The two excerpts cited above are just two examples among many instances where civil liberties activists have identified and positioned themselves as concerned citizens. For more than four decades, a segment of middleclass activists in India has adopted this self-identification, which is an important aspect of the ongoing normative contestation surrounding the notion of good citizenship. Despite its significance, the history, specificity and practice of this self-identification remain underexplored. This chapter examines concerned citizenship as an urban, middle-class, civil-societybased form of allyship, which has facilitated a distinct mode of collective action within the Indian socio-political landscape.

The Brazilian judicial system, notable for its extensive scope and intricate structure, grapples with significant operational challenges, including a vast backlog of cases and prolonged resolution times. Addressing these issues calls for innovative approaches, with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) emerging as a viable solution. This chapter investigates the integration of AI within the Brazilian judiciary, providing an analysis of its implementation, challenges, and outcomes. The chapter begins by outlining the complexities of the Brazilian judiciary and the initial steps towards AI integration, with initiatives that have paved the way for various AI applications, from predictive analytics to natural language processing, aimed at improving decision-making and case management. Key case studies are examined to highlight AI’s practical benefits and limitations in the judiciary. Notable projects demonstrate improvements in efficiency and accuracy. However, they also underscore the ongoing challenges related to interoperability, data privacy, and ethical considerations. In conclusion, the chapter reflects on the future of AI in the Brazilian judiciary, emphasising the need for strategic planning, robust governance, and continuous evaluation to ensure that AI integration not only enhances efficiency but also upholds justice and fairness.

Ressentiment has been invoked to explain a range of political phenomena, including authoritarian populism, identity-based antagonisms on both the left and right, incel ideology, the manosphere and fanatical movements. But what, exactly, is ressentiment? Is it an emotion, an evaluative stance or something else entirely? I argue that ressentiment is an emotional mechanism that transforms painful feelings of powerlessness, shame and inferiority into hostile, retaliatory emotions directed at others. I analyse the structure of this process, showing how ressentiment alters one’s evaluative outlook, sustains particular kinds of narratives, reshapes identity and fosters lasting forms of political antagonism. Ressentiment is seductive because it promises relief from self-directed pain by offering targets for blame; and it is sticky because its narratives create belonging and bolster self-worth. Understanding ressentiment in these terms reveals how seemingly intractable political hostilities can arise not from reasoned disagreement, but from deeper affective wounds.

The chapter addresses the silent cinema in Spain, the symbiosis between cinema and zarzuela, and the tensions between modernity and the so-called españolada. It analyses Spanish musical cinema, from folkloric musicals to melodramas with songs at the Second Republic. During Francoism, copla and flamenco fueled Spanish cinema, following the consolidation of the American star system. Copla and jazz shared prominence in comedy, while composers adopted the musical paradigms of classic American cinema in dramas and historical films. The chapter explores how these paradigms shifted with the arrival of Neorealism in the 1950s and the ‘New Spanish Cinema’ in the 1960s. It also examines the presence of popular music in commercial films and pop cinema. With the advent of democracy, composers adapted to a censorship-free cinema with multiple facets: popular comedy, cine quinqui (and urban rumba), middlebrow, satire, memory and nostalgia. The chapter addresses the role of music in the internationalisation of Spanish cinema since 1990, the changes brought by postmodern cinema (electronic, minimalist, and atonal music as well as the extensive presence of pre-existing songs) and a significant revival of musicals that continues to this day.

As a result of the 1898 war with the United States, the nineteenth century came to a calamitous close for Spain with the loss of its once-vast global empire. And yet, the final decades of that century and the beginning of the next witnessed a cultural fluorescence in Spanish art, literature, and especially music. This chapter examines the contributions made by leading composers in a wide variety of genres, including virtuosic solo pieces, art song, orchestral and choral works, opera, ballet, zarzuela (operetta), and opera. It places this repertoire in its relevant historical context and helps the reader to comprehend its enduring significance and popularity. These composers and their works sought to redefine Spanish identity in the post-imperial era by drawing on the country’s rich heritage of classical music, going back to the Middle Ages, as well as its conspicuous wealth of regional folklore, especially but not exclusively Andalusian flamenco.

President Biden’s Executive Order 14110, ‘Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence’, set a comprehensive policy for the US government to address concerns arising from AI technologies aiming to harness them for the public good. Despite its revocation by the current administration, we argue that the work completed under this Executive Order remains highly relevant for AI governance in civil litigation and beyond. Its deliverables – such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Generative Artificial Intelligence Profile – continue to serve as critical resources for courts, law and policymakers, the private sector, and state and local governments. As AI increasingly permeates civil litigation, legal practitioners and courts are turning to these resources to establish evidentiary standards, assess algorithmic accountability, and navigate ethical concerns surrounding AI use. In the absence of federal governance, the revoked Executive Order’s focus on risk management, civil rights, and adaptive oversight may influence state law, judicial reasoning, and corporate self-regulation, indirectly becoming foundational tools for AI’s responsible integration into justice and society.

Unless the Intellectual Property Protocol and its Annexes within the African Continental Free Trade Area succeed in establishing a unified framework, the IP landscape across Africa will remain fragmented and siloed. This is demonstrated by the existence of two separate regional IP organizations operating along the Francophone/Anglophone divide – the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) – alongside the national laws of ARIPO Member States, and to some extent OAPI, as well as eight subregional economic communities and countries that are not members of either organization. Therefore, the framework for the doctrine of exhaustion in Africa is a patchwork and somewhat disjointed, much like the overall IP landscape. The chapter examines the complex norms governing copyright in Africa and argues that, until the Intellectual Property Protocol (which introduces a regional exhaustion framework) and its Annex on copyright are rectified and properly enforced, upcycling remains a neutral concept within copyright circles. This situation could generate uncertainty for upcycling initiatives or present an opportunity to revalue waste in ways that support the circular economy across Africa.

This introductory chapter outlines the central premise of The Cultural Shaping of Emotion: Emotions vary across cultures in meaningful ways as they are shaped by the meanings and practices of the social worlds we inhabit. It introduces working definitions of both “emotion” and “culture” and reviews the historical debate between universalist and constructionist approaches to emotion. It advocates for a nuanced view that can accompany the reader throughout the rest of the book. This first chapter also situates the book’s next eleven chapters in three parts that explore i) a cultural logic to emotion; ii) how cultural differences in emotions come about; and iii) emotion dynamics in multicultural societies. As such, it sets out a coherent narrative for understanding how culture and emotion shape one another. In closing, it sketches how we can employ this book’s insights via a “culturally-informed not-knowing approach” in both research and daily life.

Epistemic bubbles are informational structures that restrict a thinker’s access to a full range of relevant sources, giving rise to a narrow and one-sided doxastic perspective. Here, I introduce the parallel concept of an affective bubble: a socio-informational structure that impinges in distinctive ways upon its occupants’ emotional states. Affective bubbles, which arise in both online and offline space, can undermine the fittingness, justification and authenticity of an agent’s emotions by harnessing psychological mechanisms of attention, self-regulation and imagination.

This chapter examines the legitimacy and sustainability of sanctions against media outlets as a tool to counter foreign propaganda, focusing on the European Union’s restrictive measures against state-controlled Russian media following the invasion of Ukraine. While acknowledging the pressing need to address harmful disinformation and propaganda, particularly in times of war, we argue that the EU’s current sanctions model raises significant concerns regarding media freedom and freedom of expression. The chapter critically analyses the conceptual ambiguity surrounding ‘propaganda’ and ‘disinformation’ in international law, highlighting the tensions between content-based restrictions and fundamental rights. Drawing on comparative analysis of national approaches, particularly from Eastern European states, the chapter proposes an alternative tripartite framework for assessing media sanctions. This framework focuses on: (1) behaviour and content of media outlets; (2) adherence to principles of independent media and quality journalism; and (3) the relationship with ‘aggressor states’. We contend that this approach provides more objective criteria for identifying bona fide news media and propaganda channels, while better aligning with international human rights standards and the liberal understanding of media freedom.