In the 1980s, two groups of physicists in Europe and America began to lay plans for a high energy proton accelerator that could settle the question of electroweak symmetry breaking. In 1984, Weinberg is appointed to the SSC Board of Overseers, and this work would occupy his time for much of the next decade. Weinberg testifies before Congress in favor of the SSC project and starts to appreciate the role of pork-barrel politics in the siting decisions. The Texas site of Waxahachie, near Dallas, is approved in 1988. The project’s construction funding is approved but faces ongoing challenges from other competing areas of science. Changes in the specifications, required by the science goals, lead to increases in the costs, resulting in bad press. In 1993, the funding was cut, and the SSC was killed off. Weinberg writes a successful trade book, Dreams of a Final Theory.

This uninhibited book of Collingwood’s rounds off his contribution to philosophy in a fiercely personal style. Declaring his unbounded admiration for the Leviathan of Hobbes and following its fourfold structure, Collingwood offers a systematic account of man, society, civilization, and “barbarism” – the last being understood as active hostility towards civilization, or revolt against it. Collingwood’s thoughts on the meaning of “society” and “civility,” as well as on questions of peace and war, remain very much alive; of particular interest here are his distinction between “eristic” and “dialectical” approaches to disagreement, and his conception of a body politic as the scene of a “dialectical” relationship between social and non-social elements. Other discussions impose greater distance on a modern reader – among them his briskly affirmative treatment of the role of a “ruling class,” of our entry into a presumed “social contract,” and of the “intelligent exploitation of nature.”

This chapter focuses on Haiti’s twentieth-century periodicals, and more specifically on the literary magazine. By bringing to light the complex stories of literary revue culture during key historical moments I show how these specific forms of publications, which played a major role in Caribbean countries, have influenced Haiti’s sociopolitical and intellectual life. At its core, this chapter addresses the tension between the aesthetics and politics of several literary revues by highlighting, first, literary and/or socially engaged magazines predominantly concerned with the development of Haiti’s literature and culture, and, second, those with a clear political agenda, some of which were infused with an explicit objective: the forging of a Haitian national voice.

Traditional economics served as the model case of most early performativity theory. In recent years, however, behavioural economics and particularly nudging has become increasingly popular; both as a policy instrument to design markets and as a behaviour change tool used by for-profit organizations. This chapter unpacks the implications of this shift in economic discourse for performativity theory, examining to what extent the performative process of behavioural economics overlaps with standard performativity and how it differs from that of traditional economics across policy and business domains. We focus on four aspects of the shift: (1) the nature of the economic subjects – consumers, workers, market actors – being performed, (2) the changes in the underlying normative standpoints and the politics of performativity, (3) the technologies of knowing adopted, and (4) the performative actions and socio-technical assemblages facilitated by traditional versus behavioural economics. The chapter concludes by offering a theoretical extension of performativity theory and a critical account of the potential impacts of behavioural economics and by laying the groundwork for future research.

This chapter refines the concept of constitutional symmetry and anticipates some potential objections. Contrary to what skeptics might assert, judges can reliably assess whether particular constitutional understandings are symmetric or not. In addition, favoring symmetry is valuable even though political alignments may shift in the future, and arguable asymmetries in the Constitution itself are not a reason to disfavor symmetric interpretations of provisions whose meaning is debatable. Symmetric interpretation also addresses contemporary challenges better than competing proposals to embrace “proportionality” in rights adjudication, give greater weight to existing precedent, or pursue one contemporary constitutional vision or another in no-holds-barred fashion. For judges who embrace an ethic of symmetric interpretation, a preference for symmetry should hold the greatest purchase in crafting general understandings of discrete constitutional provisions rather than overall interpretive theories or case-specific results, and judges should favor symmetric understandings even if their colleagues do not.

In The Prelude (1805/1850), Wordsworth reimagines time through the ritual calendar and festivals of revolutionary France. The Revolution’s rituals, moreover, complicate the common notion that Wordsworth retreats from politics into poetry. By way of ritual, Wordsworth enters what Walter Benjamin calls now-time or higher time, moments in which the past – via memory – becomes simultaneous with the present. Such now-times allow Wordsworth to juxtapose, on the one hand, his own past calling to a poetic vocation with, on the other hand, the Revolution’s founding vocation to bring liberty. In that juxtaposition, Wordsworth’s own faithfulness to his poetic calling tacitly critiques the Revolution’s infidelity to its origins. The higher time of ritual, then, mediates between Wordsworthian memory and revolutionary history. Wordsworth provides foundations for many Victorian liturgies. His sacralization of material reality, his resistance to the market’s dehumanizing rituals, his imbrication of memory and higher time – each of these undergoes further elaboration as the century unfolds.

Clare’s declaration that he ‘found the poems in the fields, and only wrote them down’ is, to some extent, pretence; however quickly he might compose, he corrects and revises from very early on, before he gets any guidance from others. The more he writes, the more he confronts the inevitable problem of repetition: his solutions can be seen in the concentrated echoes and references back and forth between poems. The manuscripts in all their teeming detail demonstrate his determination to get things right. Once publication arrives he has to contend with the conflicting demands of editors, publishers, and supporters; there are vexed questions of taste and politics. As he moves towards The Shepherd’s Calendar, however keen his desire for independence, increasingly the process becomes collaborative. When his life is turned upside down with the move to Northborough in 1832, his deeply personal poems of loss are worked on with extraordinary intensity.

Originally established by “we the people,” as its preamble majestically states, the Constitution belongs to us all. But Americans increasingly treat it as the property of one political faction or the other. In keeping with their own preferences, conservatives interpret the Constitution to protect religion, limit gun control, and obstruct administrative governance while allowing state-level regulation of moral questions like abortion. Progressives see a mirror-image constitution that advances social justice, confers broad federal power, and allows flexible administrative regulation while at the same time limiting state and local police authority and guaranteeing sexual and reproductive autonomy. As national politics have grown ever more divided and polarized, preventing either side from implementing its goals through federal legislation, both coalitions have dreamed of capturing the courts and implementing their vision instead through constitutional interpretation. A document that should be a source of unity and shared commitments has become a vehicle for extending political conflict.

This chapter introduces the politics and policy of urban nature and nature-based solutions, stemming from a diversity of flexible governance modes and novel financial arrangements with a strong involvement of local communities. It opens with a discussion of the different visions of nature that are present in cities, followed by a more detailed examination of two particularly conflicting visions: the extent to which nature is to be mobilised as a tool for public welfare versus one for private profit. Then the chapter situates nature-based solutions in the context of three specific debates that illustrate their political and contested nature. First, the extent to which the drive for multi-functionality of urban nature can be a double-edged sword. Second, the tensions between green growth and gentrification and the pitfalls of greening exclusionary urban change. And finally, the need to consider issues of justice and equity within nature-based solutions. Through case studies of innovative park management in Newcastle, the United Kingdom, and East-Boston rail-to-trail Greenway in Boston, the United States, the chapter highlights enabling conditions that can drive systemic, just, ecologically sustainable and genuine integration of nature into urban life and policy.

In 1996, along the Yangtze River in Zigui 秭归, Hubei Province, the villagers of Guilin were in the middle of packing their belongings. Their friends and relatives were helping them to remove tiles, doors, and windows from the soon to be deluged homes. Down the hill, people were loading farm tools, furniture, and other essentials onto boats anchored along the river’s banks. Amid the din of firecrackers and farewells from their fellow villagers, the first group of Three Gorges migrants set off for their government-designated places of resettlement. Because of the low-altitude location of their residence, Zhang Bing’ai 张秉爱, together with her disabled husband, and two children, were supposed to be part of the first group of migrants. For years, thanks to the help of her maternal family, Bing’ai had been able to cope with the burdensome farm work during busy seasons. Therefore, she insisted on staying for “moving up” resettlement, requesting a flat area for residential use at a higher altitude above the state designated displacement line, which was at odds with the government’s resettlement policy. “I am just attached to this land. With land, you can have everything.” Bing’ai refused to cooperate with the government’s resettlement plan, but it was to no avail. Her home, along with what remained of those of her fellow villagers, was soon underwater. Her family ended up living in a temporary hut not far from the rising water.

This chapter aims to redescribe the IPCC through the analytical framework of the book by identifying the actors, activities and forms of authority that shape the organisation and its assessment practice. Reviewing existing studies of the IPCC, the chapter begins by identifying two central concerns within this scholarship: first, the relationship between science and politics and second, the asymmetries between developed and developing country participation. The chapter contributes to this literature by using the framework of the book to identify the IPCC as five distinct units: the panel, the bureau, the technical support units (TSUs), the secretariat and the authors. This identifies other forms of authority that matter alongside scientific and political forms, most importantly the administrative, as found within the TSUs. Describing the historical emergence of the social order over thirty years and six assessment cycles reveals the relationship between economic capital and meaningful participation. It requires economic and human resources to undertake IPCC activities, and it through this investment individual actors and member government becomes meaningful and authoritative participants, with knowledge of and the symbolic power to write the meaning of climate change.

The most widely read and influential component of the IPCC’s practice of writing is the summary for policymakers (SPM), where the key messages of the underlying report are presented in short sentences and figures to facilitate travel into the media, ministers’ speeches and UNFCCC negotiations. The aim of this chapter is to describe the politics of approval. The chapter begins the historical emergence of this practice and documents the tactics and strategies available to co-chairs, authors and delegates to influence the final outcome. Documenting participation in the authorship and approval of the SPM again illuminates the asymmetries revealed in previous chapters, but also highlights the growing presence of some developing countries in the process. This is evident in the content that has initiated some of the greatest struggle – the categorisation of developing versus developed countries. This account reveals that the forces structuring the final stage of the IPCC’s practice of writing originate in the broader global struggle to determine the meaning of climate change and continue after the approval, only now with a new SPM to substantiate national positions in the negotiation of the collective response.

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.

Dictionaries are an ancient and ubiquitous genre, flourishing wherever and whenever humans flourish, but it’s important to remember that dictionaries aren’t products of human biology or necessity; they are products of human creativity and community: dictionaries are cultural and therefore political.  This chapter explores what it means to understand that simple fact. Dictionaries are partisan systems of ordering words and meanings.  They may aim to be universal, but they inevitably emerge from, record, and respond to social moments from particular perspectives.  Those perspectives may seek to celebrate or denigrate certain cultural groups, legitimate or suppress certain languages, facilitate social mobility or discrimination.  Dictionaries may highlight their cultural positionality as such for political or commercial profit, or they may cast their subjective styles as objective and universal for the same political or commercial profit.  In all events, dictionaries end up documenting cultural information in their definitions, usage labels and notes, illustrative examples and quotations, inserts and appendices, and beyond.  And, again in all events, dictionaries can have cultural impacts entirely unintended or unanticipated by their makers, running from the positive and life affirming to the dehumanizing and antisocial.

In the concluding chapter, I look back at the question I began with and the answer I found in the practice of writing. I re-visit accounts of science and politics and describe the three sides to this relationship that I observed in the IPCC. I identify sites within the UNFCCC that have been designed to bring climate science and climate politics closer together, such as in the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement. While this brings accountability against the approved knowledge base, it is likely to further increase the political pressure on the IPCC as an organisation and as a practice for writing climate change. From the IPCC’s location in global climate politics, I move inward to the actors, activities and forms of authority that constitute and shape this practice of writing. The book reveals the importance of looking beyond scientific and political forms of authority and describes why the TSUs matter as actors that have the potential to uphold or challenge the scientific order of relations. I explore the implications of science as a site of politics, the global asymmetries in the knowledge economy, and their effects on participation for the design of new intergovernmental assessment bodies, which from the outset must design for meaningful participation by all in these critical sites of agreement-making.

The electric guitar is often presented as a novel but straightforward solution to a particular problem: amplification. It is remarkable, then, that histories of the instrument focus mainly on the iconic six-string itself. No electric guitar is complete without an amplifier, and no companion to the electric guitar is complete without a corresponding history of electronic amplification. This chapter is about certain tendencies and possibilities that have existed around electric guitar amplification. It covers the historical development of the amplifier, focusing less on a loudness teleology than the instrument’s social and political construction. It also discusses the history of amplification in relation to recent scholarly interests in signal chains and supply chains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of electric guitar amplification and the problem of electricity—suggesting that the power of the amplifier has never been found in loudness alone.