To make a profit, early modern merchants had to belong to a group dominating or at least operating collectively on a market segment. Merchants relied on their “credit,” both in the narrow sense of ability to borrow and in the broader sense of being allowed into the group. Within it, mutual trust was built through a continuous Maussian exchange of favors, most notably book credit allowing for deferred payment, often interest-free, and shared insider information underpinning lucrative ventures, including with friendly officials. Social, religious, and family links played a role in this process, with complicated rules governing the creation of new links with new partners. Disputes did develop, but relationships were broken up only for serious cause. Double-entry bookkeeping helped track the complex flows of credit created by these networks; its first goal was not to calculate profit, but to serve as a source of mutual security, as confirmed by textbooks teaching the technique. In this universe, “profit” meant primarily an improvement in one’s group position – profit on individual ventures was much less important than acceptance by the group and the prospects of future profit it opened.

The Middle East has famously been described as a region ‘dripping with identity politics’. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that constructivism has gained prominence among scholars studying the international relations of the region. Following an introduction to the philosophical and sociological roots of constructivism as a social theory, the chapter discusses various strands among constructivists. It also explores how Middle Eastern scholars employ a constructivist approach holding distinct characteristics compared to those found in the broader debate on constructivism within International Relations. Scholars of Middle Eastern politics have been attentive to challenges to state identity, at supra- and sub-state levels, resulting in puzzling international behaviour. Insights from these debates on constructivism inform the case study, which contrasts the ‘classic’ Arab cold war among Arab states in the 1950s and 1960s with the regional rivalries that emerged following the Arab uprisings, which some observers have characterised as a new (Arab, neo-sectarian, Sunni–Shia) cold war. While supra- and sub-state identities played a crucial role in regional politics during both periods, notable differences existed. The case study examines whether and how identities and ideas matter in the international relations of the region in these two eras of Middle East history.

Realism is the dominant theoretical approach to international relations. The realist tradition finds its roots in a pessimistic supposition that international relations are unavoidably shaped by power politics. This chapter examines the core assumptions of classical realism. Classical realists lay a claim to a long tradition of thought going back to eminent thinkers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. Classical realism recognises that the drive to be all-powerful is inherent in human nature. States not only seek to accumulate power but also to make sure that no other state shifts the balance of power in their favour. The chapter then examines modern variants of classical realism and explores how it has been applied in the context of the Middle East. While classical realism seems to be the most fitting tradition to explain international relations in the Middle East, its application to the region has not been without limitations. The chapter then analyses Saudi foreign policy in the post-2011 Middle East through a classical realist lens. While the Saudi Kingdom played the role of regional stabiliser for decades, it emerged in the post-2011 Middle East as a regional player vying for power and attempting to shift the regional balance of power.

Sociocultural psychology of the lifecourse, which examines the development of the persons in their changing environments, offers here the frame for our exploration of development in older age. Although it has largely addressed the development of children, youth and adults, it has only recently started to approach the specificities of developing with age. This chapter retraces the ontological and epistemological foundation of this approach. It then further explores three sets of concepts of foremost importance when approaching development in the lifecourse into older age: those related to dynamics of distancing and imagining, core when examining semiotic processes in human development; those of interests and engagements, which emphasise sense-making and affects; and what regards the domains of conduct in which people engage. The chapter then sketches the specificities of development in older age within people’s material, social and symbolic environment.

In 1962, John F. Kennedy proposed withholding for taxes on dividends and interest to close the large gap between dividends and interest paid and reported. Despite the familiarity with wage withholding, the proposal encountered an enormous wave of public opposition, generating one of the most significant letter-writing campaign ever mounted. Congress relented and stripped the dividend and interest withholding provision from the bill in favor of new information reporting requirements. Why did dividend and interest withholding generate such a populist revolt? In part, the populism on this issue was manufactured by the business community. Banks and corporations mobilized their depositors and investors to contact their congressmen to protest the proposal. This is only part of the story, however. The industry-led campaign struck a chord with taxpayers who had become disaffected by the special tax preferences and shelters enjoyed by high bracket taxpayers. They viewed omitting dividends and interest as their form of self-help, while others were indignant that Congress would attack tax evasion by going after them before solving high-end tax evasion first.

William James’s exquisite attention to thinking begins, by his own account, in what he learned from “the divine Emerson” about how cultivating the practice of carefully tailoring a habit of words to clothe a perception becomes itself a habit of mind. This habit of mind was trained for James, on “forg[ing] every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts” about being human in “the vast driftings of the cosmic weather.” What Emerson uncovered and James went on to investigate and assemble into his “mosaic philosophy” through his comprehensive study of physiology, neurology, wave theory, experimental psychology, and their related fields, is that in thinking, reading, imagining, and writing we are, in fact, experiencing quantum reality, as both Niels Bohr and Alfred North Whitehead recognized in the contribution of “that adorable genius.”

Analyzes the superficial and underlying motives of initiators for the use of force.

This chapter outlines to what extent which kinds of remedies are available to the successful applicant. Albeit the differences in the wording of the various IAT statutes, it argues that it is possible to map out guiding principles for the assessment of the remedies to be granted, including remedies inherent in IATs’ powers. Moreover, it offers a critical analysis of the legal framework and its implementation by IATs in relation to the right to an effective remedy.

This chapter examines how the theological ideas discussed in Chapter 5 were successfully disseminated throughout English society. To do this it examines the religious split between the established Church of England and non-conformity. The development of the theology self-love, happiness, and interest is examined in the writings of the enormously influential philosopher and theologian Richard Cumberland. It then discusses how this evolved into Latitudinarianism, and examines printed sermons as they commented on these ethical concepts, as well as on consumption and worldly goods. The writings of the Anglican ministers Joseph Butler and Josiah Tucker are examined to show how these ideas became directly linked to economic thought. The concurrent development of non-conformist theology relating to the same concepts is traced through the writings of John Locke on the mind, and the dairy of the student lawyer Dudley Ryder. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury and his theory of polite sociability is also investigated to show how it provided a less austere means to disseminate Locke’s psychology of the mind. Central to this investigation will be the process by which individual selves were able to become comfortable with trusting new institutions by using the concept of interest as a form of commitment.

This chapter moves from examining institutional changes to the cultural history of morals and emotions, by examining how the evolution of the idea of the self came to supplant the institutional mediation of local law courts. It traces how three concepts – self-love, happiness, and interest – were developed and disseminated as religious and interpersonal ethics, all related to the development of the self within the singular mind. This was a crucial move that allowed the idea and practice of savings to move from taking the form of a debt owed, to the interest-bearing capital described above. It also validated the crucial concept of interest within religion, and this was related to the increasing moral acceptance of the interest rate. Although a legal interest rate had existed from the Elizabethan Act of 1571, interest rates are difficult to find mentioned explicitly in the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth, however, they had become commonplace.

Kierkegaard and Ørsted were not just contemporaries but personally knew each other. In this chapter, I argue that Kierkegaard probably learned the term Tankeexperiment from Ørsted. This chapter contextualizes Kierkegaard’s use of “imaginary construction” (Experiment) in his work as a whole, including his well-known uses of paradoxes. I will show how the core elements of Ørsted’s account – thought experiment as a method of variation, the need for free and active constitution, and the use of thought experiments for facilitating genuine thought – are echoed in Kierkegaard’s discussions. Along the way, I will describe some decisions on how to translate Experiment and Tankeexperiment that are unfortunate in some ways and fortuitous in others, as I will explain. In these ways, Kierkegaard indirectly takes up Kant’s proposal that “construction” (i.e., Experiment in Danish) is a means of achieving cognition.

While the British or continental marriage plot generally culminates in a high-stakes social transaction involving fixed sums of old money, the story of American marriage in realist fiction is often less about inheritance than about the abstract, dynamic, and unpredictable force of new wealth. In both its new- and old-world settings, the marriage plot is fundamentally a money plot, but the kind of money at issue tends to differ in important respects, and the role of marriage in either reproducing or disrupting social conditions also differs as a result. Simply put, if the possibilities of heteronormative social reproduction signified by marriage were the things that chiefly struck the imaginations of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, it seems that for William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and other writers of American realism, money itself was the romance of the realist moment in America. It follows that the American marriage plot often enters the period’s fiction less as the climactic mechanism of social reproduction than as a minor event in the story of money’s own reproductive capability.

The Court’s personal jurisdiction is governed by Article 34(1) of its Statute, limiting standing to states. Through an examination of the travaux preparatoires of this provision, it is revealed that while drafters considered granting individuals standing before the World Court, this was ultimately rejected due to reasons anchored in the traditional positivist doctrine. While scholars have long criticised Article 34(1) for being at odds with the role of the individual in the contemporary international legal order and called for its amendment, this chapter argues against this proposal due to the practical infeasibility with respect to Statute amendments, workload, jurisdiction, and legal interest. It argues instead that the Court may adjust its procedural mechanisms in a variety of contexts to circumvent its Article 34(1) and allow for the integration of concerned individuals in its proceedings to the best of its ability, where necessary or desirable.

Chapter 2 introduces the normative theory on which the book relies. Principles of natural law are guides for practical human action. The principles are “natural” because they are knowable through human reason and valid guides to action whether they have been accepted in any community’s laws. They are “law” in that they supply reasons or justifications for action. Natural law theory focuses human action on survival and on flourishing understood rationally. Natural law justifies reasoning with interests, understood as distinct components of a person’s well-being. Natural law also justifies reasoning with rights, understood as entitlements to act and be free from interference backed by claims against others. Natural rights focus social and political life on desirable, low, and uncontroversial goals like survival and freedom. Natural rights also help specialize – around distinct fields of human activity organized around people’s bodies, their capacities to make livings, their capacities to associate, and their capacities to use property.

This chapter explains what property covers and what interest it serves. Property is the field for legal and social relations for separable resources. And property serves an interest people have in acquiring and using separable resources for survival or flourishing. This chapter relies on work by James Penner and Neil MacCormick to introduce separability. This chapter studies property in body parts, names, identities, and slaves.

Chapter 5 builds on the observational findings from the previous chapter to test the hypotheses using two survey experiments performed on a sample of British Labour voters. The first experiment manipulates the selective incentives available to members by changing the cost of joining. Not surprisingly, people are more interested in joining when fees are low. The second experiment manipulates the party’s instrumental incentives by stating members can (or cannot) select party leaders and parliamentary candidates, as well as attend events where they may formally participate in determining the party’s future policy direction. The findings support the hypotheses generated by Chapter 2’s formal model: decentralization increases membership, conditional on voter-party alignment.

Basic concepts in finance are introduced and modelled via first-order recurrence equations. In particular, we discuss compound interest, present value and the present value of an annuity.

Chapter 2 presents the conceptual transformation of republicanism that Rousseau operated while responding to Montesquieu’s challenges. In his writings, republicanism moved from an elitist theory based on virtuous self-sacrifice to an inclusive theory based on popular sovereignty and the rational interest of citizens. Rousseau developed a theory of republican citizenship as a shared intention toward creating and maintaining a community of free and equal beings—an inclusive theory of sharing freedom. Yet Rousseau’s theory has important shortcomings that plagued French republicanism after him. On the one hand, it presented a rational project of sharing equal freedom among all, but on the other, it emphasized particularism and nationalism as conditions of its realization.