“This chapter develops a theoretical framework to explain why grassroots activists pursue litigation at international courts and how these efforts can reshape domestic social movements. It begins by situating the turn to international litigation within a context of domestic constraint and transnational opportunity, emphasizing the critical role of lawyers in identifying viable venues and guiding activists through strategic litigation. Moving beyond conventional, state-centered assessments of compliance, the chapter argues that international courts can shape domestic politics in more indirect but transformative ways. Even before a ruling is issued, litigation can embolden activists, legitimize their claims, and expand the repertoire of mobilization by attracting new allies, resources, and tactics. Drawing on sociolegal and social movement scholarship, the chapter develops the concept of “strategic mobilization of human rights” to describe how activists deploy rights language pragmatically to advance preexisting goals. Rather than transforming group identity or legal consciousness, rights frameworks often serve as tactical tools – mobilized when useful, discarded when not. The chapter concludes by identifying the conditions under which international litigation is more likely to catalyze domestic mobilization.”

This chapter examines Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its model of logical context. Against readings that see it as purely anti-contextualist, the chapter shows how logic functions as a form of context in early Wittgenstein. Through biographical and historical context, it demonstrates how the Tractatus emerged from and responded to specific intellectual environments, while setting up the book’s broader argument about parallel developments in anthropology and philosophy.

This essay draws conclusions from a quantitative analysis of the thousands of lead tablets from Dodona published by Dakaris, Vokotopoulou and Christidis in 2013. It argues that the use of lead tablets in the divination process grew rapidly in the fifth century due to the increased availability of lead in particular from Attika. The tablets would have been left in visible locations after use before being cleared away to be ready for reuse after a period of time. This practice of displaying low-value metal objects is compared to the modern phenomena of coin-trees and love-locks. The use of tablets appears to decline rapidly through the fourth century, with few inscriptions dating to the period after 300 BCE. A number of explanations are offered: the monumentalization of the sanctuary in the third century making the practice of leaving tablets on display less acceptable; the changing role of the sanctuary leading to a change in clientele and consultation practice; and the need for lead for the construction of the large stone buildings resulting in the melting down of lead tablets, with more recent tablets being disproportionately affected.

The Irish at the dawn of the twentieth century benefitted from many positive changes over the previous half-century in health care, education and social provision, and were (in general, apart from urban slums) among the healthiest in Europe. The new dynamic trade unionism reached Ireland in the 1890s and formed a combustible force when combined with the non-parliamentary nationalisms and feminism of the early century. These all culminated in the 1916 Rising, which usurped the parliamentary nationalism of the Home Rule Party and rapidly assumed leadership of nationalist Ireland. Unionists continued to oppose national self-determination in all its forms. The state of Northern Ireland was set up by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which also set up a state in the ‘south’. This was superseded by the War for Independence 1919–1921, which culminated in a Treaty with Britain which gave dominion status to the Irish Free State, comprising twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. A civil war followed 1922–1923, between pro- and anti-Treatyites.

Over 100,000 Irishmen from all over the country served in the Great War, and 40,000 died. The war brought great prosperity to farmers and shopkeepers, industrialists and food processors, though rising food prices took their toll of townspeople.

This final chapter traces how anthropology transformed Wittgenstein’s qualified antiformalism into an absolute principle. Through an examination of Writing Culture, the ‘suffering slot’, and work on ordinary life, it shows how anthropological theory made formlessness itself into the only legitimate approach to context. The chapter argues this distinctive interpretation of Wittgenstein has had lasting effects on the discipline.

The earliest written poetry in Ireland is mediated through a Christian lens. Monasticmanuscripts reveal rich strata of pre-Christian myths and poetic forms that bleed intoChristian content, potentially disrupting the intended orthodoxy. These texts display aknotwork of pagan and Christian elements, equally alert to the natural world and theincarnational word.  A delight in the materiality of the word, in the miraculous powerof the manuscript, is a distinctive feature of this early poetry, and tells us somethingabout the high status of the poet in traditional Gaelic society. The preservation ofGaelic myths and values by monastic scribes provided Revivalist poets like Yeatswith a pre-Christian Irish identity rooted in the power of nature, and allowed Yeats tofind a way to be Irish and not Catholic. The pagan world kicks back against Christianorthodoxy again in the work of later poets, including Patrick Kavanagh, AustinClarke, and Paula Meehan.

This chapter focuses on the domestic drivers of workers’ turn to international litigation by examining the political landscape that pushed organized labor in Turkey and the UK to seek remedies at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The chapter begins by explaining why the Court issued its most important rulings on trade union rights in response to cases from these two countries, despite the stark differences in their political and economic regimes. In both contexts, neoliberal reforms closed off domestic avenues for contestation, albeit through different mechanisms: violent repression in Turkey following the 1980 military coup, and institutional disempowerment of trade unions in the UK under Thatcher. Drawing on original data, the analysis shows that Turkey and the UK account for the largest number and the most important trade union rights cases brought before the ECtHR. The chapter challenges regime-based explanations and instead highlights how declining political opportunity structures under neoliberalism drove legal mobilization beyond the nation-state. In doing so, it sets the stage for the next chapter’s examination of how cases from these two countries helped reshape the ECtHR’s labor rights jurisprudence.