Climate activists are divided over whether to adopt strategies emphasizing stability and incremental change versus strategies promoting more extreme and immediate action. One way to promote policy stability is through private governance, that is, voluntary industry self-governance. Proponents argue this can stabilize expectations about the future, incentivize incremental reductions in emissions, and lock in policies and practices. This problem-solving approach serves to depoliticize debate but can lead to political backlash and repoliticization. I examine these dynamics through a case study of the financial sector, particularly the insurance industry. Collective attempts to ensure policy lock-in and stability include initiatives such as the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI), the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, and Net Zero Insurance Alliance. This is a case of failed depoliticization as demonstrated by the political backlash against these efforts.

This chapter addresses the Supreme Court’s recent, partly paradoxical lines of cases involving issues of presidential power, prerogative, and immunity. On the one hand, the Court has held that Article II and the Constitution’s overall structure endow the president with sweeping authorities and prerogatives. These include powers to control a “unitary” executive branch by removing officials who refuse to do the president’s bidding and, separately, a prerogative-like “immunity” from prosecution for many unlawful official acts, including ones that would constitute serious crimes if committed by anyone else. On the other hand, the Court has sought to limit the powers of agencies within the executive branch, which the president heads, on the theory that post–New Deal agency officials were allowed to assume functions that the Constitution reserves either to Congress or to the courts. Nowhere, this chapter explains, has the Court’s conservative supermajority pursued, or does it seem more likely to continue to pursue, a doctrinally revisionist agenda with more sweeping practical consequences.

In this chapter, I explore competition among students and parents in a North Korean elementary school. Despite the perception that competition is discouraged in socialist countries like North Korea, it is prevalent as a means to motivate citizens to increase productivity. During my childhood in North Korea, competing with friends was commonplace. Teachers encouraged competition as a method to motivate students to study hard. While capitalist societies openly embrace competition, in North Korea, it exists in a visible but unspoken form. People are encouraged to compete to "praise the Great leaders" rather than for personal goals. The norms and meaning of competition tend to vary depending on the context, as illustrated by my childhood experiences. I highlight competition in three areas: (a) competition in classes through publicized performance scores, (b) competition among students to meet material quotas (e.g., papers, apricot stones, copper, etc.) through "mini assignments," and (c) competition for student leadership positions among parents through bribery.

This chapter surveys the centrality of sex and sexuality to Joyce’s modernist experiment. Representing sexuality was vital to Joyce’s creative method because it demanded strategies that would define his prose: ambiguity, ellipsis, opacity, and obscurity. Gaps and silences marked the emergence of an inchoate modernism that characterized Joyce’s writing about sex – the subject of his fiction where form and content were most intimately entangled. A self-consciously radical frankness was essential to his commitment to innovation of subject and style, as he sought to define his creative practice against the ‘prudery’ of an imagined Victorianism. Sexual daring became an important aspect of his success in establishing himself at the heart of experimental international modernism, through little magazines and coterie publishing houses.

The economic reforms of China in 1978 and Vietnam in 1986 have spurred the emergence of privately owned enterprises, leading to increased competition across state-owned and privately owned enterprises under communist authoritarian regimes. Upon joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), both countries faced unavoidable international competition, particularly excelling in labor-intensive manufacturing industries due to low labor costs. China’s pragmatic approach to market-oriented forces has resulted in a growth gap favoring China over Vietnam. Despite this, both nations have made significant economic strides, transitioning to fast-growing middle-income countries and reducing global inequality. The onset of the US–China trade war in 2018 has seen Vietnam emerge as a major beneficiary, challenging China’s dominance in labor-intensive manufacturing industries. This shift highlights the potential for hegemonic transitions in competition dynamics. Additionally, this chapter illuminates pre-reform competition in both countries, where shortages of goods led to resource competition among citizens – an aspect often overlooked in existing literature focused on market competition post-reform.

This chapter reviews the Commission and Court’s case law on the application of A1P1 to intellectual property claims in light of the previous findings. It was not until the early 1980s that the first claims relating to IPRs were filed. A detailed analysis of the case law reveals how, by then, the Commission and Court had no difficulty in hearing complaints from multinational global corporations claiming to be victims of State violations of their right to enjoyment of possessions. Initial judicial deference to European domestic laws facilitated the anchoring of national legal fictionsinto the supranationallegal order of the ECHR, laying the ground for transnational protection of companies’ IPRs. The Court’s tilt away from the original moral intent of A1P1 later intensified in a series of landmark cases on patents, trademarks and copyright in which the Court adopted an autonomous reading A1P1 in line with European Union law,consolidating and deepening a liberal economic reading.

This chapter focuses on Neo-Victorian fiction as a sub-genre of the historical novel. It examines how British neo-Victorian texts are informed by Anglo-American and European postmodernist theories that challenged the division between history and literature. In this context, it contains discussions of a wide range of novels including Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance (1990), and Sarah Waters’s Victorian trilogy that have now become part of an ever-growing Neo-Victorian canon, while also engaging with more recent manifestations of Neo-Victorianism in TV and film adaptations. It explores how Neo-Victorianism has intersected with British political discourse; how authors’ investment in Britain’s history and Victorian literary culture problematises the Neo-Victorian novel’s position in the academy; the form’s perceived prestige; and its contribution to debates surrounding accuracy and authenticity to argue that neo-Victorianism can be read as a symptom of decadent postmodernity.

In order to be effective mathematics educators, teachers need more than content knowledge: they need to be able to make mathematics comprehensible and accessible to their students. Teaching Key Concepts in the Australian Mathematics Curriculum Years 7 to 10 ensures that pre-service and practising teachers in Australia have the tools and resources required to teach lower secondary mathematics.

By simplifying the underlying concepts of mathematics, this book equips teachers to design and deliver mathematics lessons at the lower secondary level. The text provides a variety of practical activities and teaching ideas that translate the latest version of the Australian Curriculum into classroom practice. It covers the challenges of middle year mathematics, including the current decline in student numeracy, as well as complex theories which teachers can struggle to explain clearly. Topics include number, algebra, measurement, space, statistics and probability. Whether educators have recently studied more complicated mathematics or are teaching out of field, they are supported to recall ideas and concepts that they may have forgotten – or that may not have been made explicit in their own education.

Authored by experienced classroom educators and academics, this book is a vital resource for pre-service and practising Years 7 to 10 mathematics teachers, regardless of their backgrounds and experiences.