This book comes in two parts; the first, consisting of §§1–7, offers an informal axiomatic introduction to the basics of set theory, including a thorough discussion of the axiom of choice and some of its equivalents. The second part, consisting of §§8–14, is written at a somewhat more advanced level, and treats selected topics in transfinite algebra; that is, algebraic themes where the axiom of choice, in one form or another, is useful or even indispensable.

Chapter 4 uses original survey data to test the book’s theoretical claims. The first set of findings focuses on property rights. Disputes over state land takings are concentrated where land values are greatest: close to urban centers. The second set of results focuses on how the legal system channels conflict; grievances of rural residents over state land takings often go unresolved. In the wake of state land takings, rural residents use law to fight village leaders and neighbors in order to get a bigger share of limited state compensation for lost land. The data also reveal which villagers are more likely to take action in the face of land grievances. Possible actions include mediating, petitioning, litigating, protesting, and contacting media or a local People’s Congress deputy. Personal connections to the party-state are key, while legal knowledge and party membership have no effect. The third set of results focuses on the official project of legal construction. Data analysis shows that state legal programming changes citizens’ legal consciousness and increases regime legitimacy, as measured by trust in the party-state, for the majority of citizens. Fourth, for the minority of the population that directly experiences grievances over land, trust in the state declines.

This chapter delves into everyday administrative work at the Ministry of Culture, with a specific focus on the Mass Culture Institute, the ancestor of the current General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Based on the personal papers of Saad Kamel, this chapter provides a brief institutional history of the Institute and the low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats who worked to accomplish its mission of cultivating the rural masses. This mission was influenced by diverging ideas about Arab socialism after the socialist turn of 1961. Thus, this chapter contributes to an intellectual history of Arab socialism, by showing how the Mass Culture Institute enacted a grounded version of ‘the socialism of culture’ (ishtirakiyyat al-thaqāfa). Moreover, the chapter explores the key relationship between responsibility and achievement at the Mass Culture Institute. Low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats are constantly concerned by what falls under their responsibility, which is managed by both avoiding to take responsibility for problems and seeking to take credit for achievements (however small). These everyday achievements embody, on a smaller scale, the postrevolutionary state project.

Despite increasing ethnic diversity and a rising proportion of births to migrant women, inequalities in health and care experiences for racial and ethnic minority groups have been a persistent challenge in the UK, with perinatal mental health being no exception. Whilst it is important to acknowledge that inequities in maternal health are a global phenomenon, there is a clear and alarming pattern of people from racialised groups (i.e. those who, based on their skin colour, are disadvantaged due to normalisation of an array of dynamics that favour white people) experience worse maternal outcomes in many high-income countries. Which specific groups experience worse outcomes is dependent on the sociocultural context rather than biological determinism. Childbirth has both a biological and a cultural definition. It is also a political and social phenomenon shaped by the society we live in. Humans’ actions such as the cultural creation of traditions, customs and rules affect childbirth practices directly. These actions take place through social interactions, communication and exchanges inside social institutions and can often be dismissed in the current culture of medicalisation of birth.

The Epilogue begins with a critical consideration of the post-war careers of individuals featured prominently in previous chapters, tracking their contributions to the re-emergent German environmental movement after 1945. That movement failed to confront its links to the Nazi past for decades on end, leaving a distorted and misunderstood legacy that awaits resolution even now. Extending both the chronological and geographical framework, the Epilogue outlines significant new material on non-German examples of far right appropriation of environmental ideals over the past century, including Italian and British examples. These comparative cases are essential to understanding that the themes at the heart of the book are not a German peculiarity, while placing the specifics of the Nazi era into broader historical context. Last, the Epilogue points to the persistent political ambivalence of ecology. Environmental activists today are justifiably concerned that tying their predecessors to Nazism could discredit the politics of nature as a whole and play into powerful anti-environmental currents in contemporary culture. Historical perspective allows for a more informed approach to such charged questions. If guarding against a resurgence of neo-Nazism means paying closer attention to its history, honoring the environmental movement’s future requires taking an honest look at its past.

Leadership is a very fashionable term and firmly established in the lexicon of managers in both the private and public sectors and within domestic and international politics. As a concept, it is complex, multifaceted, dynamic and invariably influenced by the context and organisational culture in which it occurs.

The chapter begins with an overview of different ideas about leadership, examining ‘wicked’ and ‘tame’ problems, the distinction between leadership and management, psychiatrists as leaders and different leadership styles. We then delve into the emerging fields of compassionate and systemic leadership, emphasising relational trust, diversity and collaboration. We explore the role of contention, developing collaborative relationships, the centrality of developing relational trust and working with diversity. The chapter concludes with a discussion focused on the ubiquitous influence of conflict in organisations. Throughout, we will explore leadership through multiple lenses to unlock new possibilities for practice.

This chapter is primarily a preparation for the study of the total variation flow. This is due to the fact that in order for the 1-Cheeger energy to be lower semicontinuous, it needs to be defined on the space of functions of bounded variation and not on the Sobolev space with exponent equal to one. Thus, we need to extend parts of the linear differential structure to the BV case, and to this end, we will require that we can approximate BV functions with Lipschitz functions in a suitable way. Our strategy will be to present a metric version of the Anzellotti pairings between a vector field with integrable divergence and a BV function due to Anzellotti and prove a generalised integration by parts formula. To be precise, we will prove the existence of two such pairings, separately for the case of the whole space and for a bounded domain with a sufficiently regular boundary. They are defined slightly differently, in particular, in the second case, the Gauss-Green formula takes into account the boundary effects.

The increasing intensity of industrialisation is taking its toll on nonhuman animals, leading to what is now described as the ‘the sixth mass extinction’ cause by Homo Sapiens. Since European settlement in 1788, the Australian continent has recorded the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world, currently a ten percent loss since pre-colonial times, with hundreds of other endangered species at high risk of disappearing. The Australian plays and performances considered in this chapter, which include Extinction by Hannie Rayson, Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster and Green Screen by Nicola Gunn and Whale by Fleur Kilpatrick, explore what it means for humans to practice an ethical obligation of care for individual species, their place within particular habitats and ecosystems as well as the entanglement of human-nonhuman well-being and survival.