This analysis of the relationships between the Late Nuragic communities of Iron Age Sardinia and Phoenicians focuses on their contributions to the formation of urban centres. Both the near-absence of colonial settlements in the eighth century BCE and the evidence of recurrent Phoenician coexistence with Indigenous communities suggest that the emergence of a small number of urban centres in the following century owed much to these cultural interactions. The role of central places in Nuragic society was instead fulfilled by a small number of major regional sanctuaries that flourished in precisely these centuries.

The name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation…. The use of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness…. [T]he Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all.

—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949: 259–261)

In Orwell's Oceania – imagined in the aftermath of the Second World War – it was ordained that Newspeak will conquer whatever remained of ‘Oldspeak’ (or ‘Standard English’) by the year 2050. Since the intention of Big Brother and his Ministry of Truth was to make speech – and particularly political speech – ‘independent of consciousness’ and free from the ‘temptation to take thought’, language itself had to occupy the limit of the permissible. In other words, what the totalitarian Oceanic state outlawed as ‘crimethink’ (or ‘thought-crime’) should not even require recourse to law.

Chapter 4 develops a hybrid theory of Kantian art criticism. Kant’s rejection of aesthetic testimony and general principles of taste makes his theory essentially particularist, but this creates a familiar problem: without principles linking descriptions to evaluations, critics’ reasons risk seeming arbitrary. Existing particularist accounts solve this by positing aesthetic properties as mediators, but Kant cannot adopt this strategy without violating his denial that beauty is a property. The chapter offers a solution by integrating Noël Carroll’s notion of success value, which evaluates works as good-of-their-kind, with Kant’s judgments of perfection. These judgments mediate between descriptive features and aesthetic evaluation without introducing principles of taste, providing reasons that inform but do not determine reception value – the value of eliciting aesthetic pleasure. The result is a hybrid account that preserves Kant’s autonomy constraint while restoring criticism’s justificatory role, offering an alternative to both property-based particularism and rule-driven generalism.

Our final part of the volume addresses what we have loosely framed as reflections on an anthropology of death “beyond death.” It opens with Aja M. Lans’s powerful critique of the ways in which the material afterlife of death in the form of human skeletal collections has historically worked to erased life – specifically Black lives and the biographies of living people whose remains have become objects of display or tools of bioarchaeological pedagogy. In exploring her own encounters with the violence inherent in producing and maintaining those collections, she invites us to consider the “corporeality of the body and its exploitation both during life and after death.” Her chapter sets the scene for the chapters to follow, each in its own way wrestling with questions that extend from the phenomenon and experiences of death. The framing of “beyond death” that binds these particular chapters urges reflection not only on death’s afterlife of mourning and memory but also some of the radical innovations and ruptures introduced by the pandemic that have both methodological and theoretical consequences for the field going forward.

This chapter argues that courts should play a role in protecting and promoting democratic values in a hybrid regime and lays out how that can be done. The chapter opens with the argument that the counter-majoritarian objection is singificantly less relevant in a hybrid regime context, contending that its reduced relevance permits the constitutional court greater latitude in its support of democratic ideals in a hybrid regime. Five different democracy-enhancing roles of a constitutional court are then proposed, alongside tools that would help facilitate the realization of these roles. The five democratic roles include: (1) the referee role, (2) the interpretative role, (3) the participatory role, (4) the quasi-representative role, and (5) the educative role. The chapter then addresses how competency concerns impact the democratic roles proposed. It argues that the democratic roles are justifiable because there is a lack of better alternatives in a hybrid regime. Courts are a second-best solution: they may not normally be the best institution to tackle certain political failures, but the inadequacies of the political process in a hybrid regime offer reasons for a constitutional court to act.

Given the surprising emergence of the far right in Latin America, there is a notable scarcity of studies on this phenomenon. The conclusion of this edited volume synthesizes the primary findings and offers comparative insights from both cross-national and cross-regional perspectives. It emphasizes identifying ideological convergences and divergences among far-right actors in Latin America. Additionally, it examines their organizational dynamics and speculates on their potential to solidify their presence in the electoral arena. The chapter also highlights some unexpected findings that are crucial for understanding the electoral successes and failures of far-right forces across the region. Finally, it places the far right in Latin America within a broader comparative framework, distinguishing its regional peculiarities and common traits from its counterparts in other parts of the world.

Heinrich’s journey with his mother and the merchants continues. Chapter 4 of Heinrich von Ofterdingen centers on their time spent at a mountain castle. Here Heinrich directly experiences the forces of poetry, first through the violent song of the knights and then through the unifying song of Zulima, a Muslim captive. Zulima opens Heinrich to a feeling of universal fellowship or philia. In conversation with her, his perspective on the crusades is enlightened, and he sees the missed opportunity of unity between the Christians and Muslims. On the morning of their departure, Zulima and Heinrich exchange gifts as an expression of their mutual gratitude.

This chapter examines why Latin America, despite vast resources and reform attempts, remains trapped in economic stagnation. It attributes persistent underdevelopment to cycles of excessive state control, political instability, and weak institutions. Drawing on decades of data, it argues that rent-seeking and bureaucratic inertia undermine innovation and growth. The result is a recurring pattern of short-lived booms followed by deep crises.

This chapter investigates how the African American autobiography is in itself a unique subgenre within the genre of nonfiction. It explores how the African American autobiography intricately weaves together intensely personal elements of the authors’ lives with the larger forces of historical changes. The specific autobiographies that I discuss were works that were published between the 1940s and 1960s, a time bookended by World War II and the Civil Rights Movement. These texts are Langston Hughes’ The Big Sea, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks, and Ezra Bells’ American Daughter. This essay explores how these writers’ lives, dreams, and dreams deferred are largely defined by their identities as Americans of color in a racially stratified America.