Using both the Petcoff and Palaganas studies as a point of departure, this chapter looks at the more general educational implications of bringing emoji into pedagogical practices. The underlying premise is that emoji not only are highly understandable images, aiding learning but also can create a positive environment, making teaching and interaction congenial and open to all learners, no matter their backgrounds or learning capacities, since emoji give them an equal voice. Emoji allow for a destigmatized approach, especially for disadvantaged learners who might not be able to adequately speak for themselves. Emoji are a psychological conduit that can easily open up lines of interaction to virtually everyone. Once this is achieved, any subject matter, from English to mathematics, can be imparted broadly through any type of learning style.

Corporate governance reforms are increasingly promoted as a method of materially improving social and environmental (ESG) outcomes. This chapter clears up the conceptual confusion about what counts as an action taken primarily for ESG purposes, then considers the incentives, resources, and market constraints that compel corporate actors to avoid unnecessary expenses or lower-value investments. The empirical evidence suggesting corporations are unlikely to voluntarily pursue ESG includes: (1) the revealed preferences of managers, particularly those that emphasize their ESG commitments; (2) the impact of ESG-friendly governance practices on corporate outcomes; and (3) the actual outcomes generated by giving ESG-friendly constituencies (such as socially responsible investors or employees) more power in corporate governance arrangements.

Face-to-face dialogue and the cospeech gestures that occur within it are social as well as cognitive. Cospeech gestures are microsocial. Some of these gestures provide information that directly advances the topic of a dialogue. Others inform addressee about the state of the dialogue at that moment. Efron distinguished between objective and logical-discursive gestures. McNeill distinguished between propositional gestures and beats. Bavelas et al. distinguished between topical and interactive functions of gestures. Gerwing documented changes in form that marked gestures that were part of common ground. Seyfeddinipur identified discursive and meta-discursive gestures. Kendon described a variety of social, pragmatic gestures. Holler and Wilkin showed that mimicking a gesture conveyed understanding of that gesture. Galati and Brennan noted metanarrative functions of gestures. Kok et al. separated semantic and metacommunicative gestures. We focus on Clark’s distinction between track 1 and track 2 functions in dialogue. Track 1 conveys the basic communicative acts (i.e. topical content) whereas track 2 conveys the metacommunicative acts that ensure successful communication.

The kingdom of Denmark, which then included Norway and Iceland, and the kingdom of Sweden, which encompassed Finland, were influenced early on by the Evangelical movement. It first gained a foothold in maritime towns, particularly in Denmark. The traditionally close ties with Germany played an important role. The Evangelical movement developed into distinct princely Reformations in Denmark and Sweden and resulted in the establishment of two strong Lutheran confessional states. When Christian III emerged victorious from the Danish Civil War in 1536 he enjoyed a uniquely powerful position and quickly implemented a Reformation settlement according to his own Lutheran beliefs. None of the Swedish kings secured as strong a position in the sixteenth century and religious change was effected more slowly in Sweden. Differences in social structure also greatly influenced the impact of the Reformation. The Reformation progressed more quickly in Denmark, which was more urbanised, commercialised and feudal, than in the less developed regions north of the Skagerrak. In Sweden and Finland a larger proportion of the peasants were freeholders compared with Denmark and they showed themselves willing and able to resist the crown’s assaults on their traditional religiosity. In Norway and Iceland too the predominance of freeholder peasants was associated with a slower pace of Reformation than that in Denmark.

This chapter focuses on a diverse group of vulnerable learners–children with special educational needs (SEN). These children are at high risk of developing social and emotional problems because their presenting conditions negatively influence growth in two critical areas of functioning: attention, planning and problem-solving; and language and communication (Stormont, 2007). It follows that delays in these areas routinely create the conditions for reduced opportunities to engage, interact and learn with others, and also the increased likelihood of developing challenging, unsafe and socially inappropriate behaviours.In this chapter, the Pyramid Model (Hemmeter et al., 2016) is recommended as an evidence-based, multi-level framework for promoting children’s social–emotional development in the early years while preventing problem behaviours. Next, we discuss aspects related to decision-making about (1) what to teach and (2) how to teach. We then highlight the critical importance of resilience and the need to develop a sense of connectedness and social understanding in children with SEN. Finally, we argue the case for partnering with families in order to strengthen SEL outcomes of these children across school, home and community environments.

“Look, if it’s not my genes, it must be the environment?” I overheard someone say this in a pub. Well, yes and no. One of the visible aspects of urban environments – and let’s face it, most of us are urban now – is food. Ever-present junk food, aisles of frozen pizza and snack foods in the supermarkets. In the United Kingdom, which built much of its colonial power on the triangle of relationships among industrialization, slavery and plantation production, sugar is historically a huge industry, and you can see sugar-based products in stores everywhere. It hurts people’s lives through dental decay, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. In the United States, perfectly edible maize is systematically turned into high-fructose corn syrup, a substance that is even more damaging to health than sugar.

In wealthy countries, the least well-off put on the most weight, as do people who are constantly under stress. Put them together, stress and under-privilege, and you have the makings of an imperfect storm, differently made in different contexts – just add ultra-processed food (UPF). Which is cheap, easily available in most places, and a significant contributor to obesity-causing food environments. Can’t you blame society, really? Before you can think about addressing this question, it is first important to have some idea of what society is. At base, a society is a group of people who are socially connected in some way, and/or occupy the same social or geographical space, usually bathing in the same political and cultural water. Social status matters, and this influences their behaviour, including in ways that can influence their body weight. If what I eat is shaped by what other people eat, because we regularly eat together (as with family) or because we as friends share common interests that extend to our eating patterns, then this aspect of society might influence the likelihood (or not) of me putting on excess weight.

I go to the swimming pool and everybody’s body is on show, including my own. I don’t have rippling pecs, and I am in my 60s, an age when you think I wouldn’t care about my body anymore, but I do. Another swimmer, in her 30s, is just getting out of the water. She is ‘a big girl’, and gets looks, of the wrong kind, even though I have watched her plough the lanes and work hard, keeping enough stamina back to sprint her final lap. If I am self-conscious of my body, how self-conscious is she? Every look is a dagger to her self-esteem. I try to put myself in her place, chanting to myself, ‘Don’t put me down, don’t put me down.’ People who say, ‘You’ve got yourself to blame’ have got it wrong. Even though the evidence is that body stigma only contributes to obesity, people stigmatize large body size – especially in the Global North among poorer people, females, and Black and Indigenous peoples. I discuss how obesity stigma comes from the type of moralizing thought that is embedded in present-day Western societies. I go on to consider how obesity stigma is used to develop and maintain social hierarchies in times of food-plenty.

This chapter explores the constitutional ramifications of the French Revolution’s transformation of the old regime of property. It reinterprets the abolition of feudalism as part of the revolutionaries’ larger attempt to draw a conceptual and legal line of demarcation between property and power. Their double aim was to make property truly private by stripping from it all attributes of public authority and to make power truly public by eliminating its former patrimonial characteristics. The attempt to implement this demarcation in practice was still underway decades after the Revolution had formally ended feudalism. Over time, it largely succeeded. From this distinction between property and power flowed some of the key conceptual binaries – the political and social, state and society, public and private, sovereignty and property – through which we still apprehend the world. The abolition of feudalism was thus much more than simply the eradication of an archaic form of property. Rather, it played an essential role in shaping the conceptual building blocks from which modernity was built.

Research suggests that people adopt conspiracy theories in an attempt to satisfy (1) existential (e.g., the need to feel secure and in control), (2) epistemic (e.g., the need to understand the world), and (3) social (e.g., the need to feel positive about one’s self or group) motives (Douglas et al., 2017). In this chapter, we consider the extent to which this framework can explain belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory specifically. QAnon beliefs appear to be driven by existential threats, such as the belief that there is a vast satanic paedophile ring which is being covered up by left-wing Hollywood elites. Regarding epistemic motives, such as the tendency to seek patterns where they do not exist, it becomes understandable why some people might be attracted by cryptic “Q Drops.” Finally, QAnon beliefs are typically right-wing and tend to point the finger towards the left-wing elite for all the alleged wrong-doings. QAnon beliefs, therefore, also appear to be socially motivated. Following the discussion, we outline the similarities and differences between QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and outline ideas for future research.

In De Officiis, Cicero values very highly the little society of parents and their children: an origin of society and seedbed of the republic, whose members should rank extraordinarily high among each other’s priorities. In light of Cicero’s biography and longstanding interest in a philosophical debate about parental love, I argue that Cicero’s position is that nature gives to humans a non-rational desire to care for their children, which leads many parents to rational love of their children, whereby they care about what is natural for at least some other humans, their children, as they care about it for themselves, holding property in common within the household. The rest of the family thereby learn loving attitudes. Such parents and their home are for their children images, however flawed, of virtue and a virtuous society. By making this experience common, nature teaches a lesson in what virtuous altruists would be like.

This chapter explains the nature of the social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts, tracing its recent development from the early 1970s and focusing on contributions that have come from sociology, anthropology, and social psychology.