Chapter 3 presents the development of new forms of republicanism in the revolutionary period. Republicanism was called upon to address a problem that was historically foreign to it: enabling the emancipation of a large and diverse people that had just lost the unifying power of their King. After examining the arguments of the first republican treatises (Condorcet, Robert, Billaud-Varenne), the chapter lays out the solutions republicans imagined to the problems that arose with the defection of the King. This included the attempt to create a united popular sovereign, and, in response to Montesquieu’s challenges, the creation of a virtuous and educated citizenry that was ready to defend the republic. Revolutionaries imagined a republic based on an abstract notion of citizenship and a representative system without representation of particular interests. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the debate between Sieyès, Condorcet, and Robespierre on the representation of the people in a republic.

This chapter frames the book. It explains the focus of women as a historically highly relevant category while acknowledging the multiplicities of (gender) identities and relations that the rise of queer theory has opened. It also draws attention to the different experiences that women have at work in relation to technology, which are mediated in complex ways by ethnic and class backgrounds as well as issues of sexuality. The chapter outlines the different disciplinary orientations the book draws upon – including feminist theory, science, technology, and society studies, sociology of work, political economy, organizational studies, labour history, as well as CSCW, HCI, and participatory design – to then introduce the key concepts and theories used in the book: the distinction between sex and gender, intersectionality, the problematic notion of race, the view of engineers/designers making ethical-political choices, the concept of technology. It forwards the notion of practice-based research and the importance of involving users in design decisions as key to achieving gender equality in design. These concepts will be elaborated as well as made ‘practical’ in the course of the book.

This chapter discusses how governments and supernational institutions have tried to tackle misinformation through laws and regulations. Some countries have adopted new legislation making the spread or creation of misinformation illegal; this has often been met with criticism by human rights organizations, for instance, because governments cannot act as neutral arbiters of truth. The UK and EU have adopted expansive regulatory frameworks that regulate not only misinformation but rather the online information space in its entirety. The United States is generally wary of any new legislation that imposes limits on speech, and doesn’t currently have legislative initiatives that are as broad in scope as those in the UK and EU. Instead, some entities in the US have tried out investing in communications campaigns about mis- and disinformation; these are aimed at individuals (and not companies or misinformation producers), and their effectiveness is evaluated in a very different way.

Chapter 2 examines the capacities of citizens in light of what deliberative democracy seems to require of them. Skeptical survey researchers and psychologists think these capacities are conspicuously lacking and that what we see instead is widespread incapacity to make any sort of reasoned choice. And even when choices are made, they are under the influence of motivated reasoning that seeks evidence only to confirm existing positions that people hold and all kinds of biases that produce polarization. Thus we cannot expect more of democracy than existing electoral processes supply. Extreme skeptics suggest we should not expect even this and so recommend we dispense with democracy instead. We look at the skeptics’ charges and show in a reading of the available evidence why we think they are mistaken. We sketch a deliberative psychology that understands citizen competence and motivations as variables that can be invoked if the circumstances are right and so make essential contributions to countering the diabolical soundscape. We can explore these ideas in the context of deliberative forums, interpersonal networks, and the broader public sphere.

Methods for making films of insoluble poly(para-phenylene) (PPP) are described and its potential as a blue-emitting polymer discussed. Efficient methods for making soluble PPP derivatives have been developed but these polymers suffer from undesirable changes in their emission due to twisting of the polymer backbones caused by steric interactions between the solubilising side-chains or by the formation of emissive aggregates in the solid state. To overcome this, ladder-type PPPs (LPPPs) made from precursor polymers have been made and their structure–property relationships and potential utility in devices are discussed. Stable blue emission from LPPPs has proven to be difficult to obtain due to the formation of emissive defects, while their wide bandgaps and unsuitable frontier orbital energies have made them of limited use in other devices.

Chapter 1 presents the debate about republicanism before the French Revolution. Montesquieu played an important part in this debate as he formulated the influential “scale thesis” according to which republicanism could not be adequate for a large country. Montesquieu raised a set of challenges to would-be republicans in France (the “motivation,” “unity,” and “epistemic” challenges). The rest of the chapter presents theoretical resources in different republican traditions (notably Italian, English, American) that informed the French republicans on key issues (conquest, freedom, commerce, institutions). This chapter retraces the context in which the myth of outdated republicanism was born, but also how the elitist and martial dimensions of the republican tradition shaped French republicanism.

Forging a professional identity is important in the scholarly world. It is better to establish your expertise in one area than to be a jack of all trades and master of none. An aspiring scholar should focus research investigations on a specific topic so that their name becomes attached to that topic. Doing so gets you well known and cited frequently. Budding scholars are cautioned not to become normal scientists who simply follow the crowd doing easy and familiar work. Simply replicating the work of others or following the hot topics of the day leaves you contributing footnotes to others’ work. Strive to become a pioneering scientist who discovers and tackles new problems. There are various ways that productive scholars forge identifiable research programs, including being a systematizer, conducting programmatic research addressing a set of related questions; an extender, extending research investigations into new areas; a straddler, combining two or more research topics; a lumper, assembling disparate topics into a coherent whole; an applicator, seeking to apply findings in helpful ways; a me-searcher, investigating topics of personal interest; and an essayist, commenting on matters of interest and importance.