Why and how we age are deep and enduring questions. The quest for a theoretical framework explaining the evolutionary origins and proximate mechanisms of ageing has led to the elaboration of hundreds of theories of very diverse kinds. The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it will provide an historical perspective of the numerous theories of ageing. Second, it will emphasize the need for a unified framework merging both evolutionary and mechanistic theories by demonstrating that such theoretical frameworks are required to promote innovative research projects involving the joint effort of multiple research disciplines.

The freedman Gregorio Cosme Osorio’s extant letters from Madrid in 1795 are the focus of Chapter 6. They provide a direct perspective of a cobrero leader’s legal culture, his views on the case, and his activities as liaison between Madrid and El Cobre (including an alleged meeting with the king). Cosme’s missives from the royal court, which high colonial officials considered subversive, critiqued politics of the law in the colony and kept the cobreros abreast of the imperial edicts issued in Madrid in their favor which colonial authorities ignored. His liaison role during fifteen years was crucial to keep the case alive in the royal court.

In the economy as in ecosystems, one tipping point can lead on to another. Creating cascades of change throughout the global economy is perhaps the only imaginable way we could make the transition to zero emissions at the pace required. This should be the focus of climate change diplomacy throughout this decade. If enough of the world joins in, we might just have a chance.

This chapter approaches the history of electric guitar music in sub-Saharan Africa through the perspective of the “new organology,” considering the unique imbrication of materiality and sociality within the cultural work of music. Multiple local and transnational networks impact the work of guitarists, including the movement of musicians, economic systems that circulate instruments, and the circulation of musical knowledge, genre, and instrumental technique. Networks are both embedded in the landscape—such as electrical infrastructure—and lay atop the physical, such as mobile data and social media applications. The author draws upon ethnographic interviews with guitarists from Ghana and Congo to show how these networks of circulation and the materiality of instruments can provide new ways of thinking about guitar music in Africa and the African diaspora.

Communities of guitarists have existed and evolved in parallel with the instrument’s long and varied historical development. Technological progress in the twentieth century saw two major milestones for the guitar: the invention of the electric guitar, and the birth of the internet. This chapter explores the shift of guitar-based communities to virtual spaces starting with email groups, internet forums, and chat rooms. These communities serve similar functions as real-world communities by sharing knowledge and resources as well as providing spaces for discussions and performances. Peer-to-peer file sharing regenerated an old form of guitar-specific written notation: tablature. Then along came social media, which changed the entire music industry, including online guitar communities. Many of the world’s largest and most visited websites, Facebook, YouTube, X, and Instagram, are havens for guitar communities no longer defined by geographical boundaries. This has had enormous consequences as cultural and aesthetic expressions, particularly in the form of guitar performance practices, are now freely transmitted globally and instantaneously via virtual networks.

The Conclusion chapter reiterates the book’s approach, focus and main points. It reminds the reader that the book has concentrated on local, provincial, peripatetic and otherwise relatively marginal sites of scientific activity and shown how a wide variety of spaces were constituted and reconfigured as meteorological observatories. The conclusion reiterates the point that nineteenth-century meteorological observatories, and indeed the very idea of observatory meteorology, were under constant scrutiny. The conclusion interrogates four crucial conditions of these observatory experiments: the significance of geographical particularity in justifications of observatory operations; the sustainability of coordinated observatory networks at a distance; the ability to manage, manipulate and interpret large datasets; and the potential public value of meteorology as it was prosecuted in observatory settings. Finally, the chapter considers the use of historic weather data in recent attempts by climate scientists to reconstruct past climates and extreme weather events.

The introductory chapter argues that the near universal rise of the radical Right is more than a series of national coincidences and that despite differences in their ideas and policies, a globally connected Right is emerging. One indication of this is the emergence of global networks and events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon Conferences, and the Madrid Forum. However, the globality of today’s radical Right goes beyond mere transnational networks, and requires a wider rethinking of its relationship to the global in two ways. First, the radical Right is constituted by transnational interactions operating at multiple scales. Second, it defines itself and is co-constituted by its relation to the global, not just to the national. The chapter also discusses the vexed issue of defining the Right and the difficulties of studying the Right.

The globalisation of advocacy and policy networks, including the dynamics of power that shape them, is integral to the emergence and evolution of norms. Yet the relationship between norms and networks remains undertheorised. How far and in what ways do changes in network structures affect the dynamism and diffusion of norms? Despite the cross-over empirically, and early scholarship on the role of advocacy networks in diffusing norms, the scholarship on international norms and that on transnational networks have subsequently developed on their own. This chapter explores the missing link between transnational networks and norm contestation by studying the spread and localisation of the ‘women, peace and security’ norm bundle. Networks do not merely serve to spread norms aka transmission belts. Rather, they are mechanisms of norm emergence, contestation, and transformation as well as diffusion. The transnational network spawned by UN Security Council resolution 1325 established a process to keep building the norm (bundle) and dialogue about it. Just as ‘norms’ are works in progress so too are the networks that support them. More attention needs to be focused on the changing nature of the agents and on the content of the evolving norms in discerning legitimacy or success of norms.

The aim of this volume is not to provide or test a single theory of informal global governance but rather to provide a set of analyses that speak to a common set of theoretical, empirical, and methodological questions. More broadly, the aim is to advance the emerging research agenda on informality in world politics. We conclude the volume by highlighting four productive avenues for future research on informality, based on the insights of the empirical chapters.

To explain the economic miracles in Germany and Japan after the Second World War, we need to pay close attention to the networks of miracle makers, who drew upon skill and knowledge that existed before and during the war. Under Allied tutelage, and in cooperation with workers and other groups that had previously been excluded from decision-making, members of these networks fundamentally refashioned German and Japanese cooperative capitalism into something more suited both to the emerging post-war capitalist economic order and to peaceful existence within it. Most of the fundamental reforms to German and Japanese capitalism were in place by about 1950, as were the networks that would prove essential to producing the economic miracle. However, we need to bear in mind that the renewed and reformed systems of cooperative capitalism did not function well immediately; in fact, the West German and Japanese economies languished as the 1940s drew to a close. What proved essential were two things explored in the next chapters: first, fundamental recasting of manufacturing in firms of all sizes in both countries; and, second, vastly increased domestic consumption followed crucially by worldwide demand for all sorts of products as the capitalist world entered the Golden Age.

Wagner’s relationship with Paris was a career-long struggle with a highly developed music industry that aligned badly with his aesthetic priorities. On repeat visits for what we would now call career networking, he rented in marginal areas of Paris, tried to get on the publishing and performance ladder, courted imperial favour, conducted concerts of his own works, and finally succeeded, briefly, in getting an opera staged at the Paris Opéra (the ill-fated Tannhäuser in 1861). Thereafter, Wagner cults – always contested – began in the concert hall, where anything from riots to hushed listening greeted programmed excerpts of his works. Cultishness intensified after his death – in the press, in artistic and high-bourgeois salons, and finally at the Opéra. This chapter explores the spaces, networks, and contexts within which Wagner attempted to carve out a Paris career which allowed the full concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk to blossom only posthumously.