Provides a brief overview of elements of the Islamic normative tradition. I consider three key concepts – justice, the common good and community – and ambiguities of their contemporary application. The primary focus of the discussion concerns resources (including wealth and property) – their attribution and distribution. To whom do wealth, property and resources belong, and what are their responsibilities? How, by whom, and for what purposes are wealth and resources to be distributed, and who has the authority to make such determinations? In broad strokes, I outline how, according to religious norms, resources ought to be utilized and managed for the sake of the "common good." The purpose of this discussion is to provide a framework that facilitates a deeper understanding of the extent to which religious norms have been instrumentalized and at times, reformulated in the conduct of the four oil-financed institutionalized practices explored in subsequent chapters.

This chapter examines Lucian’s manipulation of images of geographical authority in his True Histories, with particular reference to his representation of human and other bodies immersed in their environments. It look first at the tension between detached geographical observation and images of bodily immersion or entanglement with particular landscapes both in imperial Greek literature more broadly, and also in Lucian’s work, where that theme has a particular prominence. That point is illustrated first through discussion of Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess, which returns repeatedly to images that challenge the idea of a clear dividing line between bodies and their environments, and also between observer and participant status. The second half of the chapter then traces the contrast between detached observation and corporeal immersion through the True Histories, especially in the scenes in the stomach of the whale, from 1.30–2.20, arguing that Lucian in this text undercuts notions of detached geographical authority in ways that are closely related to his comical undermining of various other kinds of intellectual and social pretension in his other works.

Abstract: Chapter 4 tells stories of mischievous, naughty and fierce boys and girls, prompting us to rethink gendered moralities and how they are learned in childhood. Systematic behavioral analyses reveal gendered patterns in children’s moral experience, for example, boys initiate physical aggression, dominance and swearing more than girls, but girls assert themselves in more subtle ways, such as through tattling and scolding. I further explore how children’s learning of authority, aggression, boyhood, and violence is shaped by their family life as well as the larger historical trends. The chapter also examines how young girls understand their own situations and defend themselves. Despite the entrenched son-preference in this community, little girls are far from passive or submissive. To honor Arthur Wolf’s legacy on marriage and adoption and offer new insights on young girls’ emotional experience, which was not addressed in Wolf’s previous works, I present the case of an adopted daughter: an “unruly” girl who defies parental commands, asserts her own will, and negotiates love-hate relationships with different family members.

This chapter aims to redescribe the IPCC through the analytical framework of the book by identifying the actors, activities and forms of authority that shape the organisation and its assessment practice. Reviewing existing studies of the IPCC, the chapter begins by identifying two central concerns within this scholarship: first, the relationship between science and politics and second, the asymmetries between developed and developing country participation. The chapter contributes to this literature by using the framework of the book to identify the IPCC as five distinct units: the panel, the bureau, the technical support units (TSUs), the secretariat and the authors. This identifies other forms of authority that matter alongside scientific and political forms, most importantly the administrative, as found within the TSUs. Describing the historical emergence of the social order over thirty years and six assessment cycles reveals the relationship between economic capital and meaningful participation. It requires economic and human resources to undertake IPCC activities, and it through this investment individual actors and member government becomes meaningful and authoritative participants, with knowledge of and the symbolic power to write the meaning of climate change.

I open the book with the political struggle that took place between parties at COP24, over whether the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C should be noted or welcomed. This provides the context for exploring the IPCC as a central site in and producer of climate politics. In the chapter, I take the reader back to where this study began, with the question, who has the power to define climate change for collective response and what constitutes this power? The answer the book offers is the practice of writing. The actors, activities and forms of authority framework provides the analytical framework for exploring the asymmetries in power to effect how climate change is written. This approach has developed from interviews, observation and extensive data collection from IPCC documentation. The resulting book takes the reader on a journey into the intricate details of writing an assessment, the social order through which it is written and how climate change is known and acted upon through the process.

This chapter describes the journey that the scientific assessment travels from author nomination through to the drafting and reviewing of the emerging report, and explores the social scientific order that structures and imprints on the IPCC’s writing of climate change through the process. It is in the initial stages of the scientific assessment, in the government nomination and author selection processes, that asymmetries in global knowledge of climate change and their effects become apparent. While developed countries have institutionalised processes for identifying and nominating experts, the majority of developing countries do not submit any author nominations. Once compiled, it is scientific conventions and measures of authority that are used to select and appoint the expertise necessary to fulfil the government approved outline of the report. However, when these activities are situated in broader patterns and practices of knowledge production, it becomes apparent that these reproduce the structures and exclusions of the existing global knowledge economy. These asymmetries are also apparent in the order of relations in the author teams and the submission of government review comments, which reduces the space for more diverse understandings and knowledges of climate change that are relevant to and reflect the interests and needs of all IPCC member governments. The IPCC has attempted to address these asymmetries through selection criteria and other mechanisms to shape the social order of authorship, which to date have proven more successful in broadening gender representation than ensuring the full participation of developing country authors in the assessment.

Authority means the ability to affect others’ behavior without applying direct force. Its traces, noted among chimpanzees, develop among the “talking apes.” Human tribes may develop shamans even earlier than full-time chiefs. The advent of agriculture increased population density, enabling ambitious chiefs to have more sway over villagers than they could over sparse hunters: Land tillers are easy to locate and cannot abandon their fields even when hard pressed. A population density of five persons per square kilometer may be the threshold for state formation. Formation of the first states witnessed ferociousness rare in the present humans – or chimpanzees. Tool making shifted gatherers to hunting, and hunting skills may have selected for the most ferocious genes. Agriculture might have started an opposite process of self-taming that still continues, but meanwhile tribal freewheeling turned into utter regimentation, as if the state were the ruler’s household (oikos) and other people his slaves. This human self-domestication reached its fullest extent when the advent of money allowed humans to be sold and bought.

Finally, Chapter 7 outlines the effect of the martyr’s performance. Interrogating the discourses surrounding martyrdom, I show how the crises faced were perceived as a moment when the community and its foundations will either be revitalized or lost forever. In response, cries that members retain their traditional identity are linked with affirmations of loyalty to the community and its cosmological foundations. I argue martyrdoms are performed in service to what I term sovereign imaginaries: coherent visions of cosmic order and authority that legitimate acts of killing and being killed. In these contexts, multiple authorities converge on bodies; violence is used by political institutions to encourage obedience, but martyrs show that such measures cannot force individual action. A decision must be made by each individual as to which imaginary to give form in their body. I use this insight to analyze the place of martyrdom within sovereign constructions, engaging the frame of political theology and decentering the central concern with a decision by a sovereign leader to the decision of individuals whether or not to recognize authority.

In this chapter, I discuss in what sense and to what extent institutions have political authority. I take institutions with legitimate authority to be justified in wielding political power, where this political power is backed by the threat of coercion. Against the position that international institutions are not coercive, I claim that applying an adequate conception of coercion – which takes the concept of enforcement as paradigmatic for coercion, rather than the concept of pressure – enables us to understand some international institutions as coercive. It also lays open the assumption that a single conception of authority applied to all international institutions misconceives the diversity in aims and purposes of international institutions. Institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims and institutions that coordinate mutual advantage can both be plausibly understood as coercive, even though their authority differs in scope and in what standards they must satisfy. Finally, I discuss whether the standard of state consent is appropriate for international institutions: while it is plausible for institutions that coordinate mutual advantage, it is implausible as a standard of legitimacy for institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims – such as institutions of international criminal justice.

In Chapter 4, I offer a new theory of citizen power. Every adult male citizen would have been free, but this also made him kurios, or empowered, as opposed to ceding his power to a slave master. When substantivized, kurios indicated a male citizen’s institutionalized role as the head of a household. The lens of the household kurios generates an understanding of citizen power that encompasses both private and public domains. Not simply power as domination, kurios also indicated a shared power to act. As a conceptual metaphor, kurios was applied to the political sphere and structured thought across these different domains. Thus, qualities of the term kurios in its original domain, the household, corresponded systemically in the applied domain, the city. The laws and the corporate citizen body, too, were understood as kurioi. While there may be competing claims to power, the identification of the citizen as sharing in power with and through the laws and the dēmos is distinct from the modern conception of the individual versus the state. The negotiation of power in this way has repercussions for debates regarding sovereignty and the rule of law.

The conservative side of the quest for true Christianity – what traditionalists call the “rule of faith” – can also be organized in terms of doctrine, culture, and politics. The second chapter begins by looking at the doctrinal quest, which focuses on the retrieval of “historic Christianity.” John Henry Newman, Karl Barth, and C. S. Lewis represent key moments in the rise of retrievalism among Protestants.

Chapter 1 uses the Middle English Charters of Christ to outline a medieval theory of money as debt. The charter lyrics pretend to be deeds, grants, or writs by which Christ cancels the debt owed to God by sinners, or, alternatively, bequeaths the kingdom of heaven to the faithful. In exchange for the remission or the inheritance, the charter stipulates that humankind owes a “rent” to Christ of love and the regular observance of the sacrament of penance. The form of the charter lyrics imitates the form of legal documents, using the verbal formulae and visual markers designed to ensure legal and documentary authenticity as a kind of spiritual guarantee: the lyrics are sincere forgeries. I argue that the kind of belief at work in this act of forgery is a monetary belief. The lyrics function as close analogues to money in that they measure debt and depend for their value on the creditor’s right to repayment. At the same time, like money, they depend for their operation on the community’s active willingness to participate in a shared fiction.

This chapter investigates how digitization changes the internal organization of firms. Gig economy platforms and freelancing agencies are rapidly taking over market share changing our very definition of a “firm,” whereas those who still work for traditional firms increasingly rely on virtual tools and external digital platforms to coordinate and communicate. Similarly, many of the firm’s other production activities may be outsourced to external providers, including inputs, manufacturing, assembly, logistics, marketing, and even R&D. We explore the emerging nature of the firm if much of its activities are carried out by other organizations, and pinpoint the key characteristics that determine what activities firms may want to continue in-house and which activities they can conveniently use digital markets and platforms to pursue.