A central empirical fact about natural language expressions is that they involve, at some level of mental representation, arrangements of nested constituents that enter into relations of various kinds by virtue of being so arranged. Any natural language theory must specify a subtheory of constituency incorporating a recursive generative procedure. A theory of phrase structure (PS) in the most general sense is a set of hypotheses about how this internal organization of expressions and the dependencies it supports are mentally represented as part of the speaker’s knowledge of language. Hierarchical organization (empirical fact) is formalized in terms of PS (theory), such that properties of the atoms of syntactic computation determine properties of complex expressions constructed from them. Specific implementations of PS theory vary dramatically across the different frameworks that have emerged in the development of Generative Grammar. This vignette focuses on the limits of PS theory. It demarcates, generally, its analytical purview then gives examples of constructions that have resisted a coherent description in PS terms, which suggests that they fall altogether outside its scope.

This chapter proves one of the few known theorems toward separating P and NP: Satisfiability has no algorithm that runs in a certain modest polynomial amount of time and polylogarithmic amount of space. The proof serves as a unified excuse to present other important concepts, including padding, the time and space hierarchy theorems (showing that more time or space gives algorithms more power), and the polynomial hierarchy and its collapse property.

Marxism is one of the three mainstream approaches in International Relations, along with realism and liberalism. Unlike the other two, Marxism acts as a critical theory that focuses on the hierarchical structure of the international system, driven by capitalist development and expansion. Since the early twentieth century, Marxists have used the concept of imperialism to analyse this structure. The first major debate on imperialism was about the expansion of European capitalism into non-capitalist societies, which was a key issue until the 1970s. Since then, the focus has shifted to analysing imperialism in the era of neoliberal globalisation and understanding why the interstate system endures despite the capitalist drive for global unification. The international relations of the Middle East have been featured in these debates among Marxists. The chapter first explains the basic concepts of Marxism as developed by Karl Marx. It then covers classical and contemporary theories of imperialism along with recent developments in Marxist geopolitics, while situating the Middle East into these discussions. Critics often argue that Marxism tends to overlook regional dynamics and powers. To address this criticism, the chapter examines Iran as a sub-imperial, peripheral power, exploring its role in the Syrian war.

The Conclusion reflects on how digital technologies have become inseparable from the rhythms, identities and power structures of the Brussels Bubble and the European Union itself. Drawing on Stefan Zweig’s vision of technology as both a unifier and disruptor, the chapter argues that the EU is now a virtual social field – a polity where governance, diplomacy and community are co-constituted by digital infrastructures. Through ethnographic insights, it reveals five key transformations: the EU as a digitally mediated space; social media as a symbolic economy of insider recognition; diplomats and officials as cyborgs, their bodies and selves extended by devices; the everyday negotiation of digitalisation, where technology is not imposed but adapted and contested; and the necessity of a practice turn for understanding global governance in the digital age.

The chapter underscores that digital tools do not merely facilitate EU politics – they reshape its boundaries, hierarchies and temporalities. From WhatsApp groups to virtual meetings, technology is both a site of empowerment and vulnerability, challenging ideals of transparency, equality and sovereignty. Ultimately, the EU’s future will be negotiated at the intersection of human agency and digital mediation, where the ambivalence of progress and disruption mirrors the complexities of European integration itself.

Focusing on the ‘keeping’ and ‘cure’ of frantic persons, Chapter 5 explores the ideational link between ‘reason’ and ‘rule’ which – in the minds of contemporaries – justified these interventions. If the ‘ruling faculties’ of the human mind were impaired, this merited the placement of the affected individual under the ‘rule’ of others. If the subject was an adult male, the result was a rapid and often chaotic reshuffling of power relations within the home and the wider community. Looking at how householders, parishioners, physicians, mayors, and local magistrates responded to frenzy, this chapter shows how the ideas explored in Chapters 1–3 changed the lives of those who received the diagnosis. It suggests that, if the high premium placed on the faculty of the ‘reason’ served to shore up the rigidly hierarchical order of social relations which obtained in early modern England (encompassing rank, age, gender, and species), frenzy exposed the fragility of that same order.

This chapter discusses the perceptions of English variation from the earliest available commentary to the present day. Historical commentary on English variation from various sources is discussed and contrasted with contemporary accounts of the perception of variation in English. The chapter discusses commonalities in the perception of regional variation over time, examining three overarching themes: the presence of a linguistic hierarchy; the focus on the ‘best’ forms of English in areas (and occupations) proximal to the centres of power, and general concerns about language change.

Remote working – strongly widespread during the covid-19 pandemic –is today one of the main forms of innovation in the world of work. As always, within innovation phenomena we have static elements, from the past, and dynamic elements, looking to change the status quo. Consequently, the evaluation of remote work may be either conservative or innovative. Remote work can be considered as a simple re-proposition of the Fordist-Taylorist Enterprise that does not actually change the characteristics of employment as a not democratic relationship involving the worker submission to the employer managerial, control and disciplinary power. On the other hand, remote work can be recognized as the symptom of a broader cultural, organizational and process change in the firm, allowing the worker to conquer new spaces of freedom and autonomy, which not only allow for a new balance in the relationship between work and life, but also redefine both the factual and juridical connotations of subordination. This chapter analyzes this second perspective and, on the basis of legislation and collective bargaining, tries to define the elements of change in the concept and morphology of subordination within the employment relationship.

This chapter considers reductionism, a major aspect of neuroscience research. I consider reductionist claims that we can only understand nervous systems from knowledge of their component parts. I then consider reductionist approaches and what we have learnt by following them, highlighting that a complete reductionist account of any nervous system region hasn’t been and is probably impossible to achieve. I then discuss decomposable hierarchical and non-decomposable heterarchical systems, and how relational aspects suggest we cannot understand the latter systems from cataloguing their individual components. I then discuss two effects that have received little attention despite being known for decades – volume transmission and ephaptic signalling – that highlight the need to consider component parts in relation to the whole system. I finish by discussing non-reductionist views, equipotentiality, cybernetics, the holonomic brain and embodied cognition, highlighting, as many have in the past, that debating between reductionist and non-reductionist approaches is a false dichotomy.

Why have regional organizations become authorities over human rights and international intervention, and what explains the differences in regional authority across different regions? Why did leaders in some parts of the Global South go from rejecting any interference to arguing for the central role of regional organizations in international interference? This chapter introduces the central questions addressed by this book and provides an overview of its core argument, focusing on the creation of new regional authority at one important moment: the emergence of regional organizations as authorities over human rights. This was the first time when leaders in the Global South changed from arguing for complete non-interference to arguing that legitimate interference should be carried out by or with the involvement of regional organizations. They did so as a strategy of subtle resistance to new challenges to self-determination, in the form of economic enforcement of human rights by Western governments. In regions targeted by this enforcement, leaders responded by establishing their regional organizations as authorities over human rights, accepting regional interference for the first time.

The prototypical form of hybris in the Greek sources involved the self-assertion of the rich and powerful, which resulted in their disrespecting their subordinates in arrogating to themselves claims to respect they were not entitled to. This contribution looks at the flipside of this scenario, because hybris can also work in the opposite direction: from the bottom up. Hybris, that is, can also involve subordinates overstepping their position in the social hierarchy and arrogating to themselves prerogatives reserved for those higher up the social ladder. While denouncing the hybris of the powerful has egalitarian implications – it defends the right to equal respect (or at least to some respect) of those who are disrespected – denouncing the hybris of the downtrodden towards their superiors is a tool for maintaining and reproducing a social hierarchy by grounding it on an allegedly shared (yet heavily asymmetrical) recognition order.

We use recent theories of the politics of economic development and of economic interdependence and war to construct an analytic narrative of the events covered in this volume.  We trace the end of China’s hegemony, and the instability that attended it, to the different policies the region’s states chose toward commerce, development, and reform.  States that pursued modernization gained wealth and power relative to those that did not.  These choices had fateful consequences for the regional balance of power and encouraged modernized upstarts to overthrow the traditional order.  A more dynamic order arose as great powers competed to impose a new hegemony or at least a new stability, forming coalitions with the region’s other states and offering new ideologies to legitimize their rule.  While existing theories shed light on the evolution of East Asian order, our consideration also reveals important gaps in explanation that merit further investigation.

The early development of the indulgence system reinforced the papacy’s hierarchical position without significantly bringing it money or power over others.