Europeans promoted many alternatives to what became in the 1990s ‘neoliberal globalisation’. In the 1970s and 1980s, they promoted a vision of globalisation that was a compromise between liberty capitalism, solidarity capitalism, and community capitalism with its STABEX programme in 1975, which aimed to stabilise export revenue for some associated countries in the Global South. Thatcher’s policy with Nissan or shipyards shows that even a neoliberal leader such as she could practice neomercantilism, but in a much less systematic and showy manner than in Colbertist France. For all that, there was no common promotion of ‘European preference’, despite numerous talks. A minimal promotion of community capitalism emerged through the notion of ‘normative power’. The failure of the most ambitious projects should not obscure the weight of (often EC-level) protectionist regulations in numerous international markets during the 1970s and 1980s. This came in sectors such as agriculture, steel, textiles, and automobiles, before the advent of a more neoliberal form of globalisation after the completion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT (1986–1994).

The rise of community capitalism since the mid-2010s is reflected in the return of protectionism, authoritarianism, nativism, and violent conflict. European capitalism was forced to adapt by being more assertive. Europeans have embraced solutions that were previously refused as too protectionist, such as European preference, free trade contingent on adhering to social and environmental norms, subsidies to industry for strategic reasons, and competition policy decisions based on reciprocity. Some of these ideas were long defended by France. Germany previously criticised them, but has embraced some in trade since 2016, and others in foreign policy since 2022. The management of Brexit has reaffirmed the basis of European soft power, which depends on the unity of the Single Market. The Covid-19 pandemic (2020–21) forced the Union to adopt protectionist and interventionist measures. The Russo-Ukrainian War has led to very strong sanctions packages, as well as the Union’s foray into military matters. But the Europeans still remain heavily dependent on the US for defence. Donald Trump’s return to power in 2025 has forced Europe to think harder about organising community capitalism.

The notion of truth is a powerful one within transitional justice, and truth-telling and truth-seeking are considered to be a necessary part of any justice pursuit. Also in the US, official government actors are creating truth commissions (or truth commission-like processes) in order to acknowledge and address a wide range of violent and discriminatory contexts, both historical and present-day. This chapter explores two such truth commissions operating at the sub-national level, namely in the states of Maryland and California. Drawing from participatory scholarship, the chapter evaluates these examples and highlights how current and future truth processes can better conceptualise and implement victim participation in order to have deeper engagement and impact with affected communities. Examining these efforts around agency and empowerment can shed light on broader developments around formalised participation, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the second generation of victim engagement in transitional justice practices in the US.

In response to First World War propaganda campaigns and the emerging science of behaviorist psychology, which downplayed or even denied the existence of “mind” (understood as an agency directed by human cognition and will), American modernists performed the mind in and as writing: as a potentiating agent of mental plasticity to reshape habits, modifiy beliefs and behaviors, and dramatize the strategies by which consent is “manufactured.” An American modernist literary “aesthetics of exposure” sought to arrest habitual thought by exposing the behaviorist strategies of conditioning behavior and regimenting beliefs. The major works examined in this chapter – Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929) and John Dos Passos’ the U.S.A trilogy (1936) – deploy strategies of psychological and textual fracture and fragmentation in order to make state-sponsored propaganda technique visible and available for critique.

Chapter 5 marks the beginning of a more pointed analysis and justification of partial excuse across Part III, as the target site of the Real Person Approach. The chapter is concerned with exploring the nature and purpose of partial excuse through a historical overview, and with clarifying the version of the defence used to underpin the Universal Partial Defence (UPD), through touring divergent definitional and structural approaches of other common law jurisdictions. Key issues that bear on the definition of the UPD are also introduced. This analysis forms the backdrop of the argument for universalising partial excuse across all offence categories and expanding its grounds beyond mental disorder and provocation/loss of control. Core challenges to universalisation are explained and responded to, concerning the application of partial excuse to homicide only, its characterisation as a form of mitigation at the pre-verdict stage, and issues relating to both coordination and the notion of partial responsibility.

In Chapter 9 Harriet Piercy, Head of English at Haggerston School in London, turns her attention to the Unites States. Drawing on her experience as a Fulbright scholar Nashville, Tennessee, Piercy explores the challenges of promoting spoken language in English classrooms, citing time constraints and exam pressures as significant obstacles. She compares the oracy practices in the US, where policies like the Common Core State Standards prioritize speaking and listening skills, to the UK’s less-defined approach. She discusses how US classrooms vary in their implementation of oracy teaching despite clear guidelines, emphasizing the importance of professional development and pedagogical approaches. Additionally, she examines the role of assessment in shaping classroom practices, noting the absence of formal speaking and listening assessments in Tennessee. Piercy concludes by advocating for inclusive oracy practices across schools, highlighting the need for sustained investment and shared understanding among educators.

This chapter traces the long trajectory of Holocaust testimony from the 1940s to the present. It notes that there are different temporal registers for testimony, from accounts offered during the war to retrospective accounts offered after 1945, sometimes decades later. It notes the ways in which the testimony considered valuable expanded over time to include not just that of survivors of camps or ghettos, but also that of hidden children or Jews living in hiding with false papers. It also evolved in content, as testimony came to not just remember the dead, but also shape the living and the reconstruction of Jewish life. Even material culture has been incorporated into testimony, as artifacts from survivors have become “sacred relics” of a sort.

This chapter establishes and problematizes the category of “survivor” and the ways in which its meaning changed over the postwar decades. The definition of survivors is “unstable,” and includes diverse groups, not just those who lived through the camps or ghettos, but also those in exile or hiding. The chapter discusses how trauma affected not just survivors, but also their children and grandchildren, in complex ways. It analyzes the ways in which the experience of the Holocaust affected family life and the intergenerational transfer of knowledge and culture, as well as the (re)construction of Jewish communal life.

Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that was crafted mainly by Europeans and North Americans, but that never achieved mainstream acceptance in the West. It was, instead, in the Arab states and Iran that Holocaust denial entered into conventional public opinion and politics. The false claim that Jews had “invented” the Holocaust both to extort money from wealthy countries and to justify the founding of Israel became a cornerstone of postwar antisemitism. In this, deniers recapitulate the logic of Nazi ideology in attributing a pervasive, hidden power to “the Jew.” The instrumental appeal of this to geopolitical foes of Israel explains why this conspiracy theory gained broader legitimacy in the Middle East than in Europe or North America.

It is unsurprising that the legacy of the Holocaust was central to postwar Europe, but it is striking that the Holocaust became no less important in postwar America. It can be argued that the Holocaust has been “Americanized.” This phrase was initially deployed as a pejorative by critics who decried what they saw as the commercialization and trivialization of Holocaust memory. In some cases, they even argued that Holocaust memory was instrumentalized in the service of specific political agendas – support for Israel and the consolidation of a specifically Jewish identity in a multicultural America. At the same time, given the size and diversity of the Jewish diaspora in the USA, there was no way the Holocaust could not become central to American-Jewish self-understanding and, therefore, become a core part of American culture more broadly.

The introduction highlights the enduring impact of the Holocaust, the global reach of its legacy, and the ways it has shaped all domains of social and cultural life. Briefly tracing the changing shape of Holocaust memory and post-Holocaust politics, it is argued that the Holocaust has become a global touchstone for thinking about mass atrocity. The Holocaust has become a master metaphor for evil, which has led to it being appropriated and misappropriated for diverse contemporary political uses in ways that are often detached from the historical event itself. The introduction suggests that the various chapters in the volume trace these developments across a range of geographical spaces and cultural practices.

Chapter 4 examines how countries with different scientific institutional histories and income levels have dealt with scientific uncertainty and the ethics of ‘experimental’ interventions using so-called mesenchymal ‘stem’ cells, that is cells of uncertain therapeutic character. Observing regulatory practices for clinical research and commercial interventions in the context of global competition, the chapter describes the complex intertwinement of catering for patient needs and demands, the protection of high quality scientific research, the affordability of testing methods, and the prospect of economic growth through investment into regenerative medicine in China and in higher-income countries (HICs). HICs that traditionally have had the power to define standards and conditions set by regulation, even when that power is on the wane, still enjoy considerable ‘regulatory immunity’: their reputation allows HICs to tolerate regulatory violations. In HICs, a scientific boundary is commonly asserted between established stem cell scientists and clinical providers that violate official guidelines. Scapegoating, here, is used as means to defend the reputation of the regulated collective against unauthorized, but tolerated clinical cell-applications. Examples show that the USA and the EU have used regulatory immunization to protect the reputation of stem cell communities alongside violators.