For much of its modern history, linguistics has taken an ontological stance on language as a structural entity, with a wide set of implications for how languages are understood as bounded entities. This is not about the different epistemological approaches to a structural version of language taken by various schools of linguistics, but about the basic ontological assumptions about what language is. A structural ontology made it possible to treat language as an object amenable to scientific study, enabling descriptions of languages around the world and facilitating many advances in our understandings of languages as structural entities. Yet this very tendency towards seeing languages as autonomous systems has enabled those forms of thinking that emphasize boundedness. When we contrast a structural ontology with a practice ontology, where the focus is on what people do with available linguistic resources, it becomes clear that in some of the recent translanguaging debates, people are talking about different things, language as structure and language as practice. Because structural and social (practice) language ontologies are so different, the debates about translanguaging have become mired in misunderstandings.

The chapter sets out the material conditions and social structure of the hunter-gatherer era, emphasising the role of kinship, mobility, egalitarianism and trade. It sees the material and social structures as relatively stable then looks at the long transition between the hunter-gatherer era and the era of congolmerate, agrarian/pastoralist empires, emphasising climate change as the key to population growth, settlement, technological change, and the shift to agriculture. It notes the shift from biological to social evolution, and the link between settlement and a move away from egalitarian relations. Agriculture reinforces settlement rather than causing it.

This chapter ties together several moral strands under the notion of justice, where equals should be treated equally. It opens by pointing out certain facts, such as that the most likely predictor of success is parental wealth, that women earn only 86 percent of men’s income for comparable jobs, and that there are significant racial disparities at higher levels of management. The concepts of equity (merit), equality, and need are examined, as the basis for allocating resources and rewards. Libertarian views, which hold personal choice as the overriding principle, are explained and contrasted with egalitarianism which favors equal opportunities for all. Discrimination is defined in terms of power relations, and subsequently gender and racial discrimination is examined in detail, including the implications of implicit bias. Recent work in intersectionality, where individuals identify with multiple groups, is discussed as are Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. Examples from Starbucks show the promise and difficulties in promoting equality in the workplace. The final case covers discrepancies in insurance rates and the moral jeopardy of categorizing aggregated data into groups.

It is difficult to make general comments about processes of Neolithization and cultural change in Europe and the Middle East given the increasingly strong evidence for regional diversity, even at two ends of one valley (e.g. the Struma valley as discussed by Lichardus-Itten). Many of the authors in this volume argue that the spread of the Neolithic from the Middle East through Anatolia and into the Balkans and Europe was a complex and locally diverse process involving migration, exchange, diffusion and autochthonous development. Such arguments confound commentaries that seek overall themes and consistencies (as argued by Bleda Düring). “The Neolithic” has become such an enormously long period and there is so much going on at different times, at different rates and in different ways locally that any attempt to build a grand narrative seems doomed. At the level of grand narrative, evolutionary and migrationist views have returned to dominate the discourse (as claimed by Schier), but for many archaeologists (as opposed to biologists or linguists) the details of the stops and starts in the spread of various aspects of the Neolithic require contextual understanding (e.g. regarding Arbuckle and Makarewicz’ 2009 discussion of the delayed adoption of domestic cattle in central Anatolia).

For folivores, socio-ecological models predict scramble competition and egalitarian dominance relationships with female dispersal, but female Asian colobines do not all nicely fit these predictions. Alternative explanations concern an absence of competition, and the Folivore Paradox, where group size is limited by social factors such as infanticide. Relevant data are scarce, but our review shows that colobine foraging costs increase with group size, yet female fitness may increase or decrease. Dominance relationships vary from despotic to egalitarian, and are individualistic. The lack of female nepotism in despotic species (or populations) still requires explanation. Female dispersal is found in egalitarian and some despotic species, yet costs may be low if females migrate into a group with familiar females. Asian colobine social organization seems to follow one of two patterns. First, in seasonal species, food limits group size, while infanticide does not; these groups may experience contest competition. Second, in a-seasonal species groups are uni-male, the infanticide risk is high and infanticide, not food, may limit group size. This proposal requires further testing and may also apply to uni-male frugivores. This overview of the socio-ecological patterns in Asian colobines highlights that ecological and social selection pressures in interaction determine primate social organization.

This chapter focuses on tests of the relationship between power sharing and the transition to minimalist democracy in the aftermath of civil war. We begin by explaining the need to account empirically for the effect that difficult post-conflict environments may have on countries’ ability to make a transition to democracy. We then conduct an empirical test of our central hypothesis regarding the existence of a positive relationship between extensive power sharing and the transition to minimalist democracy in post-civil war states. Finally, seeking to respond to critics who argue that power sharing impedes the development of forms of democracy that might be considered more “aspirational” than minimalist democracy, we examine the effects that power sharing has on democratization two, five, and ten years after the end of civil war using V-Dem’s measures of electoral, liberal, and egalitarian democracy.