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This article studies the contested legal–political dynamics around forced migration flows to and through an unrecognized state: the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). We adopt an analytical perspective drawn from the literature on performative politics and the legal anthropology of documents to explore how migration dynamics interact with the contested legal status of the TRNC. Our two main questions are: What practical shape do the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers take in an interstitial legal space, where the foundation of law is itself subject to ambiguity, suspension, and contestation? And what implications—opportunities and hazards—does this constellation have for refugees and asylum-seekers? Drawing on interviews, lived experience and fieldwork observations, we make two arguments. First, we contend that the interstitial status of the TRNC represents both an opportunity for refugees and a threat. Secondly, we argue that a purely legal or technical understanding of legal identity and concurrent rights is inadequate; we must subject these phenomena to a politically informed analysis of the everyday practices through which legal norms and spaces are continuously shaped and reshaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The partograph has been endorsed by World Health Organization (WHO) since 1994 which presents an algorithm for assessing maternal and foetal conditions and labor progression. Monitoring labour with a partograph can reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes such as prolonged labor, emergency C-sections, birth asphyxia and stillbirths. However, partograph use is still very low, particularly in low and middle income countries (LMICs). In Bangladesh the reported partograph user rate varies from 1.4% to 33.0%. Recently, an electronic version of the partograph, with the provision of online data entry and user aid for emergency clinical support, has been tested successfully in different settings. With this proven evidence, we conducted and operations research to test the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing an e-partograph, for the first time, in 2 public hospitals in Bangladesh Methods: We followed a prospective crossover design. Two secondary level referral hospitals, Jessore and Kushtia District Hospital (DH) were the study sites. All pregnant women who delivered in the study hospitals were the study participants. All nurse-midwives working in the labor ward of study hospitals were trained on appropriate use of both types of partograph along with standard labour management guidelines. Collected quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 23 statistical software. Discrete variables were expressed as percentages and presented as frequency distribution and cross tabulations. Chi square tests were employed to test the association between exposure and outcome variables. Potential confounding factors were adjusted using multivariate binary logistic regression methods. Ethical approval was obtained from the institutional review board of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b). Findings: In total 2918 deliveries were conducted at Jessore DH and 2312 at Kushtia DH during one-year study period. Of them, 1012 (506 in each facility) deliveries were monitored using partograph (paper or electronic). The trends of facility based C-section rates was downwards in both the hospitals; 43% to 37% in Jessore and from 36% to 25% in Kushtia Hospital. There was a significant reduction of prolonged labour with e-partograph use. In Kushtia DH, the prolonged labour rate was 42% during phase 1 with the paper version which came down to 29% during phase-2 with the e-partograph use. The similar result was observed in Jessore DH where the prolonged labour rate reduced to 7% with paper partograph from the reported 30% prolonged labour with e-partograph. The e-partograph user rate was higher than the paper partograph during both phases (phase 1: 3.31, CI: 2.04–5.38, p < .001 and in phase 2: 15.20 CI: 6.36–36.33, p < .001) after adjusting for maternal age, parity, gestational age, religion, mother’s education, husband’s education, and fetal sex Conclusion: The partograph user rate has significantly improved with the e- partograph and was associated with an overall reduction in cesarean births. Use of the e-partograph was also associated with reduced rates of prolonged labour. This study has added to the growing body of evidence on the positive impact of e-partograph use. We recommend implementing e-partograph intervention at scale in both public and private hospitals in Bangladesh. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Looking Machine: MacDougall, David: The Looking Machine: Essays on Cinema, Anthropology and Documentary Filmmaking. Writing of the practice of documentary filmmaking in relation to anthropology, MacDougall nicely turns on its head a knee-jerk reaction to images as extraction and exploitation when he says, Undoubtedly the filming process... includes a sense of acquisition, of capturing some piece of reality, yet this is just as often tempered and exceeded by a feeling of humility at what the filmmaker has been able to film. MacDougall writes of the work of documentarians and fiction filmmakers challenging the dominance of the Griersonian conception, wanting to represent "ordinary folk"; men like Humphrey Jennings, with his wartime work in England; John Huston, in his [19] film I , Let There Be Light i (banned by the War Department of the United States "for showing too explicitly the traumatic effects of warfare on ordinary soldiers"); Georges Rouquier, who made short films dealing with French artisans at work, as well as features on rural lives and land that are full of ecological wisdom without ideologizing; and Luchino Visconti, Vittorio de Sica and Roberto Rossellini, with their post-war films in Italy that chronicled ordinary lives in a realist style. Both men knew too that in some films the filmmaker directs the subject and in others "the subject directs the filmmaker" (Young, in MacDougall, 171). [Extracted from the article]

The Earth and life sciences are replete with portmanteau (blended) words and neologisms. Researchers at the interfaces between the traditional disciplines within the Earth and life sciences have coined dual titles for 'new' disciplines, such as geobiology/biogeology and ecohydrology/hydroecology. An upsurge in such coinage over the last few decades reflects a healthy willingness of many researchers to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and to include the human sphere within their domains. However, some of the titles cause confusion because their meanings are not self-evident; rather, they sometimes demand extra research to reveal their meanings, thus rendering science less 'open' at a time when Open Science is being vigorously encouraged. After discussing the question of disciplinary neologisms, the paper probes the interchangeability of 15 dual 'new' discipline titles and concludes that six are more-or-less synonymous, three are nonsynonymous, and six are indeterminate for varying reasons. We question the usefulness of some, but by no means all, disciplinary neologisms, given that their meanings are not immediately apparent. Looking beyond portmanteau titles and other neologisms, the paper discusses the rise of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, as seen in the concepts of the Critical Zone, multifunctional landscapes, and Earth System Science, the last of which supports a conceptual model of the planet as an interdependent set of spheres from global to local scales that has the advantages of combining the biotic, abiotic, and human spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on ethnographic photography representing ethnic minorities on China's southwest frontier during the Republican era (1912–1949), this paper reconsiders the role of photography as a source of evidence. The cross-cultural case in China extends studies of anthropology and photography beyond a European context and complicates our understanding of 'photographic evidence' by probing how such evidence was collected, produced, circulated and perceived in Han Chinese society. While photography played a significant role as an evidential force for anthropological and ethnographic endeavors, photography as 'evidence' was negotiated within the Chinese social, political, and cultural context of ethnicity. In spite of anthropological photography's western origins, it is impossible to fully understand work representing the non-Han subject in Republican China without analyzing its relationship with the visual tradition of the Miao album, a late imperial Chinese genre of ethnographic illustration. Through a critical reading of 'photographic evidence' pertaining to non-Han women's work, marriage and dance, this paper reveals the paradox of anthropological photography as visual evidence and highlights the social constitution of such work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architectural anthropology offers a way to critically analyse spaces through the social life that happens around them. It is a qualitative approach that relies on ethnography to connect larger systems and subjective dimensions, self-reflexivity, and the use of visualisations as a key analytical tool. This paper reflects on the possible contribution of architectural anthropology to housing studies. More specifically, it looks at homing processes in social housing, interrogating how non-domestic spaces perform through tenants' inhabitation practices. It tests ways to visualise ethnographic data gathered during immersive fieldwork that involved participant observation and informal interactions in a high-rise estate in Brussels. Three types of visualisations (subjective map, annotated photograph, lived-in axonometry) are presented to articulate the paper's discussion of homing, un-homing and de-homing processes at the level of a district, urban interstices, and beyond social housing. Ultimately, the paper concludes that architectural anthropology may contribute further to housing studies by exploring the relationship between home(making) and urban contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent.) was one of the most widely distributed crop species in prehistoric Oceania, occurring from continental East Asia to the Polynesian islands. Its broad distribution is largely due to human-mediated dispersal during colonization of the islands of Near and Remote Oceania. We explore the potential for analyses of genetic variation in paper mulberry and the value of such data for the development of a new commensal model species for reconstructing patterns of human mobility in Oceania. We introduce and discuss paper mulberry as another commensal species and outline key features for its contribution to the understanding of human migration and post-colonization interaction. Here, we describe some of the extant B. papyrifera populations in Remote Oceania and Taiwan that were sampled for initial studies. We argue that the unique characteristics of this species and its importance in ancient Pacific island societies may provide the opportunity to collect valuable genetic data with which we can address several key questions in Pacific prehistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-Blackness adumbrates rationality and reaches into phobic realms, what Frantz Fanon called the "paralogical." Ebony Elizabeth Thomas's The Dark Fantastic links the dark fantastic imagination and the Dark Other of speculative fiction to their cultural iterations and augments the paralogicality of anti-Blackness by accounting for the narrative roles of hesitation and belief. This paper argues that it is further necessary to assert the narrative significance of nineteenth century Christian, pre-Adamite and/or Serpent Seed theological anthropologies for the production of what one might call a dark fantastic theological imaginary of human being. The paper argues, further, far from being a bygone heresy, the pre-Adamite mythos lives on in the "thin blue line" anthropology of contemporary policing. The paper therefore looks ultimately for abolitionist possibilities to interrupt this imaginary, which it sees in the theological counternarrative of Black being in Matt Ruff's novel Lovecraft Country and its TV adaptation by Misha Green. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the contention of this paper that ethics of work ought to be anthropological, and artificial intelligence (AI) research and development, which is the focus of work today, should be anthropological, that is, human-centered. This paper discusses the philosophical and theological implications of the development of AI research on the intrinsic nature of work and the nature of the human person. AI research and the implications of its development and advancement, being a relatively new phenomenon, have not been comprehensively interrogated in the social and ethical teachings of the Catholic Church. This paper, therefore, proposes a path for this interrogation by expounding a discourse which is believed to be epistemically helpful in the developing discourse of AI in the ethical and social teachings of the Church. The advancement in the research on AI is not only redefining the meaning of work, but, even more so, it is questioning the metaphysical notion of the human person and the theological notion of work as an intrinsic part in the selfhood and dignity of the human person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Watchman Nee's anthropology has been widely debated and polarized in academic fields. However, Watchman Nee's concept of human and the problem of ecclesiastical practices have often been overlooked in contemporary Chinese mainland churches. In the first three sections, this paper will start from different Chinese mainland denominations' interpretation of Nee's concept of human and their corresponding ecclesiastical practices. On the one hand, through the interpretive attitudes of different denominations toward the "concept of human" and their related ecclesiastical practices, we can see the situation of acceptance of Nee's anthropology in different contemporary Chinese denominations. On the other hand, we can also provide feedback for the academic research on Nee's anthropology from the reality of contemporary Chinese mainland churches. Then, this paper will make a comparison of anthropologies between Luther and Watchman Nee, referring to the current study of Martin Luther and the Third Enlightenment in China. The comparative study of these two men will not only open up new avenues for the study of their theologies but will also serve Chinese mainland churches by utilizing the results of the research on Nee's thoughts and Martin Luther and the Third Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their efforts to dissuade Africans from engaging fruitfully on matters of design, including design anthropology, colonialists dismissed the indigenes as only capable of designing witchcraft and sorcery for which they were sadly famed in colonial anthropology. Arguing that twenty-first century African universities need to include design anthropology in the curriculum, this paper contends that the future of anthropology, and of Africa, lies in design as is evident in discourses and practices on designer babies, designer humanoid sex robots, industrial robots, designer robotic spouses, synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence, human enhancements, nanofabrication, biohacking, gene and genome editing, reverse engineering and rewiring humans, gene and genome deletion, social designs and so on. Drawing on autoethnography and extensive literature review, the paper argues that design anthropology is increasingly becoming relevant in a world that is rethinking modernist designs which are at the core of the Anthropocene. Put differently, design anthropology enables [African] graduates to engage with contemporary, empirical issues of design in a twenty-first-century world where the discipline can only survive by shifting focus from an obsession with sterile discourses about, inter alia, the past and present of African witchcraft, culture, society and sorcery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews and summarizes six economics papers written as part of a project bringing together economists and anthropologists on conceptions and analyses of wealth. The project paired economists and anthropologists in order to illuminate differences in method, analytic technique, and disciplinary framings between the two fields. Anthropologists comment on the economists' papers from their discipline's point of view. The overall project was intended to increase understanding and to encourage future collaborations and learning between the two fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing participation of faith leaders in environmental debates has led to the renewed interest in the 'greening of religions'. This paper examines the frames employed by religious actors to encourage environmental action, with a focus on the eco-movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Poland. Its narratives are connected to the goals of promoting 'ecological conversion' and encouraging change at the community level. We demonstrate how pro-environmental religious actors navigate between anti-ecological voices within the Church and left-wing activism, applying the following frames: 1) presenting ecological lifestyle as a religious obligation, 2) promoting the idea of 'integral ecology,' rooted in a Christian anthropology, 3) reinterpreting Catholicism by showing green practices as a legitimized element of the Church's tradition. We argue that these activities constitute a form of a counterculture that develops a values-based approach to environmentalism, aiming to transform the culture of the Catholic church and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cultural conceptualisation of children's social identity and status through memorialisation, based on the study of children's grave markers and plots in five South Australian cemeteries (from colonisation to the present), with an age range from infant (including stillborn) to 20 years. The idea of childness, the differing conception of being or being labelled a child, was used as a measure to identify the degree of variation in child identity realised by child-only and family grave markers, showing both change and continuity in the representation of children through family choices of form, style, wording, motif, spatial arrangement and grave furniture. Archaeological evidence of childness was observed through representations of smallness, innocence, domesticity, play, temporality and the distinct emotional nature of the parent-child relationship. Notably in the latter period of study, within the context of lower child mortality, revised understandings of child identity and status were observed representing the social re-evaluation of prenatally deceased and stillborn children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using anthropological theory, this paper examines human–android interactions (HAI) as an emerging aspect of android science. These interactions are described in terms of adaptive learning (which is largely subconscious). This article is based on the observations reported and supplementary data from two studies that took place in Japan with a teleoperated android robot called Telenoid in the socialization of school children and older adults. We argue that interacting with androids brings about a special context, an interval, and a space/time for reflection and imagination that was not there before. During the interaction something happens. There is adaptive learning and as a result, both children and older adults accepted Telenoid, and the children and older adults accepted each other. Using frames of play and ritual, we make sense and 'capture' moments of adaptive learning, and the feedback that elicits a social response from all study participants that results in self-efficacy and socialization. While "ritual" refers to the application of what has been learned and "play" means that there are no obvious consequences of what has been learned. This analysis illuminates new understanding about the uncanny valley, cultural robotics and the therapeutic potential of HAI. This has implications for the acceptance of androids in 'socialized roles' and gives us insight into the subconscious adaptive learning processes that must take place within humans to accept androids into our society. This approach aims to provides a clearer conceptual basis and vocabulary for further research of android and humanoid development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kant's most sustained discussion of obscure representations can be found in the first book of his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. What is puzzling is that in the middle of the section devoted to the topic, Kant asserts that “because this field can only be perceived in his passive side as a play of sensations, the theory of obscure representations belongs only to physiological anthropology, and so it is properly disregarded here.” So, do obscure representations belong to pragmatic anthropology or not? Kant's official position is that they do not, yet the textual evidence—we find discussions of obscure representations in 20 years of his work on pragmatic anthropology—suggests that they do, in fact, belong here. Most of the literature on obscure representations focuses on their contribution to cognition and none has clarified what it would mean to assume a “pragmatic point of view” on obscure representations, and to study them in the context of pragmatic anthropology. My aim in this paper is to provide such clarification, focusing on Kant's discussion of our propensity to “play with” obscure representations and what he calls our “art of obscuring.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision by the British Colonial Office to prohibit the German-born anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff from entering any empire African colony, including South Africa, created a diplomatic problem as well a nearly derailing a major research project, 'the Changing African', developed by the German linguist Diedrich Westermann, London School of Economics (LSE) anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and JR Oldham, secretary of the London-based International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (IIALC). This paper examines academic and political freedom, as well as the treatment of émigré scholars – those forced to leave for political and/or racial reasons –, in interwar imperial Britain and its colonies using Kirchhoff as a case study. It scrutinizes the role of government and its instrumentalities on the appointment of researchers, using political affiliation as a key factor; secondly, it investigates how quasi-academic institutions, such as the IIALC and the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) acquiesced to government demands. It also illuminates the transnational aspect of security services and the international reach of academic anthropology. Thirdly, it traces the impact such actions had on research project(s), that is, how research projects were modified considering a perceived or anticipated response by government and its instrumentalities in the colonies and dominions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on 15 months of fieldwork and archival research carried out in 2018/2019 for my PhD in Social Anthropology, takes as its object the everyday coexistence with the Second World War military dead scattered across the rural landscape of Brandenburg, formerly part of the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). Focusing on the practices through which the living relate to the war dead 'out of place', I argue that the construction of the war dead as valued members of the social collectivity does not necessarily depend upon their ritual 'separation'. Indeed, the physical proximity of the misplaced and unrelated war dead in my fieldsite results in their adoption and conceptualization as local dead. I contextualize attachments to the fallen in the local history of chaotic 'total war', which collapsed the boundary between the military and civilian experience of war, and transformed the spaces of everyday life into battlefields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turning to the ethnographic record, this paper evaluates how, and if, Being and Time (Heidegger, 1962) supports clinical practice in multicultural therapeutic settings. It problematises an existentialist interpretation of Heidegger's text, asking whether we, as therapists in practice, should embrace a fixed ontology or rather strive to be ontological? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disasters and climate-related events, including tropical storms, droughts, coastal erosion, and ocean acidification, threaten small island nations. Given the urgency of reducing disaster risks and the effects of climate change on vulnerable populations, this reflection essay pursues three objectives. First, it highlights the role of anthropology, ethnography, and multi-sited research in exploring disaster impacts, climate crises, and public policy in island communities. It then highlights national planning and inter-regional activities to build awareness of various risk reduction efforts by island nations and multi-governmental organizations. This article concludes with discussion prompts to engage researchers, scholars, students, and practitioners studying and working in small island nations. Due to the growing interest in climate equity and justice, this paper argues that anthropologists can offer valuable methodologies and approaches to develop transdisciplinary and nuanced insights into researching disaster risk reduction efforts and climate policy networks in and across island nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we 'take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity' (LA 25:480). In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant is concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity as a fact of human psychology, but more importantly, to criticize and discourage it. But must we share Kant's negative evaluation? Could fantasy play a positive role in some kinds of experience? In this paper I first reconstruct Kant's conception of fantasy, and then consider what role fantasy might play in aesthetic experience. Precisely because of his anxieties about fantasy, Kant is careful to distinguish between the lawless freedom of the imagination in fantasy and the 'free lawfulness' of the imagination in aesthetic judgment. Departing from Kant, and with help from Susan Sontag, I argue that certain aesthetic objects, especially certain works of modernist art, positively invite fantasy, making fantasy part of proper aesthetic appreciation. I conclude by suggesting that while fantasy can indeed play a positive role in aesthetic appreciation, there is still reason to regard fantasy as 'normatively ambiguous'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twelfth century, certain thinkers in the north of Europe were exalting human reason in a manner that had not been seen since the time of the ancient philosophers. Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres and Peter Abelard all championed ratio in a way that seemed to challenge the hegemony of learning that rested securely with the authority of scripture, the testament of the Fathers and the canons of the established councils. In so doing, it represented a significantly different approach from the firmly established 'authors' (auctores) as certain scholars pursued their learning, and indeed even divine ascent, via other avenues. Even the visionary Hildegard von Bingen set enormous stock in rationality. This paper will discuss the use of reason for the anagogic ascent to the divine in order to trace its roots to a Platonic understanding of the universe in tandem with a highly positive anthropology that allowed for a bold reassessment of human capabilities, as well as a new appreciation of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographies of groups who draw genealogical charts are relatively common in anthropology. Bringing the ethnographic gaze to bear on genealogical charts drawn up by bureaucratic and legal institutions, however, is a fairly rare methodological strategy in both the anthropology of bureaucracy and kinship studies. Hybridizing these two bodies of anthropological theory and using ethnographic material on post-socialist housing restitution in Romania, I describe how bureaucratic and legal institutions co-create genealogical charts and use them as tools to make the composition of kin networks legible and to verify and validate them. Several articles of the Civil Code strictly regulate inheritance, amounting to what might be called, after Malinowski, the state's bastard algebra of kinship. These legal prescriptions inscribe kinship in bureaucratic certificates, documents, and genealogical charts, which help state institutions reach legal certainty about the flow of inheritance rights. Rather than simply dismissing genealogical charts as false science, anthropologists might approach them as a mundane form of statecraft and as bureaucratic inscriptions able to author social worlds and make law active in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between people and large carnivores on shared landscapes can have harmful social and ecological consequences. Human–carnivore coexistence depends on an assemblage of sociological factors including effective management institutions that address the social costs of carnivore conservation and promote tolerance toward wildlife. In East Africa, large carnivores are particularly troublesome for herders who depend on livestock for subsistence and wellbeing. This paper provides an overview of human–hyena conflict in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania. It presents descriptive results from a questionnaire survey (n = 1076) administered as part of an anthropological study (2019–2020; 2022; 2023) of human–wildlife interactions across twelve villages inhabited by Maasai agropastoralists. The survey instrument was designed through community-based participatory research methods to convey herder concerns about the impacts of spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) on the livestock economy. Based on the perceptions and local ecological knowledge of Maasai interlocutors, the paper provides an overview of the spatial and temporal patterns of human–hyena interactions. Perceived frequencies of hyena attacks on kraaled livestock were unevenly distributed geographically, with those homesteads surrounding Manyara Ranch most heavily affected. Based on herder-reported livestock losses, the costs of depredation by spotted hyenas across the study area were estimated at approximately USD 904.84 per household per year. Most homesteads lacked fortified bomas and would benefit from the provision of lights and fencing materials to improve kraal structures. The paper's central finding is that spotted hyenas represent a pressing, everyday concern for local pastoralists. Unsurprisingly, herders despise hyenas and are intolerant of sharing landscapes with them. For carnivore conservation outside protected areas to thrive in Tanzania, conservationists and policy makers must engage more meaningfully with the lived experiences of local herders who bear the brunt of conservation costs on their livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sea as a metonym for visualising the Caribbean island experience. This paper argues that islanders' relations with the sea are maintained through a double condition of connection and isolation, alienation and familiarity. This paper's theoretical position is informed by 'transinsularism', an approach that addresses how insular identities are constituted in relation to other island spaces. This paper's argument is contextualised with historical and ethnographic material on the island of Culebra, an offshore municipality of Puerto Rico. The historical material addresses the colonisation of Culebra in the 1880s by interests of the Spanish Crown, the occupation of the island by the US Navy and its liberation. The sea features at the foreground of these processes. This paper concludes that islanders maintain a sense of specific insular regard while self-consciously engaged in multiple network-generating networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on original ethnographic research in Australia focussing on the handling, management, and conceptualisation of death and the dead human body in 2020–2021. Analysis produced themes of secrecy and (in)visibility regarding both death and the collection of data. Key findings discussed are the withdrawal of information and off-the-record comments from participants, controlling of public access to information, and the (in)visibility of death and the body in the context of the mortuary, viewings and identifications, and the presentation of the body in virtual spaces. The paper argues that those who work with death and the dead in this particular context have power to shield their work, the body, and their processes from the public. Future research exploring the attitudes held by the general public towards death and the body and whether they align or challenge the death industry is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a specific aspect of the emergence of psychology and psychiatry as scientific disciplines in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It examines how psychological knowledge, which was scattered across different fields of knowledge such as philosophy and anthropology, as well as medical subfields such as physiology, pathology and state medicine, was filtered into medical education in three medical faculties of the Habsburg Monarchy: Vienna, Prague and Pest. As education was the primary arena of producing authoritative medical knowledge, the three institutions played a key role in the transfers of knowledge within the Monarchy and in shaping 'official' medical practices acknowledged by the state. These in turn could be used to validate different measures to normalize or optimize its population. Through the lens of education and the underlying tension between the different approaches to psychological knowledge that constituted a type of 'arcane knowledge' in the period, with fluid and often dubious boundaries and questionable applicability, the article points at the epistemological uncertainty and transitory nature of the psychological field. The paper also looks at how it was nevertheless integrated into medical education with varying success by the 1840s as part of the professionalization of psychiatry and with the pronounced aim of training specialists who could cooperate in creating functioning spaces for the mad where they could not only be kept, but also normalized and (re)integrated into society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the links among internationalism, nationalism and racial discourses in post-Habsburg Central Europe. Focusing on Czech advocates of racial anthropology and eugenics, the paper documents that scientists embracing racial discourses did not evade scientific internationalism, either as an ideology or as a practice. Instead, in attempting to renew and expand their networks after the collapse of the empire, they were among its pioneers in interwar Czechoslovakia. This keen yet ambiguous embrace of internationalism that linked them to their counterparts in the Allied powers in the 1920s was reconfigured in the following decade. The 1930s were characterized by a search for alternative transnational models driven by political and epistemic challenges associated with the process of state-building and changing theories of heredity. This search resulted in interactions involving even Europe's colonies and dictatorships and became a significant, though not the only, factor contributing to the radicalization of these scientific communities. Analysing these exchanges as a manifestation of the 'dark side of transnationalism', the paper argues for the utility of this concept for the history of post-Habsburg Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to consider an alternative pluralist pantheism (Mary Jane Rubenstein) as the next step in the evolution of interpersonal, interspecies, and God–human–nature relationships and its possible realisation in (post-)Christian ecofeminism and its epistemology. It follows the methodology and epistemology of theological ecofeminism, which assumes that the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature stem from the same constellation of phenomena: patriarchal domination, dualistic anthropologies, and global hypercapitalism. Recognising that pantheism is a very complex phenomenon and should not be viewed as a single codified viewpoint, but rather as a diverse family of different doctrines, this paper understands pantheism primarily as the paradigm that asserts that everything is part of a divine unity consisting of an all-encompassing, manifested deity or God/Goddess. The paper first explains the pan-en-theistic turn in Christian ecofeminism as a tool for deconstructing the dominant Cartesian dualistic binaries and their symbolism and metanarratives, and as the first "safe" phase of transition from Christian anthropocentrism. From this standpoint, Grace M. Jantzen's defense of pantheism as an alternative to transcendental theism is further explored as she argues that divinity is found "in" the physical and material world and nowhere else. The paper then moves to the second phase, proposed in the final part of the paper, on the possibility of the theoretical adoption of pluralist pantheism in (post-)Christian ecofeminist ecotheology. Here, the question of the "fear and horror of pantheism" in Western thought is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among the Dimasas (of Assam and Nagaland) in Northeastern India. This Indigenous group has a system of double descent which places them separately from the other ethnic groups in the Indian subcontinent. In double descent, lineages are drawn through both the paternal and maternal lines of descent. The existing literature suggests that studies on double descent have mostly focused on ethnic groups in Africa, while not much research has been done on Dimasas or other Indigenous groups with double descent in the region. The paper attempts to fill the gap in South Asian anthropological literature on kinship discourses by focusing on the Dimasas of Northeast India. Further, by taking gender as an analytical tool, the paper attempts to explore the complex cultural contours of the double descent system, which intricately gets subsumed within the patriarchal setup in Dimasa society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition (FBP) project. In addition to describing the scope of the project, including the various partners, collaborators and goals of the project, this article speaks to both the reasons and timeliness of carrying out a much needed revisionist assessment of Franz Boas for contemporary audiences. Given that Boas carried out much of his fieldwork with Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest, this project and the collaborations it will facilitate promise to make crucial contributions to anthropological understandings of his work in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The windigo is a generally malicious figure in several Indigenous cultures of the land currently administered by the governments of the USA and Canada. In traditional narratives, the windigo is generally associated with hunger, greed, winter, and cannibalism. In this paper, I discuss how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers have used the figure of the windigo to critique and challenge environmental injustice. While some windigo stories present the being as a terrifying monster of the "wilderness", others use the figure as an embodiment of environmental destruction and the injustice that comes with it. Windigo stories also highlight three further aspects of colonial violence: military violence, sexual violence, and religious violence. Although some stories depict windigos being defeated through violence, many stress the importance of care and healing to overcome the windigo affliction. In fact, storytelling itself may be part of the healing process. Windigo stories, I argue, can be a useful way to interrogate the injustices created by colonialism and environmental destruction, and the stories can also offer hope for healing and for an environmentally just future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This white paper takes the unknown and the vague and movement towards/in those realms – as frames for a discussion of present practice and emergent potentiality of anthropological engagement with peace (building) studies. Arguably, embracing the unknown or vague as generative constants as well as fundamental elements of non-linear peacebuilding further open collaborative, communicative spaces of possibility. Aspects of this discussion are drawn from broader conceptual/methodological considerations in both peacebuilding and social anthropology so as to contribute to an interdisciplinary alignment. Furthermore, the positions and persuasions in this work are (in)formed by extensive, on-going examinations of research and narratives active in Southeast Europe today. By looking to emergent concepts in peace studies via anthropology while moving with regional-specific ethnographies that speak back against North Atlantic hegemonies, there is offered a discussion that brings local realities into transnational (socio-academic) deliberations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper wishes to delve into concepts such as assemblage and sympoiesis and examine them within the framework of my ethnographic fieldwork on beekeeping in the Western chain of the Italian Alps. I believe that the implications of notions such as sympoiesis and assemblage can be seen to surface in the context of beekeeping and bee culture, as they emerge as multispecies activities where everything and everyone involved can be regarded as a social actor. In this respect, the most relevant issues I would like to tackle are referred to knowledge production and know-how among beekeepers who keep their apiaries in the plains for most part of the year and move them to mountain areas for the summer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the anthropological conception of the first modern Italian anthropologist, Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910). We will begin by contextualizing the status of anthropology in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Subsequently, we will delve into some of the inspirations that led the Italians to have such a multifaceted conception of the discipline. Next, we will outline the content of this approach and clarify the meaning of "omnicomprehensive science." From there, we will come to understand the reason for the variety of interests of the anthropologist, who aimed to study the human being in all aspects of life. We will then mention the moral objective present in his professional journey: through an understanding of the complexity of human life, the anthropologist wanted to contribute to the progress and well‐being of society; in other words, to "living well." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates trabecular bone ontogenetic changes in two different Polish populations, one prehistoric and the other historical. The studied populations are from the Brześć Kujawski region in Kujawy (north-central Poland), one from the Neolithic Period (4500–4000 BC) and one from the Middle Ages (twelfth-sixteenth centuries AD), in total 62 vertebral specimens (32 males, 30 females). Eight morphometric parameters acquired from microCT scan images were analysed. Two-way ANOVA after Box-Cox transformation and multifactorial regression model were calculated. A significant decrease in percentage bone volume fraction (BV/TV; [%]) with age at death was observed in the studied sample; Tb.N (trabecular number) was also significantly decreased with age; trabecular separation (Tb.Sp) increased with advancing age; connectivity density (Conn.D) was negatively correlated with biological age and higher in the Neolithic population. These data are found to be compatible with data from the current biomedical literature, while no loss of horizontal trabeculae was recorded as would be expected based on modern osteoporosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-wildlife interactions can affect human wellbeing and wildlife population persistence. This paper addresses the perceived impacts of wildlife on agropastoral food production in the Tarangire ecosystem of northern Tanzania. It is based on sixteen months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with agropastoral Maasai communities (2019–2020; 2022; 2023), 240 semi-structured interviews, and a household survey (n = 1076). People felt that caterpillars, elephants, and zebras had the most significant effects on crop production, while hyenas were responsible for the bulk of livestock depredation by carnivores. These social costs of wildlife merit further attention from conservation policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the intricacies of human defences in various domains, including the biological and psychological responses to protect oneself, and the abstract concept of sacrificing one's life to uphold ethical, moral, religious, and spiritual values. While physical, psychological, and moral values have been attended to in counselling, regard for the religious and spiritual aspects is still developing. As the author writes from a Christian perspective, Christian faith and values are considered. It is posited that a study of human nature, as presented in the Christian Bible, can facilitate a profound comprehension of human defences. The paper scrutinizes the correlation between "human defences" and "Christian spirituality" through a Christian lens on human nature. Furthermore, it introduces the idea of "spiritual defence" and how it is related to a spiritual awakening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Cephalometry is the measurement and study of the proportions of the head and face, and infant skull deformities have been the subject of many clinical studies over the last 30 years. Clinical protocols to document change are especially critical during periods of growth and development, but reference values and norms are lacking for infants, especially in the first year after birth. Discussion: Key publications were reviewed by the authors to provide a narrative review of the 1) origin of the cephalic index (CI), 2) adaptations of the measure over time, 3) anatomical landmarks and alignments used, 4) clinical tools, 5) necessary considerations for different ethnic, sex, and cultural influences, 6) value and limitations of CI measurements, and 7) appropriate use of the CI in the documentation of infant skull deformities. The CI calculation has remained constant since the 1840s, although the cranial shape classifications have changed many times over the years. Conclusions: Used in isolation, the two-dimensional (2D) and linear nature of the CI fails to describe the magnitude of the three-dimensional (3D) head deformity. However, the CI can and should be used in conjunction with other 2D and 3D measurements to provide a more detailed description and understanding of the entire cranial deformity. For today's cranial clinicians and allied health care professionals, the commonly referenced CI chart fails to reflect 1) the natural skull changes noted with supine sleeping infants, and 2) the cultural diversity of the infant population currently treated. Although the CI provides information about one of the most obvious features of the dysmorphology, clinicians must also document and report other distinct features such as frontal flattening or bossing, parietal shape or involvement, sloping, displacement, and/or posterior asymmetry. Clinical Relevance: The CI should be used in conjunction with other 2D and 3D anthropometric measurements to provide a more detailed assessment of the entire cranial deformity. The CI results should be discussed with the medical team along with a complete review of other 2D and 3D measurements to determine the best course of action for orthotic treatment or nontreatment of the head shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Pancreatic cancer (PCa) is a highly aggressive and deadly form of cancer with a low five-year survival rate. This paper explores the role of pharmacologic anthropology in understanding and addressing health disparities related to PCa. Pharmacologic anthropology examines how cultural, social, economic, and behavioral factors affect the use and effectiveness of pharmaceutical treatments. In the context of PCa, it helps us understand why different population groups experience disparities in PCa outcomes. By adopting this interdisciplinary approach, researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers can better understand the complex dynamics of PCa health disparities. This understanding can lead to culturally sensitive interventions, improved communication between patients and providers, increased community engagement, and policies that enhance access to quality care for all PCa patients. Pancreatic cancer (PCa) remains a formidable global health challenge, with high mortality rates and limited treatment options. While advancements in pharmacology have led to improved outcomes for various cancers, PCa continues to exhibit significant health disparities, disproportionately affecting certain populations. This paper explores the intersection of pharmacology and anthropology in understanding the health disparities associated with PCa. By considering the socio-cultural, economic, and behavioral factors that influence the development, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of PCa, pharmacologic anthropology provides a comprehensive framework to address these disparities and improve patient care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reading of Mantas Kvedaravičius’ research findings from the perspective of visual anthropology. The paper describes the continuities between Kvedaravičius’ theoretical concerns on the anthropology of war and his filmmaking approach. These continuities imply an epistemological position that approaches research cinematically and proceeds to write from that position. Kvedaravičius’ work is illustrative of research that takes audio-visual ethnography seriously and works through the possibilities and limitations of different media to produce new stories on the human experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) project represented here through papers by Thomas Lewis, Aaron Stalnaker, Hans Lucht, and Lee Yearley (with responses) was motivated by the judgment that the trend toward a focus on virtue ethics, with attendant concern for techniques of forming selves, creates an opportunity for a dialogue with ethnographers. I argue that the CSWR essays neglect social and institutional considerations, as well as overdrawing the distinction between “formalist” and virtue approaches to the study of comparative ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which rural Vietnamese girls' and boys' moral 'socialization' is influenced by Vietnamese educational discourses, local ideas of the body, and embodiment. In Vietnam, children's learning of 'good morality' is related to the metaphor of 'children are like white pieces of paper', which indicates that children need moral inscription in order to be socialized appropriately. In spite of official rhetoric, which stresses that all children should be 'socialized' similarly, local ways of construing the blank slate metaphor mean that rural girls and boys are socialized in radically different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on fieldwork in a public residential facility for eating disorders in central Italy, the paper examines the relational temporalities of therapeutics by looking at how time affects treatment at the intersection of professional and family care practices. In arguing that 'chronic cases' put into question the specific kind of kinship care that is at the basis of treatment, the paper contributes to the anthropological literature on eating disorders by bringing time under the analytical lens, and to the literature on 'chronicity' by complicating simplified assumptions about structural care problems. In addition, the paper draws on and goes beyond anthropological works that have highlighted the potentially harmful side of kinship - including those that have explored how kinship can be framed as a source of mental distress and at the same time as a therapeutic tool. Kinship as a therapeutic tool here becomes risky because professionals need to borrow from kinship practices in their own work with patients, balancing those with the necessary clinical detachment. The paper shows that the time chronic patients need in residential treatment generates a particularly complex mix between what is seen as 'functional' and what is seen as 'dysfunctional' in kinship care, because the 'efficacy' of the kinship work that is at the basis of treatment rests on that being partial and temporary. Long term care in the facility complicates what otherwise allows clinical detachment: the treatment team ends up literally substituting the patient's family, with professional and family care mixing 'too much' with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the story of beaver restoration across California, this paper investigates the emerging discourse of 'working with nature' through the lens of animal work and labour, exploring possibilities for, multispecies collaboration. At the intersection of animal geographies, environmental anthropology, and geographies of conservation, this paper finds three concurrent modes of working with beaver: beaver as labourer, beaver as coworker, and beaver as community. Beaver as labourer emerges as a mode where beavers go from material resource to low‐wage labourer, their liveliness predicated on their ability to be working for humans. Beaver as coworker transitions beavers from labourers to workers, respected for their skills as ecosystem engineers to be working with. Beaver as community emerges as a mode in which beavers and humans live with each other as kin, amidst wider multispecies assemblages. This mode sets the foundation to theorise the concept of multispecies collaboration, a term often used in the literature without definition. This paper explores the concept through theories of animal work and labour, challenging the premise of work altogether, while situating multispecies collaboration as an in‐between, a both/and space of working and living with 'nature'. This paper serves as an reflection on the ways in which humans 'work with nature', in a time where various nonhumans are being made to be 'workers'. It presents and analyses these relations, ruminates on implications for governance of these multispecies spaces, and develops the concept of multispecies collaboration as a critical consideration for Nature‐based Solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1936, Prof A. P. Elkin attended a seminar in Hawaii lasting several weeks, on the topic of 'native education'. In his various papers presented to a range of experts from the region and beyond during the formal conference held in Honolulu as part of the residency, Elkin set out his views on the future of the Indigenous people of Australia. Education would be pivotal to this new approach on pragmatic and humanitarian grounds. Elkin concurred with the findings of the residency: local forms of adapted education were considered appropriate for most Aboriginal Australians, only a minority continuing into further education; communities as well as children should be better prepared for their integration into the nation as the Indigenous people. This paper sets out to interrogate the proximity of anthropology and education in these claims, and the elision of Aboriginal people's agency including their contemporaneous campaigns for equal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the process from museumization to decolonization through an examination of a Haida eagle mask currently on display in the Exploring Medicine gallery at the Science Museum in London. While elements of this discussion are well developed in some disciplines, such as Indigenous studies, anthropology and museum and heritage studies, this paper approaches the topic through the history of science, where decolonization and global perspectives are still gaining momentum. The aim therefore is to offer some opening perspectives and methods on how historians of science can use the ideas and approaches relating to decolonization in other fields, and apply them constructively to the history of science, particularly in museum settings. Decolonization is a complicated process and the focus of this paper is squarely on the preliminary steps of its implementation. To understand this process fully, the paper will recontextualize the Indigenous history of the Haida eagle mask at the Science Museum through a careful reconstruction of its provenance record. Through this process it will expose the politics of erasure and hidden voices in museum collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vrolik ethnographical collection consisted of roughly 300 skulls, mummified heads, skeletons, pelvises, wet-preserved preparations, and plaster models, collected by Gerard Vrolik (1775–1859) and his son Willem (1801–1863). Most prominent in this collection were the skulls, of which 177 remain in the collection of present-day Museum Vrolik. These skulls—a troubling heritage of colonialism and scientific racism—are the central subjects of this paper, which considers the changing meanings and values of these skulls for racial science over approximately 160 years, between ± 1800 and 1960. These shifting meanings are analysed using the skulls themselves as primary sources, including the labels, numbers and handwriting present on them or their stands. Central topics addressed will be matters of classification, hierarchy, scientific bias, and disciplinary development of racial anthropology from the study and collection of idealized national types to a quantitative craniometry of populations. This paper demonstrates that during 160 years of study of this same set of crania, the skulls of white European origin gradually lost racial relevance and were increasingly normalized, whereas the skulls of dark-skinned people of African descent continued to be categorized in a typological racial scheme and as such were increasingly othered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, scholars have proposed the notion of "world anthropologies" to expose the pluralistic nature of anthropology, and to counter the colonial legacy embedded in knowledge production. This paper discusses how anthropological knowledge in and of China contributes to, is distant from, and challenges, such intellectual movement at both intellectual and institutional levels. First, unlike Western anthropology which shifts from colonialism to liberalism and then to postcolonialism, anthropology in China began with a progressive agenda of anti-colonialism, and then leaned toward liberalism. In the context of China's rise, "China" has been further embroiled in a puzzle of imperialism. This reversed ideological tendency contributes to the disorientation of the critical energy in anthropology focused on China. Second, just as China has taken an active role in the competition for education and research in a globalized, yet uneven academia through discipline construction, anthropology in the West, particularly the United States, has become provincialized in terms of its intellectual agendas. Many of the younger generation of Chinese anthropologists have become stuck in the disjuncture, struggling to channel their critical energy through engaged scholarship, both within and beyond academic institutions. The epistemic politics in and of China, at both the intellectual and institutional levels, reveals that the post-socialist condition deserves to be reference points in world anthropologies. If decolonization posits treating plural standpoints as equal, then being counted in the decolonizing efforts necessitates subscribing to the dominant framework. Thus, more attention to the post-socialist condition, and ultimately the pluralization of the reference points of political potency, should truly pluralize, and ultimately decolonize, anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science fiction takes many forms, including academic work that calls on readers to think about social and cultural problems. This paper takes a piece of science fiction, Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia, as an example and discusses the conflicts among globalization, modernization and tradition present in the text, thus highlighting the academic meaning of science fiction as a literary form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]