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This paper proposes the notion of choreographed multilingualism to describe the top-down dimension of Singapore's linguistic landscape. Using a range of examples of official multilingual discourse, including public signage, exhibition artefacts, and print texts, it identifies a quadrilingual constellation that reiterates across different modalities, stabilizing into a visual-spatial formula. As a semiotic feature, the quadrilingual formula is an indexical that calls up the trope of neat multilingualism, whereby the four official languages of Singapore (English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil) are construed in a relation of equilibrium and equitability, while nonofficial/nonstandard languages, language varieties, and Chinese dialects are relegated to oblivion. The trope of neat multilingualism in turn evokes a larger sociolinguistic ambiance shaped by the official language policy and the language education system in Singapore. The paper theorises this situation in respect of Michel de Certeau's spatial theory, arguing that official discourses in Singapore corroborate the multilingual “place” produced by technologies of choreography.

Now that Justin Trudeau’s “independent” Senate has had a full term to orient itself, how do we characterize the emerging relationship between it and the House of Commons? To answer this question, this article examines quantitative and qualitative changes in the Senate’s impact on legislation since 2015. I look first of all at quantitative changes in Senate-Commons interaction, as assessed through the Senate’s strong challenges to the Commons, more normal legislative review, and proactive policy influence. I then turn to qualitative case studies of Bills C-14, C-48, and C-69 to provide a more in-depth assessment of Senate review of legislation related to its core institutional mission. Overall, I argue that the newly independent Senate has been a much more assertive participant in the legislative process, but ultimately has been very mindful of reputational considerations and avoided going beyond “moderate” review. As a result, there are lingering questions about the practical significance of Trudeau’s reforms.

This paper focuses on how conversation and a shared participation frame are maintained in video-mediated family conversations which ordinarily do not have a particular agenda. In order to examine this question, how conversations are maintained whilst being sometimes improvised, the paper analyses a particular interactional phenomenon, namely, the image-based topic management accomplished via two methods: showings and noticings. Through a detailed multimodal analysis of family video mediated conversations, it shows how these methods are used for introducing or changing topics and hence sustaining talk. Moreover, by describing the practical actions that involve technological and social dimensions, the paper highlights the link between interaction, personal relationships and technology. The analysis of showings and noticings, enabled by the technical features of the systems used by the participants, reveals how video-communication technology is mobilized by family members as a resource for maintaining intimacy in distant relationships.

This study demonstrates that two types of language ideologies (linguistic nationalism and feminine language normativity) influence how Japanese contemporary novels represent non-Japanese characters’ speech. It investigates the role of gender and observes that novelists only infrequently assign highly gendered utterance-final forms to non-Japanese characters when they speak in Japanese. This tendency is more salient among the representations of male non-Japanese characters. Masculine expressions seem to belong to a set of linguistic resources that are considered available only to the Japanese. This exclusivism, i.e., linguistic nationalism, might explain the lack of highly masculine forms among non-Japanese characters in novels. As for the relatively frequent assignment of gendered language for female characters, the normativity of feminine language makes it part of the basic language of all female speakers including non-Japanese individuals. In addition, feminine expressions are not as strongly associated with authenticity as masculine expressions.

This article portrays youth mobility in Cameroon as a means to escape poverty and to achieve a better life. Youth mobility though not new is, however, taking a new dimension as a result of Boko Haram’s violent conflict. To explore how this violence has affected mobility, this study analyses narration of youngsters’ escape experiences from Boko Haram and their ideas of how to achieve a better life, drawing on interviews in Cameroon’s Far North Region. The study begins with the origin and regionalisation of Boko Haram, followed by the concept of youth, the evolution of mobility trends and better life. It then proceeds to narrations of escape experiences, places of destination and sheds light on mobility pathways and integration dynamics. Este artigo descreve a mobilidade dos jovens nos Camarões como um meio de escapar à pobreza e conseguir uma vida melhor. A mobilidade juvenil, embora não seja um fenómeno novo, está a assumir uma nova dimensão devido ao conflito violento do Boko Haram. Para explorar como esta violência afetou a mobilidade, o presente estudo analisa a narração de experiências dos jovens que fugiram do Boko Haram e as suas ideias de como alcançar uma vida melhor, com base em entrevistas realizadas na região do extremo norte dos Camarões. O estudo começa com a origem e regionalização do Boko Haram, seguidas pelo conceito de juventude, a evolução das tendências de mobilidade e a procura de uma vida melhor. Prossegue com as narrações de experiências de fuga, lugares de destino e lança luz sobre os caminhos da mobilidade e as dinâmicas de integração.

This article examines the connected histories of racial science and colonial geography in Island Southeast Asia. By focusing on the island of Timor, it explores colonial boundaries as modes of arranging racial classifications, and racial typologies as forms of articulating political geography. Portuguese physical anthropologist António Mendes Correia's work on the ethnology of East Timor is examined as expressive of these productive connections. Correia's classificatory work ingeniously blended political geography and racial taxonomy. Between 1916 and 1945, mainly based on data from the Portuguese enclave of Oecussi and Ambeno, he claimed a distinct Malayan racial type for the whole colony of ‘Portuguese Timor’. Over the years he developed an anthropogeographical theory that simultaneously aimed to reclassify East Timor and to revise the racial cartography of the Malay Archipelago, including Wallace's famous ethnological line.

El presente artículo cuestiona la premisa según la cual los procesos constituyentes participativos y democráticos necesariamente producen constituciones que contribuyen a profundizar la democracia. Si bien muchas de las nuevas cartas políticas presentan ampliaciones importantes a la participación, no todas ellas le abren las puertas a la oposición, ni garantizan su ejercicio. Apoyado en el estudio de los procesos constituyentes llevados a cabo en la región andina desde 1991, el artículo propone dos rutas constituyentes con resultados diferentes. Por un lado, una asamblea diversa y simétrica, donde predomine la estrategia de la negociación entre las partes, debe conducir a una constitución que sirva de plataforma para profundizar la democracia, entendida en su doble dimensión (inclusión y oposición). Por el contrario, una asamblea dominada por un actor o coalición mayoritaria que imponga su propio proyecto constitucional puede tener consecuencias favorables en cuanto a la inclusión, pero también impactos negativos en las dimensiones de la competencia y la oposición, ambas cruciales para la democracia. This article throws into question the idea according to which democratic and participatory constitution making processes necessarily produce constitutions that lead to democratic deepening. While many new constitutions create wider avenues for political participation, not all of them open the door to the opposition, nor guarantee its exercise. By studying the constitution making processes in the Andean region since 1991, this article puts forth two different routes to constitution making that yield different results. On the one hand, a diverse and symmetric assembly where negotiation becomes the dominant strategy should yield a constitution favorable to democracy, deepening in its double dimension (inclusion and opposition). On the other hand, an assembly dominated by one majoritarian actor or coalition that can impose its own constitutional project, may yield positive outcomes in terms of inclusion, while having a negative impact on the dimensions of competition and contestation, both critical for democracy.

Materially plastics are ambivalent. In spite of their often lauded quality of creating seemingly untethered imitations, representations and replacements, they have a materiality that leaks, off-gasses and disintegrates. They are accomplished at mimicry yet frequently unable to be remoulded. They are ostensibly resistant to microbial contamination yet absorb environmental pollutants and leach endocrine disrupting plasticisers. This article argues that, due to the material influence of plastics, their ubiquity, and the societal transformations that they have enabled, that anthropologists need to pay sustained attention to this material. Moreover, it argues that anthropological methods and theories are crucial to understanding plastics at a vital moment in their (and our) history. It articulates three ways in which anthropology can engage plastics at all stages in their lifecycles. Firstly, to study plastics challenges what it means to exist: whether or not human beings are bounded or permeable entities, experienced as individuated, collective or somewhere in between. Secondly, plastics disrupt what people know, are willing to know, or are persuaded is worth knowing about the production and disposal of the products that they consume. Thirdly, the materiality of plastics expose contemporary inequalities. Plastics can create unseen violence, both in their geographically unequal toxic distributions and in the vastness of their temporal effects.

This article argues for conceptualising the land-water nexus not primarily in spatial terms, but above all as a set of spatiotemporal rhythms of increasing and decreasing wetness and fluidity. By investigating human engagement with water and land as rhythms, the corresponding and conflicting dynamics of particular places becoming – for longer or shorter periods – land, water or a mixture of both can be traced as an evolving web of relationships between human imaginations and practices, and the materialities of water, mud, sediment, dams, floodgates, etc. The article illustrates this approach with two brief ethnographic examples from northern Europe: In the depopulated Estonian Soomaa wetlands, some of the few remaining inhabitants are in the process of redefining unruly fluctuating water as a tourism destination. In doing so, however, these tourism operators are finding themselves and their “products” caught up in volatile and complicated spatiotemporal dynamics, including the difficulty to predict flooding and to coordinate high water with their potential customers’ spare time, which is bound to working/school weeks and public holidays. On the Kemi River in Finnish Lapland, water flows are not only conditioned by precipitation and seasons, but also – through an intricate hydropower infrastructure – by the electricity market, triggering continued disputes about appropriate spatiotemporal rhythms in the land-water nexus. Seasonality and hydroelectricity generation point to the inherent rhythmicity of the land-water nexus, which is significant not only because it reflects the experience of people inhabiting and engaging with their in-between environments. A rhythms approach can also de-centre the (often illusive) quest for what the water-land nexus is, and instead focus on how this nexus continually comes into being and is negotiated by both its inhabitants and other people. This argument builds on anthropological thinking about temporality and materiality, and indicates how the two must be combined for better understanding how human life relates to the land-water nexus.

Because Donald Trump’s language and rhetoric attract so much attention and comment, discussions about the role of fashion and style in the Trump presidency are often limited to outfits worn by the First Lady or his daughter, Ivanka. When Trump’s style is analysed in the press and on social media platforms, it is frequently derided. This article argues for the importance of Donald Trump’s sartorial choices as forms of visual (political) communication. It suggests that Trump, whose appearance and taste are often subject to ridicule in popular culture, has actually cultivated an image of himself as anti-elite. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s lesser-known theory of the corporeal hexis to discuss Trump’s self-presentation, this article shows how, as both candidate and president, he has used sartorial codes to communicate with the different constituencies that were vital to his election and remain central to his bid for re-election in 2020.

The decision of Indonesian’s constitutional court in May 2013, to review Law Number 41/1999 on Forestry, marked a significant step forward in Indonesian policy related to recognition of the rights of Indigenous people to forest. Under the decision, Indigenous forest is no longer considered State forest and rights to it should be granted to Indigenous communities inhabiting them as long as there is proof of their Indigenous status. However, at the implementation level, special measures are required to ascertain who is truly Indigenous. Bogus claims of indigeneity and rights to land are not uncommon. This paper examines the verification mechanism employed for spatial analysis to assess traditional knowledge and Indigenous law implementation as substantial evidences for Indigenous rights recognition to a forest area. We conducted a case study in the Gunung Lumut Protection Forest with two groups of Indigenous communities living around the forest using image interpretation and spatial analysis supported by socio-economic and cultural analysis. We also assessed the capacity and awareness of Indigenous communities to manage their forest. This case study illustrates that in general Indigenous people apply ancestral norms, beliefs and traditional knowledge and wisdom in managing their livelihoods and daily life. Nonetheless, increasing necessities of life, better accessibility, and socio-cultural assimilation has changed the Indigenous people’s behavior towards nature. Holistic approaches in transferring land rights, effective long-term engagement, and revitalization of Indigenous law in line with formal law enforcement, are among the essential measures that must be conducted systematically to ensure that the Indigenous forest remains and is sustainably managed for the benefit of the Indigenous community and the environment.

This article examines the life and works of Hossein Kazemzadeh Iranshahr, focusing on the evolution of his thought from an ardent nationalist to a cosmopolitan mystic. It offers a detailed account of the spiritual transformation that Iranshahr went through around 1920 in Europe—a topic that has never been addressed in existing scholarship. It contextualizes his esoteric views, especially the influence of Theosophy on his thought in the context of the so-called “Occult Revival” in Weimar Germany. Finally, it discusses how Iranshahr's emerging spiritual worldview impacted his intellectual outlook, especially his views on religion, nationalism, civilization, and race.

Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period. After the fiasco of the short-lived independence period of 1918–20, Azerbaijan became Soviet. Soviet power then instrumentalized Azerbaijan for political and ideological penetration into Iran by galvanizing local separatist movements. Azerbaijani Iranology was shaped within Soviet oriental studies and put into service of Azerbaijani nation-building. Exiled Iranian communists found asylum in Baku, joined local research institutions, wrote the first Persian academic and school textbooks, and contributed to the translation of classic Persian poetry into Azerbaijani. Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists were sent as translators to the Soviet missions to Iran and Afghanistan. After Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991, its Iranological infrastructure was represented by several departments at the National Academy of Sciences and the Iranian Studies Program at Baku State University. While the number of Persian classes at schools during the last three decades diminished, a new generation of post-Soviet Iranologists—those who studied in Iran—emerged. While Soviet Azerbaijani Iranologists never created a solid bilingual dictionary of Persian, several Persian–Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani–Persian dictionaries were published in the 2010s. Post-Soviet Azerbaijani Iranology is still trying to find its place within humanities in the transitional nation.

This article focuses on how two Spanish American Creole writers perceived their port city as a symbol of national prestige, devoted patriotism, and utilitarian significance, at a time when the military and economic status of the port was undergoing transformational changes. It centers on the works of two eighteenth-century Cuban writers, José Martín Félix de Arrate’s Llave del Nuevo Mundo, antemural de las Indias Occidentales: La Habana descripta (1761) and Ignacio José de Urrutia y Montoya’s Teatro histórico, jurídico y político-militar de la Isla Fernandina de Cuba y principalmente de su capital La Habana (1791), to show the ways in which these authors articulated their love for their country while endowing the port and the port city with local political power and cultural prestige. This sense of “topophilia,” a concept described by geographer Yi-Fu Tuan as the “affective bond between people and place,” is what guided the aforementioned authors’ geographic view of the port.

The criminal laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran are organized around the right of the victim. In cases of murder and other intentional injuries, the judiciary recognizes the victim's next of kin or the victim as a private plaintiff with the right to retribution (qisas). The injured party confronts the perpetrator in court and decides whether to demand retaliation or forgo it in lieu of a monetary compensation (diya). If they choose qisas, they are legally bound to witness the punishment. In cases of forbearance, the maximum sentence that the state can levy for murder is three to ten years. While the rates of capital punishment in Iran continue to be among the highest in the world, the majority of murder cases culminate in forgiveness. Why would an aggrieved party forgive when the law gives them the right to retribution?

This article explores Latin American genomic studies of mestizaje and the way mestizaje’s inherent contradiction between equality and hierarchy—a contradiction typical of liberalism—is managed in genomics. In Latin America, ideologies and practices of mestizaje may be seen as an antidote to hierarchies of race and class, but also as a terrain for the enactment of these hierarchies. Mestizaje mediates this contradiction between equality and hierarchy first by deploying the idea of sexual intimacy and family kinship across racial difference, and second by representing blackness and indigeneity as spatially peripheral and temporally backward-looking, thus naturalizing them as other. Multiculturalism can be seen as a recent variant on these themes, as well as a departure from them. Recent genomics research in Latin America strongly reiterates these ideas, while also adding some new twists. Despite its apparent connection with progressive politics and policies (antiracism, better health for all, protection of human rights for victims of oppression), genomics here appears as a mainly conservative force. Resumen Este articulo aborda las investigaciones genomicas latinoamericanas del mestizaje y como la contradiccion inherente del mestizaje entre la igualdad y la jerarquia—una contradiccion tipica del liberalismo—se maneja en la genomica. En America Latina las ideologias y practicas del mestizaje pueden ser entendidas como un antidoto a las jerarquias de raza y clase, pero tambien como el terreno en el cual se reproducen estas jerarquias. El mestizaje media esta contradiccion entre la igualdad y la jerarquia primero al usar la idea de que la intimidad sexual y el parentesco atraviesan las diferencias racializadas; y segundo al representar lo negro y lo indigena como espacialmente perifericos y temporalmente atrasados, de esta manera naturalizandolos como Otro. Se puede entender el multiculturalismo como una variante reciente de estos temas, asi como una divergencia de ellos. En la ciencia genomica latinoamericana, investigaciones recientes reiteran fuertemente estas ideas, a la vez agregandoles nuevas acepciones. A pesar de su aparente vinculo con las politicas sociales progresivas (anti-racismo, mejor salud para todos, proteccion de los derechos humanos para las victimas de la violencia), en este caso la genomica se presenta como una fuerza mas que todo conservadora.

This article examines how Zeyā al-Din Barani may have imagined that contemporary audiences would consume his Tārikh-e Firuz Shāhi. Would it only be read visually or also read aloud (directed at the ear rather than the eye), and thus be received aurally, or would it even be performed in front of a larger audience? The plot and protagonists of Barani's story on Moʿezz al-Din Keyqobād present a tragedy that develops around a sultan doomed to fail. An examination of the set-up of Barani's narrative reveals that it contains numerous textual devices that would enable a storyteller to perform the story, using the text as a kind of tumār. As tragedies are written for the stage, not the study, these features of the text indicate that matters of orality, which are crucial for many genres of premodern Persianate courtly literature, are also relevant to the Tārikh-e Firuz Shāhi.

In the last decade, business and life coaching programmes have rapidly proliferated in the People’s Republic of China. Such programmes promise radical self-transformations aiming at individual success and social responsibility. The methods of most coaching programmes popular in China today are characterised by strict discipline and emotional expressivity, which are enacted in personal bonds between participants and coaches. This article describes and analyses these processes of self-transformation for the case of the rapidly growing ‘Leadership Programmes’ (LP). We outline the social background and emergence of LP programmes, present the typical features of LP training and discuss the consequences of self-transformation as seen by participants and outsiders. Altogether, these leadership programmes constitute an important new platform where ethical subjectivities are created and negotiated among new middle-class Chinese; subjectivities that are supposed to be enterprising, responsible, and expressive.

Anthropology can be broadly characterised as an optimistic discipline. While working with underprivileged groups and individuals struggling against difficult socio-economic and environmental condit...

Approximately 90% of Mexican archaeological sites are on communal ejido lands and yet the Mexican Constitution stipulates that all cultural heritage is the property of the federal government. Considering this disconnect between federal and local practices, how can archaeologists work with ejido communities to help preserve cultural patrimony? This article explores the micropolitics associated with archaeological fieldwork on communal ejido lands in Western Mexico. We show how long-standing practices based on local histories, community political theater, and interpersonal relations shape fieldwork and cultural conservation initiatives in important and unintended ways. In our study near the site of Angamuco, Michoacán, we draw upon ethnographic and archival research and outreach projects over five field seasons, and address the tensions that emerge when informal micropolitical and formal top–down sociopolitical practices interface. We show how aspects of a policy science approach are appropriate for long-term community-supported archaeology and cultural heritage management.

This project aims to test whether geometric morphometric (GM) and trabecular analyses may be useful tools in identifying talar characteristics related to hypochondroplasia. We quantified the external and internal talar morphology of an hypochondroplasic dwarf (T17) from Modena (northern Italy) dated to the 6th century AD. External talar morphology of T17 was compared with a broad sample of modern human tali (n = 159) using GM methods. Additionally, a subsample of these tali (n = 41) was used to investigate whole talar trabecular changes in T17. Our results show that GM and trabecular analyses identify a combination of traits linked to the dwarfing disorder of hypochondroplasia. These traits include decreased scaled talar dimensions compared to normal-sized individuals, presence of an accessory antero-lateral talar facet, high bone volume fraction and high anisotropy values throughout the entire talus. In our case study, hypochondroplasia does not appear to substantially modify external talar morphology probably due to the fast growth of the talus. We suggest that small talar dimensions are associated with hypochondroplasia. An antero-lateral talar facet may result from the talus and calcaneus coalition (i.e., talocalcaneal abnormal bridging) possibly related to an everted foot posture that was limited by overgrowth of the fibula. We suggest that high talar trabecular density and strut orientation provide insights into pathological development of the trabecular plates in T17. Finally, our study suggests that high talar trabecular density and strut orientation, and small talar dimensions, may be added as possible concomitant talar hallmarks for hypochondroplasia.

Korowai of Indonesian Papua have shifted their political order from rejecting relations of authority, to actively subordinating themselves to government patrons and implementing state structures locally. This shift was caused by how internal complexities of the past Korowai egalitarian system have interacted with dramatic macrostructural changes in the intruding state. Previously, I linked Korowai ideas about opacity of minds to political egalitarianism. Analyzing the new political shifts here, I emphasize again how opacity doctrines are embedded in wider processes of exchange and kinship that involve attributing thoughts to others, trying to influence those thoughts, and trying to deal in egalitarian ways with unequal economic conditions, as well as with the intrinsically power-laden dynamics of intersubjectivity itself. The Korowai example suggests wider lessons in how state formation takes hold at extreme colonial and market peripheries, and how doctrines of the knowability of minds articulate with practical institutionalization of state administrative hierarchy.

In 2014, the European Commission opened the Creative Europe programme to non–European Union states. In doing so, their intention was to provide cultural actors outside the European Union with the opportunity of engaging in a larger European cultural space, leading to new forms of European belonging. This article examines the functioning of this programme in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia and Serbia, and it analyses what forms of belonging emerged in the process. After revealing the reasons behind engaging in the programme and mapping experiences of participation, the article concludes that the programme is not only an opportunity to (re)connect with the larger European community, but for many participants it is also a form of confrontation with persisting inequalities and their marginal position within Europe. Their experience of participating in the European cultural space is directly tied to the overlapping social, cultural and political spaces of which they are part. This confirms Lefebvre’s analysis that spaces are inseparable and that newly created spaces cannot be emptied of traces of social relations in other spaces.

This paper proposes a reflection on the “human rights” category, as a native category, endowed with local and specific meanings. Therefore, it utilizes a comparative perspective by contrast on the uses and meanings of the “state violence” category and the building of processes demanding justice in Rio de Janeiro, in comparison to Buenos Aires. Specifically, it focuses on the ethnography produced after the murder of Rio's alderwoman Marielle Franco, to propose the notion of “attack on human rights”, showing how the category has been built through an antagonistic logic in Rio de Janeiro. Este artículo propone una reflexión sobre la categoría “derechos humanos” en cuanto categoría nativa, dotada de sentidos locales y particulares. Para ello, se vale de una perspectiva comparada sobre los usos y sentidos de la categoría violencia de estado y sobre la construcción de los procesos de demanda por justicia en Brasil en contraste con Buenos Aires. Específicamente, se detiene en la etnografía producida a partir del asesinato de la concejala carioca Marielle Franco para proponer la noción de “embate a los derechos humanos”, demostrando cómo la categoría, en Río de Janeiro, se ha ido construyendo a través de una lógica antagónica. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1182

Objective The present study explores growth and health in Roman (1st-3rd centuries CE) and Post-Roman (4th-7th centuries CE) Gaul, incorporating a life-course approach, to better understand the influence of Roman practices and lifestyles on health, and the impact of cultural change from the Roman to the Post-Roman period. Materials and Methods The skeletal remains of 844 individuals were analyzed for non-specific signs of physiological stress, including growth disruption (diaphyseal and adult maximum femur length), dental enamel hypoplastic defects (DEH), cribra orbitalia (CO), and periosteal reaction of the tibiae (Tibia PR). Results The Gallo-Roman sample demonstrated shorter femoral lengths, and higher rates of DEH and Tibia PR. Post-Roman groups demonstrated longer femoral lengths and higher rates of CO. Conclusions Gallo-Roman individuals may have been more regularly exposed to infectious pathogens throughout childhood, inhibiting opportunities for catch-up growth, resulting in high rates of DEH and shorter femoral lengths (‘intermittent stress of low lethality’). This could be the result of overcrowding and insalubrious urban environments. Higher rates of CO in the Post-Roman samples may have been influenced by dietary changes between the periods. Significance The intertwined and often synergistic relationships between early life environment, nutrition and settlement structure is highlighted, helping to further understandings of life experiences during the Roman and Post-Roman periods. Limitations It was not possible to obtain sufficient data from northern regions during the Gallo-Roman period, limiting this analysis. Suggestions for Further Research Further application of life course approaches can reveal subtle patterns in stress indicators.

The individual experience of everyday city life is essentially an everyday improvisation among other people. It is in urban settings where socially structured formations of daily life meet purely individual situated experience in myriads of spontaneously created and shaped assemblages of everyday life. The visual perception of space, sonic orientation in a given place and olfactory plus tactile experience of the environment are the basic aesthetic performances in cultivating a common urban reality. The author discusses specificities of anthropological knowledge derived from first-hand experience of the life of other people in the field. To cope with the complexity of everyday urban improvisation, the author employs two ancient Greek terms to define the space of human interaction: aisthēsis, i.e., sensory perception, and the complex meaning of the Latin verb colere, from which the term culture is derived. The triangulation of everyday improvisation through the sensorial essence of everyday life complements the employment of two other ancient Greek terms, praxis and poiesis. The basic empirical materials used to discuss everyday improvisation in an urban environment are collected narrations of sensory perception and individual lives from sensobiographic walks in Ljubljana, Turku and Brighton. Historically, in the West, the dominance of the senses has shifted from sound, touch and smell, orienting people in orally designed cultural domains, to sight. Smelling is specific embeddedness in place. Its paradoxical position of sensing outside air deeply inside, integrated in breathing, but not always sensing anything special. At the crossroads of distant and close, inner and outer, olfactory experience is simultaneously existentially idiosyncratic and collectively shaped. The paper’s main point is that there are no clear limits between the experienced past and the present. However, both are aesthetically and culturally inscribed in specific registers of individual, social, cultural and embodied memories. The same stands for an ethnographic practice. Everyday life is a continuum of living, weaved together from many discontinuous contingencies. It consists of incongruent, incomplete and chaotic shifts. Repetitive social activities bring order into this everyday mess: rituals and work. For this reason, repetitive music is inevitable for establishing a common ground of the everyday. If ethnography ever touches reality, it is a continuous improvisation in everyday life, shared, collective, and peculiar individual improvisation.

Cet article est l’occasion de dresser un bilan développé et détaillé des principaux acquis sur l’agglomération de Cassinomagus, issus des huit dernières années de recherches. Deux projets collectifs de recherche (PCR) successifs ont en effet conduit à approfondir, voire, dans certains cas, à renouveler les connaissances sur ce site dont la fréquentation semble être attestée dès le second âge du Fer. Une étude diachronique, qui met en œuvre une approche tant globale qu’interdisciplinaire, permet d’aborder l’évolution de la structuration urbaine du site antique. Une organisation fonctionnelle des quartiers, autour d’un réseau viaire bien établi, se dessine ainsi pendant le ier s. apr. J.-C., avec une densification de l’habitat et une diversification des activités artisanales. Le temps fort que représente sa monumentalisation au iie s. apr. J.-C. – s’accompagnant d’une réorganisation du tissu urbain – permet plus largement d’interroger la place de l’agglomération dans la structuration communautaire de la cité des Lémovices. L’agglomération connaît ensuite une lente désaffection amorcée dès le iiie s. apr. J.-C., mais la réflexion sur les effets de sa position frontalière se poursuit grâce aux recherches historiques menées sur la paroisse de Chassenon. This article represents an opportunity to draft a developed and detailed assessment of the major advances in knowledge, provided by the last eight years of research, and pertaining to the Cassinomagus agglomeration. Indeed, two successive Collective Research Projects (CRP) have deepened, and in some cases even renewed our understanding of this site, whose study dates back to the 18th c., and which is best known for the ruins of the thermal bath building of Longeas, the temple of Montélu and the La Léna theater. Excavations carried out in the eastern part of the site revealed traces of occupation dating back to the Second Iron Age, though it remains impossible to determine whether these vestiges correspond to the origins of the urban concentration that would become Cassinomagus, or whether they are merely indicative of the presence of marginal rural occupation at that time. The site remained occupied at the beginning of the 1st c. AD. And a series of gravel structures, composed of the local substratum, a rock of meteoritic origin were discovered on the southern plateau. In the absence of a broader study of these remains, which were considered only in limited areas, it is difficult to improve our definition of the nature of the occupation of the site during this period. The study of ceramic wares does, however, allow us to conclude that Chassenon was fully integrated within the commercial networks of Western Gaul. In the northern part of the site, the presence of several kilograms of forge waste (slag, hearth walls and metal scraps) and a high density of micro-waste (scales) attests to steelmaking activities, though the location of these installations have yet to be brought to light. After a period of general cooperation, conditions seem to have been right during the second half of the 1st c. AD, and the Lemovices civitas was transformed into a fully urbanized entity. This development was concentrated primarily on the southern plateau of the site. This urban structuring is clearly apparent at the Grand Villard level, wherein housing was densified around a well-defined road network. This expansion was accompanied by a diversification of artisanal activities. It may reflect a functional organization of the different districts and may even correspond to the first major undertakings of the urbanization of the area. The end of the 1st c. AD, or the beginning of the following century, was a pivotal period in the evolution of Cassinomagus, marked by its monumentalization and the restructuring of pre-existing neighborhoods. The Grand Villard area was thus markedly transformed by the construction, occupation and redevelopment of a large building. Its layout and modifications, as well as the care lent to their implementation, as well as its decor would tend to confirm the hypothesis of a ‘domus’, not unlike those discovered in the capital city (Limoges/Augustoritum). This habitat development occurred in parallel with that of monumental ornamentation. The natural topography of the land was, in fact, widely exploited by the builders in order to install a monumental complex. On the western terrace, this complex was composed of a vast place of worship, covering an area of approximately 7 ha. On the eastern terrace, the complex included two semi-detached buildings, to the north of a theater building and, finally, double imperial-style thermal baths at the bottom of the valley. The edge of the southern plateau was marked by the aqueduct installed along a natural break in the landscape. Established according to a veritable urban planning program, the new organization of this space ostentatiously affirms the importance attributed to the gods within the city. The place of worship of Chenevières constitutes a focal point in the west, its height, in terms of topography, having been enhanced by the installation of an artificial terrace. Valuable information relative to the specific divinities belonging to the community of Cassinomagus is also provided to us by a lapidary inscription discovered in the thermal baths in 2012. In this inscription, mention is made to a tutelary god of the Lemovices (Mars Grannus), associated with the Numina Augustorum and a local divinity residing on the periphery (Cobrandia). Previously mentioned in an inscription discovered in Limoges –where its cult appears to have required an abundant use of water–, Mars associated with the epiclesis Grannus may thus shed further light on the latest discoveries within the sanctuary of Chenevières. Indeed, the scenography installed in the eastern part of the place of worship appears, in fact, to emphasize the importance of the liquid component of this cult. Already attested to by their proximity to one another and location along two major axes of communication (the Agrippa and Vienna routes), the connection between Cassinomagus and its capital (Limoges/Augustoritum), is also reflected in their many architectural similarities and in their shared pantheon. The monumentalization program observed throughout this urban zone, for the 11th c. AD, seems to contribute to redefining the limits of the territory of the Lemovices by making of Cassinomagus a sort of “preview” to the Lemovices civitas. In this context, the Chenevières sanctuary, spanning an area of 7 ha, was to play an essential role in community life as a gathering place, but also as a place of expression of the power of men and gods. The city reveals the first signs of abandonment at the beginning of the 2nd c. AD. Despite a fire in the thermal baths in 275-280, the monumental complex still appears to have been occupied, though the space witnessed a shift in function and was primarily used as a recycling site. During the fifth and sixth centuries, habitats associated with granaries were even installed in the ruins of the seaside portion of the city. While no traces of occupation were found after the 7th c. AD in the monumental complex of this urban area, it is possible that the population subsequently congregated around a parish center, where burials from the Early Middle Ages are attested to. The following centuries were little documented by archeology and our primary source of information relative to them come from historical research dating to the 10th c. AD onward. This research reveals a shift in the area of influence of the parish of Chassenon due to its location near the border: long ascribed to Limoges, it passed, at an unknown date, under the influence of Poitou and/or Angoumois. Two lordships attested to from the year 1000 then shared the parish, beginning on an unknown date. The west depended on the castellany or principality of Chabanais, in Angoumois and the east fell under the viscounty of Rochechouart, enclave of Poitou. Beyond documenting these territorial changes in the light of the political and administrative forces at play, the work carried out based on archival sources makes it possible to specify the different types of occupations present within the commune of Chassenon until the 19th c., when the locality assumed its present limits.

International audience; Archaeological excavations carried out in the 1990s in the former rural parish of Rigny (Indre-et-Loire, France) uncovered 1738 graves. Among the individuals discovered, a female adult presents a series of cranial deformities characteristic of an extremely rare pathology, til then unknown in the archaeological record: the Treacher-Collins syndrome. It induces facial dysmorphism and is generally associated with hearing loss or even conductive deafness of the patient due to malformations of the hearing system.The retrospectif diagnosis of this individual was based on macroscopic analysis and computed tomography (CTscan). The use of 3D imaging made it possible to explore the impact of the pathology on the individual's hearing.In addition to the functional implications, the negative impacts of facial dysmorphic disorders in the social sphere are well known in today's societies while they are poorly documented for the medieval period.During this period, diet was an important social marker. The analysis of the individual affected by this syndrome’s diet, compared to those of other members of the Rigny village community, provide an opportunity to discuss the social significance of disability in a rural context in the Middle Ages. In this perspective, the isotopic ratios of carbon and nitrogen in this individual's bone collagen were compared to those of forty-seven other individuals found on the site.Archaeological, paleopathological and biochemical information are relevant to better characterize the functional repercussions of this syndrome on the Rigny individual and also to discuss the integration of this individual into this medieval village community.

Crisis intervention teams in Berlin, Germany use a form of dialogic practice - a therapeutic approach based on the relational meaning of language - to develop an alternative means of negotiating risk and evaluating "outcome" in psychiatric experience. These clinicians bring familial networks into the process of crisis management, revealing meaningful "outcomes" regarding crisis care to be tethered to local concepts of chronicity and responsibility. To conceive of outcome in this context requires attention beyond the individual, and instead the consideration of a distributed outcome, in which living with risk, and its consequences, is bound to the collective experience of the network.

Au sein du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle de Paris, les assistants naturalistes formaient une classe particulière au XIXe siècle. Ces employés produisaient une grande partie des collections de l’institution, contribuaient activement aux travaux des professeurs, et participaient même parfois à leur renommée. Néanmoins, ces assistants étaient plongés dans l’ombre des scientifiques, à tel point que nombre d’entre eux ont complètement disparu de la mémoire du Muséum. Dans certains cas, notamment pour les moulages d’après le vivant, leur travail est même attribué à de grandes personnalités, souvent à des professeurs. Les assistants naturalistes semblent historiographiquement peu étudiés; pourtant l’examen de ces employés à travers leurs productions matérielles permettrait de mieux comprendre l’histoire du Muséum et le développement de ses chaires. The Scientific Patrimony of the Invisibles: a Reconsideration of the Little Hands in the Service of Comparative Anatomy at the Muséum de Paris Within the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle of Paris, the assistant naturalists of the 19th century formed a particular class. These employees produced a large part of the institution’s collections, actively contributed to the work of the professors, and sometimes even participated in their renown. Nevertheless, these assistants were engulfed in the shadows of the scientists, to such an extent that many of them have completely disappeared from the memory of the Museum. In some cases, especially for life casts, their work is even attributed to the great personalities, often to professors. Assistant naturalists appear to be under–studied; yet the examination of these employees through their material productions would allow a better understanding of the Museum’s history and the development of its departments.

The morphology of the proximal carpals (scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum) are linked to the range of motion (ROM) at the radiocarpal and midcarpal joints. While the relationship between ROM and habitual locomotor mode is well established, it has yet to be investigated whether relative patterns of internal bone architecture reflect the kinematics and kinetics at the proximal row. As internal bone is known to model its structure to habitually incurred forces, internal architecture has the potential to provide insight into how a joint(s) have been loaded during the lifetime of an individual. Using a broad sample of extant great apes and humans (n=177 total), this study investigates whether relative differences in the bone volume to total volume (BV/TV) and degree of anisotropy (DA) across the scaphoid, lunate and triquetrum correlate with the presumed force transfer and biomechanics of the hominoid wrist. Results reveal broad patterns in BV/TV and DA differentiated hominoids by their predominant locomotor mode. The human pattern suggests the lunate may be the most highly strained bone within the proximal row. Both knuckle-walking taxa (Gorilla, Pan) exhibited similar architectural patterns suggesting they are adapted to resist similar forces in this region of the wrist. The relatively high DA across all Pongo carpals suggests it may have more stereotypical wrist loading than commonly assumed. Finally, the distinctly low DA in the triquetrum across all taxa suggests force transfer via the synapomorphic Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex may leave a distinctive signature in the internal bone architecture that requires further investigation.

Complexity and uncertainty often animate the desire for regulatory approaches seeking to fix, limit and constrain. But what if, instead of doubling down on ‘solid’ regulation, we also make room for ‘liquid’ regulatory approaches? We interrogate this question through deep empirical analysis of the developing regulatory framework around a form of Melanesian cultural property known as water music. We argue that, although both solid and liquid regulatory forms exist in all normative orders, we have recently seen an increasing emphasis on solid forms of regulation (legislation, registers, etc.) with respect to cultural property. As an effort to consider alternative approaches, we identify a range of liquid regulatory strategies drawing from our case-study. We show how attention to temporality, relationality and situatedness can impact upon the degree of liquidity of individual regulatory approaches, and how they can cumulatively impact the solidity or liquidity of the overall regulatory system. Finally, we identify the different ways in which gendered power and forms of accountability emerge in contexts of solid or liquid regulatory strategies.

The study of the language of religious minorities in Iran is particularly important for understanding the historical development and typology of Iranian languages. Historical and linguistic evidence substantiates the idea that Zoroastrians and Jews in cities in central and western Iran preserved their former vernacular language, whereas the majority of the population replaced it with Persian in the New Iranian period. This paper focuses on the language of Jews in Hamadan and has two main objectives: first, it examines numerous distinctive features of Judeo-Hamadani; second, it reviews and updates recent research to clarify the language origins, using data from new materials recorded during fieldwork in Hamadan from October 2018 to August 2019, and in Yazd in 2017.

Farvi, also known as Farrokhi, is an Iranian language spoken in the village of Farvi in Khur district of Kavir desert in central Iran. It shares features with other languages in Kavir region such as Khuri, Irāji and Garmayi. This paper describes synchronic and historical phonology and the grammar of Farvi based on data collected in Farvi village during April 2019. The study of historical phonology and morphological evidence show that though basically Northwestern, Farvi shares some features with Southwestern Iranian languages so that, like Kurdish and Balochi, it is separated from the other Northwestern Iranian languages. In later changes, Farvi shows some areal features that put it alongside Southeastern languages such as Northern Bashgardi and Balochi.

The metrical requirements of Persian poetry are highly restrictive. Traditionally, the rigidity of the metrical system was compensated for by a high degree of flexibility in the poetic language in terms of lexicon, phonology, and morpho-syntax. Using statistical data from different periods of Persian poetry, this paper argues that the degree of flexibility of the language used in metrical Persian poetry has been in constant decrease, moving towards what may potentially be a language crisis for metrical Persian poetry. This study traces the linguistic and meta-linguistic origins of the initial flexibility of the poetic language and its subsequent change, suggesting that some of the recent trends in Persian poetry may be viewed in part as reactions to this potential crisis.

This paper examines the historical developments and the debates revolving around the formation of an Ottoman–Iranian alliance in the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the 1908 Revolution. It argues that although neither the idea of an alliance between the two states nor the attempt to establish it was new, the way it was discussed, justified, and promoted in this period was different. The previous attempts by the Ottomans were led by the state as part of a broader pan-Islamist project (ittihad-ı İslam) that adopted a heavily religious tone. On the other hand, the main proponents of the alliance during the constitutional period were mostly transnational/international figures and religious scholars, who framed the issue within the context of Ottoman–Iranian relations, focusing on immediate pragmatic, strategic, and ideological concerns, such as protecting the sovereignty and security of the two countries against European imperialism through constitutionalism. Rather than focusing on reconciling the disputes between the Sunnis and Shi’is, and presenting this alliance as the first step towards the formation of a broader Islamic union as Abdülhamid II did in the nineteenth century, these people emphasized brotherhood and solidarity between the two constitutional governments, and tried to establish a strategic partnership based on shared borders, experiences, ideals, and enemies.

This article describes ethnography as a research method and outlines how it excels in capturing the salient experiences of individuals among diverse communities in their own words. We argue that the integration of ethnographic findings into epigenomics will significantly improve disparities-focused study designs within environmental epigenomics by identifying and contextualizing the most salient dimensions of the ‘environment’ that are affecting local communities. Reciprocally, epigenetic findings can enhance anthropological understanding of human biological variation and embodiment. We introduce the term bio-ethnography to refer to research designs that integrate both of these methodologies into a single research project. Emphasis is given in this article, through the use of case studies, to socially disadvantaged communities that are often under-represented in scientific literature. The paper concludes with preliminary recommendations for how ethnographic methods can be integrated into epigenomics research designs in order to elucidate the manner in which disadvantage translates into disparities in the burden of illness.

The plague of 1630–1632 was one of the deadliest plague epidemics to ever hit Northern Italy, and for many of the affected regions, it was also the last. While accounts on plague during the early 1630s in Florence and Milan are frequent, much less is known about the city of Imola. We analyzed the full skeletal assemblage of four mass graves (n = 133 individuals) at the Lazaretto dell’Osservanza, which date back to the outbreak of 1630–1632 in Imola and evaluated our results by integrating new archival sources. The skeletons showed little evidence of physical trauma and were covered by multiple layers of lime, which is characteristic for epidemic mass mortality sites. We screened 15 teeth for Yersinia pestis aDNA and were able to confirm the presence of plague in Imola via metagenomic analysis. Additionally, we studied a contemporaneous register, in which a friar recorded patient outcomes at the lazaretto during the last year of the epidemic. Our multidisciplinary approach combining historical, osteological and genomic data provided a unique opportunity to reconstruct an in-depth picture of the last plague of Imola through the city's main lazaretto.

This essay applies Karl Polanyi’s concepts of embedding and countermovement to provincial Hungary during and after socialism. Comprehensive state socialist repression in the 1950s was a politics-led disembedding. An economy-led countermovement began in the 1960s, later augmented by elite discourses of civil society. The 1970s and 1980s were decades of socialist embeddedness. Neoliberal configurations after 1990 dislocated both economic and associational life. The illiberal democracy of Viktor Orbán is a more consequential countermovement than the earlier countermovements to state socialism. The argument is illustrated with data from long-term fieldwork in southern Hungary, in the region of the Danube-Tisza Interfluve.