The introduction begins with the book’s central argument: Egyptian cultural and media institutions have constructed a coherent state project after the 1952 revolution through a praxis of ‘achievement’ (ingāz, pl. ingazāt). Inspired by the anthropology of bureaucracy and the state, the book intervenes in the longstanding historiography on the Nasser era to show how low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance have worked to create a unified state-idea after 1952, while constituting a bureaucratic corps on a similar ideological basis. Such bureaucrats, as well as higher-ranking officials and ministers, are central actors in the book’s narrative. The introduction also reviews the book’s main sources and methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, archival visits in institutional repositories and personal libraries, as well as regular dives into the second-hand book market in Cairo.

The epilogue examines the persistence of the term ‘achievements’ in Egyptian governmental media today, which is indicative of the concept’s resilience. This persistence raises an important question around the social and historical reasons undergirding the continuity of achievement praxis. Why are cultural and media institutions reproducing the achievement state in Egypt? The answer would seem to be that the current bureaucratic apparatus inherited, via institutional means, certain ways of thinking and working established after the 1952 revolution. This simple answer belies my ethnographic experience, because contemporary bureaucrats – with few exceptions – have a very faint sense of the history of the bureaucratic apparatus prior to their own entry into the workforce. A more likely answer, I suggest, is that the institutional context within which bureaucrats work did not change in some identifiable ways since 1952. The continuity of achievement praxis is tied to the institutional environment in which it thrives, rather than a conscious will among state officials transmitted across generations.

Social democracy may sometimes present itself as technocratic, but within its wider world of meaning, there are beliefs that speak to more radical change, even upheaval. The world of social democratic ideology is one of possibility, rather than something narrowly circumscribed. Using Charles Taylor’s concept of ‘common meanings’, this chapter explores the multifaceted nature of social democracy, which is significant for understanding how adaptable it has been as an ideological tradition. In elaborating what social democrats – and people on the centre-left more broadly – can think, the chapter presents analyses of literature from the twentieth and twenty-first century, with novels and poetry as representations of our social world. Rather than making empirical claims about what social democratic ideology is right now in a particular country or political party, the chapter explores the possible beliefs – very recognisable ones – of social democrats, and how those beliefs shed some light on the everyday dilemmas that people on the left of politics encounter. Three broad, common meanings of clear relevance to the world of social democracy are identified: money, class, and indignation. All three are discussed in relation to dilemmas social democratic actors must consider in contemporary politics.

The future will see a perpetuation of the present coexistence of unbalanced bipolarity, polycentrism, and emergent regional multipolarity. As in the past, twenty-first-century world politics will be chiefly defined by competition among the powerful. Asia is the only region where the world’s heaviest hitters come into steady and direct contact with one another. As such, it presents the maximum risk for major-power war. Most critical is the direction of the U.S.–China relationship, and this, in turn, will be significantly affected by China’s power trajectory. More broadly, geoeconomic competition and status challenges will be persistent features of international politics, as established and emerging powers try to keep up with changes in relative power and technology. The disintegration of power and principle will also continue apace, impeded by the fact that internationalist principles and institutions are themselves deeply heterogenous. Nevertheless, the future should be bright, presenting only a moderate-to-low risk of conflict. States can best navigate future risks and dangers by muddling through rather than straight-jacketing themselves by means of a grand strategy.

This chapter examines the ideological origins and political impact of the American concept of the “free world.” From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, “free world leadership” served as the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy. Although American officials imagined the “free world” as the self-evident expression of international liberalism, they defined it negatively as equivalent to the entire “non-communist world.” Cold War liberals’ persistent failure to fill the “free world” with positive content forced them to maintain a series of inflexible and ultimately counterproductive positions, including an intolerance of nonalignment, a commitment to global containment, and an axiomatic insistence on the enduring and existential nature of the Soviet threat. Although the “free world” mostly fell out of circulation after the 1960s, the logic of the concept has continued to underpin an American project of global “leadership” that derives its purpose and extent from the prior identification of a single extraordinary threat.

This chapter concludes by applying the hierarchical intervention theory to the Ukraine war, initiated by the 2014 internal upheaval that established a pro-Western government in Kyiv. This shift prompted Russia’s offensive intervention, leading to the annexation of Crimea and support for Donbas separatists, actions that were justified through rogue altercasting. In response, the US and its allies opted for indirect military support to avoid escalating the conflict. The analysis provides further support for our contention that great power interventions often deviate from ideological expectations. The chapter concludes that neither objective evidence of atrocities nor ideological ties are the main drivers of intervention. Instead, prior weapons transfers and other security ties constrain and motivate great power intervention responses to revolutionary civil wars. As the global power landscape shifts toward multipolarity, Western powers risk overcommitment and moral hazard by continuing to sell weapons to clients that they are not prepared to defend. This chapter advocates for greater oversight of weapons transfers and more transparent conflict prevention strategies, thorough legislative reviews of arms transfers and clear delineation of great power spheres of influence.

Folk music discourses have long held a complex relationship to colonialism. Definitions of colonialism – or the occupation and exploitation of one land by a dominant power – have usually been formulated through the voices of Western colonisers (or those educated within their intellectual traditions). Discourses on folk music have likewise shied away from post-colonial studies, reinforcing Victorian ideas of folk music as a natural art form that somehow exists separately from other, less static or rooted, musical ecosystems. This chapter explores the themes of (1) folk music as a post-colonial alternative to ‘cancel culture’, (2) folk music as a racialised category, and (3) strategies and possibilities for folk music’s decolonial futures. Focusing on British ideologies around the folk, I advocate for placing folk music into a critical dialogue with decolonial and Indigenous systems of knowledge that have the capacity to shift the power dynamics of these discussions away from racialized hierarchies.

This chapter discusses the sympathetic relationship between the gothic and sublimity regarding their serving similar social and political functions, emphasising their adaptability to the rhetorical interests of those in power in a given place and time. It then goes on to clarify their differences and consider whether they have a more ‘universal’ application than typically understood by taking a broadly historical approach, to examine the xenophobic and gendered origins of the sublime, and the ideological changes that come with the post-Kantian tradition. Rethinking the sublime as the differend identified by Jean-François Lyotard alerts us to imbalanced power relations and the demand for new idioms that give voice to the silenced, thus avoiding the sublime’s traditional claim to transcendence and therefore Western humanism. Similarly, a world-gothic sublime serves to witness the differend, the power imbalance between the ‘normal,’ who sets the terms of any tribunal, and the Other, who is silenced.

The new nationalism of the Xi Jinping era, which has brought together political nationalism and cultural nationalism – two largely opposing streams between 1919 and 1989 – has redefined the CPC and the PRC. On paper, the party is a class organization while the PRC is a class dictatorship that sanctions class sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty. Since 2001, the party has been represented as a national party as well as a class organization. Representing the nation entails the promotion of national culture, and a major component of the Chinese Dream is cultural revival. Consequently, the CPC and the PRC are nationalized in a shift from Marxist classism to synthesized Chinese nationalism. Their class identities appear to be at odds with their national identities, but the tension is minimized as the party turns Marxism into an empty signifier and sinicizes it out of existence.

How has the CPC maintained its organizational strength over time, especially during the period of economic reform? This chapter argues that the several important measures taken since the 1990s have reinforced the party as a strong organization. The personnel management reform since the 1990s has standardized the elite recruitment and provided a relatively fair channel of social mobility within the regime. The CPC has monopolized both the allocation of critical economic resources and appointments of key political, economic, and other societal offices through the Nomenklatura system, so that the party can distribute spoils of China’s economic growths to its key members and supporters in exchange of their loyalty. Since the beginning of Xi’s rule in 2012, the party has expanded the anticorruption and disciplinary body, committed more resources to campaigns of ideological indoctrination, increased the party’s involvement in daily policymaking and the private sector, and diversified channels of elite recruitment. These measures appear to have reinforced the party’s organizational capacity, but their long-term effects are yet to be assessed.

This chapter tracks the importance and resilience of CPC ideology by examining the development of Mao Zedong Thought from his early Communist writings (1927–1940) through to Yan’an Rectification (1942–1945) and then during his reign as Supreme Leader (1949–1976). It then explores Mao Zedong Thought’s importance for the CPC today. CPC leaders since Mao’s death have invoked, and continue to invoke, Mao Zedong Thought for legitimation and to exhibit continuity despite shifts away from the ideology and practice of the Mao era. Mao Zedong Thought thus fulfills a legitimative need rather than a social one; CPC leaders must acknowledge, and often reference, Mao Zedong Thought to project continuity even if the ruptures since Mao’s death have resulted in an un-Maoist Party-state.

This chapter explains how the CPC has from the beginning used its official language to stabilize its rule. During the Mao era people had to integrate this language into their everyday speech by repeatedly using “correct” words and linguistic formulae to say “correct” things. Compulsory use of the language forced everyone to propagate revolutionary values, and even when it failed to produce any matching revolutionary consciousness it completely silenced dissent. Official formulations had a powerful coercive function that stabilized party rule even when its policies were deeply unpopular. The party still uses official language to structure official discourses that outline the party’s vision, promote its policies, praise its leadership, claim the credit for China’s rise, and assert that it alone can guarantee the country’s future success. These discourses are pervasive, and they provide an overarching ideological framework that unofficial discourses are not permitted to contest. China may no longer be totalitarian, but the party’s strategic deployment of its official language is central to its success in creating a hegemonic political culture.

During multisite fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019, across two wholesale trading hubs in the midstream pipeline of the diamond industry (Antwerp and Mumbai), diamond brokers voiced a confounding claim: they know nothing about the diamonds they broker. I argue that this reveals a core contradiction of diamond brokers: their trustworthiness depends upon their ignorance of a diamond’s value to be deemed an impartial third actor to the transaction, while their utility as a search function depends upon their knowledge of diamonds to connect buyers and sellers in the market. In the current regime of pricing transparency, standardized diamond certificates, a pricing index, and e-commerce websites now instantly reveal diamond grades and prices, upending the necessary fiction of ignorance upon which brokers rely. These technologies are not mechanistically replacing the role of human middlemen, but rather are revealing the very structural instabilities and ideological contradictions at the heart of brokerage.

Chapter 2 turns towards the neighbourhood of Ituura. It introduces my field site in detail by exploring cases of local youth who are said to have been ‘wasted’ by alcoholism. In contrast to those who are said to have ‘given up’ on their futures, other young men are shown to embrace discourses of moral fortitude to sustain their hopes for the future while working for low, piecemeal wages in the informal economy. Such youth claim that one must be ‘bold to make it’. Engaging with anthropological discussion on waithood and hope, the chapter shows how young men cultivate moral fortitude through an ethics of endurance – a hope for hope itself, a way of sustaining belief in their own long-term futures that involves economising practices, prayer, and avoidance of one’s peers who are seen to be a source of temptation and pressure to consume.

This chapter analyses the literary, textual, and propaganda work of the two main British fascist organisations in the interwar period: the British Fascisti (1923–1935), founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF, 1932–1940). The evolving styles, structures, and aesthetics in fascist publications reflect shifts in policy and strategy, often influenced by opposing political movements. Fascist literature was a strategic tool in a war of words and ideas, and as such was crucial for promoting fascist ideology. The chapter highlights the dissemination of fascist materials, including newspapers sold at events, manifestos for recruitment, and pamphlets on diverse topics. Songs, short stories, and poems aimed to mobilise and instruct, while public speeches were central to fascist rallies and demonstrations. The BUF trained its members, the Blackshirts, in public speaking, making speeches integral to their propaganda efforts; these speeches were later published, recorded, or filmed. This ‘gestural politics’ is exemplified by the BUF’s newspaper Action!, a title that symbolised the movement’s focus on public performance and outreach. Through these varied forms, the chapter shows how fascist propaganda intertwined literary efforts with political activism to influence British society.