Chapter 8 is concerned with the policy community and in making recommendations at international, state, regional and local levels. The first task is to refine the results of the study, the second is to determine a set of generic observations and the third is to present country-specific recommendations. Defining a recommendation and distinguishing it from mere wish fulfilment are by no means simple tasks and some recommendations available in the literature are so general that it is difficult to interpret their meaning with any degree of precision. That is why the recommendations should be realisable. The chapters offers a suite of generic recommendations suitable for consideration in many jurisdictions before moving on to suggest very specific recommendations for each of the eight case study jurisdictions investigated. A certain reticence in acknowledging the salience of these recommendations is particularly characteristic of international migrants, refugees and what are sometime called translational workers as national and local authorities will determine that their obligation is to provide instruction in each state”s dominant language so as to enable the residents to function within the “normal” parameters of the educational, health and social services. Accordingly, while the focus of the investigation is on the reception and adoption of the new speaker concept as an element in policy formulation, the narrative also seeks to strengthen the interpretation by providing additional information on the various contexts within which the investigation was undertaken.

This chapter examines sequences of offers by sellers in gourmet shops, video documented in a dozen cities across Europe, focusing on offers of a taste of cheese. Such offers to taste are shown to occur in two types of sequential contexts. They are made when a customer has expressed interest in a product but displays some hesitation in deciding whether to purchase it or not. Such offers to taste pursue sale of the cheese; they are not simple small gifts. Participants orient to this character of the offers by treating them as providing assistance in decision making. On the other hand, if the offer is made sequentially too late or too early, it is rejected, underlining the pursuit of sale at work in an offer of a taste. A contrasting environment of offers is also examined. In these cases, a plate of small pre-cut pieces of cheese are on the counter for anyone to try. The offers are typically accepted by the customer but without leading to buying. This enriches our understanding of the preference organization of offers and requests, and the relationships between benefactor/beneficiary, further supporting the relationship between the offer and the pursuit of the offerer’s interests.

The chapter looks in detail at Churchill’s post-Second World War campaign for European unity. It begins by explaining the concepts of ‘the English-speaking peoples’ and ‘Christian civilisation’ that informed his thinking, before outlining the evolution of his thought through exposure to the ideas of Coudenhove-Kalergi and Briand. Prior to the Second World War, Churchill stated explicitly that Britain should not be a member of a proposed United States of Europe, but his ideas continued to evolve. In 1940 his government made the offer of Franco-British Union, and by 1942 he was promoting the idea of a Council of Europe as a counterweight to Russian ‘barbarism’. Defeated at the 1945 election, his Zurich speech and ensuing United Europe campaign are seen within the context of his desire to demonstrate his continued relevance on the world stage and against the backdrop of the developing Cold War. Nonetheless, they were based on sincere beliefs that helped inspire a broader transnational movement. The chapter concludes with the ambiguities in Churchill’s views on the role of Britain in Europe and argues that they may be a ‘problematic guide’ to more recent European politics.

The chapter examines the transfer of the item(s) from the customer’s hands into the hands of the seller. This transfer is a crucial part of many commercial transactions, as the seller must enter the item number into the shop’s inventory system, both to learn the price and to subtract the item from inventory. Exploring data from ‘kiosks’ or convenience stores across Europe, the precise details of this manual transfer of items are examined There are two general methods by which the transfer is enacted: in the first, the customer gives the item directly into the hand(s) of the seller; in the second, the customer places the item on the counter and the seller picks it up. Which method unfolds depends on a variety of factors, including the seller’s physical availability at the moment the customer approaches the counter, the kinds of items purchased, and whether the seller has anticipated the transfer by reaching out their hand, in a shape recognizable as ready to ‘take’. These two methods are seen to reveal the moral and commercial nature of the manipulation of objects, and ultimately of the transaction.

In 1977, Roberto Bolaño moved from Mexico City to Paris and eventually to Spain. His works from the beginning of the 80s such as Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce (with A.G, Porta) and Antwerp, set in Catalonia, and A Little Lumpen Novelita - a story set in Rome -, portray the social crisis at the end of the Spanish Democratic Transition and the so-called Lead Years in Italy. The Costa Brava landscape and the town of Blanes, where he resided from 1985 onwards, would become the settings of The Skating Rink and The Third Reich. The 1992 Barcelona of Distant Star, the 1939 Paris of Monsieur Pain, and other European settings of Woes of the True Policeman and 2666 recreate the dislocations of different lives in exile and the conflicts of those who cross the West’s established borders and logic, transgressing national identitary configuration itself. This chapter will map the complex reflections of Bolaño, an icon of the global writer, on the Spanish and European reality of the end of the 20th and beginnings of the 21st Centuries, as well as on the potential, limitations, and cracks within these trans-Atlantic connections.

Mapping Roberto Bolaño’s worlds, “literary” and “non-literary” alike, invites the work of many hands. In that collaborative spirit, conceived and organized in four parts – “Geographical, Social, and Historical Contexts,” “Shaping Events and Literary History,” “Genres, Discourses, Media,” and “Aesthetics, Culture, and Politics” – the twenty-nine essays that follow bring together the work of a distinguished group of scholars representing a range of disciplines. The volume itself is thus a nexus of many overlapping worlds, of locations and perspectives aligned and divergent, a site to encourage conversations about Bolaño’s work for generations to come, to 2666 and beyond.

Underground Mathematics tells the story of subterranean geometry, a forgotten discipline that developed in the silver mines of early modern Europe. Seven case studies describe how an original culture of accuracy and measurement paved the way for technical and scientific innovations. Based on a variety of original manuscripts, maps and archive material, it recounts how knowledge was crafted and circulated among practitioners in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. Specific chapters deal with the material culture of surveying, map-making, expertise and the political uses of quantification. By carefully reconstructing the religious, economic and cultural context of mining cities, Underground Mathematics argues that practical mathematics fruitfully interacted with the world of humanists, scholars and courts. In doing so, it contextualizes the rise of a culture of accuracy and quantification from 1500 to 1800. Subterranean geometry thus proves relevant to broader discussions in the history of science, technology, and knowledge.

This chapter contains historical support for my argument from the pre-modern and modern worlds. Even though industrialization was very limited in the pre-modern world, I provide evidence that urban, industrial areas allowed for the creation of broader ethno-national identities in the two cases of ancient Greece and Rome. I then discuss theories of the rise of nationalism in the modern world, with close examination of several cases from both Western and Eastern Europe. In particular I examine in more detail how industrialization encouraged assimilation in Germany and the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, before moving on to a discussion of the case of South Africa. In many of these cases I not only show how industrialization led to the growth of broader ethnic identities but how these processes were actively discouraged by the state, most obviously in the case of apartheid South Africa, while in other cases state-promoted assimilation failed.

Underground Mathematics tells the story of subterranean geometry, a forgotten discipline that developed in the silver mines of early modern Europe. Seven case studies describe how an original culture of accuracy and measurement paved the way for technical and scientific innovations. Based on a variety of original manuscripts, maps and archive material, it recounts how knowledge was crafted and circulated among practitioners in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond. Specific chapters deal with the material culture of surveying, map-making, expertise and the political uses of quantification. By carefully reconstructing the religious, economic and cultural context of mining cities, Underground Mathematics argues that practical mathematics fruitfully interacted with the world of humanists, scholars and courts. In doing so, it contextualizes the rise of a culture of accuracy and quantification from 1500 to 1800. Subterranean geometry thus proves relevant to broader discussions in the history of science, technology, and knowledge.