Of the many CGIAR research centres around the world there is none as historically important to the organization’s international development of wheat and maize interests than the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), headquartered in Mexico. CIMMYT, launched in 1966, is both a local and a global creation. Rooted in Mexico’s approach to agricultural research, CIMMYT’s mission is equally intertwined with international development promises and growing food security concerns of the mid-twentieth century. Initial research that led to Norman Borlaug’s famous high-yielding hybrid wheat seeds took advantage of Mexico’s microclimates – and existing experimental stations – to solve narrower agronomic questions while later programs expanded in focus to include an increased socioeconomic bent and emphasis on the farmer. This chapter examines how CIMMYT, modeled after the successful Mexican Agricultural Program of the 1940s, evolved from a nation-centred agenda to become a mold-breaking international organization, while remaining rooted in and influenced by Mexican realities. The chapter illustrates that to speak of CGIAR is to engage with locally centred histories.

Chapter 3 focuses on political mobilizers of welfare nationalism, mainly popular attitudes toward welfare deservingness, and agents that mobilized anti-immigrant politics. The chapter elaborates on four types of deservingness criteria for migrants; need or vulnerability, ethnic closeness, contributions to receiving states’ economies and to their national security. It argues that societal norms for outsiders’ deservingness have narrowed in both Europe and Russia. Populist parties, anti-immigrant, and Euroskeptic are shown to be key mobilizers of welfare nationalism, abetted by anti-immigrant mass media. The chapter tracks one major populist party each in Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Poland, showing how that party gained vote share and national influence by opposing the CEE and MENA migrations. Using party programs and electoral outcomes, it shows how populists reinforced and amplified welfare nationalist grievances in societies, channeling them into electoral success and pressures for exclusionary migration policies. In authoritarian Russia, popular grievances against migrants are shown to be similar to grievances in Europe, but welfare nationalism was mobilized by regional elites, governors, and mayors. The chapter draws on arguments about authoritarian elites’ motivations to respond to popular grievances in order to explain how sub-national leaders used anti-immigrant mobilization for political advantage in Russia’s hybrid regime.

This chapter will examine some aspects of Marsilio Ficino’s complex engagement with the many-sided but interrelated notions of temperance and music, and with the technical notion of participation (methexis) in the Platonic Ideas, a key, it would appear, both to Platonic metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics (see Cornford 1962 [1935]; see too Spruit 1994–1995),1 and to Christian theology, given that redeemed souls will participate in the glory of the risen Christ on the Day of Judgment having already participated in the gift of divine grace.

In his maturity, Ficino was the undisputed voice of Renaissance Platonism on at least three counts. First, as a devout Christian, an ordained priest, and eventually a canon of Florence’s cathedral, he was wedded to the dream, in part a Patristic dream, of reconciling Christianity with Platonic and pre-Platonic philosophy, and of inaugurating a new Platonic age of gold.

Chapter 5 turns to attempts by French missionaries and envoys to convert the ruler of the most powerful state in Southeast Asia, King Narai of Ayutthaya, in the 1680s. It first lays out the setting into which these proselytisers arrived, playing particularly close attention to the elevation of the king in both divinised and righteous modes and his relationship with the sangha. It then shows how the commercial and administrative functioning of the kingdom pulled in sources of outside strength, which promoted the relevance of religious diplomacy. In the 1680s, a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon, became the most powerful officer at court, and he fashioned an image to the French of a ruler ripe for conversion, giving rise to a series of embassies received in Versailles and Ayutthaya. The French sought to enhance their prestige through the use of astronomical–astrological science and had a chance at a healing miracle in the 1660s. If this failed the French could take comfort from the fact that Narai was somewhat restless within his ceremonialised role, had tense relations with the Buddhist monkhood, was a cosmopolitan attracted to French culture, and was concerned to maintain the good will of Louis XIV. Some even portrayed him (mistakenly) as moving towards deism.

Twenty-week scan was fine; partner went to Mexico to work. A further scan done by a friend showed that the baby had died. Subsequently spent some time in a psychiatric hospital again before returning to work.

This chapter builds the theory about how civilians form factual beliefs in war, walking through the two major factors that power the theoretical engine behind the book’s argument. First, it explores the role of people’s psychological motivation in how they think about the world and its application to belief formation in war zones. In general, people will be motivated to interpret events in a way that fits their prior worldviews in the dispute, but not everyone will do so: for those who are closer to the action, such biases are outweighed by an “accuracy motive” and the need to get it right. Then, it discusses the role of people’s information sources in shaping their factual beliefs. The media in conflict zones is particularly prone to fueling factual biases, but not everyone is equally vulnerable: those more directly exposed to the relevant events will often reject biased narratives due to their community’s local information about what is actually taking place. Ultimately, the chapter weaves these two factors together, showing how they jointly ensure that fake news spreads widely in war, but those who are close enough to the action tend to be more resilient and know better.

Human rights are granted to all humans based on their humanity. The justification for human rights is that every individual is born free and equal in possession of a rational mind. The CRC does not define the begining of childhood, only its end at the age of 18. The monist construction of the child-rights identity is unique because, depending on national legal regulations around abortion, it is possible to apply it from the moment of conception and does not require being live-born.

Lucas L. Schulte analyzes “The Book of Isaiah in the Persian Period.” This was a crucial time in the book’s overall development. He shows how Persian emperors were able to enlist scribal elites in various subject nations and win their support. The well-known Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon may be the most prominent example, but Isa 40–66 also reflects its own interpretation of this international Persian Royal Propaganda Model. This chapter also shows how the later parts of the book of Isaiah interacted with religious and sociopolitical issues in the postexilic Persian province, comparing and contrasting it with the viewpoints of Ezra and Nehemiah in particular.

This chapter highlights a number of potential explanations for the apparent disconnect between the votes and the views of dissenting members of the Monetary Policy Committee. The MPC appears to agree more than would be expected on the basis of views expressed elsewhere in speeches and papers. None of them are particularly satisfactory. The obvious way to establish which, if any, of these explanations are relevant is to ask former members of the Committee what they think. There remains a compelling case for producing an oral history of the Monetary Policy Committee if we want to understand how and why committees function in practice.

The chapter examines how the size and diversity of the migrant population shaped economic outcomes in western Poland using statistical analysis. It shows that when state institutions were extractive, the composition of the migrant population played no role in shaping economic performance. Once institutions became more inclusive, however, municipalities settled by more regionally diverse populations registered higher incomes and entrepreneurship rates. The chapter then rules out a series of alternative explanations for these findings.

In Carl Lavery and Rezvan Zandieh’s chapter Artaud is afforded further examination. By adopting a hyphenated notion of a ‘re-turn’, Lavery and Zandieh challenge a historiography that would describe Artaud’s impact as being on the medium or discipline of theatre alone. Their ‘re-turn’ is not predicated on restoring an originary Artaud, nor does it aim to provide yet another reading or interpretation of his artistic work. By proposing a particular mode of arranging bodies and objects in time and space, Artaud’s theatricality overspills its disciplinary enclosure and informs other artforms. They posit Artaud as a performance theorist whose ideas allow for a unique take on the indeterminate borderline existing between theatre, conceptualism and installation art. To investigate that liminal fold, they place Artaud in dialogue with artist Christian Boltanski, whose relationship with theatre and performance they tease out.

J. Blake Couey, in “Isaiah as Poetry,” begins with the basic fact that nearly all of the book is written as poetry and encourages readers to approach it as such. He surveys its erudite vocabulary, its creative use of sound, and its parallelism and larger strophic structures. He closes with an extended appreciation of the “imaginative worlds” evoked in the book through the use of imagery and metaphors. He observes of its poetic vision that “its scope is nearly boundless.”

This chapter is devoted to a short excursion into the theory of alternative algebras over commutative rings. We prove Artin’s theorem, according to which alternative algebras on two generators are associative. We study in detail McCrimmon’s theory of homotopes, which plays a strong role in this book and therefore merits greater emphasis here than one might find in other discussions of alternative algebras.

The sixth chapter covers the origins of Roman historiography. As usual, they are in Greece, and as usual the Romans do something rather different with their model. From its origins in Cato down to what many considered its perfect form in Livy, the Romans were deeply interested in their own pasts. But history-writing was not as it is in the modern world: the ancient historian did little of what we would consider research. Here again, therefore, literary elements were to the fore: choosing the right kind of story to tell and telling it in the right way were the important things. Discussions of Ennius, Cato, Caesar, Sallust, Asinius Pollio, and Livy.