Chapter 1 conceptualizes a primary form of racial doubt: questioning the equation of blackness with slavery. It is built around the testimony of Ben Newton, who declared he was born free in the United States, kidnapped at the age of ten, and subsequently enslaved in Cuba for several decades. It explores the degree to which racial doubt was intrinsic to the tension between racist agnosia (the social practice of actively ignoring exploited, racialized people) and anti-racist recognition (whereby some of these people could make themselves seen or heard). As Ben Newton pointed out when he reached the US consulate in 1853, “almost everybody” knew his story, but neither his owners nor the local authorities had felt pressured to liberate him. When he told this same story in a new context, recognition and freedom became less elusive. Through a focus on Ben’s testimony, the chapter charts the legal, practical, and linguistic terrains in which captives challenged their enslavement.

This chapter explores Nuer experiences of encountering the urban frontier and the Ethiopian state in the borderlands. It does so by tracing the history and evolution of Gambella town and Newland, the Nuer dominated peri-urban settlement at its eastern edges. Newland has long been a place that attracted people seeking modern education and links with new actors and institutions. Over the past two decades, this peri-urban settlement expanded significantly and emerged as an important node in global Nuer networks. The chapter highlights the salience of fears of manipulation, trickery, and embarrassment in people’s engagements with the urban frontier, and central role such sentiments played in motivating people’s quest for education, knowledge, and global connectivity in the urban environment. The attitudes concerning learning and modern education that this chapter explores are essential for understanding the religious dynamics described in the rest of the book.

Chapter 2 examines abolitionist texts that engaged the conventions of the theatrical genre of farce to denounce the illegal slave trade. By analyzing how captives and abolitionists mocked the generalized awareness of pretense that helped slavery flourish under prohibitions, it foregrounds the role that farce played in processes of racialization. Henry Shirley, a kidnapped man who requested help from British authorities, pointed out that a large range of people were complicit in the illegal slave trade, thereby making the rule of law look like a farce. The chapter concludes by tracing how captives turned the logic of pretense to their advantage, using forged documents or new names in the cities of Havana and Santiago. Enslaved people, it shows, could sometimes partake in the benefits of pretense by assuming new names and passing as free.

This chapter investigates Pindar’s construction of the relationships by which communities are constituted: relationships between families, individuals, and the polis; between the inhabitants of the polis and their past; and between different polis communities.  It surveys civic values, as well as the passages where Pindar discusses specific constitutional forms.  Because Pindar’s lyric expresses political issues through the lens of poetic concerns, assimilating civic and military conflict to vicissitude, it maps some of the strategies by which Pindar subsumes the political into the poetic.  A final focus is the nature of Pindar’s Panhellenism and the connection of Panhellenism to elite mobility.  Pindar’s Panhellenism projects competitively local claims for eminence into a broad Greek arena and characterises the mythico-historical past of Greek cities as one of migration and elite movement. The interaction of local identity with the Panhellenic arena is thus driven by the mobility of heroic and then athletic elites.

This chapter examines a landmark constitutional petition that challenges governmental inaction on forest conservation in Pakistan, situating the case within broader discourses of environmental justice, constitutional rights, and the public trust doctrine. The petitioner, a practicing advocate, brings a critical legal challenge invoking fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to life (Article 9), human dignity (Article 14), access to public spaces (Article 26), and state obligations for leisure provision (Article 38(b)).

Central to the petition is the alarming statistic of Pakistan’s rapidly diminishing forest cover, which has decreased to a mere 1.9% of the national territory. The legal action seeks a writ of mandamus compelling government implementation of multiple environmental policies and laws, including the Forest Act, Trees Act, National Climate Change Policy (2012), National Forest Policy (2015), Forest Policy Statement (1999), and Punjab Forestry Sector Policy (1999).

The case represents a significant judicial intervention that mobilizes the public trust doctrine to reframe environmental resources as collective heritage rather than objects of private ownership or commercial exploitation. By challenging the commodification of natural resources, the petition articulates a constitutional framework for environmental protection that prioritizes public interest, ecological sustainability, and intergenerational environmental justice.

In recent years, as material culture has become more central to the study of all aspects of the ancient Mediterranean and new materialism has gained greater traction across a variety of academic disciplines, growing numbers of scholars have begun to explore how material objects and notions of materiality feature in Pindar’s work. This chapter offers an introduction to some of the main tendencies of such work. It discusses Pindar’s propensity to speak about his songs in terms normally applied to material crafts, such as weaving or carpentry; the role of tools and instruments in Pindar’s conception of composition and creation, both as applied to song and in a broader sense; the materials of the built environment; Pindar’s relationship with the contexts of his musical performances, real and imaginary; and the earth itself as a significant facet of Pindar’s conception of the material world.

While there were some aspects of Nuer ‘tradition’ or ‘culture’ that Messianics in Gambella proudly endorsed and celebrated as biblically authentic, others were rejected as ‘pagan’ or satanic. In this chapter, I turn to the relationship between Messianic Judaism and ‘Nuer customary law’, to explain these dynamics. The chapter traces the process through which the spiritual significance of cattle declined, under the influence of the secular state, and instead, under born-again Christian doctrines, the individual human (body and soul) emerged as the prime means of communicating with God. Cattle in its desacralised form, however, was still used by Messianics for bridewealth payments, and they insisted that their marriage practices were not only the most loyal to Nuer ‘tradition’ but also biblically authentic. The chapter offers new insights on the endurance of pre-Christian practices among African born-again Christians, showing how old ‘customs’ may be deemed relevant and meaningful even under a radically new regime of spiritual mediation.

Drawing on Islamic teachings and principles, Islamic environmental law offers a distinct perspective and values that contribute to its practical implementation in Muslim countries. This chapter proposes that empowering local communities to assume responsibility for their environmental obligations can foster a bottom-up approach to compliance, thereby cultivating a stronger sense of environmental stewardship and social responsibility among community members. To promote such a bottom-up approach, it is crucial to recognize Islamic environmental law as an academic discipline and encourage its inclusion in academic discourse. This recognition will inspire scholars and practitioners to explore how Islamic principles can be translated into concrete actions and policies that advance sustainability and environmental well-being.

This introduction briefly glances at Pindar’s poetry and its later reception so as to set the scene for the volume that follows. Before outlining the shape of the book and its chapters, it surveys the recent history of Pindaric criticism so as to provide the reader with a sense of its wider intellectual context.

References to Ignatius Sancho’s wife, children, and family life are interweaved throughout his letters. Sancho often wrote to his friends, briefly updating them on his family’s well-being and activities. When these brief references are collated and analyzed, an underrepresented perspective of Sancho’s family as a middling Black family emerges, where the Sanchos each embody the ideal representation of husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, and children. These references to the Sancho family in the Letters help make the Sancho family one of eighteenth-century London’s most well-documented Black families. More importantly, the family’s representation in the Letters answers essential questions about how the Black family were perceived in society and the role class, race, and gender play in shaping childhood, parental relationships, and family life. This chapter details the representations of Blackness, fatherhood, motherhood, and childhood observed in the Sancho family.

The right to water is a central theme in Islamic thought, emphasizing its status as a divine gift and a communal resource integral to human dignity, environmental stewardship, and social justice. This study explores the manifestation of this principle within Islamic-Iranian cities, examining both historical and contemporary perspectives on water management, conservation, and urban development. Grounded in Islamic teachings, including the Quran, Hadith, and Sharia law, the paper highlights key principles such as equity, sustainability, and the balance between human and environmental needs. The architectural and urban planning traditions of Islamic-Iranian cities, characterized by sophisticated water systems like qanats, cisterns, and public fountains, reflect the integration of faith, culture, and practicality in addressing water scarcity. By analyzing Islamic environmental theory and the framework of integrated water resource management, this study underscores the role of water as a cornerstone of sustainable urban living, advocating for the preservation of water resources as a moral and ecological obligation for future generations.

The study of law suggests that its performances, largely through the format of trials, take place behind the closed doors of courtrooms. Little of the exterior would seem to intrude upon its routines and, vice versa, little of what might constitute law’s performativity occurs outside of its bounded architectural habitat. Yet this has not always been the case. Numerous examples of outdoor performances provide a rich study into the siting of legal performance. The argument presented in this chapter is that it was initially the outside that provided the primary stage and staging of law. Asserting the presence of law across the various and remote parts of the realm required performances of its majesty on the very surface of the earth. It required acts heralding, inscribing and publicising common law as the law of the land and so it was the land that had to become the physical platform and the scene of its delivery. The evolution of common law depended upon the rudiments of landscape, on the plotting of the countryside, and on the elemental matter of the earth. Such features formed a stage on which the emergence of common law not only took place but was very much performed.

Locating Prohibition's Origins in Colonial India

India is the only country in the world to have prohibition written into its national constitution as an ideal. Article 47 of the Constitution of India establishes that ‘the state shall undertake rules to bring about prohibition of the consumption, except for medicinal purposes, of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health’. Although the state is obligated to implement the policy, there is no compulsion to do so within a stipulated time frame, which makes it a Directive Principle of State Policy – an ideal. As much a national ideal as an instrument of state power, prohibition's fate has been entwined with the rise and fall of state governments since the country's independence.

Prohibition has also spawned its own political economy in India, with a broad spectrum of political parties professing commitment – though usually short-lived – to its enforcement. The specific circumstances of its introduction have varied across the country, as have the policy's trajectories and outcomes. Local cultures, economic circumstances and the demands of state governance have directly contributed to these differences. Besides Gujarat, which has enforced prohibition since 1947 despite a series of hooch-related tragedies and other controversies, Bihar, Mizoram and Nagaland are all ‘dry’ states at the time of this book's writing. Alcohol is all but banned in the union territory of Lakshadweep, although prohibition has been greatly contested in recent years. The association between prohibition and M. K. Gandhi has been the strongest in Gujarat, whereas evangelical Christianity paved the way for the policy's introduction in Nagaland. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur and Haryana have all tried prohibition on for size at various times since independence, only to suspend it as better suited for implementation at an unspecified time in the distant future. Crippling fiscal deficits and a strong liquor lobby heralded prohibition's termination in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala respectively.