This chapter furthers the discourse on “narrative” with specificity on “magic, memory, myth, and metaphor.” Herein, the chapter shows that the knowledge of the past is preserved in oral vehicles as “songs, images, poems, rituals and religions, stories and myths,” as memories not only preserve but sustain them by transporting them to succeeding generations, using narrative when evoked. It also examines memory’s limitations, especially when compared to history. They include “bias (of the narrator), misinformation, infallibility and the impossibility of rightly (in)validating (individual) memories”–the lack of corroborator. It is also prone to manipulation and subject to the narrator’s interest, while the information processed and stored as memory can also fade over time owing to the collection of new memories. In the Yoruba context, the chapter highlights the relationship between “Itan” and “Aroba,” with the major distinguishing factor being their timeframe from the period of happening. The chapter also dwells on collective memory, which relies on individuals’ narration to become one because no one person was present everywhere to witness everything at once. Lastly, there is the clarification of the different problems in African epistemology, such as magic and the likes.

This chapter explores cultural themes in Africa with “narrative politics” and its cultural values central to the discourse. In expounding “narrative,” the chapter brings to the fore its two most potent modes (literature and history), which reflect reality but are different in their modus operandi – through imagination (creativity) and verifiable facts. Written beautifully and with references, this chapter blurs the contrast between the two “narrative devices” and focuses instead on espousing their working togetherness. This is because a co-adoption of both in the narrative adds creativity to facts presentation, which thus makes it interesting to read and sustain readers’ interest just as their Yoruba derivative, Alo and Itan, is often a mixture of both.

The chapter also asserts the importance of autoethnography and how through personal experience and identity, the society’s “collective consciousness” is exhibited and manifested. Also, there are references made to the cultural relevance and implication of “time and season,” “taboos and superstitions,” “greetings and reverence,” as well as “namings and places” in Yorubaland.

The chapter focuses on religious and ethnic affiliation as social factors that influence the structure of variation in several Arabic-speaking communities. We go beyond the simplistic correlations between religious/ethnic groupings and language, and seek to uncover the histories and social meanings of variation based on such groupings. We include examples, both old and new, to illustrate variation according to these factors.

The history of recent wildlife extinctions and the widespread role of humans in these events are described. Conflicting views about the role of human numbers in wildlife declines are cited. There follows an outline of the book structure, highlighting the major proximal causes of declines in Britain , including persecution, urbanisation, agricultural intensification, climate change and disease, as detailed in subsequent chapters. There are also chapters on population growth, people's perceptions of population size and the implications for conservation A comparison of population densities in a range of countries reveals that the UK, especially England, has one of the highest densities in the world. The UK therefore provides an ideal study to investigate the impacts of human numbers on wildlife declines.

This chapter discusses the normative and doctrinal implications of the theory. At the broadest level, the book is skeptical of political control of administrative actions when it comes to particularities. This viewpoint argues against the nondelegation doctrine, popular on the right, and also against models of the state that emphasize presidential control over administrative bodies, widely popular in recent decades. Lodging control over particularities of policy in the hands of democratic organs offers only the illusion of a democratically responsive state, more often delivering various forms of capture. The preferred approach is instead for democratic organs to formulate policy at higher levels, which the public plausibly understands and provides fewer inroads for corruption, and then to have the reasoning state resolve the particularities. The chapter identifies ways in which the reasoning capacity of the state might be improved, for instance through more robust publication requirements and greater use of cost-benefit analysis.

Opinion polls indicate that many people in the UK are concerned about wildlife declines and about overpopulation. These feelings are widely shared by naturalists, scientists, artists and many religious groups, as well as by the general public. Unfortunately, such views are uncommon among economists and rarely feature at all in politics. Discussion of population pressure has remained largely taboo, even in wildlife circles, presumably because of fear of causing offence. However, there are adverse consequences for society from a high human population that go far beyond problems for wildlife and countryside. Traffic jams are health hazards, both physically and mentally,and infrastructure expansions generate stress for those affected by them, while public services including healthcare and education are increasingly overwhelmed by people needing to use them.

This chapter is diagnostic in nature and marks a turn toward a normative assessment. It argues that we continue to experience high levels of distrust in government for three reasons. First, it observes that, however dark our current circumstances, the counterfactual in which the legislature is more active in lawmaking is darker still. Second, it points out that the scope of government activity has changed markedly over the last century, with the government edging into policy areas that may be comparatively difficult to build trust in. Third, and most relevant to the book’s thesis, the present state deviates from the theory in a variety of ways. For instance, administrative agencies increasingly favor thinly proceduralized actions, often at the expense of transparency, deliberation and public reasoning. Likewise, an ideology of presidential control over the administrative state threatens the space necessary for the reasoning state to thrive. Privatization of public roles, similarly, jeopardizes the place of the reasoning state.

In the years and decades following the end of the Revolutionary War, dozens of ordinary Americans engaged in different ways the burgeoning genre of memoir writing. In fragments and half-told stories, as well as whole-of-life biographies, ordinary colonists offered a rich and inclusive history of the era. In their varied forms and diverse styles, they were among the earliest group of Americans to try and explain themselves, and often emphasized themes of betrayal, deprivation, divisions, violence, disease, and chaos. In doing so, these writers undermined or complicated more well-known narratives about the Revolutionary era that dominated the mainstream print culture and subsequent histories of the Revolution. In that respect, those who wrote about their Revolutionary era experiences were also engaging in a Revolutionary act. Collectively and over many decades, memoir writers drew on and enriched a new medium of storytelling that ultimately reveals a more complicated founding story of a nation.

Chapter 7 follows Augustine’s argument through books XV–XVIII of The City of God, showcasing humility and pride in action throughout human history, sacred and secular. Augustine presents a long series of exemplars of virtue and vice, including humility and pride, and so invites readers to reflect on these qualities’ roles and ramifications in personal, familial, social, and civic histories.

A dashing portrait of General Giuseppe Garibaldi filled the front page of the June 9, 1860 issue of Harper’s Weekly while an accompanying article fêted “the hero of the new Italian war,” extolling the “wonders” of his fight for freedom on two continents. “Of all the Italian patriots of 1848 he is, without a doubt, the ablest, most sensible, and most respectable,” Harper’s enthused, praising his certain success in this “new” attempt to unify the Italian peninsula as one state.1Harper’s proved to be wrong – Italy didn’t unify until 1870 – but this minor setback did little to dampen American enthusiasm for the principled military strategist.2 After meeting the hero that same summer, Henry Adams observed to his brother Charles that Garibaldi “looked in his red shirt like the very essence and genius of revolution, as he is.”3 In comments such as these, as in the numerous celebrations of his character that appeared in the 1850s, Garibaldi embodies the ideals of republican revolution; no need to fear either a turn to terror or divided loyalties with such a “sensible” revolutionary leading the charge.

This chapter is devoted to some of the philosophical issues that arise in the context of action, taking issue with the thesis that the turn to practices will lead to a better ‘theory’ of international relations or of social action. I first examine different choice-approaches and show why they are false friends; that is, they rely on misleading analogies. Here rational choice (goal means rationality), technique (techne), or the production of an object, systems (whole/ part distinctions), and teleologies or ideal theories concerned with the clarification of normative principles are found wanting. Common to all these different approaches is the notion that action can be subjected to a theoretical gaze, be it the view from nowhere or of being able to determine where we are from the point of the ‘end of history’. After some preliminary criticism I show 12 important differences that characterize action and that are overlooked when we think that such views are helpful for understanding praxis.

This chapter summarizes the explanations developed in preceding chapters, fits them into a more comprehensive theoretical framework, and tests them using path analysis, which helps researchers understand causal sequences. Democratization is characterized by punctuated equilibrium. Distant historical factors such as geography and demographic characteristics, together with incrementally changing aspects of social and economic development, affect a country’s level of democracy, but only roughly. Institutions and organizations such as a healthy civil society, the rule of law, and institutionalized political parties, tend to reinforce one another and keep each country’s level of electoral democracy close to an equilibrium or set point. However, short-term economic performance, anti-system movements, and opposition campaigns can sometimes disturb the equilibrium, making significant upturns and downturns possible.

This edited volume surveys and retests most of the central explanations for democracy outcomes (levels of electoral democracy and upturns and downturns in it) using Varieties of Democracy data. After a chapter describing historical trends, other chapters survey and test hypotheses concerning geography and demography; international influences; economic determinants; institutions; and social forces. The volume concludes with a new theoretical framework emphasizing the historical sequencing of different kinds of causes. The conclusion also uses path analysis to integrate the most promising hypotheses from the preceding chapters into causal sequences explaining levels, upturns, and downturns.

Cognitive failure and the fear of losing control over one’s life has occupied mankind for centuries. In our chapter we describe the conceptual history of dementia starting with the first written traces from the twenty-fourth century BCE, relating the story of an Egyptian officer who not only developed the inability to remember yesterday but also became more and more childish. Subsequently, we summarize medical discoveries that have allowed cognitive, psychological and behavioral symptoms of dementia to be viewed as a result of brain disease rather than, for instance, witchcraft or ill will. In the context of growing awareness of neuro-pathophysiological mechanisms underlying dementia, associated with postmortem brain research in the late ninettenth century, Alzheimer’s disease became the ‘face’ of dementia for some time. We discuss further developments in the discovery and in the treatment of different types of dementia, also focusing on psychosocial aspects of the disease. These became an important topic of research as pharmacological treatments aimed at curing the neurodegenerative causes of dementia as yet do not exist. AWe compare how different cultures and societies deal with dementia. Finally, the political and societal attempts to promote social inclusion and empowerment of individuals with dementia are summarized.

Best known for her links to Italy, where she moved at eighteen, Vernon Lee was a Pan-European who viewed western Europe as a single entity unified by shared culture and history despite local languages and customs. Born into an expatriate family, she learned multiple languages as her family shifted residences during her youth, including stays in Germany and Switzerland. More important, Vernon Lee’s wonder and imagination were awakened by her German-speaking Bernese governess who taught her German fairy tales and legends as well as history and literature; the governess also imparted a profound experience of female love. This chapter posits Lee’s foundational German-related childhood experiences as key to her psychological, sexual, and imaginative formation; her supernatural and historical writing; and her sexuality. After demonstrating the Anglo–German conversation of Lee’s supernatural tales, especially ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Woman’, with German lore and the romantic tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, the chapter focuses on the novella Ottilie (1883) as a site of Lee’s conceptualisation of haunted historical narrative. It concludes with a feminist reading of Ottilie and proposes the novella’s suitability as an imagined history of Ottilie von Goethe.

The fifth chapter establishes Calvin’s dependence upon tradition in two different manners. First, it does so by examining those theologians upon whom Calvin relied. The chapter considers Calvin’s use of John Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Augustine of Hippo. Each case shows the earlier theologian’s authority for and influence upon Calvin. Then the chapter turns to three different doctrinal loci. These are the establishment of infant baptism, the Trinity, and predestination. In each instance, Calvin had to place his confidence in traditional sources, either to bolster his biblical work, or to replace what was impossible to produce biblically, as in the case of infant baptism.