The practice of relational reiteration shapes the Old English and Anglo-Latin riddles. Challenged to “say what I am” without actually naming themselves, the books, bells, wild creatures, and mysteries of the early English riddle tradition respond by reiterating their own conceptual edges, drawing upon the same types of social, chronological, and physical “landmarks” that a local tenant would use to perambulate property bounds. Aldhelm, the first known English riddle-writer, declares that his aim is to “reveal with verse the hidden mysteries of things,” and his Enigmata are explicitly framed as a cosmology: an attempt to articulate the subtle links between individual elements of God’s creation. Although the Old English Exeter riddles make no such claim, these poems are even more invested in the link between identity and practice: each speaker’s physical form comes into view through the lens of their interaction with human beings. The result in both cases is transformative. Each riddle creature is “built” incrementally, piece by piece, as the riddle describes its interactions with the hierarchical world outside itself—not physically, per se, but as a conceptual entity.

The Iron Age and the Archaic period were a period of profound transformations in Sicily: Greek and Phoenician colonial settlers interacted with the Indigenous communities of the hinterland and played a key role in processes of change that also involved daily social and economic life.

This chapter presents the archaeological evidence from three settlements in western Sicily, dating from between the early Iron Age and the late Archaic period: Monte Maranfusa, in the middle Belice valley; Makella, located in the Eleuterio valley; and the small settlement on the Castello della Pietra in the lower Belice valley.

Thirty years after his Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, Neruda’s three books of “elemental odes” (1954–57) refocused his poetry into the everyday things and the everyday life of the common people. This new type of poetry responded to an invitation by Miguel Otero Silva, the director of the Caracas journal El Nacional, for a weekly collaboration, which the poet envisioned as an opportunity to offer a chronicle of the daily life of his time, his people, and the everyday objects that surrounded them. This anecdote led the way for Neruda’s “impure” poetry to challenge the assumed range of topics for poetic discourse, beyond his reputation as a poet of love and politics, earned from his previous poetry collections. He began to write in a simpler way, as the “invisible man” who walks the streets talking to common people about their daily experience.

Brief remarks suggest different reading strategies to different readers, both specialist and nonspecialist. Those less familiar with modern Iranian history and politics are invited to begin with Chapter 1, the “Introduction.” More knowledgeable readers may prefer to skim over parts of Chapter 1 in order to begin with Chapter 2, “Tied Up in Tehran.” Thanks to the community of support who have contributed to this project.

Nazi Germany’s policies profoundly altered both private and public lives of religious Jews in Germany and then across Europe. Despite targeting Jews as a “race,” anti-Jewish measures forced the Jewish religious leadership to seek new ways to assist their communities. Maintaining Jewish religious practices during the Holocaust became increasingly challenging and eventually impossible for most Jews.

The Introduction focuses on the experiences of victims of the Holocaust rather than perpetrators. It addresses victims’ perceptions, understandings, reactions, self-help and varied attempts at resistance. It also concerns Roma, mentally and physically challenged individuals, Slavs and Soviet POWs, and homosexuals. Finally, it addresses historiography, as do most of the chapters in this volume.

Chapter 3 focuses on the kinds of domestic duties expected of women in gentle, noble, and royal establishments and thus offers an understanding of everyday life in a late medieval elite household. The range of activities required of highborn household servants was broad, encompassing both public and private obligations. They saw to their queens’ or noblewomen’s personal needs in terms of apparel, entertainment, and piety. They traveled when duties demanded it and assisted their queens and ladies with medical care. To perform these tasks, they were entrusted with significant household resources and also, sometimes, care and custody of royal and noble children. Over years of service, through daily serving the needs of their employers, some serving women and their mistresses developed affectionate relationships as they shared literary tastes and devotional practices. Their employment provided opportunities for elite female servants to live a sumptuous lifestyle surrounded by luxury and entertainments, and also to network with other courtiers. I argue that investigating the domestic duties and daily lives of these often-overlooked women completes our understanding of courts and great households by showing the importance of female employment in the Middle Ages.

This chapter provides an introduction to the use of mobile sensing in social and personality psychology. It first looks at mobile sensing’s historical roots and discusses how, in the field, the method follows in the footsteps of other traditional approaches to the collection of behavioral data. It then covers research questions of the kind that mobile sensing lends itself to, and provides a high-level summary of the current literature on mobile sensing. In the third section, the chapter illustrates the very basic how-to of mobile sensing with respect to technical rationale, implementation in studies, and coverage of variables. The fourth and final section is a psychometric reflection on where mobile sensing currently stands and where it is or should be going. To this end, five predictions are evaluated that were made for mobile sensing research when it first emerged in the psychological research landscape about a decade ago.

This chapter provides an overview of the conditions and experiences of the 22 million people who lived on farms and who inhabited the villages and small towns in the countryside during the revolution. The relationship between these people and revolutionary legislators in Paris was one of negotiation, confrontation and dialogue. This chapter will highlight how rural dwellers adopted, adapted and resisted change from the capital. It discusses the cahiers de doléances, not only as they represent a decisive moment of mass politicization, but also because they emphasize so very well the concerns, hopes and fears of the majority of the population. The chapter also pays attention to the various waves of peasant insurrection – against feudalism and taxation – during 1789-1793. A balance sheet is drawn up for the outcomes of the French Revolution for the rural population, which reveals that changes in family life, religious practices and socio-economic relations combined to fundamentally alter the mental universe of all French citizens.

Food, clothing, and commerce

My objective in this chapter is to investigate these questions through the examination of the relationship between society and the city in nineteenth-century Tehran. This relationship focuses on the spatiality of ordinary people’s daily lives. Social theories of space have become a common domain for geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and ethnographers as a means to investigate socio-spatial processes. In this chapter, I unfold this theoretical framework and explain the impact of the spatial approach on social and historical examinations of cities before presenting the main empirical analysis of daily life and social spaces in nineteenth-century Tehran. My objective is to socialize the spatial analysis and, more importantly, to spatialize the social analysis. This chapter focuses on the relationship between urban society and Tehran in the nineteenth century. It examines people’s everyday lives in the city and their religious and non-religious spatial practices. It investigates various social spaces of day-to-day interactions in the city. I start by presenting a social analysis of Iranian urban society in the nineteenth century. Afterwards, I examine social spaces in two main categories: spaces based on religious gatherings and spaces based on nonreligious practices. This chapter ends with the examination of women’s social life and spaces in the city.