A speech by Isaeus allows us to observe in detail a family chorus caught up in the turmoil of the Athenian civil war. It is at its heart that the heroine of this chapter, Hegeso, lived for most of her life. “Hegeso (daughter) of Proxenus”: her name is engraved on a beautiful funerary monument located in the Kerameikos Cemetery. A woman alone, whose portrait is on display in a public space, without any male presence: It’s a rare enough occurrence that we may be tempted to think this stele is an exceptional document testifying to a particular form of recognition not of womankind, but of an individualized woman. However, this would be wrong. For the very name of Hegeso can only be established through interaction with the other funerary monuments nearby, and this tends to erase the singularity of her presence by confining her to the role of the model wife. Above all, Hegeso finds herself at the crossroads of a family feud between two branches of the family of Proxenus, her father, caught up in the events of 404/3. Far from constituting a zone of withdrawal and intimacy, families were rife with political conflicts. The memorial of Hegeso nevertheless exhibits the harmony of the family sphere in the form of two half-choruses singing in tune: the regulated game of exchanges from which marriage proceeds, as well as the regulated gender divisions within it. Celebrating the fixity and the permanence of family lineage, this portrayal masks, or staves off, political turbulence by presenting the oikos as existing in an unchanging temporal space: that of its cyclic reproduction from one generation to the next.

Two younger sons of two fathers, one in the Prodigal Son parable and the other, Jacob, son of Isaac, each acquires his inheritance before the father’s death and is resented by an older brother. In both instances, heaven so directs events as to mitigate fraternal discord.

Chapter 6 shows how female subordination was expressed and symbolised through head-covering, following St Paul’s injunction that ‘the woman ought to have power on her head because of the angels’ (1 Cor. 11: 10). While some theologians, including Calvin, sought to reinterpret the text figuratively rather than literally, the Reformation never completely lost sight of the idea of the church building as a sacred space hallowed by the presence of the angels. This idea was taken up in the early seventeenth century by Laudian divines who used it to promote the gesture of bowing to the altar. More surprisingly, it was also supported by a handful of non-Laudian divines, including Joseph Mede and Paul Micklethwaite. This complicates the standard picture of the early Stuart church as divided between Laudians and their opponents, and suggests that the Laudians were tapping into a more widespread concern about declining standards of reverence in public worship. It also challenges the view that the Reformation witnessed a desacralisation of sacred space, by showing how the belief in the sacredness of churches not only persisted long into the early modern period but rested specifically on the notion of supernatural presence.

This chapter evinces that the engagement of Spanish imperial officials with distant societies utterly foreign to them was only possible thanks to the clever use of their networks of patronage. Patrons, clients, and brokers played a vital role in shaping the officials’ activities. By looking at some of these networks from an imperial perspective, new light is shed on how the culture of bounty and clientelism, which was based on personal and local linkages, adapted to the global dynamics and new geographies, thus facilitating the government of the empire, even in regions thousands of miles away from the core of those networks. Furthermore, the chapter shows that royal service was a familial endeavor, including, of course, the wives. Although often contradictory, the networks, goals, and means of the officials’ kin and those of the monarchy were interwoven and became almost indistinguishable.

To survive the city and the war, displaced families and friends needed to keep themselves and each other physically, socially, mentally, spiritually, and culturally safe. This chapter is about this discussion of self-preservation and what this entailed when, to many, the war and displacement risked societal disaster. It explores the debates and projects that were built within new churchyards, evening schools, and social spaces, where men and women argued over what integrity and moral order looked like. Social and cultural projects – from night language schools and clan associations to childcare circles and neighbourhood vigilante gangs – all involved setting out definitions of responsibility and standards. They also raised questions about the practical meaning of being displaced ‘southerners’. In a stressful expensive city and a fragmenting southern war, this chapter explores how people developed different limits of mutual support and kinship, and understood their political community based on different standards of Blackness, shared history, and knowledge.

The striking image of three local Chinese women spectators at the Bandung Conference of 1955 was taken by Lisa Larsen, who was a photographer commissioned by LIFE magazine to cover the conference. What does this photograph tell us about international diplomacy? Was it a coincidence that the female photographer happened to take one of the most visually arresting photographs of women as diplomatic spectators? This chapter proposes to probe further the significance of gender in constructing images of international diplomacy. In general, visual sources of international diplomacy tend to portray women in multiple capacities as actors on the international stage. However, this stands in stark contrast to textual sources, which reveal very little female agency, mostly due to the narrowly defined notions of who constitutes a diplomatic actor in traditional approaches to studying diplomacy. Elsewhere, the author has argued that the invisibility of women in diplomacy can in itself be seen as a performative stance. In this chapter, she explores how we can ‘recover’ the lost female presence in diplomacy by privileging the female gaze, through the iconic female photographer.

Economic inequality is not the only form of inequality in urban contexts. In this chapter, I discuss other forms of marginalization in public spaces. Although my main focus is on social relations among citizens, the state’s control of public spaces is consequential in creating and sustaining structural inequalities that directly or indirectly impact social relations in public spaces. Whether controlling appearance and behavior (particularly for women) or suppressing certain belief systems and lifestyles, these state-imposed restrictions create inequalities that extend well beyond economic inequality in use of space. I argue that discriminatory laws or conventions (especially against women and those whose lifestyles or beliefs are not aligned with the ideals promoted by the state) are translated into unequal power relations in public spaces. This chapter examines how these inequalities impact perceptions of class and culture as social groups interact in public spaces and how public spaces are used to create spaces of being and belonging for marginalized groups.

Following a brief historical overview of the birth of the organised movement, Chapter 1 introduces literary figures and texts promoted by antivivisection periodicals such as the Zoophilist, the Home Chronicler, and the Animals Guardian. Adopting a literary-critical approach offers a fresh perspective on the movement’s association pamphlets and periodicals which have, thus far, largely been examined as historical documents. Poems, stories, and ‘humane words’ from notable writers were sourced and deployed to shape a common antivivisectionist identity, articulate the movement’s ideology, and mobilise activists. Analysis of antivivisection poems by Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Robert Buchanan is complemented by attention to the framing and reception of these works in antivivisection publications and the wider press.

This chapter reviews how the logic of biosecuritisation animates the AKP’s new securitisation technologies. It indexes the government’s attempts to reach deep into the population’s domestic life, families, and bodies to target women, LGBTQ+, and disabled people for biosecuritisation. The first section unpacks the theoretical dimension of biosecuritisation. In the next section, the focus is on biosecuritisation as a logic of authoritarian securitisation. The third section unpacks the gendered insecuritisation of women and the exertion of biopolitical control over their bodies and reproductive lives. The next section then turns to biosecuritisation of the already marginalised LGBTQ+ community, and their criminalisation as ‘deviant’. The last section describes the potentially catastrophic consequences of the biosecuritisation of disabled people. I argue that the biosecuritisation of the purges works to further insecuritise and exclude the already marginalised sub-groups of women, members of LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities by trapping them in the vicious circle of biosecuritisation.

Arnold Schrier’s study, Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850–1900 (1958) set out to analyse the impact of mass emigration to America on the country of origin. Schrier collaborated with the Irish Folklore Commission to devise a questionnaire to gather data on the cultural and folkloristic reaction to emigration. While conducted in 1955, most of those interviewed were in their seventies and eighties and could provide memories and reflections on emigration and returned migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questionnaire is a significant source for those desiring to learn more about Ireland and America and possible Americanising influences. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the questionnaire and the data which emerged from it. Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh notes the nuanced attitudes towards the returned migrant evident in the survey responses, beyond the stereotype of the ‘show off’ returned Yank. Mac Cárthaigh concludes that the disruptive figure of the returned Yank highlighted the gap between the opportunity and novel experiences represented by emigration and the conservatism of the society left behind.

Chapter 4 examines issues of citizenship and religion, with a particular focus on the status of non-Muslims and women. After discussing the problematic notion of citizenship in the Arab world, the chapter analyzes the specific meaning and scope of citizenship in the post-2011 constitutional systems. The chapter shows, on the one hand, that despite significant improvements with respect to the past, non-Muslims and women are still excluded from full citizenship, which remains a prerogative of male Muslims. On the other hand, however, over the past few years, prominent religious leaders and institutions have called for a more equality-based approach toward citizenship’s rights for all people, irrespective of one’s sex and religious belief. Given the profound influence that religion exerts on law and society in Arab countries, these calls might well lead to the adoption of legal reforms aimed at reducing discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and might represent a first step toward replacing the differentiated citizenships that currently exist in Arab countries, with one single, full, and inclusive citizenship.

This chapter examines the promotion of entrepreneurship and business startups in Oman and its rhetorical targeting of youth and women. Although innovation is part of the promotion agenda, entrepreneurship is often focused on encouraging citizens to create their own private sector job. The chapter focuses on the experiences of young people in internalising entrepreneurship promotion discourses and in starting personal businesses. It illustrates two key tensions – first, the tension between rentierism embedded within authoritarian governing structures, on the one hand, and the logic of neoliberal capitalism, on the other; and second, the tensions between rhetoric and realities of youth and female empowerment narratives. Entrepreneurship is expressed and promoted as an empowering activity, and at times is experienced as such, but can also be used to legitimise or reconstitute patriarchal and authoritarian structures to accommodate the market. The space of entrepreneurship promotion is both a key tactic of labour market bandaging, and a distinct illustration of rentier neoliberalism