Addressing adversity and hardships that readers were likely to encounter in ordinary life (falls into poverty or bankruptcy, loss of parents, lover, caste and home, malignant misrepresentations, sexual harassment, domestic cruelty), these fictions were described as novels. In modeling the idealized responses of characters from the mercantile and professional ranks or from the lesser gentry to suffering and misfortune, Eliza Parsons, Jane West, Elizabeth Bonhote, Mrs. Gunning, Elizabeth Helme, Anna Maria Bennett, Mary Meeke, Ann Howell, Isabella Kelly, Susannah Rowson and many anonymous authors promoted new, proto-Victorian values. Novels of Education addressed issues of parenting and upbringing up to and including courtship and centered on debates about filial obedience, especially in choice of a spouse. Marital Domestic Fiction debated issues related to adultery, divorce, widowhood, spinsterhood, and second marriages. Female Biography combined the two with elements of other genres to follow one or more characters through a “Life.”

Thomas More was the first to question the application of the death penalty to a particular offence. Theft had long been classified as a capital crime in the penal codes and practices of Britain and elsewhere. In More’s Utopia, a range of arguments is marshalled against the execution of thieves, echoed by later progressive thinkers. More’s critique brings to bear a whole armoury of arguments, including proportionality, deterrence, the public good, the law of God, and the causal relationship between poverty and petty crime. His argumentation was picked up by radical thinkers in Britain in the seventeenth century and gave impetus to a movement to formulate and promote alternative punishments for trivial offences. The principal candidates were hard labour and exile, the latter involving, in Britain, transportation to America and later Australia. Transportation had obvious disadvantages, and in any case it began to be asked, ‘How can the criminal be made maximally economically useful to the mother country?’ The contribution of Sir William Petty in the first decade of the Restoration (1760s) was crucial in this, and the idea finally finds articulation in the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.

Scholars examining the characteristics of suicide bombers tend to note that poverty-related variables cannot explain participation (that suicide bombers come from more educated and wealthy circumstances). On the other hand, scholars and practitioners often note that poverty reduction is essential to combatting terrorism (and support for suicide terrorism seems correlated with higher poverty). Much of the empirical work suffers from an over-reliance on the Palestinian case, possible sample-selection bias, and conflating populations with recruits and absolute poverty/low education vs. relative poverty and relative deprivation. Consequently, scholars have concluded that adverse socio-economic conditions and suicide terrorism are unrelated or even inversely related. The demographic qualities of suicide bombers challenge the link between poverty, poor education and violence. While the inverse relationship continues to find broad empirical support, many studies focused on a single case (the Palestinians). Using original data from field research in Sri Lanka this chapter raises critical issues and provides some preliminary empirical support for a link between lower levels of education and support for suicide terrorism. An operative might have different characteristics than the general population from which he/she is drawn. Future research should seek to identify more precise causal mechanisms between socio-economic conditions and suicide terrorism and all forms of political violence, while policies aimed to redress these conditions should continue as constructive elements of broader counter-terrorism strategies.

India was a poor and unequal country in 1947. Much of its labour force was in low-productivity agriculture, but it had a significant, if small, industrial sector. A plausible trajectory going forward was that rapid industrial growth would draw labour into higher-productivity areas, reducing poverty and inequality. But India went down a different path, beginning with an emphasis on heavy industry. This increased the economy’s productive capacity, but did not generate enough jobs to dent poverty and inequality. Over-regulation and neglect of exports contributed to slow growth until 1980, though agricultural productivity rose with the introduction of new high-yielding varieties of crops in some areas. After 1980, and especially after 1991, policies became more friendly to markets and business and India grew rapidly, led by growth in the services sector. This, however, did not create jobs at the same rate, because the growth was skill- and capital-intensive. Poverty fell substantially, but inequality spiked, and job creation remains a big concern.

The ‘logic’ of charity in modern Britain has been understood as ‘complex’ and ‘varied’: ‘a loose and baggy monster’. Charity after Empire takes this complexity as the basis for a new interpretation. First, the indeterminacy of the role and function of charity lay behind its popularity and growth. With no fixed notions of what they should be or what they should do, charities and NGOs have expanded because they have been many things to many people. Second, the messy practices of aid meant success could always be claimed amidst uncertain objectives and outcomes, triggering further expansion. Third, just as charity was welcomed as a solution to poverty overseas, its scope and potential were contained by powerful political actors who restricted its campaigning and advocacy work. Fourth, racial injustice, especially apartheid, shaped not only humanitarianism overseas but also the domestic governance of charity in Britain. It all resulted not only in the massive expansion of charity but also limitations placed on its role and remit.

Status comparisons are constantly made in many societies today, leading to an inferiority complex. Income inequality is linked to diverse health and social outcomes in the world, including violence, lack of trust, prevalence of heart failure, environmental degradation, and poor oral health. Chronic stress, induced by inequality, leads to many of the chronic diseases we face. Economic inequality influences power distribution, which is now captured by big corporations in the US. Middle-aged White American men, especially those without college degrees, have seen their mortality increase though drugs, alcohol, and suicides, termed deaths of despair, as their livelihoods have declined because their jobs have migrated to poor countries. Ranking countries by life expectancy situates the US tied with Cuba for longevity

This introduction presents the volume’s premise and structure. It details why it is crucial to examine and harmonize the two worlds of law and knowledge to understand and amplify Indigenous guidance and wisdom found in treaty commitments. This introduction introduces the volume’s five parts, each discussing different aspects of understanding and implementing the various international, multinational, and nation-to-nation treaties to advance sustainable development and affirm Indigenous knowledge and rights in the various legal systems that we will explore.

Centring the devastating case of five-year-old Michael Komape’s drowning in a pit latrine at school, this chapter discusses the ‘dis/empowerment paradox’ inherent in South Africa’s ‘transformative constitutionalism’. Through the example of the Komapes’ 2018 case against the Minister of Basic Education (2018), it reveals the limitations of transformative constitutionalism rooted in Euro-American liberalism, which resonates with a neoliberal political economy that has failed to relieve the impoverished majority of their dehumanising precarity. While the chapter highlights the failure of the South African government to relate and respond to the suffering of the people it is meant to serve, more profoundly, it exposes the limitations of transformative constitutionalism due to its inability to even ‘see’ (let alone, validate) the world-sense of its majority population as legitimate law-sense. The Komape case thus reveals three key insights: (1) the resistance of private law to transformative ideals, (2) the reluctance of South Africa’s legal culture to embrace decolonial transformation and pluralism, and (3) the tension(s) between the legal consciousness of ordinary South Africans and the dominant legal culture. The case therefore underscores the need for Ntu Constitutionalism: a system grounded in indigenous normative priorities and robustly representative of South Africa’s marginalised communities and their needs.

In Tongoane v National Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the government’s attempt to regulate property in traditional communities through the Communal Land Rights Act (CLARA) was unconstitutional. It emphasised that traditional land was already governed by indigenous ‘living law’ and CLARA sought to replace this vernacular law, a system evolved over time, with legislation. This highlighted the presence of indigenous law predating colonialism, challenging colonial notions like ‘lex nullius’ (no law) and ‘terra nullius’ (empty land), which denied indigenous Africans their rights. This chapter argues that South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional vision fails to fully recognise and integrate this vernacular law, undermining true transformation, and instead advocates for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’, which would amalgamate ‘customary’, ‘common’ and vernacular law to reflect the realities and normative convictions of most South Africans. This approach aims to rectify historical injustices and create a more just legal system, rooted in indigenous values and addressing social and economic inequities. Explicating the indigenously feminist decolonising concept of Alter-Native Constitutionalism, the chapter calls for reconstitution of South Africa’s legal framework and content to give full voice to indigenous world-sense and law-sense, advocating a shift away from Eurocentric logics and norms.

Governments command tax revenue to provide services. The US government’s revenue is lower than that in Western European nations. The latter provide services such as universal healthcare, paid parental leave, and free education. A large portion of the US government’s revenue supports the military, which comprises almost half of the world’s total military expenditures. The richest 400 American families pay the lowest tax rate today, in sharp contrast to their paying the highest share in the 1950s. The federal government borrows to pay for services rather than resort to taxing the rich. Americans seem more accepting of not redistributing wealth than Western Europeans. Policies not supported by the elite are unlikely to become law. Poorer people are less likely to vote in the US. Since the 1950s, US states with the most liberal policies have had better mortality trends than conservative states. Americans prefer medical care spending over public health and social spending. Neoliberalism has increased economic inequality and produced a rightward political shift. Reparations can improve racial inequalities

This book concludes with this Afterword that emphasizes the critical importance of integrating Indigenous knowledge and treaties into the framework of sustainable development. This chapter summarizes the conclusions we have brought forth throughout this volume and is centred on the wisdom and practices of Indigenous peoples that promote respect, reciprocity, and harmony with the natural world. The convergence of Indigenous knowledge with global sustainable development agendas is now widely recognized as a crucial step towards a more balanced and resilient future. As the world faces unprecedented challenges such as natural disasters, resource scarcity, and human rights violations, recognizing the strengths of diverse worldviews becomes essential. By examining case studies and comparative legal research, this book demonstrates the potential of treaties to foster sustainable futures that benefit all living beings.

A substantial portion of adult health is programmed in the first 1,000 days after conception. Birthweight is a good indicator of fetal development. Low birthweight leads to compromised neural development. Preconception stresses have health impacts, as do prenatal ones. Natural experiments have demonstrated the adverse health impacts of various early-life stresses. Secure infant attachment to caregivers, with much global variation, leads to salutary health outcomes. Trauma or abuse in early life leads to many health compromises. Stress causes much chronic pain in the US, leading to people there consuming most of the world’s opioids. Beneficial posttraumatic growth may occur. Poverty policies affecting early life lead to adverse adult health outcomes

This chapter addresses the evidence for the burial of moneyed laymen. The latter are, perhaps not unexpectedly, both ubiquitous and largely invisible in this collection. The necrosima includes only one hymn specifically addressing the death of a husband and father. By contrast, the majority of its forty “generic” hymns contemplate a male lay Christian subject, mourned by his children, anxious about abandoning his family, and plagued by anticipation of the harsh judgement he might receive. These hymns become a site for working out the necrosima’s theology of possessions – a topic that appears explicitly in some of the collection’s most paraenetically focused hymns, including, for example, madrāshâ 28 (“In funere principum, & Divitis cuiusque”/“On the burial of a prince or some kind of rich man”), but is a prominent theme in much of the corpus. This chapter accordingly examines anxieties about wealth and poverty, and the ethical pedagogy inherent in the necrosima, including its emphasis on charity.