There is evidence that language has some innate basis. Babies are born with certain expectations as to how language works, and language learning, according to Chomsky, is simply a matter of parameter setting. Pinker and Bloom (1990) take an evolutionary perspective on language. Chomsky’s recent theoretical work suggests that very little of the language ‘organ’ is specific to language. Some language deficits have been traced to a malfunctioning variant of the gene FOXP2. While this initially excited attention as ‘the language gene’ or ‘the grammar gene’, subsequent research has shown the true story to be more complicated. Research suggests that language may well have been around for almost 2 million years. There are a number of hypotheses suggesting that language evolved to fulfil a social function, such as social grooming (binding groups together), the making of social contracts (to enable monogamy) and the use of language to impress potential mates.

Chapter 5 examines the regimes for the international trade in dangerous chemicals and in hazardous and radioactive wastes. Wastes are not prima facie a global common resource but rather a negative resource produced by industries and households. Wastes are usually viewed as a burden, an externality, and the question has been how to share the costs associated with such an externality. In the late 1980s, the not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) syndrome in the developed world drove up waste disposal costs, which, in turn, motivated states and waste generators to find cheaper disposal options in the developing world. As a result, wastes were transferred to states with no infrastructure to deal with them. The outcry generated by such transfers led to the adoption of an international regime based on the forced enclosure of wastes according to the principles of self-sufficiency and proximity. This forced enclosure has been contributing to illegal waste trade conducted by criminal networks. Other issues that we examine in this chapter are the legality of nuclear weapons testing, the international regulation of nuclear power plants, and the international response to nuclear accidents.

Chapter 10 uses Louisville, Kentucky (a metropolitan area with eviction rates double the national average) as a case study to critique how housing markets and eviction practices not only favor landlords’ property rights over the rights of tenants but also play important roles in maintaining racial segregation and in the day-to-day marginalized lives of the urban poor. Evictions perpetuate racial inequity and segregation in housing and are embedded within a system of white privilege that benefits historically white places. Eviction rates are compared to housing segregation patterns generally and to the historic redlining maps specifically to show the relationships of these racially unequal patterns of housing opportunity. Eviction is a means of control of disadvantaged neighborhoods and an institutionalization of racism in the urban landscape.

Evolutionary psychologists use the concept of reciprocal altruism/direct reciprocation to help explain cooperative behaviour. Direct reciprocation consists of self-sacrificing acts between two unrelated individuals that are based on delayed reciprocation. Documented cases of reciprocity are known in non-human species including the giving of regurgitated blood between vampire bats and mutual aid in vervet monkeys. Tit-for-tat has been labelled an evolutionarily stable strategy, or ESS. An ESS is a strategy that cannot be bettered provided sufficient members of a group adopt it. Humans playing prisoner’s dilemma repeatedly develop the ESS tit-for-tat strategy. This suggests that humans seek a willingness to cooperate but also bear a grudge when this cooperation is not reciprocated. Aggression and violence between the sexes covers: sexual harassment, intimate partner violence and rape. While rape and sexual harassment are almost exclusively male preserves, intimate partner violence involving female-on-male acts is actually slightly more common than the reverse.

It is of great importance to integrate human-centered design concepts at the core of both algorithmic research and the implementation of applications. In order to do so, it is essential to gain an understanding of human–computer interaction and collaboration from the perspective of the user. To address this issue, this chapter initially presents a description of the process of human–AI interaction and collaboration, and subsequently proposes a theoretical framework for it. In accordance with this framework, the current research hotspots are identified in terms of interaction quality and interaction mode. Among these topics, user mental modeling, interpretable AI, trust, and anthropomorphism are currently the subject of academic interest with regard to interaction quality. The level of interaction mode encompasses a range of topics, including interaction paradigms, role assignment, interaction boundaries, and interaction ethics. To further advance the related research, this chapter identifies three areas for future exploration: cognitive frameworks about Human–AI Interaction, adaptive learning, and the complementary strengths of humans and AI.

Nathalie Carnes takes a fine selection of concrete examples from different times and cultures to show that material objects, icons, images, and art can be a natural extension of Christian worship. Through the incarnation and its continuation, they can carry a set of meanings that enhance and clarify the liturgy and make it a sensory reality in complementary ways.

The chapter explores the Indian public’s proactive efforts to participate and insert themselves into the constitution-making process. This ran against the accepted wisdom at the time, which held that constitutions should be crafted by mature political elites and constitutional experts behind closed doors. Their insistence on having a say ultimately forced the Constituent Assembly to incorporate the public into its chambers and procedures, and it turned the constitution-making process into an open public affair. Newspapers, magazines, and radio programmes closely tracked the constitution-making process, and the draft constitution became a bestseller. The Indian public acted as unsolicited citizens, as sovereign-subjects, in their pursuit of their constitutional visions and aspirations. Even before the constitution arrived, the Indian public was busy working out its potential implications for their lives. Indians claimed ownership of the constitution, suggested amendments, translated it into vernacular languages, and they held the central and provincial governments to account on its basis. They, thus, legitimated the constitution even while it was being made.

This chapter explains the reasons for the popularity of the anti-Iranian movie Not Without My Daughter in 1990s Türkiye despite the country’s own harrowing experience with Hollywood’s Midnight Express (1977). In conjunction, I analyze a moment of failed outreach from Iranian woman reformists to a devout, US-educated Turkish woman politician called Merve Kavakçı, who was denied her seat in parliament because of her headscarf in 1999. The chapter demonstrates how US discourses and Iran–Türkiye comparisons influenced the work of Turkish and Iranian women’s activists who sought to expand Muslim women’s political participation and reform repressive clothing codes in the 1980s and 1990s.

Rather than thinking of nature versus nurture it is better to think about interactions between genes and the environment. The Santa Barbara School of evolutionary psychology proposed that human cognition is the result of innately specified domain-specific mental modules. Babies have certain expectations of the way that the physical world operates. Infants of at least three months of age have the knowledge that objects exist independently of their ability to perceive them. Babies have preference for face-like stimuli from birth and learn the details of human faces rapidly. Young children have an understanding of the role of mental states as a cause of behaviour. This skill, known as theory of mind, becomes more sophisticated as children develop. It is measured by a number of tasks such as false belief task and the eyes test, in which participants are required to judge how people feel from looking at their eyes.

Chapter 1 offers a historical introduction as well as an overview of existing research in the field. It argues that by mapping out the trajectories of former volunteer soldiers, it is possible to see the many ways in which the Spanish Civil War and the broader anti-fascist engagement of the inter-war period could constitute a transformative experience and event; an event that expanded volunteers’ political horizons and gradually opened up possibilities for border-crossing political engagement in the post-war era. Thus, it sets the stage for the case studies constituting the main part of the book, showing that the political and military influence of the volunteers in Spain did not necessarily come to an end in 1938/1939 or even in 1945. In a few yet significant cases, it stretched across the globe far into the Cold War period.