This chapter examines four examples of concept formation in formal modeling and draws lessons for scholars outside formal theory. Because defining concepts is often more straightforward than solving models, formalization offers valuable tools for clarifying ideas. First, it highlights how formal definitions of conceptual primitives precede and shape model construction. For example, in economics, elasticity is formalized with intuitive ideal-type values, while in political science, audience costs – defined as part of a payoff structure – have endured owing to their clarity and portability. After solving models, scholars can aggregate and disaggregate equilibrium outcomes to build typologies. The chapter illustrates this with two further concepts: state-sponsored protection (refined through a model of cartel–police interactions), and commitment problems (which benefit from formal aggregation of diverse mechanisms). These cases demonstrate how formal tools, like natural-language concept analysis, help structure concepts – offering transparency, precision, and manipulability, though sometimes at the cost of nuance. For nonformal scholars, the chapter encourages “conceptual accounting”: experimenting with mathematical representations to clarify meanings and omissions. Ultimately, the formalization of concepts is not only compatible with broader conceptual analysis – it can enrich it. A glossary is included to assist readers less familiar with formal theory.

Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851) was born in Buenos Aires before the May 25, 1810, revolution, but was educated in the liberal environment of Bernardino Rivadavia’s government, which sent him to Paris to further his education. Upon return in 1830, he saw the rise of Juan Manuel de Rosas and became an opponent of his regime in both a literary and a political sense. He along with others founded the Asociación de Mayo in 1837, which caused his exile in Montevideo, where he wrote the compelling ‘El matadero’ (The Slaughterhouse) and published the Dogma socialista, from which the current selection is taken. The “socialism” of the title might be somewhat deceptive, in that Echeverría’s program contained the standard tenets of liberal democracy. His thoughts on the rule of law, while not entirely original, became a powerful weapon against dictatorship, one that was seen as applicable well beyond his native land and became a classic of Spanish American political thought.

In his essay on typologies, David Collier urges scholars to “put typologies to work.” This chapter responds by “working with typologies” in synthesizing the rich literature on communist and post-communist regime classifications. The chapter examines several of the descriptive and explanatory typologies that have advanced scholarship on the region, drawing attention to their contributions, as well as missed opportunities for deeper conceptualization and explanation. The analysis includes newly constructed typologies that show how these missed opportunities can be addressed.

Juan Francisco Manzano (1797/8?–1853) was born and grew up as an enslaved person in the province of Matanzas, Cuba. He taught himself to write despite being forbidden to do so by his masters: “when everybody went to bed, I used to light a piece of candle, and then at my leisure I copied the best verses, thinking that if I could imitate these, I would become a poet.” He published a first selection of his poems in 1821, still under slavery. His work attracted the attention of literary circles in Havana, and the favour of Domingo del Monte (1804–1853), “a wealthy intellectual, leader, and patriot who … mentored a generation of young writers.” It was thanks to Del Monte’s efforts that Manzano was able to buy his freedom in 1836. Del Monte also persuaded Manzano to write his autobiography narrating his sufferings under slavery, which he started to write in 1835.

In this appendix, we outline some of the results of the theory of convex analysis that we need throughout the book; two principal examples of such tools are the Brezis–Komura theorem and the Fenchel–Rockafellar duality theorem.

As climate awareness intensifies in the first decades of the twenty-first century, theatre and performance studies continues to reflect on and revise the depth of its engagement with ecology, understood broadly as the interrelationships between organisms and their environments. ‘From Ecology to Ecocriticism’ covers the rise of ecology first as a science then its gradual shift to the humanities and onto theatre and performance studies. The question of the relationship between humans and nature now animates much of the scholarship on ecology, theatre and performance. Hence, if ecology is the study of the interrelations between organisms and environments, then ecology in theatre studies focuses on the interrelations of the theatrical and its referents in the politics of sentence at climate change. The chapter concludes by arguing that ecocriticism in Australia expands to encompass the impact of settler colonialism and the continuing dependence on fossil fuel consumption and exports.