved during the Reformation, started to be refounded only in the late 1840s, so there were fewer of them. Still, of the ten Anglican Sisters who nursed in the war, five proved to be outstanding nurses.

In Greek and Latin literature roughly contemporaneous with Paul, the Galatians were often depicted as people who were liable to quickly swerve off course and to betray their allies. This chapter argues that Paul utilized these stereotypical notions about the Galatians in service of his rhetorical purposes in his letter to the Galatians.

Chapter 10 discusses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a noninvasive brain imaging technique that utilizes light to measure hemodynamic responses. It traces the evolution of spectroscopy from Newton’s prism experiments to modern neuroimaging applications, explaining how near-infrared light penetrates tissue to detect changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. The chapter details the physical principles underlying fNIRS, comparing continuous wave, frequency domain, and time domain approaches while examining the instrumentation of modern systems. It addresses practical considerations including optode placement, signal quality optimization, and noise reduction techniques. The relationship between fNIRS signals and neural activity is discussed, highlighting similarities to the BOLD response in fMRI while acknowledging limitations in depth penetration. The chapter covers analytical approaches for fNIRS data processing and emphasizes its unique advantages: portability, relative affordability, and functionality in environments hostile to electromagnetic recordings. Case studies demonstrate fNIRS applications in specialized contexts like underwater environments and space exploration, illustrating why this technique has become an essential tool for specific research questions despite its spatial limitations.