Many factors influence the perceptions, attitudes and behaviour of actors in co-management, from trust and perceptions of legitimacy to the timing and extent of participation. The chapter introduces and reviews concepts that have less extensively been applied to analyses of the co-management of renewable natural resources. These concepts are personal values, behaviour, social norms, identity and agency. The chapter draws on literature from social psychology and philosophy to identify key characteristics of each concept and identify what has been learnt from application of these concepts to relevant contexts to the co-management of renewable natural resources. The chapter concludes by identifying key and recurring themes, particularly related to the need to understand the social context of co-management, the role of social norms and the links between values, behaviour, identity and agency and the rights and pursuits of justice of Indigenous Peoples and local communities involved in co-management.

This chapter makes the case for a robust conception of agency within emotional experience, challenging the traditional view of emotions as passive. Emotions are not simply endured but enacted; they are best understood as forms of spontaneous, reason-responsive engagement that express an agent’s evaluative stance towards their situation. Drawing on Jean Moritz Müller’s account of emotional spontaneity and expanding it through Richard Moran’s concept of the practical stance, the chapter develops a view of emotions as modes of situated responsiveness that manifest a person’s commitments and concerns. It is argued that the emotion-constitutive agency involves capacities to construe and formulate an evolving response to the agent’s existential situation. Moreover, emotions are shown to be not just reflective of the agent’s vulnerabilities but also mediums through which vulnerability is inhabited, negotiated, and at times resisted.

The four symphonies of Michael Tippett occupy a central position in his output. Written at different stages in his compositional career, each symphony not only functions as an important waypoint along Tippett’s stylistic journey, but also has something of significance to express, whether that concerns the genre itself and its relationship to past composers and models, the human condition, or contemporary society. The concept of humanity is central to Tippett’s oeuvre; in interrogating this humanistic element, this chapter examines Tippett’s four symphonies (and the withdrawn early Symphony in B♭) through a triple lens of narrative, agency and embodiment, an approach driven not only by the immediacy of the symphonies’ communicative musical language, but also through a recognition of Tippett’s views of symphonic music as reflecting the ‘inner flow of life’. The chapter argues that listening for narratives of agency and embodiment brings new light, and life, to Tippett’s symphonies and acts as a powerful reminder of what it is to be human.

This chapter introduces the broad conceptual framework of the processes of subjectivisation within global discourses and connects it to agency. It introduces the idea of situational agency and draws upon Mahmood’s work to suggest that agency can be found in the ‘inhabitation of norms’. the chapter provides a background context to post-genocide Rwandan policies, introducing the key agenda of unity and reconciliation, and presents Rwanda as a post-colonial state. Finally, this chapter problematises the collection and interpretation of field data in a post-colonial setting.

The first half of this chapter explores the linguistic means by which Twa tell their story. By mobilising linguistic resources, they are challenging their continued exclusion under the charge of ‘mind-set’ problems and are attempting to renegotiate the social constructs that govern the position of Batwa in Rwandan society. As such, the language practice of contradiction is read as an assertion by Twa of their full membership in society and a demand for equal care. The second half of the chapter locates the Rwandan state as the key mediator of global life for Rwanda’s Twa, translating global ordering narratives into the everyday. The state makes use of the development narrative, refracting it through the prism of national unity, to offer Twa an attractive and accessible vision of a non-fragmented modern Rwandan subject.

This chapter is devoted to the Romantic women philosophers, and it groups their reflections on subjectivity. This chapter aims to identify a common thread that unites these women thinkers and contributes to the understanding of the Romantic Self. Despite the diversity of their perspectives, they shared a common understanding of the self as shaped by relationships with others and nature, and as incapable of imposing herself on them, a view that echoes arguments presented by the men philosophers of Romanticism. However, these women thinkers tend to focus on a particular point: the possibility for the self to create a space for her own voice and, on occasion, her actions. After the explanation of Sophie Mereau’s notion of agency, and the differences between her and Caroline Schlegel-Schelling’s political thought, the chapter focuses on Mereau’s and de Staël’s interpretations of Fichte's philosophy and their idea of autonomy. The role of memory and love in Sophie Tieck's and Dorothea Veit’s conception of the self is then analysed. The chapter closes with Günderrode’s and Bettina von Arnim’s notion of subjectivity, and its relationship with nature and society.

The development of new therapeutic methods for intervening in brain function has the potential to influence aspects of a person’s agency, including their autonomy and authenticity. To determine whether or not this is the case, we need an assay that can measure aspects of agency before and after neurointervention. This chapter introduces a framework for thinking about agency as a multidimensional construct, and describes a research project aimed at measuring agency. The authors develop an Agency Assessment Tool (AAT) using survey methods and present preliminary results from the project that shows that the AAT can characterize control and patient groups along several dimensions with a factor analysis; the results show some interesting patterns among putative conceptual dimensions with network analysis. Although the data do not go so far as to include interventions to help understand causal relations, the authors discuss the prospects for using data-driven tools to come up with ontologies of agency.

The introduction situates the Anthropocene as a contested concept whose formal rejection by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2024 contrasts sharply with its widespread adoption across the humanities. It traces the term’s origins in Crutzen and Stoermer’s proposal, reviews competing “golden spikes,” and examines how debates over dating and definition have shaped cultural discourse. Beyond geology, the Anthropocene emerges as a multidisciplinary figure of thought, raising questions about planetary systems, individual responsibility, and ethical entanglement. The introduction highlights literature’s dual role as historical precursor and critical interlocutor, from Romantic environmental sensibilities and Moby-Dick’s proto-Anthropocene themes to contemporary climate fiction and speculative narratives. It also addresses representational challenges posed by scale and deep time, the politicization of terminology, and alternative framings such as Capitalocene and Chthulucene. Finally, it considers literature’s potential agency in confronting planetary crisis, surveying narrative strategies from apocalyptic imaginaries to realist depictions of “slow violence.” By mapping these debates and tensions, the introduction frames the Anthropocene as both a conceptual battlefield and a lens through which literature negotiates the interwoven histories of humans and Earth.

Ngũgĩ’s theatrical activism in Kamĩrĩĩthũ in the 1970s and 1980s was a kind of homecoming. His conscription into theatre activities in the village was a homecoming to his adopted home, and to an epistemological one where theatre was linked to practical and historical concerns articulated by the underprivileged subjects of his earlier writing. Writing plays in Gĩkũyũ enabled him to reach his ideal audience, the workers and peasants who could not read his works written in English. Their lives embodied the broken promises of independence, concretised in community-building. A repoliticised gitiiro dance sequence evokes the joining of hands that would deliver a second liberation. Joining the community theatre project was a kind of homecoming to the storytelling and theatrical performances of his youth. His detention for theatrical activism connected him to a long tradition of community activists who used art to advance social and political causes. In turn, Kamĩrĩĩthũ needed Ngũgĩ to thrive. The theatre of learning and its investment in praxis enabled the community to read their embodied material conditions and act upon them, thus energising the Kamĩrĩĩthũ people’s rallying cry that their sons and daughters who were inspired by anti-colonial nationalism to enter the theatre of war in the 1950s will return home in triumph over colonial and neo-colonial forces.

This chapter examines how Sophoclean tragedy approaches and conceptualises the relationship between divine and mortal. It demonstrates that Sophocles builds on the early Greek theological, philosophical and literary tradition outlined in Chapter 1, but steers his own, distinctive course. It argues that Sophocles’ tragedies deploy ideas and beliefs about humans and gods in three, closely interconnected ways: in the explicitly theological and philosophical discourse uttered by characters and choruses; in the trajectories and experiences of individual characters on the stage; and in the broader, religious and ethical patterns that underlie these trajectories, which are occasionally and partially revealed to audiences. As part of its attempt to foreground the close interrelation of dramatic structure, form and content, the chapter devotes considerable space to a new interpretation of dramatic irony. This general discussion relies on readings of four Sophoclean plays, Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, as well as on brief comparative analyses of some Aeschylean and Euripidean examples.

Chapter 2 has three main sections. First it draws on the philosophy of technology literature, more specifically post-phenomenology, to interrogate the meaning of human–technology relations. Can visitors to a website be considered users of machine translation even if they are unaware that a machine translation tool is in use? What is the meaning of ‘use’ exactly? When a police officer uses machine translation to speak to a driver, what type of relationship does the driver have with the machine translation tool? These are some of the questions initially addressed in this chapter. The chapter then examines technologies’ influencing properties. Convenience is persuasive and machine translation tools are designed to be convenient. They reflect specific social and economic values which research on their use needs to consider. Lastly, the chapter discusses the complex decision-making that uses of machine translation call for in the sectors under analysis. A case is made for the notion of virtue as an apt framework for engaging with the dilemmas posed by risky but potentially beneficial uses of machine translation.

This chapter documents a cultural logic to the content of emotions, linking cultural models of agency to different emotional conceptualizations, appraisals, and connotations. The authors argue that emotions can either be conceptualized as originating from within the individual, aligning with a disjoint model of agency, or as emerging from social interactions, reflecting a conjoint model of agency. They further show how cultural differences in both the magnitude and relevance of appraisals align people’s emotional experiences with their cultural context. Specifically, experiences of happiness, anger, and awe, are found to come in different variants, implying that the “same” emotion can be associated with slightly different appraisal patterns. By relying on the Natural Semantic Metalanguage research approach, the chapter finally highlights some likely universal and highly cultural specific aspects of emotion experience. The chapter concludes by suggesting future research directions, including the integration of cultural neuroscience and the analysis of emotions in social media.

The chapter provides an introduction to the sociocultural analysis of second language (L2) acquisition as a process of socialization by and through the learning of an additional language. It offers a discussion of socio-cultural institutions and communities involved in L2 learning as well as a description of the development of language repertoire in additional language learning as a social accomplishment. The chapter opens on a summary of the controversy that arose in the early 2000s between the cognitive and the socially-oriented Second Language Acquisition (SLA) paradigms. Bypassing this divisive debate, the chapter focusses on the diversity of approaches to additional language learning within the sociocultural paradigm. Key concepts of sociocultural SLA research such as social integration, agency, identity and power relations as well as affordance and language repertoire are defined. A framework of analysis for the learner’s language repertoire is presented. Finally, the chapter recalls issues in the study of naturalistic SLA as a privileged area of research in light of the sociocultural paradigm. Longitudinal data from one migrant worker are analysed to illustrate the social and linguistic development of his language repertoire. In conclusion, the chapter charts some pending issues for the sociocultural analysis of L2 socialization.