This article argues that the dovetailing economic, geopolitical, and security interests that underpin the Belt and Road Initiative demands a dispute resolution mechanism that focuses on broader interests and legal rights. Using the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a case study, it identifies the conditions in which Chinese investors could have initiated an investment arbitration but did not. This can be explained by the rights-based orientation of investment treaties failing to reflect the interests of multi-project initiatives. Instead, alternative methods of home state intervention, such as state-funded political risk insurance, are used to protect investors. In other words, the political economy of CPEC investments refuses to utilize hard law mechanisms. Given this context, mediation may be a viable alternative. These circumstances accelerate the trend towards “de-legalization”, which is often cited as an inevitable consequence of the emerging “geoeconomic order” but suggests that reasons other than national security are the cause.

The quantity of archaeological data for the fortified hilltop settlements of the Late Intermediate period on the Andean altiplano, called pucaras, varies greatly. Some areas, such as the territory of the Colla Aymara chieftaincy east of Lake Titicaca, are well documented thanks to recent and exhaustive research. Other areas, such as the territories of the Lupacas and the Pacajes, are much less documented. From comparative spatial analyses of satellite images from these two territories, we obtained new data on pucaras, whose characteristics seem to differ from those proposed in the archaeological literature. Through a combination of fieldwork and spatial analysis of 295 pucaras, we identified 252 unpublished sites and propose a new typology comprising four categories. Based on ethnohistoric data and the results of the architectural and geographical analyses, we discuss the possible motivations for building so many pucaras; we suggest that some reasons are of a symbolic nature.

Successful ageing continues to be a key theme in contemporary ageing discourses, where good physical and cognitive health in older age is an individualised responsibility. This paper explores how Australian aged care stakeholder discourse contributes to constructions of self-responsibility for brain health and dementia prevention in older persons. Brain health advice messages about diet, exercise and ‘brain fitness’ by aged care stakeholders are argued to construct a moral framework of ‘brainwork practices’ to prevent or delay dementia. This study performed discourse analysis of a sample of public online aged care stakeholder documents (N = 170) to reveal three key concepts in discursive constructions of dementia. The first concept characterises dementia as a disastrous force to be opposed; the second is a biomedical concept of dementia as preventable (or able to be delayed) in a ‘successful’ older age, while the third reflects neurocultural ideas that fetishise perfect memory as the best defence against cognitive decline and dementia. Identifying this matrix of responsibilising ‘brainwork practices’ messages by aged care stakeholders makes a contribution within social gerontology to revealing neoliberal conceptions of older age as an outcome of lifestyle and consumer choices, where dementia is constructed as ‘failed’ or ‘unsuccessful’ ageing.

Recently, a number of philosophers have argued that, despite appearances, the success of Don Marquis's well-known future-like-ours argument against abortion does not turn, in an important way, on the metaphysics of identity. I argue that this is false. The success of Marquis's argument turns on precisely two issues: first, whether it is prima facie seriously wrong to deprive something of a future like ours; second, whether, in a counterfactual circumstance in which an abortion does not occur, the foetus is numerically identical with something that, later on, experiences a life like ours. Since the former claim is plausible (albeit disputable), the success of Marquis's argument does turn on the metaphysics of identity in an important way. Before defending a positive argument for this position, I consider what I take to be the most promising way of challenging it. This involves a recent objection to Marquis by Tim Burkhardt (2021). Burkhardt claims that his objection floats free of the metaphysics of identity. I argue that it fails to do so, and that in fact it fails outright. I end by considering the relationship between my arguments and the question of what matters in survival.

This introduction begins with a brief overview of the three major factors shaping economic life and exchange in India, as laid out by contributions in the edited volume Rethinking Markets in Modern India: embedded exchange, contested jurisdiction, and pliable markets. The overarching logic of all the contributions is that markets in India must be understood as path dependent, that is, expressing a historical trajectory and specific, and changing, political and moral regimes. The remainder of this introduction discusses the origins of the distinction between ‘economy’ and ‘culture’ in the nationalist critiques of empire and how these critiques have led to a widespread moral ambivalence vis-à-vis the commercialization of everyday life in India that persists today across the political spectrum.

Far from being a monolithic approach to psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is in fact an umbrella term to describe a family of psychological therapies that share many common features but also have nuanced differences. Of the CBTs, two are often conflated under the ‘CBT’ moniker, namely cognitive therapy (CT) and rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT). In this article, we explore some of the key differences and similarities between CT and REBT, touching on philosophy, practical implementation, and literature. We provide a brief hypothetical case study to demonstrate the different ways a therapist using CT and REBT might tackle the same client problem. We do not declare either approach superior, but suggest each might have their advantages in certain contexts and acknowledge that skilful practitioners could, and often do, integrate both approaches. As CBT continues to evolve and move into new areas, it is important that psychology practitioners and researchers are clear about which specific approach to CBT they are delivering, measuring and/or reporting on.

I began working on this article in the winter of 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine shattered the fragile stability of Europe. Artur Solomonov's tragifarce How We Buried Josef Stalin (2019) speaks directly to this catastrophic time but also to the legacy of Stalinism in Russia. ‘A play about flexibility and immortality’, Solomonov's farce confronts its audience with the dilemma of Stalinism, which Putin's putrid regime continues to mobilize. Using irony, hyperbole and grotesque, it proposes a dramaturgical response to the question of why hostility to the world, isolationism and nationalistic aspirations are deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of Russian society. To Solomonov, the issue rests in the malleability of a Russian psyche that embraces an image of the tyrant and allows it to remain immortal; it also feeds Russian collective nostalgia, which prepared the ground for the rise of what Lev Gudkov called ‘recurring totalitarianism’.