Readers have very credibly seen their most innovative concepts about gender reflected in James Joyce’s works. Joyce presented gender as it affects our attempts to live collectively and on shared terms, suggesting that gender flexibility is crucial to understanding human community, the polis, and thus the political. He explored gender as a physical experience, a socially intersectional construction, a performative speech act, and a phenomenological gesture while consistently challenging the stability of gender difference. Joyce’s famously ambiguous prose remains the creative strength of his oeuvre, which may put political and social wrongs to right by witnessing to a long history of gender-based violence, but equally may perpetuate old ideals in the service of strange comedy. His texts place responsibility on the reader to make meaning and justice in the world, while his words also provide readers with more fluid possibilities to counter the old inequities of the sex/gender system.

Using the World Value Survey from Wave 2 (1989–1993) to Wave 7 (2017–2020), Study 1 demonstrates that individuals in individualistic regions exhibit more anti-competition attitudes compared to those in collectivist regions. Additionally, individuals in authoritarian, socialist, and collectivist Asian regions show the highest level of pro-competition attitudes, followed by those in democratic, capitalist, and individualistic Western regions and those in democratic, capitalist, and collectivist Asian regions. Study 2 reveals that competition is more likely to be endorsed by individuals who prioritize the individual’s responsibility over the government’s responsibility, value private ownership of businesses over government ownership of businesses, emphasize hard work for success, and prefer income incentives over income equality. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of materialism and self-determination are also inclined to endorse competition. Notably, variations exist in the relationship between individual difference variables and attitudes toward competition among the regions.

Chapter 4 addresses the radical change in the legal landscape of firearms litigation as a consequence of Congressional enactment of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (2005) (PLCAA). The chapter traces the history of events leading to and precipitating the firearms industry and its legislative allies to introduce and enact the major statute conferring nearly blanket immunity from suit on the entire firearms industry. The discussion sets forth the constituent parts of PLCAA, including its statement of purposes, findings, definitions, and the six exceptions to immunity from suit. The chapter suggests that after 2005 PLCAA effectively stemmed the tide of firearms litigation and references the plaintiffs’ difficulties in invoking the PLCAA exceptions – to be discussed in more detail in ensuing chapters. The discussion notes the conceptual and doctrinal PLCAA victory the Sandy Hook Elementary School plaintiffs achieved in invoking PLCAA’s predicate statute exception and the implications of that judicial victory. The chapter closes with a discussion of the repeated unsuccessful legislative attempts by gun control advocates in Congress to repeal PLCAA.

This chapter traces the emergence of Joyce’s aesthetic from Stephen Hero to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, analyzing the development of Stephen Dedalus as would-be artist in the context of Irish colonial experience. It pays particular attention to the influence of Oscar Wilde. Both Wilde’s Picture of Doran Gray and Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist belong to the Bildungsroman tradition, that is, to the novel of development, which their narratives challenge and transform by presenting the central character’s growth to maturity as deviating from cultural expectations rather than fulfilling them. Joyce’s narrative, however, points toward a new nation’s emergence.

One of the concerns of postmodern British fiction was the textual and discursive means by which historical events are communicated to the present through story-telling. Much post-millennial fiction still dips into the postmodern toolbox; it is not unusual to read novels with a fragmented and non-linear narrative, for example, but these novels focus instead on the now, while asking what does it mean to be now, to recognise that the past and the present exist simultaneously, and how does this translate into an understanding of temporality. As Lauren Berlant has argued, neoliberal economic policies mobilize instability, and that instability is evident in contemporary fiction’s representations of history, genre and identity. Some novels examined here invoke past and present through an illusion of narrative simultaneity, while others investigate how the powerful can write and rewrite the present and the past and in doing so can disrupt perceptions of temporality.

This chapter explores the applicability of competition law, particularly in its EU dimension, to actvities, tournaments, broadcasting and others of the ATP, although the same rules apply mutatis mutandis to the WTA and the ITF. The chapter commences by examining good governance standards in EU law and policy and explores access to the organisational market for rival tennis tours under competition law. In doing so, it examines the legality of blocking rivals from accessing the organisational market, in particular in relation to rules 1.07, 1.14 and 8.05A(2)(e) of the ATP Rulebook. The chapter assesses the compatibility of these rules with EU competition law, especially in relation to recent judgments adopted by the CJEU and whether the restrictions to competition imposed therein are compatible with legitimate objectives and proportionality. The chapter examines whether wild cards are compatible with Article 56 of the TFEU and the freedom to provide services.

Because the full reconstruction emerges piecemeal over the course of the study, this chapter starts by summarizing the most fundamental ways in which Aquinas connects the big-picture elements of his ethics through his understanding of happiness, both individual and common. The chapter then offers reasons for thinking that Aquinas’s ethics of happiness is still worth taking seriously today. In particular, it focuses on three illustrative aspects that make Aquinas’s ethical views distinctive and appealing. The first is Aquinas’s account of the nature of happiness and how that account fits into his broader understanding of well-being. The second is Aquinas’s account of the relationship between the right and the good. The third is Aquinas’s account of the most comprehensive role that virtue plays in ethics and human life.

This chapter explores the function of ethics in the International Tennis Federation (ITF). It starts off by setting out the difference between ethics and law and then introduces the ITF’s substantive ethical rules. It explores covered persons under these rules, as well as the incumbent basic and other rules. It then examines the role and functions of the ITF’s Ethics Commission and analyses the few cases that it has entertained over the years. The chapter examines how ethics investigations are conducted, as well as the nature of relevant decisions by the Commission, which classifies breaches as either aggravated or non-aggravated. It futher examines the suspensive effect of the notice of charge and recourse to the ITF’s Independent Tribunal and the CAS, as well as the range of sanctions that may be employed. Finally, the chapter explores the elections and Eligibility Panel of the ITF in respect of those seeking elections to the higher executive echelons of the ITF.

Public schools exist to educate students. Local school districts are governed by elected school boards. But only adults vote in local school board elections. I argue that these three facts are the primary cause of low academic achievement in American public schools, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. The institutions of democratic control cause unacceptably poor performance because the main concerns of adults who vote in local school board elections are not aligned with the academic needs of students. Adult interests – organized around partisanship, identity politics, employment concerns, and property values – dictate what schools do, often at the expense of academic achievement. I also argue that the existing literature, focused on the debate about the role of money and teachers’ unions in education, overlooks other major problems with public education. Finally, I also anticipate the main counterarguments to my thesis and “prebunk” them by showing why they are wrong.

Chapter 7 traces Commerzbank’s trajectory of financialisation to highlight how its extroverted strategies differed from those of Deutsche Bank. Commerzbank is a less-likely actor of financialisation as it is a smaller bank and has historically focused on the European SME sector. Commerzbank attempted a transformation without major relocation, and redirected fewer resources to its strategies of liability management (LM). While it established the first German foreign branch in the US in 1971, it never bought a major US or British institution. Commerzbank’s more hesitant approach meant that the bank failed to uphold itself in US money markets several times. The chapter shows that Commerzbank’s significant US immersion only happened during the GFC when it bought the larger Dresdner Bank during the 2008 financial crisis but could not manage Dresdner’s heavy exposure to US RMBS, eventually resulting in a public bailout. Commerzbank’s alternative story demonstrates that the rise of US finance made LM a transformative but differentiated concern for non-US banks.