Homeowner self-governance constitutes a form of basic democracy, which means collective self-government without committing to conventional liberal values, and poses a tricky dilemma for the party-state. On the one hand, it can relieve the party-state of the burden of trying to govern hundreds of thousands of complex neighborhood problems that, if badly handled, could undermine the party’s legitimacy simply through incompetence. On the other hand, independent civic organizations may threaten the party leadership both within and beyond residential neighborhoods.

The point of departure of this book was the attempt to analyse the changing nature of election campaigns and intra-party organisational change in India that has taken place in the last decade. I have argued that ‘professionalisation of politics’ is the appropriate analytical category through which we can capture these changes, identify their causal drivers and understand the possible implications of this trend for the future of Indian democracy. In this book, ‘professionalisation’ has been understood to be constituted by three interrelated features. First, it includes the growing salience of technology and technological solutions to carry out quotidian tasks in the world of politics. This change can be seen in activities ranging from the aggressive use of new media technology for political communication to the increased reliance on ‘scientific’ opinion polling and data analytics to understand public opinion. Second, professionalisation entails the emergence of new kinds of actors—labelled in this book as ‘political professionals’—and a specialisation in the work performed by them. In particular, I have discussed the growing role of party employees (which capture the internal dimension of professionalisation) and political consulting firms (which capture the external dimension of professionalisation) in India. Third, professionalisation is also a discursive practice insofar as it provides a shared imaginary for different actors to articulate new ideas, visions, aspirations and expectations related to politics. Thus, for example, in this book, we encounter political consultants who believed that they were reforming Indian politics by making it more organised, efficient and rationalised through their work. While it is tempting to dismiss this as mere rhetoric, the discourse surrounding professionalisation is, in fact, a crucial tool through which such new actors seek to legitimise their presence and participation in politics.

When thinking about the professionalisation of politics, it is important to consider the three aforementioned features as a conceptual whole and not as discrete elements that are independent of one another. Thus, for example, the introduction of technological innovations in politics is in itself not a sign of professionalisation. This is because, at each point in time, politicians have tried to use the most advanced form of technology available to them (as discussed in Chapter 3).

People may believe sleep to be simply a static state that is the direct opposite of wakefulness; however, this is not the case. Rather, it is a complex and dynamic process, and throughout sleep we progress through multiple stages that can be measured discretely across behavioural, physiological, and cognitive domains. This chapter describes the differences and features of these different stages and how they can be measured. Also described is the fact that sleep and wakefulness are not mutually exclusive, and that there are times when the lines between sleep and wake can be blurred, and this is notably true in insomnia. Finally, the chapter explains how sleep is regulated through interacting homeostatic and circadian processes, and the neuroscientific underpinnings of the sleep and circadian system.

This chapter establishes what it means to do discourse analysis. This is done by defining discourse analysis and providing examples of discourse. The chapter offers a practical overview of how the discourse in discourse analysis fits within the research process. The examples of discourse that are introduced in this chapter are grammar, actions and practices, identities, places and spaces, stories, ideologies, and social structures. After reading the chapter, readers will know what discourse analysis is; understand that there are many types of discourse; know that discourse is an object of study; and understand how an object of study fits within a research project.

Chapter 4 is an extensive study of runaway slave advertisements that mention that a slave speaks Dutch. For this chapter, I have compiled a database of 487 enslaved persons, coded by year of flight, name, age, Dutch language ability, name of master, county, and original source. I demonstrate that runaway slave advertisements in New York City and environs plateaued in the period 1760–1800, but peaked later in the Hudson Valley, with exceptional growth in the 1790s and 1800s. The data provide evidence for the persistence of the Dutch language in New York and New Jersey and contribute to a picture of Dutch-speaking slaves presenting a sharp economic challenge to the institution of slavery. By the 1790s, Dutch-speaking slaves were running away at a rate of at least 1 per 500 per year. For Dutch slave owners, this meant a significant loss of capital and, moreover, a risk on their remaining slave capital. Runaway slaves tended to be prime working-age males, and the loss of the best field workers frustrated New York Dutch farmers. The pressure of runaway activity also lowered the value of retained slaves and made New York slavery more costly in general. Runaways put pressure on slaveholders to manumit their slaves, extracting the most labor possible from them before agreeing to let them go.

In August 1955, Isaac Asimov published his well-known short story ‘Franchise’ in If: Worlds of Science Fiction magazine. ‘Franchise’ depicts a futuristic US that has earned the distinction of being the world's first ‘electronic democracy’ because a supercomputer named Multivac has displaced mass franchise as the technique of electing the American president. During every election cycle, Multivac selects a single voter who is adjudged to be the most ‘representative’ citizen and then subjects them to hours of rigorous questioning to learn about the mood and preferences of the wider electorate. While Multivac's inception was driven by the hope that it would ‘end partisan politics’ and reduce ‘voter's money [being] wasted on campaigns’, we are told that by the election year of 2008, there was ‘more campaigning than ever’ before. In the story, the mantle of ‘Voter of the Year’ is conferred on a man named Norman Muller, a humble shopkeeper from the state of Indiana. Asimov's choice to foreground the figure of the diffident Muller was arguably strategic. Although voting may have disappeared in this electronic democracy, Asimov did not seem to envisage that technological innovations would result in either a pure technocracy led by scientists or a model of sortition led by a computerised lottery. Ordinary Joes like Muller had a role to play—they were, after all, the crucial repositories of ‘data’ for Multivac. Thus, this was a world where electoral verdicts were still predicated on collective public opinion. However, they were mediated by the science of probability distributions, the logic of sampling and the sentience of computers that could parse large tranches of data and deconstruct subjective human emotions. In other words, for Asimov, technology would not entirely obviate political citizenship, but certainly truncate its role.

Although the year 1984 carries an obvious Orwellian resonance, for members of the INC, this was the year when Asimov's foresight seemed to be vindicated over George Orwell’s. Rajiv Gandhi, a fourth-generation scion of the Nehru–Gandhi family, was busy rolling out an ambitious programme where he envisaged that political decision-making in the party would be managed through large-scale data collection and computerised analysis.

This chapter lays the foundational framework for the relation between language, culture, and identity. Through an analogy, it illuminates the developmental parallels between heritage language and the rhizomatic growth of bamboo. Introducing the method of serial narrative ethnography, it underscores the significance of narrative knowing across the lifespan as a means for scientific understanding and the power of multiple stories through voices. It also presents an outline of the book.

Although sleep is measurable, the assessment of insomnia does not typically rely on using objective measurements. Nevertheless, there may be circumstances where objective assessment is warranted. This chapter describes the role of and place for objective estimates of sleep such as polysomnography, actigraphy, commercially available personal devices, and physiological assays, and weighs up the evidence for these.

Chapter 16, As for the future of England (August 21 - September 17). As the Banque de France and NY Fed loans to Bank of England are used, a French and US loan to the British government is contemplated and arranged through J.P. Morgan and with assistance from the NY Fed and Banque de France. The arrangement leads to the ’bankers’ ramp’ accusations and the relationship between Harrison and Harvey deteriorates. Harrison visits Norman who is unhappy with the Bank for England’s and Harvey’s actions and the decision to peg sterling to the US dollar at 4.86. J. P. Morgan also question the policy of the Bank of England and wonders why Harvey doesn’t raise the bank rate. Harvey seems to be focused on forcing the British government to cut the budget, adn the BIS argues that Great Britain is now the European country with the most serious financial conditions.