Generations of historians have seen the interplay between the early modern state and its armed forces, and between warfare and state formation, as key factors in the process of modernisation. The creation of the modern state was most powerfully expressed through the supposed symbiosis between absolute regimes and standing armies. The image of geometric order and discipline generated by formations of infantry drawn up in kilometre-long battle lines; the authorities’ direct involvement in provisioning, equipping, and uniforming its soldiers; central government’s reach into every aspect of warfare and military planning. All of these have been regarded as defining traits of the interconnection between the standing army and the state. Research on the inner structures of early modern military society has, until recently, been coloured by preconceptions about functioning hierarchies and chains of command, an increasingly effective military administration, rigid discipline, and corresponding efficiency in the waging of warfare. Such a top-down view remained unchallenged as long as researchers relied almost exclusively on sources derived from governmental and/or legal provenance, leaving an impression of overwhelming state authority reaching right down to the level of the common soldier.

Chapter 5 addresses the application of the law on disfigurement from the point of view of employers. It analyses the findings from interviews with HR and EDI professionals about their approaches to disfigurement equality at work. It explores employer approaches to visible difference in a variety of contexts – from recruitment to workplace culture to making reasonable adjustments. This chapter reveals considerable uncertainty among employers about how to address the social barriers of looking different. This uncertainty is addressed by guidance in Appendix 1. Moreover, drawing on literature about the legal consciousness of human resources departments, it also uncovers tensions in the daily reality of HR practice which may impact both their ability and motivation to create appearance-inclusive workplaces.

This chapter explores how members of the online incel community interact with (presumably) new members on the subreddit r/Braincels. It seeks to explore why new members might stay on a website known for hostility and poor mental health. Through the use of corpus linguistic methods, I explore ways that members of the community might interact with newcomers. I argue that users do not index their identity as new on the forum through lexemes such as new or first, and that there appears to be few repeated and explicit ways that members signal posting on the forum for the first time. As such, I analyse how incels construct their community, by using corpus linguistic methods and Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework. I argue that the members of the incel community constructed their group as ‘toxic’, but also as a place where they were able to receive mental health support. Ultimately, I argue that more work needs to be done to explore not only why people might engage with these kinds of forums, but also how members of the incel community convince people to stay engaged.

There were practical limits to these political imaginaries and projects. People needed to work, and the war was a source of employment for many displaced people. This chapter explores the parallel systems of governance in Khartoum that southern militia-running businessmen (including Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, Paulino Matip, Abdel Bagi Ayii Akol, and others) organised in Khartoum, including their own prisons, barracks, and offices. Many residents drew on their jobs, sympathetic policing, and ‘traditional’ courts, but these rebel authorities also propagated their own ideas of future structures of political community based on regional zones of ethno-political authority. This is an unrecorded history of militia governance, looking beyond these authorities’ immediate mercenary aims and exploring their leadership’s and members’ own critiques of governance and models of power. This sets a challenge to current studies of rebel governance systems, which rarely examine pro-government proxy militias. It also outlines how the more creative, inclusive, and imaginative intellectual work detailed in this book was undermined (and ultimately buried) by these wartime exigencies and practical (if mercenary) structures of militia work and ethnic self-defence.

In order to situate the women who worked in royal and aristocratic households in their proper context, the first chapter explores household composition, demonstrating similarities of servant arrangements at all levels of elite society even though household size varied at different status gradations. Over time, households of every status level grew, offering further career opportunities, especially since elite households became more welcoming to women in the late fourteenth century, even though throughout the Middle Ages they remained almost exclusively male domains. This chapter argues that female servants gained their positions through kinship and patronage opportunities that favored their placement and promotion. In investigating the qualities that employers desired in their servants, I contend that they chose attendants who demonstrated useful skills, good character, and pleasing appearance. This chapter reveals that turnover occurred due to death, retirement, marriage (which did not necessitate retirement), dismissal, or transition to different households, and seems to have been a frequent aspect of life for a lady-in-waiting, yet I also assert that a minority of attendants served their ladies for long durations, at least a decade or more.

Offering two case studies – the economic transformations of Sohar and Duqm – this chapter grounds the book’s argument about Oman’s global labour market in material cases of spatial transformation and the integration into global value chains through which both commodities and labour circulate. The chapter argues that millennial citizen expectations take shape in these developments, from the interaction of ostensible outcomes of economic globalisation, neoliberalism, and government responsibilities of governing hydrocarbon windfalls. Citizen reactions emerge from their perceived right to, or exclusion from, these returns. The chapter further substantiates two points through these cases. First, both neoliberal reform and oil wealth explicitly or implicitly make promises to populations about an improved economic life, which, when unrealised, results in disenfranchisement and discontent. Second, capital needs labour and pursues supplies from the global labour market not only because it is cost effective but deliberately because it is both flexible and controllable. It seeks to avert potential labour disruption and secure seamless operations. Together, these findings show the ways Omani labour organises and the power of labour through the threat of its resistance.

The investigation of singular practices and actions is the bedrock of Conversation Analysis (CA), yet it is not the only approach that CA research can take. This chapter poses a series of analytic questions designed to guide the analyst’s attention towards a complementary mode of analysis, one which takes as its object of study not a singular practice but rather a system of practices, alternative solutions to a recurrent problem of social organization. While this approach has been employed to greatest effect in research on generic organizations of interaction, the analytic techniques are themselves generic and applicable across domains of action. Rather than select a practice or action and ask what forms it can take or what environments it can inhabit, conversation analysts can instead select a problem, an exigency of social interaction, and ask how participants solve it. Alternative practices and actions naturally cluster around the organizational problems to which they serve as possible solutions, and it is this endogenous organization that CA research aims to document. The chapter sketches out and illustrates a range of analytic techniques that conversation analysts have employed in past research and can employ again to discover and investigate organizations of practice.

Chapter 7 examines the belief by some that affirmative action amounts to reverse racism and reverse sexism. The distinction between affirmative action and equal opportunity is described, as is the common belief that affirmative action involves quotas (quotas are illegal). Practices that undermine meritocracy in both college admissions and in employment are explored. These practices include legacy admissions, donors, and, in the context of employment, biases in job selection. Chapter 7 makes the case for the need of affirmative action because subtle forms of bias infiltrate all aspects of employment. The chapter critically examines the argument that diversity benefits organizations. The chapter ends with a discussion of goal-oriented versus process-oriented affirmative action plans, and other strategies to reduce bias in admissions and employment.

This chapter analyzes the discursive functions of a single interactional practice – the use of the phrase “now what” – that is recurrently employed by an individual diagnosed with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD; pseudonym Robert). Robert’s use of “now what” recruits assistance from interlocutors when a wider array of recruitment resources may not be readily available. I show how this practice calls on collaborators to articulate the next step of a task-based activity for which Robert requires guidance. I also examine how Robert employs “now what” over the course of a year. Over time, Robert begins to employ “now what” to navigate non-task-based activities, such as when being reprimanded, showing how he extends its use as he faces new interactional challenges. Some research examines "dementia interactions" through a lens of deficit; other research emphasizes skillfulness. I show how “now what” illuminates both the troubles Robert faces while simultaneously demonstrating his resourcefulness to navigate such troubles. I argue that such "compensatory" practices point to both deficit and skill, and suggest that a dichotomous framework – identifying a practice or behavior as either only a deficit or a skill – is unlikely to adequately capture the social engagement of those diagnosed with neurological disorders.