Chapter 8 looks at what happens when there is too much sense, instead of too little, when there is an absolute clarity and a certainty in the face of apparent chaos or confusion. Wonder is the primary trope of this chapter, and it traverses various analytical keys including the physics of superposition, which provides the background for the “lightning strikes” that can be seen as the wonder element, or absolute certainty. These arguments are articulated with ethnography from Cuba, where spontaneous oracular emissions produce coincidences and synchronicities that sculpt destinies, as well as from post-dictatorship Chile and Argentina, where time must be reconceptualized in relation to the myriad disappearances of political opponents that family members must still contend with, and where spectrality is timeless and “timefull” at once. We end this chapter with an argument that proposes the decolonization of time.

Chapter 9 moves the discussion from not-knowing to not-doing in the acts of everyday life. Here, the focus is on people’s willingness and purpose to stop knowing, to pause, or to put a stop to the meaning of the world by engaging in subversive acts of not-doing. This concept is derived from the work of the controversial anthropologist and ethnographic fiction writer, Carlos Castaneda. This chapter centers on various forms of deliberate immersion and transportation of subjects into the negative and enigmatic realm of not-knowing. Therefore, we perceive not-doing as purposely creative, devising practices with the intention of altering consciousness in order to introduce individuals to experiences commonly referred to as paranormal, esoteric, mystical, divine, artistic, and subjunctive.

By the end of the twentieth century, the cost of astronomy worldwide had risen to levels that only the wealthiest countries or consortia of nations could support. This chapter traces the history of the ambitious astronomical projects undertaken in the wake of World War II, largely based on financial means the United States had introduced during the war. As even these levels of support are reaching affordable limits, astronomers may need to resort to techniques modern archeologists have developed in their studies of prehistoric events, traces of which can now still be unearthed hundreds of thousands of years later. Astronomers may eventually have to similarly dig “down,” in addition to their traditional look “up in the sky,” to affordably learn as much about our ambient Universe as we may, barring currently unforeseen means of interstellar travel and exploration that might ultimately be found.

This chapter describes the internal environment of a financial institution.

This contribution questions the reality and possibility of the claim that the European Union (EU) is founded on “representative democracy”. In the absence of a European demos, three consecutive difficulties are analyzed: the question of the unity of the represented, the representation of citizens as EU citizens, and, finally, the quest for representativeness of the European society. The reflection’s conclusion points towards the complementarity and inseparability of the representative and participatory forms of democracy in a transnational context, with the participatory forms adding a transnational dimension to the European representative democracy.

This chapter looks at the global picture of migration management and aid. We present the first-ever global estimate of migration management aid from 2002 to 2022. Based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data on official development aid, we find that states of the Global North spent more than $73 billion on development aid to manage migration within developing countries, increasing from $718 million in 2002 to $8.71 billion in 2022. The United States and EU donated similar levels of migration management aid before 2015, but after 2016 the EU contributed more than 50 percent of all migration management aid every year – reflecting the importance of the EUTF. The top recipients of migration aid were Turkey, Iraq, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza, and Lebanon, which all represent key hosting states for refugees during this twenty-year period. This chapter shows how migration management aid has emerged as a global trend, despite variation in implementation, purpose, and region.

This chapter focuses on increasing flexibility in self- and emotion-patterns, suggesting a process-oriented and patient-oriented perspective on psychopathology and psychotherapy. Such an approach can take into account the notions of affective atmosphere and the importance of external environmental factors, including social processes, in the treatment of psychiatric disorders. The notion of a self-pattern as a dynamical gestalt allows for a systematic approach to understanding and treating such disorders. Specifically, it allows us to zoom in on the affective factors that include emotions, constituted as their own dynamical patterns, to discover the connections among the various features of self-pattern, and the pervasiveness of the affective in everyday life.

Chapter 7 examines Gulliver’s Travels Parts II and III, with particular focus on the role of ideology, namely religion and sectarianism, in the context of global politics and trade. Swift saw modern Europe as a once-unified constitutional and ideological system (Christendom) that fell into a state of decay – a process accelerated by ideologies and policies motivated by hubris and aggression, such as absolutism, militarism, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. In doing so he illustrated essential dynamics of modernity, science, technology, and globalization and implied that their unrestrained development would lead to conflict rather than cooperation. He painted a picture of Asian governments, namely Japan, as foils to European governments: while they were despotic at home, they followed rational self-interest abroad, enabling cordial trade relations and a balance of power. By contrast, modern European colonial powers are satirized as being blinded by the pursuit of commercial monopolies and hence objects of foreign manipulation.

This chapter describes a number of important univariate and multivariate statistical distributions and their uses, as well as discussing various copulas.

This chapter describes the main approaches to identifying risk, in terms of tools and techniques.