The freedom and power of citizens was buttressed by the exclusionary effects on non-citizens. My reading of Apollodoros’ Against Neaira ([Dem.] 59) in Chapter 5 exemplifies the practical results of the ideology of freedom on all levels of Athenian society. The case calls into question the limits of citizenship and demonstrates how a status transgression can impair the jury’s own power. The prosecution speech alleges that Neaira, a resident foreigner, is guilty of pretending to be a citizen. As a foreign, female sex laborer, Neaira represents the antithesis of the model citizen. Neaira’s arrogation of citizenship privileges, however, gives her a measure of positive freedom and power. In contrast to other readings, I show that power struggles are crucial to analyzing the prosecution’s arguments. The prosecution attempts to show that instead of doing “whatever she wishes,” Neaira deserves to be subject to others doing “whatever they wish” to her. Apollodoros’ characterization of her transgressions as destabilizing citizenship indicates the centrality of autonomy and power to citizen identity. Hence, the importance of positive freedom was not simply theoretical, but practical.

Shelley K. Taylor recounts her impression, growing up in a multilingual city in Canada with multilingual parents, that everyone had their own ‘secret’ languages. While she has been a lifelong learner of languages, her journey reflects a blurring of boundaries between naturalistic and instructed Second Language Acquisition. Through her research on multilingual education navigating across different language families and global contexts, she challenges educators’ monolingual mindsets to promote students’ academic achievement and multilingual development.

This chapter argues that although the poverty narrative has been a source of dramatic empowerment for those in desperate need, the effectiveness of this instrument has also become clear to others. It provides illustrations of the increasingly indiscriminate overuse and deliberate misuse of poverty narratives by the less rich and the more rich, respectively. Through four cases focusing on the misuse of this narrative in trade negotiations, and further examples in multiple areas of bargaining, I make a sombre central point. The poverty narrative, because of its many demonstrated wins, has been appropriated and hijacked by multiple players. As more and more states and people learn to effectively play the role of the powerless victim, the poverty narrative is attracting a major backlash. There is a tragic irony to this: as the (still relatively newly discovered) power of the powerless loses credibility through overuse and misuse, the biggest losses accrue to the neediest and the poorest. The potential damage to the international system of rules is also severe.