This chapter introduces some technical details about networks. Although they may seem like a complication that could be saved for later, the details presented here are actually a useful starting point. They will provide a sense of the many options for ways that a network can matter, which is helpful to have in mind when constructing a theory that will guide data collection. A social network is a record of a set of relationships – links – among actors in a group of interest. Depending on which relationships are present, an individual may find herself in a very different network position than someone else. Different groups can have different patterns of relationships, which means there can also be variation across networks. This chapter will help us be precise in these comparisons across actors and across networks and will highlight why they can be relevant to empirical research.

This chapter centres on the market maintenance of the Norwegian meat market arrangement. A market design created in the 1930s to guarantee minimum prices to farmers and weekly volume balancing is still in place. The market arrangement must be shaped to a 100 per cent equilibrium – volume balanced – at 13:00 every Wednesday, 52 times a year. The market operator, Totalmarked, performs ‘continuous market organizing’ through market coordination and market correction. Ongoing market maintenance activity is an overlooked theme within the Market Studies literature. In the chapter, we make no normative assessment of the performativity of the market design. Instead, the temporal dynamics of market maintenance as ongoing continuous organizing through four market work activities performed by a market operator are analysed. This broadens current conceptualizations of market design towards something that is incomplete, requiring constant market work. The chapter thereby emphasizes the work and devices involved in the ongoing stabilizing of an existing market. Totalmarked performs four market work activities to enact the market rules that underpin a long-standing market design in this heavy regulated, protected agricultural market. The chapter concludes by highlighting the interplay between place and market identity in Market Studies.

Europe is living its Weimar moment. The historic task of the European Union (EU) today, the book argues, is to articulate and institute a new imaginary of prosperity. Imaginaries of prosperity integrate societies around the shared pursuit of a prosperous future, while rendering “political-economic” questions the main preoccupation of politics. The new imaginary of prosperity today has to be both credible (able to provide answers to contemporary challenges) and appealing (conjuring a world in which people want to live). It has to include not only an alternative macroeconomic framework (a different role for tax, public spending, or welfare provision) but also a different set of microeconomic institutions (a new role for the corporation, technology, industry, finance, and consumption). It is exactly in this latter space that the EU has undertaken the first important steps towards reimagining prosperity. The book analyses several policy fields, showing that the EU has already made significant efforts to foster more caring consumption, circular products and technologies, sustainable industry, and fairer corporate activity. But the EU has to go further and faster – if it intends to respond effectively to the soaring problems, while halting another Europe’s slide into tribalism.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the concepts and definitions inherent to Web3. It presents a deep exploration into the phenomenon of "Convergence of Convergence," a term coined to denote the convergence of various dimensions within Web3, such as technology, data, user interactions, business models, identity, and organizational structures. The chapter also offers a comparative study of Web3 from different perspectives – tracing its evolution in the Internet era, analyzing its implications for user experience, evaluating its regulatory aspects, and understanding its scalability. Each of these aspects is explored in a detailed, standalone section, allowing readers to comprehend the multifaceted nature of Web3. The overarching aim of this chapter is to foster a comprehensive understanding of Web3, delineating its significance as a major shift in the Internet paradigm and its potential for creating more decentralized, user-empowered digital ecosystems.

What was the effect of war outcomes on key indicators of state formation in a post-war phase? In this chapter I demonstrate that victors and losers of war were set into different state capacity trajectories after war outcomes were revealed. I do this using a set of cutting-edge causal inference techniques to analyse the gap in state capacity that was generated between winners and losers in the time-period of most stringent warfare (1865-1913). After substantiating that the outcomes of these wars were determined by exogenous or fortuitous events, I provide a short description of my treatment—i.e., defeat—and outcomes—i.e., total revenues and railroad mileage as key indicators of state infrastructural capacity. My estimator, a difference-in-differences model, shows defeat had a negative long-term impact on state capacity which remains remarkably robust even after relaxing key assumptions. Finally, I use the synthetic control method to estimate how state capacity in Paraguay and Peru would have evolved in a counterfactual world where these countries were spared the most severe defeats in late nineteenth-century Latin America.

This chapter traces the publication history and animating ideas of Luciani Opuscula, a set of translations of Lucian begun as a collaboration between Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus. I examine the volume’s contents, which grew over time as Erasmus kept adding to them, and the letters with which both translators prefaced their own selections, explaining to fellow humanists how the works are to be read. These interpretive letters tell us much about how the two great northern humanists understood Lucian and what role he played in their own evolution as the foremost ‘Lucianists’ of their age.

This chapter explores questions of obligatory charity (zakāt) in the legal miscellany-work, Jāmiʿ al-Shatāt, of the female Iranian jurist Nuṣrat Amīn (d. 1403/1983). The author’s remarkable career and the esteem she enjoyed among fellow (male) jurists are discussed, along with the nature of her legal authority. The passage excerpted in this chapter is representative of the character of the book in question: it examines the proofs of the rules of law (fiqh), typically first presenting previous opinions on a given question or topic, then evaluating the reasons, explanations, rules or rationales (dalīl or aṣl) for each of these opinions in respect to the primary sources.

The brain is the organ of perception and cognition and so it is understandable that it is studied by thousands of scientists around the world. But the brain is encased in solid bone, making it difficult to study. We can’t see, probe, or touch it without major surgery, so we often rely on indirect methods such as personal interviews or autonomic measures such as heart rate or blood pressure. Other techniques to study the brain require expensive specialized equipment such as electroencephalograms, fMRI, PET scans, or magnetoencephalograms.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, collecting data online was the only option for many researchers. This chapter describes the barriers to, advantages of, and key lessons learned in conducting online interviews during the pandemic. We draw on a qualitative study focusing on employment experiences during the pandemic among youth with and without disabilities. Thirty interviews were conducted synchronously via Zoom. Barriers to conducting online interviews included technical difficulties and some challenges with building rapport. Benefits of conducting online interviews included greater efficiency and flexibility, technical advantages, and perceived anonymity and privacy. Key lessons learned in conducting online interviews included testing equipment in advance and having a back-up recorder, giving participants questions in advance or having it on the shared screen, and providing technical information to participants in an easy-to-understand format.