Chapter 2 takes an in-depth look into how area-studies scholarship has explained the wide empirical variation in levels of Eurasian natural gas interdependence across nations and over time. It then lays out the empirical design; it introduces the study’s dependent variable — natural gas interdependence in Eurasia — and discusses the definition, operationalization, and measurement of this dependent variable. Next, it introduced the study’s independent variable, a concept labeled new dominant narratives, and lays out the key independent variables contributing to the rise of new dominant narratives: domestic politics, leaders’ dispositions, and international economic and technological incentives. Finally, the chapter situates the book’s key analytical terms — interdependence, cooperation, gas security, and power in Eurasian gas relations — in the existing literature. It specifies that, in this book, these concepts are not treated as context-less or ultimately “real,” but are seen as historically contingent and understood contextually.

This chapter examines debate training as the most prominent liberal political education initiative in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Spearheaded by young, university-educated Tunisians and supported by international donors, debate training seeks to foster a culture of public deliberation on national issues. While informed by transnational liberal models, the initiative also draws on Tunisia’s own political traditions, which were rooted in 19th century reformist thought and evolved throughout both the nationalist and neoliberal periods. This convergence of national and international liberal influences forms the foundation for constructing norms of democratic civility, which simultaneously demarcate historical and contemporary revolutionary incivility. However, the efforts of civic trainers often meet resistance, exposing deep societal fault lines – particularly along class, regional, and religious divisions. The interaction between civic trainers and participants illuminates how different segments of Tunisian society negotiate, reinterpret, or contest the ideals of deliberative democracy and the vision of the public sphere it entails.

One of the classical problems in mathematics is to study rational or integral solutions to a system of diophantine equations, that is, a system of polynomial equations with rational or integral coefficients.

This concluding chapter considers how we as editors approach the anthropology of death from varied positions and histories of engagement. We reflect on how individually we have studied – and, in Ruth Toulson’s case, practiced – alongside deathcare workers, from morticians and funeral home directors to pathologists and forensic scientists; how we have examined traces of death and dying through archives and testimonial evidence; and how we have learned of the rites of the dead from surviving families and mourners, the needs of the living, and the social worlds that bind the two together. Our aim is not to wrap up the preceding chapters with any neat bow, but to reflect on what this field has meant to us individually as scholars and as people who have experienced the death of loved ones and thought deeply about the meaning of those losses. Finally, we reinforce one of the volume’s key arguments – that the anthropological study of death is one of studying processes and contexts of being with the dead. Taken together, this Handbook’s compilation of chapters underscore why death matters in new and urgent ways beyond concerns of just human life.

This work examines how organized crime is emergent from the material conditions of life and death. Focusing on Brazil, I develop the idea of “muted martyrdom” to show how longstanding and banal efforts to maintain highly unequal conditions of life and death, both actively through violent policing and passively through the non-provision of life-giving infrastructures, are productive of novel techniques of “life insurance” for populations that, under the global and social relations of capitalism, must not be subject to techniques of life-saving. By returning to the political economy of life and death, which is to say how both life and death are commodified in and via social relations, I push toward a broader understanding of insurable and un-insurable life, which matters because it tells us that death and its material conditions are a powerful force and epistemological means for reading capitalism’s harms and the contestation it instills.

This chapter explains analytic or inferential statistics, which extend beyond description to draw conclusions about populations based on sample data. Core concepts such as probability, sampling, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals are introduced, providing the framework for statistical inference. Common statistical tests, including t-tests, chi-square tests, and regression models, are explained with guidance on their assumptions and appropriate use. The distinction between statistical and clinical significance is emphasised, encouraging cautious interpretation of p-values and consideration of effect sizes. The chapter also addresses issues such as multiple testing, type I and type II errors, and the role of power and sample size in study design. Practical examples illustrate the application of inferential statistics in evaluating treatment effects, identifying risk factors, and testing public health hypotheses. Strengths of inferential methods include their ability to generalise findings, while limitations include vulnerability to misuse and misinterpretation if assumptions are violated. The chapter concludes by underscoring the importance of combining statistical expertise with substantive knowledge. This chapter maps to syllabus sections 2.3–2.6, which cover hypothesis testing, probability, regression, confidence intervals, and the interpretation of p-values.

The Conclusion synthesizes the book’s two central phases: a revised interpretation of Kant’s theory of artistic beauty and a constructive proposal for Kantian art criticism. It recaps the main theoretical tools developed – especially the role of judgments of perfection – and their implications for contemporary debates about normativity, testimony, and the nature of criticism. The hybrid model advanced throughout the book offers a distinctive and timely alternative to both generalist and particularist frameworks. It upholds Kant’s critical legacy while equipping art criticism with renewed philosophical rigor and relevance.