Chapter 1 introduces the “puzzle” of the variability of Eurasia’s gas interdependence over both time and space. It outlines how political dynamics of natural gas pipelines therefore differ from oil pipelines, in part because the market for natural gas is much more regional and segmented than the integrated global market for oil. It summarizes the historical development of the Soviet-Eurasian gas trade and delineates variations in natural gas interdependence between various European and Eurasian nations in order to lay out the main argument grounded in constructivism — that the uneven character of Eurasian (natural gas) interdependencies is motivated and shaped by shifts in dominant narratives over time and across nations. This book also elaborates the conditions under which large shifts occur in the way firms define their commercial interests. It considers how international economic opportunities moderate domestic politics while adding personal leader incentives — in turn, based on individual personality traits and dispositions — while being attentive to the particular sociopolitical contexts in which shifts in natural gas interdependence take place.

This chapter asks the question what being ‘local’ really means. How many generations must people of Phoenician ancestry live locally before they are considered ‘locals’? Analysis and comparison of ceramics and burial rituals in Iron Age South Iberia show that locality is produced daily by myriad actors who were differentiated and connected by ethnicity, social status, age, and gender. Who is considered ‘local’ in one place might look alien compared to how other communities and individuals perform their locality elsewhere. Ultimately, this chapter debunks the persistent notion of stable ethnic identities in the ancient Mediterranean that add little to our understanding of selfhood and cultural and colonial contacts.

This chapter presents Persistent Citizens’ central theoretical framework: a psychological explanation for state-centric persistence. The chapter highlights the significant psychological costs associated with engaging the state, including feelings of stigma and shame and the loss of autonomy and control.  The authors identify three domain-specific attitudes that they argue can both reduce these costs and otherwise directly increase the likelihood of persistence: entitlement, indignation, and self-efficacy. The book refers to these attitudes collectively as "2ei." The chapter defines each of these attitudes, explaining that entitlement is the belief that one has a right to a benefit; indignation is the emotional response to a violation of that right; and self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to successfully interact with the state. The chapter hypothesizes that individuals who possess these attitudes are more likely to engage in state-centric persistence.

Chapter 5: Cast from Life? We begin with the statues represented on the Berlin Foundry Cup and then advance to the Livadhostro Poseidon, an early indirect casting. Myron and Polykleitos, the fifth-century-BC artists whose names are most closely associated with the rise of athletic statuary, would have used this process, and they probably used living models, enabling them to repeat anatomical features, as on the Riace Bronzes and the bronze Apoxyomenos. These repeated bronze images surely represented the statuary industry as a whole. Did the industry go downhill in the third century BC, as Pliny claimed that it did (NH 34.53) after reaching its apogee in the fourth-century workshop of Lysippos? Were Pliny’s contemporaries more interested in the values of bronzes than in genius (NH 35.50)? Perhaps producing a statue from many small solid-cast pieces was the key to the future of the lost-wax process.

Climate change worsens health outcomes through direct heat-stress impacts, proliferation of pests such as mosquitoes carrying malaria or dengue, forced urbanization that increases the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and greater electricity generation that increases air pollution. The reduction of the use of chemical pesticides, through Integrated Pest Management and biopesticides, is occurring slowly. Recent re-direction of focus onto noninfectious diseases away from infectious diseases is problematic for lower-income people, especially in light of the resurgence of infectious disease vectors. Vaccine development for local strains, and deployment, have made progress, despite vaccine hesitancy. The nutrition status of Southeast Asians varies widely, but interior populations of even relatively wealthy Malaysia suffer from poor nutrition. Nutrition fortification has been gaining ground to various degrees in the region. Overall, the focus needs to be on food security rather than food self-sufficiency.