Martin Mohr’s chapter extends issues of urban space and infrastructure to the critical theme of Sacred Roads. It thus complements the chapters on neighborhoods, water supplies, and public gardens. Within the city and beyond its urban environment, roads have been both a facilitator of mobility and a conveyor of meaning at all times and in all cultures. Acknowledging the fundamental difference in the basic configuration of ancient Greek and Qin and Han Chinese societies, Mohr’s exploration of the significance of monumental roads emanates from the careful crafting of a meaningful matrix of comparison. He finds this in the typology of ancient societies as modelled in the works of Christoph Ulf; although tied to observations in the ancient Mediterranean, Mohr explains how the model is applicable to ancient worlds in general. Reliance on bureaucratic structures and techniques set Chinese building projects apart from the notoriously small scale of Greek roads. The question of physical disproportions set apart – note how Chang’an contained a monumental grid of multi-lane passage fares – the chapter demonstrates how the Direct Road, from Yunyang to Jiuyuan, was the religious and topographical backbone of Chinese society, much like sacred procession roads in ancient Greece, for instance on the island of Samos. In both cases, the purpose of reinforcing central strategies to establish physical connections between political and religious centres went hand in hand with the goal of achieving societal cohesion. The comparison concludes with further insight into regions between China and the Mediterranean, whose monumentally and ideologically inflated palatial cities once again accentuated an intriguing foil for the Greek example.

The book’s epilogue takes the first steps to applying the conclusions of the work to other current social and cultural contexts, like the Black Lives Matter movement and white Christian Nationalism in the United States. After demonstrating the way the book’s arguments help highlight the stakes of these movements, I proceed to question the utility of a martyrdom during our era of ever-increasing global interconnection, and whether it is time to be done with martyrs once and for all.

Pablo Ouziel offers his reflections on the Workshop and volume. He describes the development of some of the main themes. Next, he presents six distinct types of working relationships among democratic citizens that he first developed in his research with citizens involved in Spain’s 15M movement. Then, he shows the presence of these six ‘joining hands’ relationships in the various chapters. This exercise enables us see how the diverse democratic citizens of each and every chapter can work together in context-specific, integrative relationships of democratic cooperation and contestation. As the chapter illustrates these relationships of democratic “joining hands” or integration are not only possible, but actual, here and now, in the local and global field of democratic diversity. The further growth of these action-coordination relationships has the potential to generate and integrate robust democracies with the capacity to respond to our ecosocial crises and co-create a sustainable, democratic future.

In order to start the analysis of the Telecommunications chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it is fundamental, as a first step, to understand the reasons why a plurilateral agreement among twelve countries, whose main objective is to address trade-related issues, includes a specific chapter on Telecommunications.

Although there is no single answer to this question, it is possible to develop some reasons that support the inclusion of this chapter in the TPP.