Relationships involving asymmetric vulnerability have an ambiguous normative status. On the one hand, such relationships often strike us as problematic because they involve asymmetric vulnerability. On the other hand, asymmetric vulnerability is a condition of many relationships that we value. This generates a dilemma: it seems that relational egalitarians must either claim that we should eliminate asymmetric vulnerability – but this would be to foreclose valuable social relationships – or maintain that relating as equals is possible despite asymmetric vulnerability – but this threatens to undermine relational egalitarianism’s political bite. This paper explores how relational egalitarians should address the tension between vulnerability and equality. While the tension might not be fully resolvable, I argue that egalitarians have a range of strategies to reduce it and grappling with the ambiguous status of human vulnerability may help us to better understand the nature of relational egalitarianism.

Social relationships are not only linked to emotional well-being, but also significantly associated with physical health. Reviewing the epidemiological and experimental body of research reveals evidence of directional and potentially causal associations between social connection and health and longevity. This is consistent with theoretical approaches to social relationships including attachment, social baseline, social network, and social support theory, all of which identify social relationships as vital to health and well-being. Theoretical models further conceptualize how it is that social relationships influence health. The growing scientific evidence documents some of the biological and behavioral pathways involved. While the evidence on the associations between social relationships and health is robust, the literature is uneven pointing to the need for further research on the complex nature of relationship quality and tech-based social connection.

Abstract: In this chapter, Garchar applies Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy to the concept of dying well, shifting the focus from death as a passive event to dying as an active, process-oriented experience. As Garchar argues, Dewey’s framework emphasizes the continuity of life and death, embedding dying within social, environmental, and communal relationships. Dewey sees life as a process of interruption and recovery, where individuals grow through interactions with their environments. Garchar shows that this model extends to dying, which is not an isolated event but a communal process shaped by relationships and social structures. Recognizing this continuity allows for the cultivation of environments that support both living and dying well. Habits, often unquestioned, structure human experience. In end-of-life care, rigid habits – such as aggressive medical interventions – can prevent meaningful engagement with dying. Dewey’s emphasis on deliberation and imagination invites critical reflection on these habits, encouraging more humane and flexible approaches to end-of-life experiences. Garchar concludes that dying well requires active participation, including open discussions about death and structural changes in healthcare and social norms. Rather than seeing death as a battle, Dewey’s pragmatism reframes dying as an opportunity for reflection, growth, and intentionality – aligning with Epicurus’ insight that “living well and dying well are one.”

This chapter explores the personal letter in the history of English through textual and material conventions of letter-writing, community aspects of letter-writing and language, and the role of editors and the reliability of edited epistolary sources. Community context is viewed as contemporary letter-writing practices, the involvement and influence of social networks and social relationships in letter-writing and language use, and the human factor and community aspects inherent in editing letters and compiling corpora.

This chapter explores aspects of individual visions and visionaries that increase the traction to create social change. It begins by examining epistemic gaps – knowledge deficits that inspire visionary ideas – and the role of imagination in addressing these gaps. The chapter then focuses on compelling narratives, discussing the importance of storytelling, relatable characters and moral alignment in crafting transformative visions. It continues by discussing the factors that enable a vision to be spread, such as social identity and network positions that bridge social divides. The chapter also considers how visionary ideas interact with group dynamics and system attributes that facilitate or hinder change. Case studies of William Shakespeare, Martin Luther, and Karl Marx are presented: transformative visions arise from unmet needs; are effective when they offer innovative social relationships; are marked by clear, moral narratives; are more likely to emerge in societies with diverse, autonomous subgroups; and spread via networks of higher trust.

Four themes regarding the nature of meaning making are proposed: (1) That humans are inherently motivated to seek and find meaning, from cradle to grave; (2) Meaning making is an active process, always involving an interaction between person and event; (3) There is a dynamic, transactional relationship between meaning and experience, with past meanings impacting what is experienced and new experiences altering meaning systems; and (4) The developmental process underlying meaning making is inextricably social.

Humans spend a lot of time in social interaction compared to other animals. The reasons may be various: the need to service social relationships, to detect ‘free riders’, or to handle rapid changes in fluid social arrangements. Actual conversational usage though suggests the prime job is to navigate changing social relationships in a sea of micropolitics. One difficulty is the delicacy of social relationships, and the care that is usually taken to avoid potential loss of ‘face’ or social esteem, as shown by the danger of teases. Social relationships are constructed through three key modes of exchange: reciprocal exchanges of intimacies, reciprocal exchanges of respect, and asymmetrical exchanges of intimacy to juniors and respect to seniors. Even the most complex societies are constructed partly through these three modes, which have some parallels to primate grooming patterns.

Depression is a leading cause of disability in high- and middle-income countries and is of increasing relative burden in low-income countries. The Global Burden of Disease study illustrates how depression is increasing as a proportion of all the disabilities resulting from illness. This is because we know how to prevent other major causes of disability such as cardiovascular disease and infection and so their incidence is on the decline. Meanwhile, there is evidence that rates of depression are rising slightly. In order to have an impact on this major public health burden, we will need to devise preventative strategies to reduce the incidence. As depression is a continuum, much of the disability is experienced by the larger numbers of those with mild and moderate levels of depression who might not seek treatment for themselves. Therefore, effective preventative strategies applied to the whole population will have more widespread benefits than interventions simply targeted towards those at high risk. In order to develop preventative interventions, we need to know what causes depression.

Epidemiology tends to be primarily concerned with causes outside the individual or with genetic causes.

An example of another way of working with perspectivism is developed in Chapter 6, in which specific principles from the theory are adapted to specific problems based on geo-ethnographic affinity with current native ontologies. How far can one go with an interpretation of the archaeological record from that starting point? Two more examples are presented. First are the relationships between people and material culture in central Argentina’s pre-colonial societies (ca. 1200–1500 CE). In a characteristically perspectivist fashion, the use of referential fields on different media highlights a way of being in the world that was experienced as inherently unstable. The second example focuses on the relationship between people and landscape in the initial peopling of the same region at the beginning of the Holocene. What would the relationship with the landscape have been for a perspectivist people populating a space absent of humans but with other entities that had the capacity to be subjects? The relationship turns out to have been more social than ecological, established prior to any given interaction, which comes into conflict with the conventional idea of archaeological landscape as empty space.

One of the ways for immigrants to speed up the process of integration was by expanding their social and business networks. The fact that they arrived as a large group with similar backgrounds (e.g. textile workers, exiles with families) provided them with the basis to form a network of family and friends that would reduce the economic and psychological risk of migration. The evidence confirms this pattern, as the immigrants from the Low Countries maintained closer relationships with their compatriots. They inevitably mixed with the native population; however, as we will see later, their relationships with the English were largely based on business . But what were the strategies the new arrivals used to strengthen their position in the new environment? How did the Flemings create and expand their social and business networks? The present chapter is concerned with exploring the integration process of the immigrant community, and how it reflected on both their daily life and the organization of their trade. It will examine the social and business networks of the Flemish immigrants as evidenced in the surviving testamentary records and through the judicial documents.