Words, like biological species, are born and then, someday, they die. The half-life of a word is roughly 2,000 years, meaning that in that interval about half of all words are replaced with an unrelated (noncognate) word. Where do the new words come from? There are numerous dimensions along which new words could vary from old words, so it may not be easy to see how to enter this problem. However, extending our small worlds metaphor and the observation of clusters in language, we tell a simple story that mirrors biological theories about the origin of species. Language has urban centers with well-populated and well-connected meanings (like *food* and *red*). It also has rural fringes, where words live more isolated lives as hermits with limited connections to other words (like *twang* and *ohm*). Are new words more likely to be born in urban centers or in the rural fringes?

This chapter brings central elements of the book to the fore, reflects the need for critical thinking, and problematizes the future of agreement-making and the study thereof. In doing so, it addresses critical questions that run through all chapters of the book: Why does it matter to “be there”? How do I navigate closeness and emotions? Is my data ever complete? What will “being there” mean in the future? Global environmental agreement-making is in constant flux, adapting to changing institutional circumstances, power relations, and new emerging environmental problems. Although the multilateral setting with its “old-fashioned” diplomatic practices and formalities creates the impression of stability, routine, and immutability, there is change and the possibility to do global environmental relations differently. We understand critical scholarship to have a vital role in illuminating enduring power relations and revealing potential openings for change and transformation to ensure agreement-making enables better collective stewardship of the Earth. This aspiration nourished the objective of this book to problematize how and why we conduct research at and on global environmental negotiations and to evaluate and expand the concepts and methods available to further this study. The chapter closes with a reflection on future research questions and themes.

Chapter 5 attends to the notions of siblinghood between female friends or lovers of the same age group. Drawing on the idealized closeness and harmony afforded to uterine sisters, especially among the matrilenal Akan, a same-sex lover can be invoked as a sibling in order to front a non-sexual connection. Among insiders however, claims to being “of the same blood” signal emotional and sexual attachments. Thereby everyday practices such as bathing, washing, and eating together over extended periods of time emerge as the crucial markers of these familial intimacies. Conversely, it examines the spectre of incest that lingers among same-sex lovers who do share lineage ties and are thus both metaphorically and genealogically related. The chapter argues that female friends who raise children together, take care of each other’s elders, and build joint networks that include male husbands and relatives, do much of the work afforded to (queer) families.

Closeness and interdependence are considered to be essential components of any intimate relationship of significant duration.These core processes, however, can also be manifested in one-time interactions between strangers, with positive consequences including an increase in positive mood and belongingness. Many years ago, Art Aron and his colleagues developed a closeness-generating exercise (sometimes referred to as the Fast Friends procedure) that was designed to generate “a temporary feeling of closeness, not an actual ongoing relationship” within pairs of strangers. Other closeness- and interdependence-inducing tasks have also been developed including additional ones based on structured, self-disclosure and some based on doing activities such as playing a game or engaging in humorous activities.In this chapter, I describe the different tasks that have been developed to create a feeling of closeness or interdependence in initial structured interactions, the types of research questions that have been addressed with this method, and sample findings across multiple lines of research. Although there are limits in the degree to which findings from research based on temporary feelings of closeness in a laboratory setting can generalize to initial interactions and developed relationships in the “real world,” creating closeness and interdependence in a laboratory setting allows researchers to test the influence of various theoretically-important variables, including individual characteristics (shyness), the context of the interaction (medium of communication), and mediators (perception of being liked by the other).