This chapter takes forward the exploration of marriage as difference through an examination of what are locally perceived as ‘mixed’ marriages in Penang. Difference can be calibrated in many registers – including age, wealth, class, familial background, religion, language, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The cultural and ethnic diversity of Penang offers unusual scope for marrying outside familiar boundaries. But which sorts of difference are most salient, and which boundaries are more permeable and more easy to bridge? ‘Malayness’ and Islam have a historically privileged legal status in Malaysia, and marrying a Muslim legally requires a non-Muslim spouse to convert. The bodily, culinary, religious and legal concomitants of this conversion are likely to impact close family members of a non-Muslim partner. At the extreme end of a range of possibilities, ‘mixed’ couples encountering or expecting opposition from their families sometimes elope to marry. But, after marriage, a long process of accommodation and absorption is likely to occur. Experiences of ‘mixed’ marriage and the negotiation of difference, which is part of marriage everywhere, offer a perspective on other changes in Malaysia over several decades. But more broadly, it provides a way to understand how intimate worlds may generate wider social transformation.

The past few decades have witnessed a significant religious revival in China, coinciding with a sharp increase in economic inequality. This chapter investigates the impact of religion on the Chinese public’s perceptions of income disparity and political trust. The findings reveal a notable difference in the perceived fairness of personal income distribution between religious and nonreligious individuals. Religious beliefs are positively correlated with a heightened sense of fairness regarding both personal and national income distribution. These perceptions of fairness, in turn, contribute to fostering people’s trust in political institutions and government officials. However, religious beliefs mitigate the positive effect of perceived fairness in income distribution on institutional trust. Consequently, when income distribution is perceived as unfair, institutional trust declines more sharply among religious believers compared to their nonreligious counterparts.

In the ‘Coda’ to Part III, I reflect on the relationship between late medieval religious and economic practices, brought together through the theme of alchemy.

It is well known that Ennius stands out among the early Roman writers by being active in a variety of literary (mainly poetic) genres. It is also obvious that there are clear distinctions in form and themes between the different types of works in line with their generic identity; at the same time, some stylistic features, motifs, and concepts may be observed in works assigned to different literary genres. This chapter explores such items in Ennius’ corpus and discusses the respective role of generic distinctions. Such a study contributes to identifying typical aspects of Ennius’ output as a whole as well as to describing specific generic manifestations.

This concluding chapter elaborates on the main themes that have run through this book. It argues for the unity of knowledge in the natural sciences, the arts and humanities, and the hard and soft social sciences (section 1); discusses eclecticism and experimentalism as a compelling intellectual response to navigating the risk-uncertainty conundrum (section 2); illustrates different forms of coping with the risk-uncertainty conundrum with the help of punditry, scenarios, and forecasts (section 3); draws out the implications of the complementarity of risk and uncertainty for moral luck, policy, and pragmatism (section 4); and, returning to worldviews, points to the affinities that science and religion share in our coping with the risk-uncertainty conundrum (section 5).

This chapter begins with reference to Les Murray’s impressiveness as a reader of his own work. It illustrates the distinctiveness and variety of Murray’s poetry, celebrating its avoidance of predictable forms, topics and ideas. The chapter also observes the difference in the reception of Murray’s work in the global North and the global South. It points to the ways in which Murray’s poems don’t seem to end in conventional or predictable ways, but seem unending. The chapter discusses ‘The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle’ as possibly Murray’s greatest poem, for its all-encompassingness. It cites Murray’s anti-modernism and his membership of the diasporic super-group of English-language poets, including Brodsky, Walcott and Heaney. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how the flavour and nature of Murray’s poetry changed in the last twenty years of his life.

This chapter analyses the relationship between religion, state-formation, and nationalism. The focus is on the transformation of collective subjectivities in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman worlds. By zooming in on case studies of the Ottoman empire and Turkey, the chapter analyses what role religious and state institutions play in the development of distinct nationalist projects. Since both religion and nationhood were key sources of political legitimacy, the chapter explores how these are two distinct types of collective subjectivities reconciled in the social and political spheres. The chapter investigates the inherent tensions between the universalist doctrines of Sunni Islam and the unambiguous particularism of modern nationalist projects in Turkey.

This chapter considers the fraught and complex history of religion and poetry in Australia, given the context of settler – colonialism, Aboriginal understandings of Country, and Australia’s growing cultural diversity. Discerning that anti-religious sentiment has emerged through a perception of Christianity as too close to settler – colonialism, it argues for a broad understanding of religion to include major world faiths and Aboriginal spirituality. It considers how nineteenth-century poets responded to the crises of faith brought about by Darwin’s theory of evolution, and then how poets grappled with meaning-making and value-making following the two world wars. At the same time, it recognises that many poets; including Francis Webb, James McAuley, Vincent Buckley; and Les Murray; still shared an institutional understanding of religion. The chapter considers how recent poets have meditated on the relationship between the secular and the sacred. It analyses the mosaic quality of Fay Zwicky’s reflections on her Jewish ancestry, as well as the navigation of Buddhism in poets like Harold Stewart, Robert Gray; and Judith Beveridge; Christianity in the work of Kevin Hart and Lachlan Brown; and Islam in the work of Omar Sakr.

This chapter focuses on the historical relationship between nationalism and conspiracy theories in times of pandemic. It argues that premodern conspiratorial narratives were mostly focused on eschatological and theological images, aiming to blame and delegitimise the religious Other. In these imaginary plots, the spread of disease was interpreted as an attack on one’s religious beliefs. With the rise of nation-states and the decline of empires and patrimonial kingdoms, periodic outbursts of epidemics gradually attained more nationalist interpretations. In these narratives, the threatening Other was usually nationalised, and even traditional religious groups became reinterpreted as a threat to one’s national security

Culture can be a source of identity, including topics such as nationality, religion, race, and personal background. Culture can be an artistic inspiration, which can encompass many dimensions. Artists can want to share and teach, to process controversial social issues, and to engage in self-discovery. In this chapter, artists share how their culture shapes their creative output. For some, art enables them to address difficult topics that might not otherwise see the light of day.

The final chapter examines how a new kind of shamanism developed in the riverbank settlements and attracted peoples across the colonial and Indigenous spaces. Although shamanism was a feature of Amerindian societies, the Portuguese also had a tradition of healing and folk curing. Riverine shamans from Indigenous communities were highly active in the eighteenth century, and modified Indigenous practices and Catholic symbols to meet the needs of their clients from all backgrounds seeking their ‘merciful’ work. Shamanic curing and healing connected the three spaces as shamans moved between each one and provided clients with relief from their suffering.

The Equality Act provides protection against discrimination on the ground of various protected characteristics: sex, race, disability, age, religion and gender. It protects against direct discrimination where there is adverse treatment because of a protected characteristic, and also indirect discrimination where the same rule is applied to all groups but has an unjustified and disproportionate adverse effect on a group. Adverse treatment includes harassment and victimisation. There is in addition a duty of reasonable accommodation for disabled workers. The law also requires equal pay for women for similar work or work that has equal value to that performed by men.

This chapter examines the shift from almost total estrangement in the early 1920s to broad enmeshment in cultural, economic, and finally diplomatic exchanges in the early 1930s. While acknowledging the importance of converging economic and strategic interests, the chapter argues that images and ideas were also significant, particularly in defining the identities and trajectories of the two countries. It illuminates the divergence between American anticommunists who loathed the atheist Soviet dictatorship and the growing number of intellectuals, journalists, African Americans, and others who became fascinated by the Soviet experiment in social and economic transformation. It also analyzes the ambivalence of Soviet writers, cartoonists, and political leaders about the United States, which they harshly criticized for its imperialism, racism, and economic exploitation, but also admired for its energy, productivity, and advanced technology. The chapter closes with a discussion of how President Franklin Roosevelt disregarded a terrible famine in Ukraine and protests by Ukrainian Americans as he negotiated for the establishment of diplomatic relations.

This chapter introduces students of US foreign relations to the methods of studying religion in US diplomatic history. The challenges in thinking about (and with) religion might be divided into three general issues: how to understand the relationship between religion and historical causality; how to make sense of the ways that religion is embedded in supposedly secular forms and institutions; and, perhaps most importantly, how to define religion. Making sense of religion demands attention to all these issues, as well as a willingness to engage with nonstate actors and ideology. Perhaps most importantly, it demands diplomatic historians take seriously the religious language, institutions, and behaviors they encounter in the archive. After a brief historiographical overview of the religious turn in diplomatic history and the global turn in religious history, the chapter focuses on the key themes of secularism, humanitarianism, causality, and mapping. It ends with a discussion of how attention to religious studies scholarship can help attune diplomatic historians to new dimensions in our traditional archives.