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Funding: British Academy (GrantNumber(s): PF20\100094), H2020 European Research Council (GrantNumber(s): 683033). This article explores the place of liberal subjectivity in the professional culture of Ukrainian journalists to analyse a more general process by which liberal ideas are transferred from contexts of hegemonic liberalism at the core of the global capitalist system, to its postsocialist margins. I outline how certain Anglo- American ideals of good journalistic practice, which encode traits of liberal subjectivity, are borrowed and elaborated by a Western-funded movement for an anti-oligarchic liberal reform of Ukrainian journalism; and examine how these ideals are taken up within oligarch-controlled media, a context that the reformers see as inimical to liberalism. Through an ethnographic portrait of an editor- censor at a major oligarch-owned TV channel in Ukraine, I analyse how she reworks these professional ideals in ways that simultaneously uphold oligarchic patronage, and extend the reach of liberalism in Ukraine. This reveals how in the contradictory force field of global capitalism, both the reformers and those whom they seek to reform, are part of the same actually-existing liberalism. I propose that to better understand cases like this, we need to learn to see liberalism in fragments: as always partial and incomplete, and as constituted by multiple elements. Publisher PDF

Taras Fedirko would like to acknowledge funding from the British Academy (grant no. PF20/100094) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 683033). Liberalism has been fundamental to the making of the modern world, at times shaping basic assumptions as to the nature of the political, and in other cases existing as a delimited political project in contention with others. Across its long history, liberal projects have taken a diverse range of forms, which resist easy reduction to a single logic or history. This diversity, however, has often escaped anthropological attention. In this introduction to our special section on Grammars of Liberalism, we briefly trace this historical diversity, interrogate anthropological approaches to conceptualizing liberalism, and offer a broad framework for studying liberalism which remains attentive to both continuity and difference. Firstly, we argue for attention to how the political claims made by liberal projects unfold at the levels of values, their interrelations (morphology), and the underlying rules governing the expression and combination of values, and their intelligibility as liberal (grammar). Secondly, we argue for empirical attention to how values are expressed and liberal projects assembled across different social forms. We argue that this approach enables anthropology to grasp the diversity of liberal political projects and subject positions while still allowing scholars to approach liberalism critically and to interrogate its underlying logics. Publisher PDF Non

Despite the economic and social significance of crime reduction and criminals' rehabilitation, research evaluating the effects of incarceration on behavior is surprisingly scarce. We conduct an experiment with 105 prison inmates and complement it with administrative data in order to explore several aspects of their social behavior. We first perform a comprehensive analysis of behavior in three economic games, finding evidence of discrimination against a sample from outside prison. In addition, our regression analysis reveals that inmates generally become less pro-social towards this out-group the longer they remain incarcerated. Finally, we introduce and evaluate a priming intervention that asks inmates to reflect on their time spent in prison. This intervention has a very sizeable and significant impact, increasing pro-sociality towards the out-group. Hence, a simple, low-cost intervention of this sort can have desirable effects in promoting rehabilitation and integration into social and economic life after release.

What form does power take in situations of retaliation against whistleblowers? In this article, we move away from dominant perspectives that see power as a resource. In place, we propose a theory of normative power and violence in whistleblower retaliation, drawing on an in-depth empirical study. This enables a deeper understanding of power as it circulates in complex processes of whistleblowing. We offer the following contributions. First, supported by empirical findings we propose a novel theoretical framing of whistleblower retaliation and the role of mental health, which draws upon poststructuralist psychoanalytic thinking. Specifically, we highlight how intra- and inter-psychic affective and ambivalent attachments to organizations influence the use of normative violence in cases of whistleblower retaliation. The second contribution is empirical and builds upon the existing literature on whistleblower retaliation by highlighting how organizations position whistleblower subjects as mentally unstable and unreliable individuals, to undermine their claims. We conclude by highlighting the implications of normative power for the outcomes of whistleblower struggles. This study was funded by British Academy (GB)/ Leverhulme Trust (Grant no. SG122608). peer-reviewed

Progress in understanding the emergence of pathological anxiety depends on the availability of paradigms effective in inducing anxiety in a simple, consistent and sustained way. Much progress has been made using the Threat-of-Shock paradigm (TOS), which generates anxiety through the delivery of unpredictable electric shocks to participants. However, TOS may be problematic when testing vulnerable populations. Moreover, it is not clear whether anxiety can be sustained throughout experiments of long duration. Here, we bring support for an alternative approach called the Threat-of-Scream paradigm (TOSc), in which the tactile delivery of shocks is replaced by the auditory delivery of distress screams. We report on an one-hour long study (plus its replication) in which participants were exposed to blocks before which they were told that they could hear aversive screams at any time (threat blocks), vs. blocks before which they were told that no scream will be heard (safe blocks). Both the experiment and its replication showed higher subjective reports of anxiety, higher skin conductance level, and positive correlation between the two measures, in threat compared to safe blocks. Anxiety measures were sustained throughout the experiments, suggesting little emotional and physiological habituation. Our results suggest that the delivery of low intensity distress screams can be an efficient, stable and cheap methodology to assess the impact of sustained anxiety on a diversity of cognitive functions and populations. We therefore believe the TOSc will become an essential part of the psychological toolkit, particularly so for researchers interested in the emergence of pathological anxiety.

This article forms part of a larger project, titled “Poetical Matter” and partly funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, which examines the exchange of methods, theories, and language between poetry and the physical sciences in the nineteenth century Analogy, the comparison of one set of relations to another, was essential to Humphry Davy’s understanding of chemistry. Throughout his career, Davy used analogical reasoning to direct and to interpret his experimental analyses of the chemical reactions between substances. In his writing, he deployed analogies to organise and to explain his theories about the relations between physical processes and between the properties of different chemical elements and compounds. But Davy also regularly expressed two concerns about analogical comparison: first, that it was founded not on the rational interpretation of facts but on imaginative speculation; and second, that it was a kind of rhetoric, the persuasiveness of which depended not on material evidence but on misleading figures of speech. This article discusses the influences that informed Davy’s ambivalent assessment of the value of analogy, and it examines the distinct yet overlapping ways in which this assessment was expressed in his notebooks, his lectures and treatises on chemistry, his philosophical writings, and his poetry. Postprint

Funding for this work was generously provided by the ESRC (PTA-030-2003-00784), the Wenner-Gren Foundation [Gr. 7376] and British Academy (PDF/2009/423). Addressing the intersections of economic opportunities and scriptural interpretation, this article examines how Buddhist monks involved in the Mongolian gold rush view the ethics of mining. Commonly regarded an act of theft and violence within Mahāyāna Buddhism, mining is locally subject to strong ethical denunciations. Drawing on historical connections and transnational devotional practices, the mining monks engage creatively with a method of meditation known as ‘breaking the mind’, which offers a competing way of knowing the world. Focusing on the universe within which they conceptualise action, they present a radical reinterpretation of ethical human life. I argue that the mining monks’ own conceptual framework highlights the analytical importance of attending to not only visible bodily action, but also people's self-reflection in our attempts to understand the place of the ethical in human life. Postprint

© Patrick Cairns, Gozde Ozakinci, David Ian Perrett. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 14.07.2020. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. Background: Inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption causes a considerable disease burden and premature mortality. Despite public health promotion of a healthy diet, the average consumption is still below recommended levels. Fruit and vegetable consumption influences human skin color, increasing red/yellow/orange pigment in the skin. Given that this color is deemed attractive and healthy-looking, the appearance benefit may motivate to eat more fruit and vegetables. Such appearance motivation could be particularly useful in young individuals who currently eat the least fruit and vegetables. Objective: Our objectives were to assess how widely the impact of diet on skin color is known within the UK and to compare the strength of motivation to eat fruit and vegetables based on health and appearance benefits among different demographic groups. Methods: Four groups of UK residents (N=200 per group) were recruited through the Prolific online platform. Groups comprised younger (aged 18-24) and older adults (aged 40-60) of low and high self-reported socioeconomic status (1-5 and 6-10 on a 10-point rating scale). Facial images simulating the skin color associated with low and high fruit and vegetable diets were shown to participants. Questionnaires were used to assess (1) background knowledge of the health and skin color effects of dietary fruit and vegetables, (2) the specific motivational impact of the skin color illustration, and (3) the relative importance of motivation to consume fruit and vegetables arising from health and skin color appearance benefits. Results: We found that 61% (n=487) of all participants were unaware of the dietary-skin color association. We also found that 57% (n=457) of participants found the simple demonstration of the dietary impact on skin color positively motivating to eat more fruit and vegetables. The visual demonstration was equally motivating for participants of high and low self-reported socioeconomic status (P=.63) and different ethnic backgrounds (White N=453, Black N=182, Asian N=87, P=.22). Health benefits from a diet high in fruit and vegetables were regarded as more motivating than skin color appearance benefits. The appearance-changing benefits of a high fruit and vegetable diet (compared to the health benefits) were relatively more important for the younger participants (Mann-Whitney U=96,263, P

We often talk about ‘Town Centres’, but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, policy makers often speak or act as if their definition was self-evident. The Dutch and later the British governments, for example, introduced very specific policies for them without ever clearly defining what or where they were. In this paper, we propose a simple methodology to predict town centre boundaries and extent. Using a range of micro-geographical data, we test our method for the whole of Great Britain in an attempt to capture all the dimensions of ‘town centredness’ in a 3D surface. We believe this is a contribution in its own right but is also an essential step if there is to be any rigorous analysis of town centres or evaluation of policies directed at them. Our method should contribute to improve not just debates about cities, shopping hierarchies and town centres, but also to other more general debates where people and policy proceed ahead of any clear definition of what are the objects of interest., The authors thank SERC/CEP for funding (ESRC grant ES/M010341/1), and R.S.-G. acknowledges support from the British Academy. The authors thank Mr Mark Teale from CBRE and DCLG for providing them with data. ABI data accessed via NOMIS under BRES notice NTC/BRES15-P0572. The authors benefited from comments and suggestions from participants at the SERC Work-in-progress research seminar, at the CESifo Conference on the Use of Geocoded Data in Economic Research and at the University of Birmingham City-REDI seminar. The authors finally thank Steve Gibbons and Daniel Arribas-Bel for comments and an anonymous referee for helpful criticisms. Any errors remain our own.

Let x be a transformation of y, whose distribution is unknown. We derive an expansion formulating the expectations of x in terms of the expectations of y. Apart from the intrinsic interest in such a fundamental relation, our results can be applied to calculating E(x) by the low-order moments of a transformation which can be chosen to give a good approximation for E(x). To do so, we generalize the approach of bounding the terms in expansions of characteristic functions, and use our result to derive an explicit and accurate bound for the remainder when a finite number of terms is taken. We illustrate one of the implications of our method by providing accurate naive bootstrap confidence intervals for the mean of any fat-tailed distribution with an infinite variance, in which case currently available bootstrap methods are asymptotically invalid or unreliable in finite samples.

A.H. is supported by a BBSRC studentship. D.P. was supported by a British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship. Impressions of health are integral to social interactions, yet poorly understood. A review of the literature reveals multiple facial characteristics that potentially act as cues to health judgements. The cues vary in their stability across time: structural shape cues including symmetry and sexual dimorphism alter slowly across the lifespan and have been found to have weak links to actual health, but show inconsistent effects on perceived health. Facial adiposity changes over a medium time course and is associated with both perceived and actual health. Skin colour alters over a short time and has strong effects on perceived health, yet links to health outcomes have barely been evaluated. Reviewing suggested an additional influence of demeanour as a perceptual cue to health. We, therefore, investigated the association of health judgements with multiple facial cues measured objectively from two-dimensional and three-dimensional facial images. We found evidence for independent contributions of face shape and skin colour cues to perceived health. Our empirical findings: (i) reinforce the role of skin yellowness; (ii) demonstrate the utility of global face shape measures of adiposity; and (iii) emphasize the role of affect in facial images with nominally neutral expression in impressions of health. Postprint

International audience; he VILLA project ("Varieties of Initial Learners in Language Acquisition: Controlled classroom input and elementary forms of linguistic organisation") studies the very first phases of the process of language acquisition and estab- lishes a tight link between learners' achievements in different domains of lin- guistic knowledge and the input they received. Novice adult and child learners with five different native languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian) were exposed to fourteen hours of input in Polish that was provided in a com- municative classroom setting. Whereas the exposure conditions and the content of the input were kept constant for all learner groups, the age of the learners and the amount of metalinguistic information provided was varied between groups. Acquisition of different target language properties (phonology, morpho-syntax, discourse-pragmatics) was observed longitudinally through a series of tasks and experiments repeated over time. The paper presents the methodological set-up of the project and summarizes first results.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 715146. The authors also acknowledge the funding received to carry out this research from the Leverhulme Trust (ECF‐2013‐177) and the British Academy (EN150010). This article considers how people working in the oil and gas industry in Colorado perceive their involvement in energy exploration in relation to broader understandings of devotion, compassion, and outreach. I argue that although their energy projects may appear to merely echo companies’ formal promotional pitches, the oil field and corporate actors’ own moral ambitions reveal more-than-human cosmoeconomic visions of oil’s potentiality. This article thus demonstrates how multiple and diverging ethical registers intersect and inform the valuation of oil. Publisher PDF