In November 1972, in the course of talking about public security and protection work, Premier Zhou issued important directives on reactivating and developing informants. Below are his key points (wording not checked by the Premier):

The Premier said the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution resulted in an ideological mobilisation and a mobilisation of the masses. The major weakness in our work now is that we are no longer sufficiently in touch with what is happening in society. The first issue that must be resolved is in the public security sector, where informants must be reactivated and results must be achieved before the end of this year. Our contacts among foreign expatriates, for example, were in some respects quite useful.

How should we proceed in merging what [in Shenyang’s economic protection sector] are currently agents, informants, and confidential guardians and in designating all of them agents?

The creation of a single uniform designation calls for identifying the specific utility of each agent, carrying out individual validations, and deciding on the level at which the agent is to be run. (Note: below, informants and confidential guardians are all referred to as agents.) Agents about whom we already have a pretty good idea are to be examined in detail; agents about whom we still really do not have a good idea must be scrutinised in depth and exhaustively, and their recent records as well as their documented pasts must be appraised repeatedly. In the end, we must produce conclusive validation reviews to determine our decisions about whether to retain or to terminate.

Agents constitute an extremely important instrument utilised in operational work and security protection of infrastructure development. To fully bring their utility into play, a system of orderly management must be introduced, agent activity must be properly handled, and work must be prevented from descending into a state of chaos. Based on the Central Ministry of Public Security’s Trial Measures Governing the Management of Agent Files, we have therefore drawn up the following temporary regulations.

‘Undercover cadres’ and ‘agents’ are the products of the Liu [Shaoqi], Deng [Xiaoping], Peng [Zhen], and Luo [Ruiqing] counter-revolutionary revisionist line and its aggressive promotion of ‘isolationism’ and ‘mysticism’ in the public security, procuracy, and legal sectors. So-called undercover cadres and agents are, for the most part, landlord, rich peasant, counter-revolutionary, bad, Rightist elements, renegades, tewu, Catholic priests, monks, imams, senior officers in Chiang Kai-shek‘s bandit army, core elements in reactionary political parties and organisations, or degenerate [Communist Party] elements. They form a counter-revolutionary fifth column created to prepare in organisational terms for the restoration of capitalism. From what the masses have brought to light, when utilisation of ‘agents’ peaked in our province, their number in the province as a whole exceeded 28,000. According to the original Public Security Bureau statistics for the second half of 1965, the total number of ‘agents’ in the province that year totalled 2,581.

These guidelines regarding the recruitment and use of agents (here referred to as the development of informants) show how, after years of uncertainty, one operational component responsible for the security of critical infrastructure responded to the demands of China’s central government for a revival of agent work. Subjects covered in the guidelines include the principles and demands to guide recruitment, the scope and qualifications of targets, deactivation, authority to recruit, running, record keeping, and more. Some minor modifications aside, there is no alternative paradigm at work here, and what the guidelines propose differs little from what had been the case prior to 1967. As far as HUMINT is concerned, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969) had now become something more akin to an aberration than, as originally intended, ‘a new stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country, a deeper and more extensive stage’.

In the wake of the big round-up that we carried out after entering Shenyang in 1948, we proceeded to intensify agent work capacity building while stepping up efforts to combat collaborators and root out enemy operatives. Agent work required tailoring the approach to, and the management of, each target individually and the setting of priorities with respect to the target’s exploitation, cultivation, training, and utilisation. As a general policy, furthermore, it entailed painstaking operation and prolonged utilisation in order to allow agents to successfully infiltrate or approach and strike at the enemy and to perform their vital role in combatting collaborators and rooting out enemy operatives.

In accordance with our great leader Chairman Mao’s teaching that ‘public security organs must conduct more systematic operational work’ and on the basis of stronger Party Committee leadership and implementation of the mass line, covert assets (henceforth to be uniformly referred to as informants rather than as agents) capacity building and utilisation of necessary technical operational instruments are to be reinforced so as to allow us to engage in covert struggle energetically as well as shrewdly and to effectively mitigate and strike at acts of sabotage by tewu, spies, and hidden counter-revolutionary elements. …

This short essay provides a concise top-down picture of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945. It looks at not only its leadership and command (including the State Defence Committee, Stavka, and General Staff) but also size and structure, political supervision, mobilisation and training, and military equipment. When looking at mobilisation and training, it briefly considers not only wider issues but also the mobilisation of specific national groups and women. When considering equipment it identifies some key pieces of equipment that the Soviet Union was able to produce in large numbers, and that proved to be not only relatively easy to manufacture but also rugged and effective.

The human brain can be divided by both structure and function. Brodmann maps provide a useful way of organising the complex cortical structure based on cytoarchitecture. The basic architecture of the prefrontal cortex shows nothing substantially different to other cortical regions we have a clearer understanding of. However, it remains clear that there must be something anatomically different in the prefrontal cortex for it to be able to carry out such complex functions. Despite vast differences in the functionality of brain regions, topographic connectivity is considered a hallmark feature of cortical structure. However, relatively recent research evidence shows there may be more complexity to the connectivity pattern in the prefrontal cortex when viewed on a fine scale.

Australia has been regarded for the last 80 years as a member of the elite club of truly industrialised and modern nations. The fact of Australia’s industrialisation is regarded by most people, particularly scholars, as an inevitable consequence of being part of the industrial and technological culture of north-western Europe. But there was never anything inevitable about the industrialisation of Australia. Australia was a battle ground for competing major economic powers including Britain, the United States, France, Germany and later Japan. In 1900, Australia was a valuable market for manufactured goods. While the struggle for this market was at times intense, there was de facto agreement among the major powers that the emergence of local secondary industry was not to be encouraged.

An essential practice of the transport work at the station, one that focuses many of the concurrent and competing attempts to make a living, is the preparation of buses for departure. This is what the station workers refer to as ‘loading’, the significance of which highlights key aspects of hustle as activity. Chapter 4 looks at the practices and the various ruses, tricks, and bluffs that make up the task and craft of loading. It shows how changes in the organisational structure of the station, accelerated by the pressures of the urban labour market, have created a context of loading that is permeated by contingent constellations, a situation of constantly reproduced hustle. After detailing the practices of non-competitive and competitive loading, it turns the analysis around to describe the different ways in which station dwellers experience, accommodate themselves to, and try to exploit situations of hustle.

Chapter 7 aims to further explore the impact of dyslexia on performance at work. It will incorporate the framework of adult dyslexia outlined earlier in the book along with ideas for strategy development so that the latter can be put into practise to manage job demands. In the chapter, we will explore the main areas that our dyslexia contributors have most commonly identified as challenges over-and-above the literacy/language challenges discussed in chapters 5 and 6. This chapter, therefore, discusses the common challenges in the workplace related to new situations or novelty, as well as time management, stress and work overload, and remembering information. It also covers how dyslexia can impact on workplace training and professional examinations. Ideas related to developing job specific expertise will be covered as these can reduce the impact of challenges and increase confidence. The 4 M’s strategy that we introduced in chapter 6 will be something we will discuss further in this chapter. It will also discuss issues related to organisation and prioritisation, which links to metacognition and planning discussed in previous chapters.

This brief chapter examines how narratives are useful in work psychology. Narratives can be used for everything from career planning to worker relations and ideas around job identity. People often want to identify with the organisation they work for, and successful identification can be positive in terms of satisfaction and productivity. If there is a shared narrative between workers and managers, then the organisation is likely to be more successful. Narrative is a useful device for examining the nature and progress of careers, and activities such as appraisal can enhance these narratives.

This chapter analyses how the ecumenical synods contributed to the organisation of the festival network. It first discusses their involvement in the organisation of individual agones. The sources indicate that there was a broad spectrum of synod involvement: the old, well-established agones probably did not require a lot of organisational assistance, whereas the organisation of some newly founded agones was entirely outsourced to one of the synods. Between these two extremes, synod involvement varied according to specific circumstances. Second, this chapter investigates how the synods helped maintain the festival network as a whole. Due to the combined experiences of their travelling members, they had a unique overview of the agonistic circuits and as such could provide valuable input when the festival calendar was reformed. Communication went the other way around as well: for instance, they communicated changes in schedules and imperial decisions to their members. In sum, the synods were the lubricant that kept the agonistic machine running. The synods were thus not simply a by-product of the ‘agonistic explosion’ of the Principate but rather a key factor that made it possible.

This chapter examines the organisational structure of the ecumenical synods. First, a new interpretation of their organisation is proposed. Whereas earlier scholars have argued for a (con)federal structure consisting of a leading group in Rome and quasi-independent local branches in the provinces, the sources indicate that the ecumenical synods were much more uniformly organised, with a central headquarters in Rome, local headquarters in certain cities and mobile delegations travelling along the agonistic circuits. Next comes an overview of synod officials and a discussion of the finances of the two associations. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the relationship between the synods and the emperor. Whereas several other scholars believe that the synods were a tool with which the emperor kept the agonistic world under control, it appears that the synods had more agency than was earlier assumed. Finally, this chapter analyses other agonistic associations in the Roman empire and their relationship with the ecumenical synods.

Organisational empowerment is a critical pathway to support the sustainable transformation of food systems, mediated through different types of organisations. Collective action can be an effective strategy to include marginalised groups who may otherwise be excluded from agricultural development, extension, financing, or other aspects of climate-resilient food security. Key empowerment actions by farmer and producer organisations include building capacity, supporting greater access to inputs and information, facilitating the formation of agricultural enterprises, connecting to policy and markets, and encouraging youth membership and leadership. A focus on livelihoods, production, and poverty reduction can be a basis for increased agency and influence in decision-making. Women’s collective action is a platform to access information, technology, and a share of finances, which can lead to agency and leadership in local decision-making. For youth organisations, it is important to mobilise finance, provide support to post-production activities, support rural youth networks and recognise the role of young women in food systems.