‘What is a woman?’ Beauvoir asked in her 1949 feminist masterpiece, The Second Sex. Her answer is that woman has been constructed as ‘the Other’ vis-à-vis man: she is nothing in herself, she is just not a man. Her situation is the result of historical and social processes, which many people, including herself, erroneously perceive as natural and unchangeable. Is Beauvoir’s presentation of women still relevant to today’s world? Chapter 4 argues that, although she referred to 1940s European and North American societies, a substantial portion of her critique remains surprisingly pertinent. This chapter, while offering a general presentation of The Second Sex and its reception, focusses on some of its most philosophically interesting aspects, including the obstacles that society and culture pose to women’s self-creation. Busy with reproduction of life, notably domestic chores and motherhood, for Beauvoir, women do not pursue authentically held goals. Her view that women’s liberation can only be achieved collectively, through a transformation of society as a whole, can still play an extremely relevant role in debates not only about women but also any oppressed group.

In previous chapters, the added value of the capability approach (CA) for work was demonstrated at the conceptual level, organisational levels, and several specific contexts. In this chapter, we aim to demonstrate its added value for new developments in work, some of which are already underway and others that are foreseeable. We argue that even for disruptive, unforeseeable changes, the CA provides a framework for action dealing with them. Through the lens of the capability model, workers, enabled by leaders and professionals, can create environments that empower employees to adapt to changes while achieving their full potential. It highlights the importance of fostering resilience, flexibility, and sustainability within organisations to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by global trends. Actionable strategies for leveraging digital tools, embracing cultural diversity, and implementing eco-friendly practices can be implemented to enhance employee capabilities. By integrating these elements, decision-makers should drive transformative change that supports both individual well-being and organisational success in a rapidly evolving work landscape.

Propaganda and storytelling are key themes of this chapter. It examines the important roles of providence and martyrdom in constructing stories of the Irish rebellion and beyond, whether in the depositions or other accounts, including print. Both themes were important in building the rebellion and subsequent warfare as a confessional conflict, with providence and martyrology used for polemical purposes: to demonise the enemy, demonstrate divine favour for one’s cause and support co-religionists in their struggles. This played a crucial role in articulating the period as one of religious conflict above all, as violence, suffering and other ills were narrated and understood through recognisable confessional vocabulary, imagery and tropes. The chapter also considers the importance of martyrdom and martyrology in the emerging imperial context, with victims of violence in colonies – including Ireland – described in martyrological terms that contributed to justifying empire and disguising the violent intent and reality of imperial ventures.

Is the relationship between teacher leadership and principal leadership a win-win situation or a zero-sum game? Based on the data from two rounds of the Schools and Staffing Survey, it is found that the leadership relationship is characterized by a win-win situation in six out of the seven leadership domains. The practice of win-win is more prevalent at the elementary than at the secondary level. The empirical findings on the predominantly win-win relationship between teachers’ and principals’ leadership suggest the win-win theory is not utopian and provides a foundation for integrating principal and teacher leadership to bridge the fault line for school renewal.

Although only two of the 26 principles enshrined in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration are devoted specifically to the protection of nature, they have encouraged a large number of states to conclude various international agreements of a sectoral nature, which were supplemented in 1992 by a global agreement on biodiversity. In addition to tracing the influence of the Stockholm Declaration on international nature protection law, this chapter discusses the European Union’s (EU) role in the development of international law in this field. Conversely, the chapter also looks at how EU internal rules on nature protection have been influenced by the obligations stemming from multilateral environment agreements and illustrates the cross-fertilisation that has occurred between EU and international law.

In the last decade, the number of youths engaged in transnational jihadism has been increasing, with many of them joining armed forces in the Iraqi–Syrian conflict zone and committing acts of violence in France or abroad. The terrorist attacks on the headquarters of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall and surrounding cafés in 2015 can be seen as France’s 9/11 and a turning point in its counter-terrorism policy: the war on terror had reached French soil. Against this socio-political setting, French legal institutions have been extensively mobilised. A two-year state of emergency was introduced between 2015 and 2017, gradually becoming part of common criminal law. The number of trials against individuals involved in armed groups on the Iraqi–Syrian front has reached a level unprecedented in the history of French criminal justice: terrorism has become a phenomenon of mass prosecution.

This chapter’s survey of Los Angeles’s African American literary history concentrates on how the literature of South Los Angeles and South Central, major centers of population and culture in Black LA, portrays space, history, and belonging, as well as with racism and inequality. The chapter discusses Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), and the widespread, enduring impact of the Watts Writers Workshop, which emerged in response to the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Batiste also addresses the depiction of racism, challenges of urban life, and the promise of social revolution in works by Quincy Troupe, Kamau Daàood, Wanda Coleman, Walter Mosley, Michael Datcher, Jervey Tervalon, Sanyika Shakur, Dana Johnson, Lisa Teasley, and Paul Beatty. Batiste dedicates particular attention to the publishing ecosystem of Black popular fiction, which often escapes scholarly attention and in which several Black LA authors prospered throughout the 1990s.

The introduction brings the reader into the world of seventeenth-century Ireland. It offers a brief overview of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially the legacies of rebellion and violence that were present at the opening of the study in 1603. It considers broadly English understandings of and policy towards Ireland across a wide timespan, before introducing some of the key differences that emerged in the early seventeenth century. It offers a survey of important historiography and a reflection on source materials, particularly the 1641 Depositions and associated materials, before concluding with an overview of the book’s structure.

This chapter shows how the booster myths of early Los Angeles literature grew in scale and potency alongside the city itself, not least as Hollywood came increasingly to exemplify shimmering vacuity and false promise in the public imagination. Critiques of such a city arrived both either side of World War II from a welter of writers including Upton Sinclair, Don Ryan, William Faulkner, Myron Brinig, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Budd Schulberg. Gustafson notes that 1939 marked a golden year for LA literature, with the publication of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, John Fante’s Ask the Dust, and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. Less remarked upon historically, but surfaced by Gustafson here, this is also the period in which a more diverse vision of LA literature began to emerge, as the city became a setting and subject in writings by racialized minority authors like the African American Chester Himes and Filipino American Carlos Bulosan.

The chapter ‘Digital Diplomats’ examines how smartphones have become indispensable to the everyday workings of Brussels’ political and diplomatic life. Drawing on ethnographic vignettes – from a diplomat’s panic at forgetting her phone to a trilogue meeting where multiple devices shape negotiations – the chapter argues that smartphones are not merely tools, but integral to the EU’s everyday governance. These devices function as shapeshifters: they are information portals, negotiation aids, social outlets and even diplomatic prostheses, extending the reach and capabilities of their users.

Inspired by the scholarship of Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour, the chapter frames smartphones as central to the ‘diplomatic assemblage’ – a dynamic interplay of people, practices and technologies. The phone’s omnipresence transforms how work is done, from protocol staff using step-counters to assure delegates, to diplomats managing multiple conversations simultaneously. Yet, this dependency also introduces new vulnerabilities, as seen in rising cybersecurity threats and the institutional push to regulate device use.

Ultimately, the chapter reveals how digital technologies are redefining diplomatic bodies and practices, making the EU’s political life increasingly hybrid. To understand contemporary governance, we must recognise the smartphone not just as a tool, but as a constitutive element of the Brussels Bubble’s social and political fabric.

This chapter looks at the work of John and Michael Banim, who emerged as important Catholic novelists in the late 1820s. Their work attempted to capture the energy of O’Connellite politics in fiction, blending rhetorical set pieces with melodramatic incident. Public speech and oratory become centrally important to their work, and the influence of Richard Lalor Shiel on John Banim in particular becomes clear on reading his work.

This conclusion reflects on the importance of studying the two world wars as moments of interconnectedness, when societies, economies, and cultures interacted with one another across national boundaries. It insists on the importance of moving beyond solely diplomatic, military, and political histories to instead prioritize transnational and transimperial perspectives, acknowledging groups and individuals above and below the level of states. Several categories are particularly useful in this endeavor: home fronts, colonial mobilization, captivity, occupations, and neutrality. Taking stock of these helps to highlight new frameworks of experience spread across the world. Finally, there is the important question of the relationship between the world wars and globalization. By their nature and by the reactions they prompted, these two global conflicts were ultimately the agents as much as the opponents of that process.

Chapter 11 introduces students’ early engagement with Statistics in the Foundation to Year 2 level. It focuses on key concepts such as posing questions, collecting data, and interpreting simple visual representations. You will explore essential language, sample activities, and assessment strategies, along with common misunderstandings to look for when supporting young learners in developing foundational data skills.