Many of the challenges facing social democrats today have deep historical roots. Labour politics were never simply encoded in the daily experience of the industrial working class; they had to be made. Labour had to adapt to an already acculturated working class, but over time, through a combination of rhetoric and public policy, it not only did so but it also changed the culture of that class. This chapter analyses both the practical strategies developed to build Labour’s base a century ago, and the parameters (and limits) of the vernacular social democratic politics that emerged from its eventual success. Vernacular politics are not ideological or partisan because politics is marginal to most people’s lives. Practically minded social democrats therefore need to identify where their goals chime most naturally with vernacular politics. This means recognising the predominantly contractual conception of social entitlement, but also where universalism has put down deepest roots: not just in health and education, but also in housing and in the care of the elderly and infirm. Above all, Labour needs to rediscover the ethical and emotional appeal at the heart of its historic claim to represent all working people: championing the dignity of labour and of place.

Chapter 5 introduces the main ways in which local history was written in the early Islamic centuries. As wide as possible a snapshot is offered, based on extant works and what we know about many now-lost works, of early Islamic local history-writing, with the works divided for the most part into four different models: conquest histories; biographical (or prosopographical) histories; chronologically organised histories of events; and histories that focus on topography or on the particular distinctions (faḍāʾil) of a town or region. The aim is not to provide a comprehensive list of known works, but rather to draw attention to the main ways local history was written/compiled and what kinds of topics local historians were interested in.

By asking how political communities are constructed and with what boundaries, this book has explored different conceptualizations of nation, different perceptions of territory and dynamics of unity and division. It has presented alternative notions of political community outside of the nation-state paradigm, in communities smaller than the state and going beyond the boundaries of the state. My work has devoted attention to the beginnings of political communities or to their reshaping processes. By establishing boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, these communities defined themselves at different levels: the local, regional, transnational and national levels. In the border region between Ghana and Togo, these political communities were built on top of each other, like a palimpsest, and intersected with the Ghanaian and Togolese states that used these dynamics to their advantage. This book endeavours to make us rethink the notion of the nation-state and its associated concepts in light of these dynamics: citizenship, elections, border and nation-state.

In this chapter, the book is introduced by interrogating how a political community is constructed and with what membership boundaries, especially when it lies across borders, or at another level than the nation-state. I argue that the political belonging found at the local level and based on ideas of ‘indigeneity’ – whereby the individual is bound to a particular community and has access to a bundle of rights by virtue of the ‘first-comer’ or ‘early-comer rule’– informs and contributes to the making of other types of political belonging at different levels.

Chapter 7 focuses on more local dynamics over cross-border voting in certain borderland localities where all scales merge, and where palimpsestic political communities emerge even more clearly. It emphasizes the question of authority in the recognition or contestation of belonging. By campaigning in the Togolese borderlands in the 2000s, the Ghanaian political parties aimed to instrumentalize cross-border ties and recognized the authority of the local level in confirming belonging to the nation. This chapter demonstrates that the local level is the authority on and the gatekeeper of national belonging. As a consequence it shows that the local level is the most powerful layer of belonging in the palimpsestic political communities of the region, since it is capable of influencing all the other layers of belonging.

Chapter 8 looks at some of the ways local historians represented their region’s or town’s history and the ways they crafted narratives that placed their local, idealised communities within the history of wider communities. The chapter looks in particular at the ways local historians discussed the historical topography of their regions and towns, the ways they dealt with non-Muslim and pre-Islamic history, and the master narratives they used to build their communities’ histories, in particular the ways in which those narratives differed from the ones often encountered in universal histories. One overarching argument of the book, brought to the fore in this chapter, is that local history-writing was, in the early Islamic centuries at least, not always as distinct from universal history-writing as we are sometimes led to think; and that where differences can be seen, they often concerned the conception of community and the role of elites as much as whether a given work covers the history of one region much more thoroughly than others.

Chapter 3 looks at the various ways Muslims in the early Islamic centuries constructed a variety of idealised communities engaging with dialogues between universal ideas and more particularist ones, an endeavour that can be seen in a number of different scholarly fields. The first half of the chapter looks at debates in the fields of theology (specifically prophetology), law and politics (and political theology); the second half considers ideas about attachment to territory and the existence of a united Muslim world, before ending with a brief consideration of the social significance of gradual processes of conversion to Islam. One of the key arguments of this book is that local history-writing was one way for certain elites to deal with the dialogue between universal and more particular concerns as they envisioned and created their communities. Chapter 3 lays the groundwork for this by exploring that dialogue in fields ranging beyond history alone.

The book’s Introduction begins by considering definitions of folk music, specifically that developed by the International Folk Music Council during the 1950s. I point out that Cecil Sharp’s work had a profound influence on this conception. The underlying logic behind such definitions is a habit of opposition in which folk music is situated as a paradigm of authenticity in contrast to something else tainted with commerce, frivolity, or bourgeois individualism. I show that folk music has most often been understood through a characteristic form of Marxist nostalgia surrounding older forms of culture opposed to modernity, capitalism, mass media, and the culture industry. The appeal of the folk, I suggest, has chiefly been as a vehicle of critique – a way of identifying alternative ways of being. As illustrations, I turn to Ananda Coomaraswamy’s anti-colonial vision of Indian nationalism as well as the recent ‘ShantyTok’ trend on TikTok. Ultimately, folk music and song are inextricable from the social communities they have brought to life.

In this chapter, legendary artist Peggy Seeger draws together, in characteristically virtuosic fashion, the themes of this book as a whole through the trio of song, singer, and community. Communities, she argues, are the social soil upon which human cultures germinate. They breed and support singers who make, sing, and pass on songs, which in turn act as a group glue, thus creating new communities. She portrays herself as a ‘song-carrier’ and a storyteller, pointing out that folk songs provide us with great templates – opportunities for everyone to narrate their own story in their own way.

This chapter considers what kind of utopian articulations can be glimpsed in contemporary British experimental poetry. Three experimental poets writing in the 2010s are analysed in detail: Sean Bonney, Verity Spott, and Callie Gardner. The chapter situates these poets within the British experimental poetry scene, tracing an ecosystem of small-scale independent publishing. DIY poetry magazines such as Zarf (produced in Cardiff, Leeds, and Glasgow) and presses such as the87press, Aquifer, DATABLEED, Sad Press, and many others operated outside of formalised spheres of paid labour. In the 2010s, communities of British poets, publishers, audiences, and readers sustained themselves through a non-commercial ethos of gift exchange. This ethos was explicitly utopian in its attempt to construct an alternative to capitalism through non-alienated economic and social structures. Whilst Herbert Marcuse’s utopian theorisation of the 1960s counterculture feels relevant to this moment in the British experimental poetry scene, the chapter explores how many of these poets expressed scepticism about the form’s inherent political potential. For them, politics, rather than aesthetics, contained the germs of utopian possibility. Their experimental works offer precursors to a futurity that is not yet here, but the arrival of which is necessary for the survival of progressive politics.

This chapter explores Scotland’s relationship with utopia, arguing that this relationship is complicated by Scotland’s perceived peripheral, and potentially oppositional, identity within the United Kingdom. Twentieth-century Scottish fiction has often been reticent to engage with fully developed utopian paradigms, instead focusing on quotidian experience. However, utopian communities are also positioned as an opportunity to look beyond the nation to examine questions of individual and collective desire. The chapter focuses on three main strands of Scottish utopian fiction from the post-war to the present: the unusual emphasis on death and cyclical return in key utopian texts; utopian novels that explore communal life and homosociality; and queer works that employ storytelling as a utopian act. The texts discussed in this chapter reveal that in Scottish literature utopia is not located in some far-off future but, rather, operates within the continuity created by shared narratives of identity, community, and desire. Examining these themes, the chapter concludes that Scottish utopian fiction is more varied than previous accounts have noted.

This chapter provides an overview of suicidal behaviours and suicide prevention strategies among minority groups, including refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The chapter highlights the interplay of cultural and gender diversity in shaping suicidal behaviours and emphasizes the need for tailored interventions that address the specific challenges faced by these populations. It reviews the existing literature on the prevalence of suicide among minority groups in both high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), examining the role of cultural factors, gender-based violence, and mental health issues. The chapter also discusses suicide prevention strategies in humanitarian settings, such as community engagement, gatekeeper training, cultural adaptation of interventions, and the importance of integrating mental health services into primary healthcare services. The chapter highlights evidence-based practices recommended by research, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The conclusion underscores the need of a comprehensive, culturally sensitive approach and calls for further research, increased investment in mental health infrastructure, and the development of gender-sensitive strategies to reduce the burden of suicide among minority groups in humanitarian contexts.

Over the course of seven years, the Tata center recruited and trained more than 200 graduate students from 18 different MIT departments to design and implement energy solutions that are practical and reliable in the developing world. Their work produced 45 patents, 12 commercial licenses, and over a dozen startups. This chapter demonstrates the method for implementing similar programs, with a focus on energy-related research projects. The program leaders describe their project as “CPR for Engineers,” with a three-axis model focusing on developing Compassion, Practice, and Research.

What held the textual community of the People’s Republic together? This chapter explores how literary acts by individuals across a spectrum of influence, from Mao Zedong to Xu Chengmiao, created meaning and connection out of the imagery of the Hundred Flowers. Despite his leadership of the Leninist state mechanism, in early 1957 Mao joined in what had been dismissed as “language games” with his own extended allegory and metaphor that borrowed more from writers like Ai Qing than from Party formulism. This chapter argues that Mao’s creative appropriation of the imagery of the Hundred Flowers enabled him to speak to a broad audience that included the Soviet leadership, Party conservatives, and literati across the political spectrum. The creative circulation of the Hundred Flowers enacted a resurrection of literary communities with roots in dynastic China. Finally, we turn to the writers Guo Xiaochuan, Xiao Jun, and Xu Chengmiao to observe how personal literary practice connected writers to the growing national movement and how the movement of a literary trope created a national community.