This appendix contains many background results to which we refer in the main text. It may also be used as a resource to brush up on some prerequisite material with which the reader is unfamiliar (e.g. measure theory, concentration inequalities or matrix theory), though our presentation is briefer than can be found in more specialised texts, as well as being more tailored to our needs in the rest of the book.

This chapter discusses the gradual consolidation of the dual-sided framework in the contemporary digital era. Despite the decades-long transatlantic battle between ‘free flow’ and privacy protection, serious disagreement over how to conceptualize data, and the inter-regime tension between human rights and world trade, this chapter argues that the consolidation of the dual-sided framework is precisely a result of such internal tensions and contradictions. The more this dichotomy seems hard to resolve, the more the two framings of free trade and human rights get reinforced, and the more they monopolize the policy terrain for the governance of information and data. This chapter also shows that, despite the entrenched dichotomy, free trade and human rights regimes have been mutually influencing in the ways they respectively approach transborder data flows and the responsibility of big tech, hence further reinforcing the transnationalization of capital and unequal distribution of power in information capitalism.

There has long been a complex relationship between ritual and change in anthropological theory. On the one hand, scholars have tended to view rituals as unchanging because they serve as effective vehicles for illustrating the deep ideational or social structures of a group. On the other hand, other scholars have long pointed out the existence – and even the commonality – of change. How should we interpret ritual change beyond simply declaring rituals (even invented ones) to be a mixture of change and continuity? At the core of these debates lies the question of what constitutes a change in ritual. Is any modification of a ritual considered a change, or do only certain changes that are structurally different from before count as change? By analyzing how different types of deathcare workers have transformed Chinese death practices, I demonstrate how their limited practical arrangements as they carefully navigate the state’s ambiguous position on death rituals have actually created long-term types of structural change at the collective and cumulative level.

This chapter explores thematic repertoire as a hallmark of aesthetic variety in African American novels of the 1940s. Focusing on portrayals of dating and marriage, it charts how Chester Himes, Ann Petry, and William Demby use romantic relationships to express unique creative priorities as they engage Black life in a Jim Crow society. The chapter’s argument builds on recent research about heterosexual intimacy. At the same time, it endorses a patient exploration of mid-century African American novelic production, contending that precisely because the 1940s were moments of unprecedented growth in the publication of Black fiction, that era’s texts provide singular insights into artistic maturation. Today, scholars celebrate the variety of Black expressive styles. While such hoorays often wear theoretical guises, this chapter suggests that fully grasping such plurality requires scrupulous attention to the archive of African American literary and cultural production. It espouses a granular analysis tied to exhaustive inventorying.

This chapter examines the placing of COVID-19 grief through ethnographic vignettes from three distinct contexts: the prolonged search by one woman in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to find and bury her mother’s body; the ritualized micro-eulogies and use of public health data that characterized Kentucky’s state response to the pandemic; and the community efforts to create a national commemorative space in Washington, DC, for lives lost to COVID in the absence of state recognition. Drawing on philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s notion of the ethical imperative to care for the deceased, we show how individual acts of mourning – what we call “micro-eulogies” – confront the silences and erasures surrounding COVID-19 death. These quotidian practices of naming, honoring, and remembering the dead emerge alongside and against narratives of revisionism and calls to “move on.” In attending to the specificity of these three places – geographic, sociopolitical, symbolic – and the movement of individual and collective grief between the private and the public, the chapter explores what it means for the experience of COVID-19 loss to be located. It argues that localizing pandemic grief is an act of refusal, one that demands a collective reckoning and response.

This chapter looks at the governance of information in the last two decades of the twentieth century, when the ambition of the New World Information and Communication Order was superseded by the sweeping wave of liberalization. Free trade became a prominent frame with which to conceptualize information and build institution for its governance. This chapter discusses institutional and conceptual changes during this period. Institutionally, privatization of telecommunication – especially in dominant countries like the United States – affected the organizational structure of international telecommunication organizations. Particularly, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization underwent considerable reforms to ensure an international institutional environment for the privatization of telecommunication. Conceptually, telecommunication was no longer perceived as a public utility; it had become an issue of trade in services, eventually brought to the world trade regime. As a result, the World Trade Organization, with which the ITU formed a complementary relationship, became a primary forum for the regulation of telecommunication.