This chapter examines the aftermath of early Anglican missionisation to Makushi groups. It begins with a story that was told to the author of a past Makushi leader described by a villager in Surama as a false prophet. The chapter then discusses various prophetic movements that arose among the Makushi and neighbouring Indigenous groups during the 1840s and afterwards which culminated in the alleluia religion. These movements used material and immaterial objects acquired and appropriated from the missionaries for new purposes. Many of these movements emphasised a central theme of transformation, which was often described in colonial sources in terms of Indigenous people becoming ‘white’ in one form or another. The movements combined resistance to colonialism with Christianity, shamanism, and sometimes also sorcery. In this context, shamanism became a means for contacting the Christian God. The chapter foregrounds a shamanic relational mode that structures interactions with outsiders among the Makushi.

Climate change is humanity’s greatest challenge for the XXIst century. Its effects will be felt for generations to come. In light of the enormity of the challenge, bank regulators are moving, yet reforms are neither homogeneous nor comprehensive. The EU is clearly more committed to the effort than any other player, and even within the EU, attitudes are cautious towards Pillar 1 (prudential requirements) and macroprudential measures, and bolder towards Pillar 3 (market discipline through disclosures) and Pillar 2 (supervisory review), though more uneven on the latter. This does not follow a scientific logic (due to the high uncertainty of climate risk) but a policy logic, since legislators and regulators tend to follow a path of minimum resistance, and undertake first the reforms that require them a lower epistemic burden.

Many drugs are available to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), but are limited to alleviating symptoms; no disease-modifying treatment (DMT) has been approved by any authority. There is much effort to develop remedies capable of altering the underlying neurodegenerative processes in PD. Current concepts target the deposition of pathologic α-synuclein oligomers either by immunization strategies or by small molecules that interact with the protein aggregation. Further DMT approaches modulate pathologically active intracellular processes such as the c-Abl kinase or LRRK2 pathway or aim to activate signaling pathways involved in neuroprotection, such as the GLP-1 receptor pathway (with GLP1-agonist exenatide being the most advanced DMT in the PD drug pipeline). Replacement of enzymes such as β-glucocerebrosidase, modification of the microbiome, or targeting energy metabolism or inflammation are further approaches proposed to slow down neurodegeneration. Novel symptomatic treatment approaches envisage improvement of pharmacologic properties of levodopa or dopamine agonists or target non-dopaminergic neurotransmitter systems, e.g., the glutamatergic, serotoninergic or cholinergic system.

After a long tradition of studying languages as isolated systems, researchers are increasingly aware of the fact that speakers of most of the world’s languages are multilingual. The coexistence of multiple languages within the brain can be a significant force shaping each. The recognition of constructions and their arrays of constructional properties provides a useful tool for understanding contact phenomena: much of what is transferred in contact situations are constructions or constructional features. Conversely, examination of what is replicated can enhance our understanding of the nature of linguistic knowledge. Here replicated constructions of varying sizes and degrees of schematicity are first described, from words through discourse structures, then the transfer of individual constructional features, including prosody, special connotations, various pragmatic effects, linguistic and extralinguistic contexts of use, and frequency are discussed, as well as the social situations under which they occur. The kinds of constructions and constructional properties replicated provide additional evidence that constructions are more than simple combinations of basic form and meaning.

Taking the nationalisation of the telegraph in 1870 as a starting point, this chapter considers how information was understood as immaterial yet depended upon a complex material infrastructure. The first section addresses telegraphy as a technology of the present, enabling people to experience new kinds of contemporaneity, while, at the same time, ensuring that it remained stubbornly uneven. The second turns to text, exploring how it was made suitable for transmission by new information technologies and the new kinds of workers employed to process it. The third looks at the print archive. To ensure the right information could be readily retrieved, systems of bibliographic control were developed to manage the material from which it derived. Throughout, I return to Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875). Trollope’s novel is deeply interested in the contemporary, attending to the technologies that structure the moment and those that make that moment pass.

US first ladies have exercised a complicated kind of activism when it comes to women’s rights. Some have acted as vocal advocates to insist that women’s equality should be a national priority. Others have used their platform more quietly to intervene on behalf of women’s rights. Still others have held and promoted views that have contradicted, undermined, or altogether avoided efforts to advance women’s rights. This chapter traces how US first ladies have addressed and influenced the prevailing women’s rights issues of their day, with a focus on two national campaigns: a federal amendment for women’s suffrage and a federal amendment for equal rights. By engaging or avoiding the debates surrounding women’s suffrage and the ERA, these women stretched the political and rhetorical boundaries of their platform and shaped public understanding about the ongoing struggle for women’s equality in the United States.

Chapter 4 explores the complex dynamics and profound consequences of the 2014 Umbrella Movement. We illustrate how its spontaneous eruption led to a hybrid organizational structure comprising a formal leadership and self-mobilized protesters who saw themselves as leaderless, and how such dynamics eventually led to the division and fragmentation of the opposition.

United Nations (UN) peace missions are meant to foster peace. However, slim progress has been observed in the states in which they have been recently deployed. If peace misions are effective in alleviating the suffering of the population on many fronts, the puzzle remains: To what extent are UN peace missions powerful instruments of peaceful change, given the persistent political coups and ensuing protests and violence in the receiving countries despite their presence? In this chapter, a constructivist, multilevel analytical approach is used to discuss how peace missions factor in peaceful change. A three-fold argument is made: While it can be demonstrated that UN peace missions are powerful instruments of peaceful change at the international level all the while mitigating crises on a regional basis, they do little to prevent/alleviate the continuation of violence at the national level. Using the examples of Sudan, Mali, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cyprus, this chapter examines how UN peace missions are instruments of change, yet their peaceful effect depends on whether one takes into account the national, regional, or international level factors.