A little over a month after the storming of the Bastille, the royal theatre censor was keen to highlight that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen may have seemingly abolished censorship, but like a phoenix from the ashes, it would rise again at the hands of his fellow citizens. He was proved right. This study explores why that was the case, opening with an examination of contemporaneous definitions of censorship, an overview of the theatrical world at the time in France, and an analysis, using archival material from the regimes from 1788 to 1818, of how theatre could shape the public consciousness. The central argument here is that theatre censorship allowed contemporaries to influence what thousands of people saw (or not), and thus the internalized effects of these plays to shape the world around them.

This opening chapter sets out the framework for a more systematic discussion of ancient Greek personal religion in the subsequent chapters. It starts from a working definition of personal religion by clarifying its relationship to the much better documented civic dimension of ancient Greek religion. Its core consists of a substantial historiographic section that grounds the study of personal religion in the larger trends that have shaped and continue to shape the study of the religions of the ancient world – including parallel developments in the study of Roman religion. Taking stock of where we stand helps us to sketch out what is at stake in foregrounding individual religious beliefs and practices and how they fit into our understanding of ancient Greek religion more broadly conceived.

Roman legal texts open a view onto the life and society of the empire at its height, its management, its peoples, their activities, interrelations, and problems, and their experiences when facing the juristic power of the state and its officials. Now, the first step in the study of these texts is the identification of the sources of the law. Sources are defined first as the mechanisms by which the law was introduced and regarded as authoritative by the Romans, and second the legal works transmitted to us by writers and compilers in the ancient world, which have been translated and analysed by modern scholars. This introduction offers a brief overview of these topics and some of the issues associated with the use of legal texts in the study of Roman social, economic, and political history.

The last chapter is the Conclusion. After a brief overview of the book’s key themes, topics, and arguments, the chapter places India in a comparative perspective and asks the following questions. How analogous are political and economic trends in India when compared to similar countries? How do India’s achievements and shortcomings discussed in the book stand up against some other comparable countries?

Chapter 4 first examines two societal groups – labor and women – and asks two questions. How have these groups fared since the 1980s? And how have they responded to top-down changes in India’s political economy? The final part of the chapter also discusses civil society activism and social movements more generally. As with Chapter 3, Chapter 4 highlights that the story of India since the 1980s is not wholly top-down. While the state and business remain dominant actors, societal groups have challenged and continue to challenge that domination.

Chapter 4 analyzes several common features in New Religious Movements that turn violent – a millennial and apocalyptic worldview, totalistic organizational rules, isolation, and real or perceived persecution – and how these features can help make sense of the infusion of violent expectations in the sectarian movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls as represented especially in the Rule of the Community.

Chapter one is the introduction to the book. It outlines the main goals of the book, previous scholarship, and a new methodological framework for understanding violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It presents an overview of the sociological approaches to the people behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and scholarship on the meaning of violence.

This chapter provides general concluding thoughts on the book and insights into larger contributions to the scholarly fields in which it interacts.

Bridget Nichols shows how important the bodily dimension of the liturgy is, especially because it is steadily associated with mental and cognitive activities. In this context, she pays particular attention to the role of the senses, which impacts greatly how not only big celebrations and ceremonies but also small gestures are experienced.

Education changes lives. It opens doors and provides us with the skills and dispositions to achieve what we believe in. But not all students flourish in their educational settings. The ways students experience their education are shaped by the differences among them. Despite many years of equity-based reform in schools, the children most at risk of educational alienation, failure or withdrawal in the third decade of the twenty-first century are, for the most part, the same children who were most at risk 50 and 100 years ago. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, rural and isolated areas, non-dominant cultural, language, or religious groups, students with disabilities, and many who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with a particular subject area, gender or culture have been shown to experience schools as places of alienation, not as places of growth, opportunity and learning. Issues of sexual and gender identity, mental health, and instability of citizenship, housing, and employment combine to make the situation even more complex.

Political legitimacy is highly important internationally—and probably increasingly so. The question of legitimacy is at the heart of some of the most vital and debated issues of international relations and international law. Think about the centrality of legitimacy with respect to just war theory, issues such as self-determination, the secession of a country and the creation of a new one, state recognition, tensions between the demands of national sovereignty and those of human rights, international humanitarian interventions, and so on. At stake in each of these situations is identifying what is the right course of action and what is legitimate and what is not—and how these situations are handled has an influence on the international system and its legitimacy. In this perspective, Chapter 7 shows that the significance of legitimacy at the international level unfolds in the context of the interactions between the national and international realms and the following distinctions: we/them, inside/outside, particularist/universalist, and system/society.

This chapter concentrates on the conditions of access to and the nature of membership in the international system as established by international law—specifically, three issues. The first issue is the type of society that is presented as a legitimate collective member of the international order. One of the first steps that international law takes to determine legitimacy at the international level is to identify the criteria necessary for a collective actor to be viewed as a full-fledged legitimate member of the international community. The second issue is that after World War II and the creation of the United Nations (UN), access to international membership in the international order moved toward a form of universality that has been relatively pluralistic. The third issue is that despite this movement toward a pluralistic universality, there are limits to the universality and pluralism of international membership in the international system as defined by international law.

Science, Technology, and Society (STS), a young academic field, explores how science and technology shape society and vice versa. Its rise stemmed from a growing awareness of technology’s impact on societies (e.g., think about artificial intelligence and social change); science’s nonobjective nature (i.e., scientific knowledge is influenced by social and cultural contexts); concerns about scientific advancements (e.g., the potential misuse of genetic engineering); and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. STS draws tools from various disciplines to tackle complex issues. STS researchers analyze the "goodness" and "badness" of science and technology. They tackle key concerns such as universality vs. context-dependence (i.e., does science hold everywhere, or does each culture shape it?); the influence of social forces on science (e.g., who decides research priorities and how they decide); risk analysis and ethical considerations to balance technological progress with safety and responsibility; and democratizing science and engineering (i.e., increasing public access and participation in these fields). STS encourages critical thinking about the complex interplay between science, technology, and society. It aims to guide us toward a future where advancements serve the greater good, ethically and inclusively.

Infants and toddlers are immersed in the social culture of their family, community and society from before they are born. Every family has distinct social practices and ways of interacting which shape very young children’s holistic physiological, cognitive and emotional learning, development and wellbeing. These practices reflect the values, beliefs, norms and expectations of their community and culture. Over time, through repeated social encounters and experiences, the social culture of their family and community is passed on as infants and toddlers become socialised into these specific ways of engaging with others. Social practices and interactions thus form the basis of the relationships that infants and toddlers form with significant others. As a result, the social opportunities that very young children experience and participate in during their everyday existence have far-reaching consequences for their sense of identify and belonging.

A new economic model begins to emerge. After the turn of the century, the worldview made of free markets, globalization, and liberal democracy met multiple crises. While the political pendulum swings back toward government control, economists and independent agencies should promote balance, mitigating the tendency toward the extremes of public opinions divided into opposite camps. The tendency toward a stronger presence of the government in the economy must be controlled; the perimeter of open and competitive markets should not be restricted to the point at which they lose their creative force. In this book we reflect on these developments through the prism of one of the most ancient and fundamental societal institutions: money. Money is a mirror of society; it reveals the drivers, contradictions, strengths, weaknesses, and failures of society at large. We build on two convictions. The first is the value of history, to tell us what money is, what purpose should it serve, and how best it should be designed and governed. The second is that the fundamental purpose and requirements of money do not change through time or space. What changes are the manifestations of money. Technology is part of this process and should be used to serve money’s purposes better.