How did early modern women and their families know they were pregnant? Childbearing guides of the period suggested that married women could know they were pregnant very soon after sex, and was related to moral and sexual continency. Women were encouraged to ‘keep accounts’ in their paperwork of their health and bodies, both as a tool to discover pregnancy quickly and as part of the broader culture of Protestant self-examination. Writing about conception and pregnancy sought to impose certainty on what was otherwise an ambiguous experience. Since keeping good accounts and records was linked to piety, orderly gendered labour and status, these records became examples of the respectability of families more broadly.

In Chapter 5, we examine whether Black and non-Black elected officials differ in their discussion of what Mansbridge (1999) describes as uncrystallized issues. Mansbridge (1999) argues that uncrystallized political issues are those which have not been on the political agenda for very long and politicians have not yet taken public stances. As a result, uncrystallized issues provide another good avenue to explore whether Black elected officials engage in more proactive racial rhetorical representation than non-Black elected officials. While Mansbridge’s (1999) hypothesis was theoretical, in Chapter 5 we set out to empirically assess whether descriptive representatives are the most likely to speak out on Black centered uncrystallized issues. We find empirical support for Mansbridge’s (1999) uncrystallized issues hypothesis using the hand coding of race-based appeals in press releases during the 114th through 116th Congresses and a case study of press releases and Tweets discussing racial health disparities in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our point of departure has been that, by using the language of solidarity, we – consciously or not – participate in the politics of it. The group of authors coming together in this volume contribute analyses of solidarity as a norm, a process, a practice, or a vocabulary creating polyperspectivity. In so doing, we let the course of our analysis be directed by the actors we investigate over a span of time in history. From the start, our intent has been to engage in a double move: to deploy history as an interpretive practice – a theory, a methodology, a philosophy – with which to engage law; and, simultaneously, to offer history as a substantive arena in which other interpretive practices from across a broader array of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences can engage with law.

In this paper, I discuss the possibilities of transnational worker solidarity, with a focus on the potential of digital communication that became normalized during the Corona pandemic. I draw on Sally Scholz’s distinction between different types of solidarity and argue that historical forms of worker solidarity were often a combination of social and political forms of solidarity, in concrete local settings responding to concrete local problems. I also draw on economic and psychological considerations for explaining how these constellations helped bring about solidaristic action. I then provide arguments for why, despite various reasons for pessimism, transnational worker solidarity is, today, needed maybe more than ever. New digital technologies and the social habits that are developing around them have the potential to give a new impulse to transnational worker solidarity, because they can create levels of connectedness and trust that are closer to those experienced by certain historical worker communities, for whom social and political solidarity overlapped. But these opportunities can often not be grasped because of legal obstacles. Therefore, I conclude by postulating that workers should have a right to “know their colleagues” along value chains, allowing those who work together to connect in ways that potentially lead to solidaristic action.