Tremper Longman begins the Companion by setting the stage for many of the chapters that follow. Of first importance is the fact that discussing ‘biblical wisdom literature’ is not as simple as it seems. For the category as such has been questioned, and, even among those scholars who agree to use the phrase, what it means and designates remains up for debate. Longman presents the various viewpoints in terms of the ‘traditional view’, reactions to it, and ‘the way forward’. Matters of genre, the grouping of biblical texts, and their social location or worldview arise, as do suspicions about how ‘wisdom literature’ came about within scholarship and a recent repudiation of what it has become. Longman’s way forward indicates that Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes do indeed have meaningful affinities, and that these texts can and should be studied together, as well as in relation to other OT texts.

Divided into three parts, Chapter 1 outlines the rationale for selecting respondents—homeland Liberians, permanent and circular returnees, diasporas—with an overview of their demographic profiles; the conceptual framework, actor-oriented analysis, which considers myriad responses to development interventions based on actors’ disparate life-worlds (lived experiences), social locations (socio-economic positions), and levels of agency (capacity to act); as well as deep thinking about the author’s positionality. The methodological, theoretical, and biographical reflections in this chapter are intended to contextualise how the author came to understand Liberia’s political economy of belonging and its relationship to contestations over dual citizenship.Chapter 1 demonstrates why it was essential to converse with Liberian actors inhabiting different locales in three continents. It shows, for example, that diasporas disclose through their identities, practices, and relationships that citizenship can be simultaneously passive, active, and interactive. They also both challenge and substantiate certain theoretical approaches including conceptualisations of diasporic influences on homeland foreign policy and, by the author’s extension, homeland domestic policy. Reflecting on her positionality as a Liberian researcher who has occupied multiple spaces and places, the author evaluates her own biases as someone who made a conscious choice not to naturalise abroad and how this decision influences her analysis of Liberian citizenship construction and practice.