1. In this story the researchers understand mattering as a core value in social work. How can mattering be practised and expressed in social work research? 2. What issues of feeling valued and giving value arise from this story? 3. How could the stories of the participants be presented to social work students in an educational setting?

This chapter studies civilian grain management agencies and the logistical branch of Nationalist China’s armed forces, the Supply and Baggage troops. It highlights two key policy shifts: provisioning armies in kind, and centralizing and collecting land tax in kind. While these changes shielded army consumers from inflation to some degree, overlapping mandates among multiple agencies produced confusion throughout the war zones, and the Supply and Baggage troops were plagued by both inadequate training and a historical disdain for logistics. However, blanket accusations of ineptitude obscure the fact that, despite large variations in climate, infrastructure and politics across Free China, these institutions fulfilled their basic task: collecting and circulating enough grain to keep the Nationalists in the war. The chapter also uncovers details about the everyday endeavors of low-level grain management officials and military transport personnel, the individuals who implemented provisioning plans but who remain nameless and forgotten in the literature. Moreover, despite systemic weaknesses, a cadre of experts worked to elevate the status of logistics within Nationalist armies.

The book examines Nationalist China’s military provisioning strategies during its war against Japan, from procurement and storage to transportation and seizure from the enemy, to make two broader points. Firstly, the conflict shows that the historical concept of total war should not be confined to modern technology as a means or to rapid victory as an end. Chinese thinkers christened their struggle against Japan a “total war,” but held a different vision of totality to accommodate China’s premodern resource base and commitment to protracted warfare. Secondly, logistics deserves more attention not just among military historians, but among all scholars of war. Its technicalities are a crucial window into the everyday experiences of ordinary actors who have been marginalized in historical scholarship.

After attempts to target national and international politics stalled, the network of groups concerned with fair trade regrouped around local activism. This chapter shows how paper was a crucial product to understand the strand of activism which emerged in the 1970s: it served as a medium for groups across Europe to keep in contact but was also the main carrier of information about the injustices the movement tried to address through distributing leaflets, posters, and books. Activism in many places was anchored by so-called world shops, which had first emerged in the Netherlands at the end of the 1960s as meeting places for activists with similar concerns. The model quickly spread throughout Europe, offering activists a way to come together around a diverse set of issues, which they first and foremost addressed in their own neighbourhoods. The chapter offers an alternative reading of 1970s activism, claiming that social activism did not subside but rather shifted towards local activities, which has been less visible to contemporary observers as well as historians.

Chapter 8 analyzes the marketing of inkiko gacaca; that is, the RPF’s effort to create demand for its invented tradition. By revealing a series of tactics related to this marketing strategy, the book here sheds light on the manufacturing of consent about the meaning of transitional justice in post-genocide Rwanda. The focus is on the presentation of law in everyday life, with particular reference to select localities.

This chapter offers a critical analysis of how scholars have interpreted the relationship between eighteenth-century cultural practice and revolutionary politics, circa 1760 to 1825. The chapter first surveys and classifies eighteenth century cultural practice, identifying three main types: the social arts, practices of everyday life, and fine arts. The bulk of the essay then reflects on three major paradigms for interpreting how these forms of culture interacted with revolutionary politics. The dominant approach, exemplified by literature on the “bourgeois public sphere,” argues that eighteenth-century culture prefigured or lay the groundwork for revolutionary politics. Other scholars, particularly those working on the fine arts in the revolutionary era, have emphasized how cultural practices were transformed by revolutionary politics. A third, newer approach emphasizes the autonomy of cultural practice. Scholars working within this paradigm argue that cultural change was itself a form of revolution and that culture acted as an independent container for new political practices during the revolutionary era. This paradigm points the way to a broader, more inclusive account of revolution in this period. The essay covers the historiographies of eighteenth-century culture and revolutionary politics in North America, Europe (especially France and the Netherlands), and Latin America (especially Peru).

In the space of a single generation, social media have transformed how billions of people make friends, build communities, and share knowledge. However, approaches that suggest harm occurs based solely on time spent using social media disguise this everyday reality. In response, this chapter points toward the importance of understanding who uses social media in daily life, why, and how. While we have more data than ever to help us explore the impacts of new technologies, including social media, everyday experiences require description alongside careful theorizing about the mechanisms that might cause benefits or harms. This collectively shifts research priorities towards applied applications that can mitigate problems, injustices, and inequalities that social media and other digital cultures can foster.

This chapter surveys consumer experience in an economy with a shrinking supply of consumer goods, explaining how consumers responded to the shortages, price controls and rationing. It explains social experience with queues and the motivations and rationale for food protests by ‘housewives’ to obtain more food, and the family strategies to exploit opportunities for getting food from relatives and connections in rural areas. It also examines how consumer hardship was represented in the daily press and the use of humour in cartoons about the black market, queues, and restaurants.

An examination of Maroon cultural, festive and political practices, their victorious militarized Black masculinity and their wider transimperial significance as figures of resistance or reconciliation, as images of the the red-coated Maroon circulated across imperial networks