The nature of prejudice and bigotry have changed in recent decades. In most communities it is unacceptable to be openly racist, sexist, or homophobic. Norms against prejudice have certainly changed. It is true that prejudice directed toward many groups has decreased; however, individual attitudes have not necessarily caught up with changing norms. As a result, some people hide their prejudices, attempting to mask their discrimination in neutral-seeming behavior. Others truly believe they are not prejudiced, even when they are. Social psychologists have spent recent decades measuring and mapping the nature of subtle, covert, and implicit forms of contemporary prejudice. Benign Bigotry critically examines seven contemporary myths and assumptions that reflect prejudice that appears common sense, even harmless, but actually reveal the perniciousness and insidiousness of contemporary prejudice. Benign Bigotry critically analyzes: (1) the assumption that prejudice is an individual-only problem; (2) that people in outgroups are all alike; (3) that those accused of a crime are likely guilty of something; (4) that feminists are manhaters; (5) that LGBTQ+ people flaunt their sexuality; (6) that those who claim racial colorblindness are not racists; and (7) that affirmative action amounts to reverse racism.

The Conclusion describes the stakes of ignoring the impact of bigotry. In particular, the ways in which bigotry impacts the lives of those who benefit from it are a focus.

Chapter 1 introduces our idea that group-based inequality is in large part the result of anger constraints placed on disadvantaged groups. We use research in social psychology to understand how public expressions of anger are reserved for the powerful. We develop a theory of how group-based social hierarchies in society are maintained by instituting rules of who can express anger and who cannot. We provide several examples of how United States race relations between Black Americans and whites exemplify this “anger rule.”

A great deal of figurative decoration on Greek painted pottery relates to mythology. But what made particular painters choose to paint particular scenes at particular times? This chapter assembles the evidence for what was painted on Athenian painted pottery from the seventh to the fourth century, showing how different scenes peaked in popularity at different periods, and how although some scenes were perennial favourites, others attracted interest only briefly. The chapter then explores the implications of the patterns both for changing degrees of engagement with one particular set of texts, the Homeric epics, and for the way in which changing values affected the myths, and the literary instantiations of those myths, that were in vogue at any one time. While the questions of what it is to be human, how men relate to women, and how to behave at a party are of lasting interest to users of pottery, engaging with issues of divine power is popular in the sixth century, with issues of sexual relations and extreme situations arising from war popular around 500, and issues about decision-making as popular in the fifth century.

In “The Book of Isaiah in the Neo-Assyrian Period,” Michael Chan offers an overview of the centuries of Assyrian dominance in the Levant. He takes five exegetical case studies that demonstrate the historical and literary impact of that Mesopotamian power on Isaiah and his successors in the eighth and seventh centuries bce. In particular, he observes how Assyrian imperial propaganda was subverted by the prophets in various ways.

Lucas L. Schulte analyzes “The Book of Isaiah in the Persian Period.” This was a crucial time in the book’s overall development. He shows how Persian emperors were able to enlist scribal elites in various subject nations and win their support. The well-known Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon may be the most prominent example, but Isa 40–66 also reflects its own interpretation of this international Persian Royal Propaganda Model. This chapter also shows how the later parts of the book of Isaiah interacted with religious and sociopolitical issues in the postexilic Persian province, comparing and contrasting it with the viewpoints of Ezra and Nehemiah in particular.

In the adjacent to Market Studies research stream, the emerging Market System Dynamics (MSD) tradition similarly studies how markets are constituted as complex social systems and how actors and institutions actively shape (and are shaped by) them. This chapter firstly provides an overview of the body of work that has accumulated within this tradition. Secondly, our chapter outlines five theoretical processes that highlight specific aspects of how markets are constituted as from an MSD lens. These processes include the (de)legitimation, the (de)moralization, the (de)politicization, the aestheticization, and the complexification of markets. We conclude this chapter by briefly discussing a set of biases within the MSD tradition (process inflation, enabling lens myopia, presentism, and particularism), and discuss how MSD and Market Studies as distinct research traditions might benefit from greater interaction.

Geopolitical competition between the world’s major powers does not make cooperation on climate change impossible; neither does industrial competition in clean technologies make it unnecessary. In the power, road transport, and steel sectors, there are ways that the United States, China and Europe can work together to accelerate the low carbon transitions – not by avoiding competition, but by shaping it to achieve better outcomes.

I open the book with the political struggle that took place between parties at COP24, over whether the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C should be noted or welcomed. This provides the context for exploring the IPCC as a central site in and producer of climate politics. In the chapter, I take the reader back to where this study began, with the question, who has the power to define climate change for collective response and what constitutes this power? The answer the book offers is the practice of writing. The actors, activities and forms of authority framework provides the analytical framework for exploring the asymmetries in power to effect how climate change is written. This approach has developed from interviews, observation and extensive data collection from IPCC documentation. The resulting book takes the reader on a journey into the intricate details of writing an assessment, the social order through which it is written and how climate change is known and acted upon through the process.

This chapter sets out to identify key conceptual resources available for exploring power in the social construction of global environmental degradation for collective response. The chapter begins with the epistemic community model, which illuminates the role that transnational communities of scientists have in identifying issues like climate change and informing political action. This approach has been important for documenting the origins and establishment of the IPCC in 1988. However, empirical accounts informed by discursive and normative frameworks in other issue areas challenge the centrality of scientists in treaty formation. The studies reviewed identify the emergence of environmental issues as the source of new institutions; however, they also highlight how problem diagnosis has to converge with prevailing political and economic orders. Revisiting the IPCC’s emergence through the idiom of co-production at the end of the chapter, reveals how climate change had to be transformed into a global problem to fit with the existing remit of international organisation.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the ethics and laws of war. The first part outlines what international law and the ‘just war’ tradition say about war; the second explores the conduct of war; and the third examines two recent dilemmas as examples of moral and legal debate: the legitimacy of pre-emptive self-defence and the use of cluster bombs.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the contemporary political debates surrounding globalisation. It illustrates the main features of protests against the social consequences of a globalised economy, and it identifies some of the key political issues that scholars and students of International Relations must face when addressing the promotion of justice and effective governance within a more densely connected world.

This chapter makes three main arguments. First, ideas and practices of diplomacy have a multi-millennial history – much longer than is generally thought. Second, this long history has been characterised by both continuity and change. As a result, diplomacy has been as much adaptive as resistant to change. And third, that diplomacy is not diminishing in importance. To assess these claims, the chapter first addresses the issue of defining diplomacy, before examining the evolution of diplomacy in terms that may be characterised broadly as pre-modern, modern and postmodern. Finally, the chapter evaluates the relationship between diplomacy and the study of international relations.

This chapter suggests paths along which the futures of international relations as subject matter and International Relations as an academic discipline may develop. First, it stresses that the division between the ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ or ‘non-traditional’ agenda is intended as a device to facilitate learning for new students of international relations. Second, it outlines how novel intellectual developments in the field are shaping its future trajectory, with a specific focus on the continued development of a ‘Global IR’; IR’s increasing intellectual engagement with the sociology of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and STEM subjects as sources of conceptual innovation; and recent attempts to define the International as a condition of interactive multiplicity in an effort to clarify its distinctive contribution to the wider social sciences. Finally, the chapter notes that thinking about the future itself is becoming increasingly central to the discipline, with methods of counterfactual analysis, social imaginaries of future histories and utopian idealisations emerging as important theoretical and political projects.

The debate about whether state or non-state players have primacy has been a major preoccupation for International Relations researchers. This chapter argues the key is not so much to determine which players are dominant, but how they interact to produce the prevailing order. The 1985 book Bringing the State Back In declared the return of the state for international politics and political economy (Evans et al. 1985). This chapter argues instead for bringing state–society relations ‘back in’ to the centre of what makes international relations.