Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the book. It sets out the research context, key research questions, research methodologies and other relevant information about the book. This sets the stage for the discussion of substantive topics in the following chapters.

To open this eceletic book of ideas, we present the key themes and ask the question, Is our education system providing the right opportunities, knowledge and skills to empower children and young people to thrive on planet Earth? Introducing the concept of the series, we explain that there seem to be three existential uncertainties - the climate and environmental crises, fractured communities and insecurities about self and purpose - that require a diverse collection of voices and their ideas to bridge academia with the practitoner wisdom in classrooms.

Chapter 7 addresses changes in fundamental rights within the tension between social evolution and constitutional stability. How is constitutional thinking responding to the challenge posed to fundamental rights by non-state actors? How can we understand the increasing importance of technology for freedom of expression? These questions lie at the heart of the sociological view of fundamental rights as social institutions arising from modernisation. This perspective emphasises the function of fundamental rights and the emergence, growth, and impact of these norms, in contrast to the state-centred, mostly defensive understanding of fundamental rights that prevails in legal practice. The Swiss legal system provides an enlightening case study for the socially based expansion of fundamental rights. At the end of the 1950s, the Federal Supreme Court was a global pioneer in recognising various unwritten fundamental rights, resolving the tension between social change and constitutional stability through the imposition of strict conditions on the acknowledgement of unwritten rights. This makes it a remarkable example of how a national supreme court interprets its role as guardian of the development of fundamental rights with restraint, while appealing to social acceptance when democratic legitimacy was formally lacking.

This chapter advocates for Alter-Native Constitutionalism’s prioritisation of vernacular understandings of property and housing within South African law, challenging the colonial legacy of ‘lex nullius’ that undermines Black South Africans’ land claims. It critiques the uncommon law’s failure to recognise the Ntu’s historically-rooted, multigenerational land-based relationships and emphasises the interconnectedness of property and housing. The chapter uses Ntu Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation set out in Chapter 6 to critique the ways in which, in its precedents, the Constitutional Court has interpreted the property and housing clauses to the near-complete exclusion of vernacular law’s layered property rights system. It argues that courts, as part of the state, should enforce these constitutional protections using Alter-Native Constitutionalism to uphold vernacular land rights. Further, arguing that the courts must prioritise equitable housing access over strict property rights, the chapter uses the Salem case’s limited ‘sharing model’ attempts vis-à-vis restitution to show that vernacular law’s ‘access-to-occupation’ could be feasibly extended throughout South African ‘property law’ in a manner that would reduce forced evictions and balance state, ‘owner’ and beneficial occupiers’ interests. The chapter thus illustratively pushes for judicial interpretations that better reflect ordinary people’s socio-economic realities, needs and sociocultural values, as well as constitutional commitments.

The introduction outlines the arguments of the book and places it in context of existing studies of the plebiscite and Sarah Wambaugh. The latter has only recently become a subject of inquiry, with only a handful of articles examining her career. Examining Wambaugh illuminates overlooked aspects of contemporary history and the new field of women’s international thought. The plebiscite, meanwhile, is normally studied from political science or legal perspectives. Although historical studies of individual plebiscites exist, the technique as a whole has not been studied historically. The history of the plebiscite complements studies of self-determination, with both having been constrained and ‘domesticated’ over time.

This chapter examines the applicability of the term “cosmopolitanism” to Indian Ocean contexts through the question of language, asking: How does one represent a multilingual past using the medium of historical fiction? It examines the use of multilingualism and translation in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies (2008) and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise (1994), novels that draw on multilingual nineteenth-century sources to tell stories of cross-cultural encounters in the Indian Ocean. These novels use various textual strategies, such as direct inscription of multiple languages or indirect description of linguistic difference, to portray a multilingual Indian Ocean encounters. Closely examining these textual moments alongside the novels’ sources reveals the limits of liberal cosmopolitanisms constructed both within and through the texts. They articulate a politics of language that shapes cosmopolitan intercourse in the Indian Ocean, and in doing so, self-reflexively critique the Anglophone text as a medium of cosmopolitan exchange today.

This chapter demonstrates the importance of comparative analysis of the choice, placing and treatment of illustrations in the text. Here I list the eight surviving sets of the Lancelot-Grail made in the same cultural contexts. I analyse a pair of copies of the Estoire del saint Graal attributable to Metz in the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century, comparing them with MS Royal 14 E.III, the most fully illustrated surviving copy. Both Metz manuscripts show special interest in the end of the story and the tomb of King Lancelot, ancestor of Lancelot du Lac, and one of them shows particular interest in depictions of the Grail.  Perhaps it was commissioned by a member of the clergy or by a devout lay person. In this period we have few names of patrons or makers and conclusions must be based on what is in each manuscript and the pictorial choices made there.

Chapter 1 introduces realism and reference and provides an account of why these issues have been ignored in Jewish philosophy and theology. The second half of the chapter demonstrates that antitheoretical accounts have been dominant in the study of rabbinic theology and that a realist approach has significant historical and constructive advantages.

Chapter 9 examines the issue of whether and how foreign civil judgements against overseas-listed Chinese companies will be recognized and enforced in China. As overseas-listed Chinese companies usually have their main assets located in China, it is important that Chinese courts recognize and enforce foreign securities judgments. However, there are many difficulties in this area, which undermines the efficacy of the regulation of cross-border securities transactions. In quest of solutions, this chapter assesses the possibility of suing Chinese companies in the offshore financial centers where they are incorporated, finding that there would be similar issues with judgment enforcement in China. It also examines the viability of using arbitration as an alternative, arguing that arbitration may only supplement, rather than substitute, court litigation for resolving securities disputes.

A survey of the evidence for textile production and trade shows extensive market activities, supported by state enforcement of agreements. The most intrusive form of state intervention was the imposition of a monthly quota to be delivered by weavers, accounting for up to half of their production volume. This may have represented the transformation of an existing quota arrangement attested in New Kingdom Egypt. However, the cash-based Ptolemaic system, in which weavers were compensated and could substitute cash payments for their deliveries, had a different dynamic. The stable demand offered by the quotas offset some of the risk of production for the market by the weavers. This arrangement made the state into an oversized market player, but the textiles it collected were not sold through retail concessions but put to practical use or exported. In addition, weavers and other occupations were subject to taxation in cash, the state levied customs and sales taxes, and it derived revenues from flax cultivation and sheep husbandry, likewise without exercising exclusive control and using private contractors. Attempts at local monopolies were rather undertaken by professional associations.

Chapter 8 focuses on Machiavelli’s mature theory of the state in the Discorsi. It begins by drawing attention to the extent to which his theory continues to be mounted as an attack upon the prevalent pattern of neo-classical political discourse in the humanist writings of his predecessors, which had defined and explicated the civitas, the populus, and the res publica as forms of civil association. Their political arguments had been predicated upon a belief in natural human sociability. As in Il Principe, so in the Discorsi, Machiavelli’s theory of the state involves him in rejecting these philosophical presuppositions entirely and in supplying a new philosophical picture of the state as a body. After identifying some new challenges which now face Machiavelli in his account of ‘the free state’, this chapter shows how Machiavelli uses Book 1, chapter 2, to furnish two novel pieces of his theory. The first consists in a conjectural history of the state; the second articulates a genealogy of virtue. That Machiavelli’s explanation of the generation of a moral vocabulary among humans is ensconced within his account of the formation of the state is of lasting significance for our understanding of the architecture of his philosophy.

This chapter asks the first of three questions about aid projects: what happens when politics is made central to its work. Charitable humanitarianism usually promotes itself as operating outside of politics. In Southern Africa, the Clutton-Brocks practised a form of inter-racial cooperation with the politics very much left in. The Cold Comfort Farm experiment near Harare was an affront to white minority rule. Clutton-Brock was deported, and his chief collaborator, Didymus Mutasa, was imprisoned. It failed as a practical aid project. Yet the grassroots initiative inspired others to establish similar ventures elsewhere: at Nyafaru on the border with Mozambique; in Malawi; and, most significantly, in Ruvuma in Tanzania. The memoirs and biographies of many Zimbabwean political leaders mention Clutton-Brock and Cold Comfort Farm for not only alleviating poverty through cooperative self-help but also for placing the spotlight on the underlying causes of poverty: the racist legislation of the Rhodesian government, particularly in regard to land tenure and ownership.