This chapter demonstrates how Ibadis, whether merchants or scholars, participated in the everyday legal life of Ottoman Cairo by using its shariah courts. It does so by focusing on two Ibadis living in seventeenth-century Cairo: a merchant named ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Baḥḥār and a scholar named Muḥammad Abī Sitta. The variety of ways in which both men used the court system demonstrates its importance to Ibadi merchants and scholars in the Ottoman period. The chapter’s overarching theme is how Ibadis used the legal tools of Ottoman Cairo, waqf property, and inheritance courts to navigate their everyday lives.

Higher education in the United States advanced democracy during the much of the twentieth century by fostering social mobility and by deepening students’ understanding of democratic citizenship, as well as strengthening their capacity to participate in a democratic polity. Concurrently, higher education enjoyed widespread esteem in the United States, while colleges and universities became highly stratified by financial capital, or endowment size, which was closely correlated with prestige. Yet, this financial stratification widened into a yawning "wealth gap" that precipitated a decline in public esteem near the end of the twentieth century. This historical chapter explains these developments and argues that wealth concentration in higher education and wealth inequality in the US population are interrelated, and this interrelationship weakens social mobility and democracy in the twenty-first century.

This chapter, along with Chapters 5 to 6, examines the legal duties that constrain accumulation once a charity has been created. Controller duties (e.g. directors’ duties and trustee duties) are the focus of this chapter. Clearly, duties of loyalty, good faith and of care and diligence can potentially play a restraining role in relation to agency costs, the risk of which can be heightened by accumulation. Further, controller duties also raise the possibility of regulating the retention and distribution of charity assets by controllers, thus affecting the intergenerational distribution of benefits. The chapter provides an overview of the controller duties arising from each of the main legal forms adopted by charities and analyzes the impact of those duties on accumulation. Particular attention is paid to duties arising on the exercise of discretionary powers, such as the duties to act upon genuine consideration and to act impartially. Examples are provided primarily from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In addition to facilitating the accumulation of wealth, palace affiliation also created a group of women who had the resources and inclination to engage in charitable activities. A career in the harem underscored by material and moral patronage enabled many of these former slaves to amass the necessary resources—wealth, status, and networks—to be charitable. Thus, chapter 5 deals with another component of the material world, that of the charitable activities of female members of the imperial court. More specifically, the chapter examines their architectural patronage and endowments. In the previous chapters, palace women appeared as the receivers of patronage. In this chapter, they appear as dispensers of patronage as a result of the patronage that they themselves had received. The chapter endeavors to locate the impact of being affiliated with a particular household on the charitable activities of its members. It also aims to evaluate the possible implications that the charitable activities of this group of women had for the imperial court, the members of the imperial household, and Ottoman society. It demonstrates how female members of the imperial court engaged in charitable activities that served the interests of both Ottoman subjects and members of the imperial court, while also leaving their individual mark on the architectural, social, urban, religious, and intellectual landscape of various regions of the empire

This chapter introduces the background and key research question of the project for this book, which is an output of a multi-country study on a highly important subject in emerging markets: what types of capabilities do emerging market firms need, and how do they acquire and upgrade these capabilities in order to achieve competitiveness in the global market? The chapter highlights two unique aspects of emerging markets: weak institutions and lack of endowment. The main theme of the book thus becomes how emerging market companies develop competitive capabilities to international levels facing these two critical constraints. The chapter also discusses the organization of the book, which comprises twelve different country studies, and presents the methodology used to select and evaluate the firms studied.

Attention in this final chapter is directed to the private passions of church personnel as revealed in the executors’ accounts of deceased canons, and in particular Jacques de Houchin, remarkable for his bibliophilic sophistication and (apparently) private music-making. Houchin’s book collection at death ran to more than 300 volumes, including large numbers of classical texts, making him one of the most significant private bibliophiles of his age. He also possessed a large number of music books and musical instruments. Centred on this one man’s proclivities, the chapter paints a picture of private music-making within the confines of the church and its cloister, involving canons, vicars and choirboys.