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Humanness supposes innate and profound reflexivity. This volume approaches the concept of reflexivity on two different yet related analytical planes. Whether implicitly or explicitly, both planes of thought bear critically on reflexivity in relation to the nature of selfhood and the very idea of the autonomous individual, ethics, and humanness, science as such and social science, ontological dualism and fundamental ambiguity. On the one plane, a collection of original and innovative ethnographically based essays is offered, each of which is devoted to ways in which reflexivity plays a fundamental role in human social life and the study of it; on the other—anthropo-philosophical and developed in the volume's Preface, Introduction, and Postscript—it is argued that reflexivity distinguishes—definitively, albeit relatively—the being and becoming of the human.

This article argues that xing 性 in the Zhuangzi 莊子 should not be understood as “human nature” but as “human condition.” It introduces the problem of interpreting xing as “human nature” by surveying relevant English-language literature before detailing the interpretive paradigm of Chinese accounts showing how the latter’s appropriation of the language of substance ontology hinders an accurate portrayal of Daoist xing. It argues that xing should be interpreted in connection to the concept of ming 命understood as contingent, natural, and temporal “external conditions”. It argues that xing are “internal conditions” that function in conjunction with ming as “external conditions” where “habit” (xi 習) mediates their interaction.

Once celebrated as a model development for its progressive social indicators, the southern Indian state of Kerala has earned the new distinction as the nation's suicide capital, with suicide rates soaring to triple the national average since 1990. Rather than an aberration on the path to development and modernity, Keralites understand this crisis to be the bitter fruit borne of these historical struggles and the aspirational dilemmas they have produced in everyday life.  Suicide, therefore, offers a powerful lens onto the experiential and affective dimensions of development and global change in the postcolonial world. In the long shadow of fear and uncertainty that suicide casts in Kerala, living acquires new meaning and contours.  In this powerful ethnography, Jocelyn Chua draws on years of fieldwork to broaden the field of vision beyond suicide as the termination of life, considering how suicide generates new ways of living in these anxious times.

Platonic Noisebrings classical and contemporary writings into conversation to enrich our experience of modern life and politics. Drawing on writers as diverse as Plato, Homer, Nietzsche, Borges, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth, Peter Euben shows us the relevance of both popular literature and ancient Greek thought to current questions of loss, mourning, and democracy--all while arguing for the redeeming qualities of political and intellectual work and making an original case against presentism. Juxtaposing ancient and contemporary texts, politics, and culture, Euben reflects on a remarkable range of recent issues and controversies. He discusses Stoic cosmopolitanism and globalization, takes a critical look at Nietzsche's own efforts to make the Greeks speak to the issues of his day, examines a Greek tragedy through Hannah Arendt's eyes, compares the role of comedy in ancient Athens and contemporary America, analyzes political theory as a reaction to an acute sense of loss, and considers questions of agency and morality. Platonic Noisemakes a case for reading political theory and politics through literature. Working as much through example as through explicit argument, Euben casts the literary memory of Athenian democracy as a crucial cultural resource and a presence in contemporary political and theoretical debates. In so doing, he reasserts the moral value of what we used to call participatory democracy and the practical value of seeing ourselves with the help of insights from long-gone Greeks.

Contemporary humans exhibit spectacular biological success derived from cumulative culture and cooperation. The origins of these traits may be related to our ancestral group structure. Because humans lived as foragers for 95% of our species' history, we analyzed co-residence patterns among 32 present-day foraging societies (total n = 5067 individuals, mean experienced band size = 28.2 adults). We found that hunter-gatherers display a unique social structure where (i) either sex may disperse or remain in their natal group, (ii) adult brothers and sisters often co-reside, and (iii) most individuals in residential groups are genetically unrelated. These patterns produce large interaction networks of unrelated adults and suggest that inclusive fitness cannot explain extensive cooperation in hunter-gatherer bands. However, large social networks may help to explain why humans evolved capacities for social learning that resulted in cumulative culture.

A parameter-free model predicts patterns of commuting, phone calls and trade using only population density at all intermediate points. Accurate prediction of population movement Since the 1940s, planners needing to predict population movement, transport-network usage and even epidemics have turned to a model based on the 'gravity law'. This assumes that the number of individuals travelling between two locations is proportional to the population at the source and destination, and decays with distance. This approach has its limitations, because it looks at the flow between two specific points only. Here, Albert-László Barabási and colleagues present an alternative model that takes into account population density at all intermediate points. Their parameter-free radiation model predicts a range of phenomena — from commuting and migrations to phone calls — much more accurately than the gravity model. Needing only data on population densities, which are easy to measure, the system can be used to predict commuting and transport patterns even in areas where data are not collected systematically. Introduced in its contemporary form in 1946 (ref. 1 ), but with roots that go back to the eighteenth century 2 , the gravity law 1 , 3 , 4 is the prevailing framework with which to predict population movement 3 , 5 , 6 , cargo shipping volume 7 and inter-city phone calls 8 , 9 , as well as bilateral trade flows between nations 10 . Despite its widespread use, it relies on adjustable parameters that vary from region to region and suffers from known analytic inconsistencies. Here we introduce a stochastic process capturing local mobility decisions that helps us analytically derive commuting and mobility fluxes that require as input only information on the population distribution. The resulting radiation model predicts mobility patterns in good agreement with mobility and transport patterns observed in a wide range of phenomena, from long-term migration patterns to communication volume between different regions. Given its parameter-free nature, the model can be applied in areas where we lack previous mobility measurements, significantly improving the predictive accuracy of most of the phenomena affected by mobility and transport processes 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 .

Feeding a growing world sustainably In the coming years, continued population growth, rising incomes, increasing meat and dairy consumption and expanding biofuel use will place unprecedented demands on the world's agriculture and natural resources. Can we meet society's growing food needs while reducing agriculture's environmental harm? Here, an international team of environmental and agricultural scientists uses new geospatial data and models to identify four strategies that could double food production while reducing environmental impacts. First, halt agricultural expansion. Second, close 'yield gaps' on underperforming lands. Third, increase cropping efficiency. And finally, we need to change our diets and shift crop production away from livestock feed, bioenergy crops and other non-food applications. Increasing population and consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources. Today, approximately a billion people are chronically malnourished while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity and climate on a global scale. To meet the world’s future food security and sustainability needs, food production must grow substantially while, at the same time, agriculture’s environmental footprint must shrink dramatically. Here we analyse solutions to this dilemma, showing that tremendous progress could be made by halting agricultural expansion, closing ‘yield gaps’ on underperforming lands, increasing cropping efficiency, shifting diets and reducing waste. Together, these strategies could double food production while greatly reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.

A cornerstone of modern biomedical research is the use of mouse models to explore basic pathophysiological mechanisms, evaluate new therapeutic approaches, and make go or no-go decisions to carry new drug candidates forward into clinical trials. Systematic studies evaluating how well murine models mimic human inflammatory diseases are nonexistent. Here, we show that, although acute inflammatory stresses from different etiologies result in highly similar genomic responses in humans, the responses in corresponding mouse models correlate poorly with the human conditions and also, one another. Among genes changed significantly in humans, the murine orthologs are close to random in matching their human counterparts (e.g., R² between 0.0 and 0.1). In addition to improvements in the current animal model systems, our study supports higher priority for translational medical research to focus on the more complex human conditions rather than relying on mouse models to study human inflammatory diseases.