Volume II charts European urbanism between 700 and 1850, the millennium during which Europe became the world’s most urbanised region. Featuring thirty-six chapters from leading scholars working on all the major linguistic areas of Europe, the volume offers a state-of-the-art survey that explores and explains this transformation, how similar or different such processes were across Europe, and how far it is possible to discern traits that characterise European urbanism in this period. The first half of the volume offers overviews on the urban history of Mediterranean Europe, Atlantic and North Sea Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and European urbanisms around the world. The second half explores major themes, from the conceptualisation of cities and their material fabric to continuities and changes in the social, political, economic, religious and cultural histories of cities and towns.

To understand health communication in Ghanaian contexts and how arts are ‘activated’ in this sphere, indigenous ways of communicating health and navigating healing must be explored. I discuss these dynamics in two communities: Nkoranza, an Akan community, and Ga Mashie, a Ga community. Both communities adhere to a cultural imperative to ‘sell one’s illness in order to get a cure’. I argue that the ‘selling’ is health communication, while the ‘cure’ encompasses eclectic therapeutic options, including pharmacological, psychological and/or spiritual methods. These communities are also hypervigilant about risk in intimate relations, which is heightened during serious illness and complicates the imperative to sell one’s sickness. Indigenous healers navigate this psychosocial terrain creatively and subversively, aiming to ‘sell healing’ for all conditions. They advertise using multi-form arts, tell stories in diagnostic encounters, and incorporate artefacts and performance in healing processes. I will illustrate where ‘selling sickness’ intersects with ‘re-inventions of healing traditions’ in healing environments and signpost where specific art forms are activated in these spaces.

This short essay provides a concise top-down picture of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. It looks at not only its leadership and command (including the State Defence Committee, Stavka, and General Staff) but also size and structure, political supervision, mobilisation and training, and military equipment. When looking at mobilisation and training, it briefly considers not only wider issues but also the mobilisation of specific national groups and women. When considering equipment it identifies some key pieces of equipment that the Soviet Union was able to produce in large numbers, and that proved to be not only relatively easy to manufacture but also rugged and effective.

Envisioning the experience and study of purpose as timeless pursuits, this chapter is used to imagine five transformative trajectories likely to guide purpose scholarship in the years ahead.

These trajectories aim to deepen understanding of purpose across cultural landscapes, against a backdrop of emerging technologies, and amid profound societal changes. They also strive to illuminate innovative solutions for helping more people feel purposeful while unifying diverse intellectual perspectives on purpose that can be leveraged to that end. To close out this volume with these trajectories is to hope they serve as beacons for researchers, practitioners, and lay readers alike, respectful of where purpose inquiry has been, is currently, and is likely heading.

Volume I offers a broad perspective on urban culture in the ancient European world. It begins with chronological overviews which paint in broad brushstrokes a picture that serves as a frame for the thematic chapters in the rest of the volume. Positioning ancient Europe within its wider context, it touches on Asia and Africa as regions that informed and were later influenced by urban development in Europe, with particular emphasis on the Mediterranean basin. Topics range from formal characteristics (including public space), water provision, waste disposal, urban maintenance, spaces for the dead, and border spaces; to ways of thinking about, visualising, and remembering cities in antiquity; to conflict within and between cities, economics, mobility and globalisation, intersectional urban experiences, slavery, political participation, and religion.

Different surface modification techniques to modify surfaces of medical devices including principles underlying these surface modification techniques and advantages and limitations of each technique are discussed in this chapter.

The relationship between the crown and the gentry was multifaceted. It encompassed both military needs and civilian offices. It could be both direct and indirect, involving personal service – in the royal household for example – on the one hand or indirect in helping to maintain royal rule across the realm. It involved central organs of government – attendance at parliament most particularly – and, crucially, power and influence in the provinces. The relationship was by no means a static one. It evolved and shifted focus over time.

This chapter compares the processes and outcomes of labor politics in post-uprising Tunisia and Morocco. It explores how institutional legacies from authoritarian rule created distinct opportunities for unions to exert influence over transitional governments and shaped their ability to secure meaningful political and economic reforms. The analysis underscores how historical legacies influence unions’ capacity to engage effectively in political transitions. It concludes by considering how institutional legacies might change.

Food shortages impacted some countries more severely than others. They also did not affect everyone equally within societies. Access to food determined new social hierarchies in wartime. Rising costs of living everywhere meant that a higher part of household income had to be devoted to food. Worsened material conditions sharpened old social divisions and created new ones. In many cases, it was easier for the rich to still obtain food despite rationing, which fed resentment against the comparatively better-off. The term ‘profiteer’ and its equivalent in other languages came to define the perceived enemy, which lived in opulence during times of scarcity and took advantage of the reduced circumstances of others. Employees on fixed incomes were particularly hit by the changing economic conditions. For middle-class people whose identity was linked to their class status, the struggles they experienced to obtain basic consumption goods were experienced as déclassement. Hunger both weakened and strengthened the spirit of community: outsiders, including a growing number of war refugees, were increasingly perceived as additional mouths to feed in a context of dwindling food supplies. Hunger thus transformed the self-perceptions of many Europeans and their positions within established social hierarchies.