The city of Colossae (Kolossai) belonged to the region of ancient Phrygia and could be found in the Lycus Valley. Located in western Anatolia (modern Türkiye/Turkey), Phrygia was an old and distinct territory with its own culture, language, and religion centuries before the arrival of Rome. Phrygia’s home was originally along the Sakara (Saggarios; Latin Saggarius) River in northwest Anatolia, and its civilization peaked in the eighth century BCE, extending far south beyond Colossae. Major empires conquered it, from the Persians to Alexander the Great to even the Celtic tribal warlords who had migrated from the north. Each conqueror desired to control the trade routes running east to west. Centuries before Paul, the Persian Xerxes the Great camped near Colossae on his way to Greece, as did the Persian Cyrus. Herodotus says that Xerxes arrived at Colossae and described it as a “considerable city of Phrygia” (Herodotus 7:30). Both saw the Lycus Valley as a strategic gateway to the west (see Map 1).

Allen Ginsberg taught Shelley’s notion of the poet as legislator and the Romantic ideologeme that art could save the world, and conceived of the poet as shaman. He heard his father recite Romantic verse daily for years before he learned to read. This informed his championing of poetry’s “aural renaissance,” in which he played a role. Ginsberg’s early exposure to the first blues recordings made him a lifelong aficionado who taught blues as poetry. Immersion with Kerouac and friends in the New York jazz scene of the 1940s–1950s informed his and Kerouac’s writing, as they adapted jazz – which they equated to “Black speech” – in their writing. The Beats’ synthesis of post-Whitmanic American poetics with the rhythms and inflections of African-American vernacular speech took that argot to the masses, and influenced the 1960s generation of rockers, in particular the two musical phenomena that would carry the Beat/Romantic vision into global mass culture: Bob Dylan and the Beatles.

The introduction discusses the ways in which Alejo Carpentier has been seen by critics over time. Showing that much has been said about the writer’s style and vision for a Latin America that is connected to the world, this chapter also discusses critiques of the writer’s unfailing support for the Cuban Revolution and a controversy surrounding his official biography. It further presents readers with the history of Carpentier’s editorial successes and the recent renaissance of interest in his work, and it showcases resources for further Carpentier research. It ends by briefly introducing the six-part division of the book and each of its contributions.

Chapter 2.1 tackles risk pooling. Risk pooling refers to the way prepaid funds are combined and then used to provide care for a covered population. Pooling is an often-underappreciated aspect of health financing which shapes the overall health system. Key learning includes that

• Pooling prepaid funds is central to progressing towards UHC. It bolsters health system efficiency and equitable access to services.

• Pooling maximizes redistributive capacity and allows the health system to align funding with needs and social priorities.

• Having multiple risk pools can be problematic, particularly if

• – pools have too few people;

• – if everyone in the pool has similar risks, and

• – if there is no redistribution of resources across pools.

• Structuring and managing risk pools well can offset problems associated with fragmentation by

• – Reducing duplication or overlap, making purchasing and service delivery more effective

• – Avoiding disproportionately large financial burdens falling on particular pools and,

• – Minimizing risk selection and ‘cream-skimming’ whereby pools try to exclude high-risk (and therefore high cost) individuals.

• Policy-makers can use a range of pooling strategies to enhance efficiency, equity and access but path dependencies and context matter. Options include

• – Encouraging the integration (i.e. consolidation or merger) or coordination of pooling schemes

• – Boosting funding for less endowed pools

• – Equalization through risk adjustment across pools via direct transfers between schemes

• – Making membership compulsory or

• – Aligning data systems, benefit packages and payment infrastructure across pools.

This chapter discusses the history and evolution of international intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection, focusing on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. It examines the justifications for and debates surrounding the extension of developed country-style IPRs to developing nations, as well as the TRIPS provisions themselves. The chapter also addresses the conflicts between TRIPS and other international regimes, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the significant public health concerns raised by TRIPS, particularly regarding access to essential medicines. Finally, it concludes by analysing the distributive impact of TRIPS and the challenges posed by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

This chapter examines ideas pertaining to the rational-discursive faculty and species difference that took shape within the discourses of medieval Judaism and Christianity. The chapter’s first section centers on two non-human animals described as speaking in the text of the Hebrew Bible: the serpent of the Garden of Eden and Balaam’s she-donkey. It argues that whereas works of serious exegesis by authors like Augustine and Maimonides downplayed the potentially radical significance of the talking done by these scriptural creatures, the medieval literary reimaginings of the same scenes indulged in drawing out the unorthodox implications of the non-human chatter. The chapter’s second part then considers Christian attitudes toward the naturalistic question of whether non-human animals outside the Bible actually do possess the rational-discursive faculty in some measure. Here, a clear progression can be observed over time: Despite the willingness of some early authors to humor this possibility, non-human animals gradually became barred from all conceptual access to rational thought.

Chapter 2.3 reports on low-value care and how to reduce waste. Decommissioning or disinvesting from low value care means taking money away from health care services that give poor value for money. Key learning includes that

• Ending investment in health technologies or treatments that are ineffective releases resources for more effective high-value care, increases efficiency and quality and contributes to sustainability.

• Disinvesting from or decommissioning low-value care often faces institutional barriers.

• Health technology assessment (HTA) and the continuous monitoring of peer-reviewed evidence and administrative health care data are key in identifying low-value care and prioritizing what should be decommissioned.

• Combining financial and non-financial mechanisms can help influence both the supply of and demand for low-value care and stop its provision.

• Broad stakeholder consultation and engagement is a key part of ending the use of low-value care because patients, clinicians, health related organizations and health system norms and structures can all create barriers to change.

• Decision-makers need to address how resources released by disinvestment can best be re-invested to strengthen efficiency, quality and access.

This chapter uses the theoretical frameworks of racial formations, racecraft, and intersectionality to analyse the racial dimensions of the two accounts of the massacre of the Pelasgian men of Lemnos and their enslaved Thracian concubines by the Pelasgian women of Lemnos in Apollonius’ Argonautica. The chapter argues that the epic presents the Lemnian women’s actions as driven by their sense that the Pelasgian men had overturned the racial hierarchy of the island that had previously benefitted them. The Lemnian women’s violent resistance to their change of status is presented by the narrator as an overreaction prompted by sexual jealousy new sentence. But it is presented by Hypsipyle as the restoration of the ‘proper’ racial order. Intersectionality helps to tease out the different racial destinies of the two groups of non-Greek women on Lemnos. The free Pelasgian women are to be the mothers of racially superior sons, whereas the Thracian girls, as mothers of the racially inferior sons of the Pelasgians, are to be exterminated with them so that that Lemnos can fulfil its destiny to become the source of the Greek founders of Cyrene.

This chapter charts Alejo Carpentier’s connection with Mexico, from his momentous first visit in 1926, when he traveled to Mexico City as editor of Carteles, to his later friendships with major Mexican intellectuals, and including his publishing choices in the early and late phases of his career, (EDIAPSA; Fondo de Cultura Económica; Siglo Veintiuno). It focuses particularly on Carpentier’s friendship with Diego Rivera and his circle, as well as on his depictions of Mexicans living in 1920s Havana. This chapter describes Carpentier as part of a transnational community of intellectuals bonding over shared ideas on avant-garde art and politics. It argues that Mexican literary, visual and musical culture and the Mexican Revolution impacted Carpentier’s life deeply and shaped his vision of Latin America.

Current thinking views the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean as highly interconnected. This contrasts with late twentieth-century ideas of either geographically separate regions or more developed centers that dominated less complex peripheral societies. A major inspiration for the present approach is a post-processual understanding of the complex dimensions of consumption. Elite burial goods at Lefkandi ca. 1100–825 BCE illustrate how imports were used in status strategies. In the eighth century BCE, there is a decrease in valuable grave goods as dedications of imported luxury items in public sanctuaries became the preferred means of elite display. Current views also reflect postcolonial understanding of non-indigenous settlements as sites of hybridity and inbetweenness, not the imposition of a colonizing ethnicity on local identities but new cultural syntheses. Examples include a large number of the early so-called Greek colonies. A recently excavated example is L’Amastuola in Apulia, an indigenous settlement of the late eighth century where Greeks came to live in the early seventh century.

This essay explores Alejo Carpentier’s engagement with Afro-Cuban culture in his literary works, analyzing how he incorporates African languages and cultural elements. It examines Carpentier’s perspective on African art and religion, revealing his interpretations and potential misunderstandings of Afro-Cuban traditions. The analysis includes discussions of his poems, essays and novels, focusing on his use of language, imagery and cultural references. Ultimately, the essay contextualizes Carpentier’s work within the broader discourse of Afro-Cuban identity and cultural representation.

Based on an in-depth analysis of a few selected cases of commercial dispute and litigation, this chapter illuminates the functioning of the complex and competing legal systems and the mechanisms of dispute resolution among merchants in Surat in western India and Zanzibar in East Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It explores the dynamics of this legal space, the endurance of legal plurality and qualitative changes in it over the period under review. It critically examines the perceived binary between the legal plurality of the pre-colonial period and the legal uniformity and centralization of the colonial period. The chapter argues that merchants usually sought to resolve their commercial disputes through informal negotiations, petitions, arbitration and legal proceedings in courts of law. The analysis of commercial disputes show that despite the emergence of the European (English) colonial legal system across the Indian Ocean arena in the nineteenth century and the colonial state’s push to make the law uniform and implement a single legal system, the normative and customary mechanisms of adjudicating commercial disputes endured in the colonial period.