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Commensality (the act of eating together) is studied in a range of disciplines and often considered important for social communion, order, health and well-being, while simultaneously being understood as in decline (especially the family meal). However, such claims are also contested in various ways. In this paper, we discuss the expanding field of commensality research and critically reflect on the debates surrounding its social functions, including its role in public health. We illuminate the deep social and cultural significance of commensality, through time and space, and conclude that whether or not commensality is the preferred social form of eating for any given individual, it is difficult to escape its sociocultural desirability and idealization. As a cross-cultural phenomenon in both past, present, and future, we suggest that commensality deserves further research. This includes commensality as a research topic in itself and as an entry point to unveil different dimensions of social relations between people, as well as interactions between humans and material objects.

The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected this pattern, as shown for example by numerous fruitful ventures into the \"politics and poetics\" of anthropology. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to the simple insight that anthropology is composed of claims, whether tacit or explicit, about anthropos and about logos--and the myriad ways in which these two Greek nouns have been, might be, and should be, connected.Anthropos Todayrepresents a pathbreaking effort to fill this gap. Paul Rabinow brings together years of distinguished work in this magisterial volume that seeks to reinvigorate the human sciences. Specifically, he assembles a set of conceptual tools--\"modern equipment\"--to assess how intellectual work is currently conducted and how it might change. Anthropos Todaycrystallizes Rabinow's previous ethnographic inquiries into the production of truth about life in the world of biotechnology and genome mapping (and his invention of new ways of practicing this pursuit), and his findings on how new practices of life, labor, and language have emerged and been institutionalized. Here, Rabinow steps back from empirical research in order to reflect on the conceptual and ethical resources available today to conduct such inquiries. Drawing richly on Foucault and many other thinkers including Weber and Dewey, Rabinow concludes that a \"contingent practice\" must be developed that focuses on \"events of problematization.\" Brilliantly synthesizing insights from American, French, and German traditions, he offers a lucid, deeply learned, original discussion of how one might best think about anthropos today.

Climate change poses increasing risks to outdoor occupations, including construction work. This study explores how vulnerability is constructed in narratives of manual labour within the Swedish construction sector, particularly under extreme weather conditions. Drawing on 16 qualitative interviews with Swedish construction workers, the study adopts a social constructionist lens to explore how vulnerability is shaped and experienced. The findings identify multiple, intersecting forms of vulnerability-bodily, hierarchical, material, social, and market-driven-exacerbated by climate-related challenges such as high temperatures, heavy rainfall, and strong winds. Crucially, the analysis highlights how extreme weather disrupts temporal rhythms, widening the gap between scheduled work plans and the actual time needed to complete tasks. The paper concludes that vulnerability arises not only from direct exposure to adverse weather, but also through indirect social, material, and temporal dynamics inherent in the construction sector and exacerbated by climate change.

Making creates knowledge, builds environments and transforms lives. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture are all ways of making, and all are dedicated to exploring the conditions and potentials of human life. In this exciting book, Tim Ingold ties the four disciplines together in a way that has never been attempted before. In a radical departure from conventional studies that treat art and architecture as compendia of objects for analysis, Ingold proposes an anthropology and archaeology not of but with art and architecture. He advocates a way of thinking through making in which sentient practitioners and active materials continually answer to, or 'correspond', with one another in the generation of form. Making offers a series of profound reflections on what it means to create things, on materials and form, the meaning of design, landscape perception, animate life, personal knowledge and the work of the hand. It draws on examples and experiments ranging from prehistoric stone tool-making to the building of medieval cathedrals, from round mounds to monuments, from flying kites to winding string, from drawing to writing. The book will appeal to students and practitioners alike, with interests in social and cultural anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design, visual studies and material culture.

Accelerating climate change has been associated with, among other things, rising temperatures, rising sea levels, extensive periods of precipitation, and difficult wind conditions. These are said to affect large segments of society, not least outdoor workers, whose working conditions are negatively affected. Much media attention has been paid to the situation of outdoor workers, and the media presents tips on what to consider when working in conditions such as high temperatures. The aim of this paper is to explore how the Swedish media reports on outdoor workers and their working conditions in relation to climate change and difficult weather conditions, especially high temperatures. The aim is also to describe and analyze how an identified risk discourse is legitimized in media representations of extreme weather and outdoor work. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of 72 articles in the Swedish media, available in the digital archive retriever.com (Mediearkivet). A social constructionist perspective is used to explore how weather, climate, and risks are “constructed” in the material, and a focus on storytelling techniques and legitimization strategies makes it possible to investigate how certain views of weather, climate, and risks are justified. According to the results, climate change and changing weather conditions are related to risks at both a structural level and an everyday level in working life. Two overall categories of risk are identified, on one side physiological and mental risks, and on the other economic and technological risks. Together, these categories underpin a general risk discourse that is legitimized using strategies such as scientification, dramatization, and personification. The conclusion is that the media representations are characterized by a de-politization of climate change and changing weather conditions, and by a focus on individual adaptation to these changes.

Background Documenting traditional knowledge on plant use among ethnic groups has enabled researchers to obtain a better understanding of how indigenous flora is seen and used in daily life. Their therapeutic applications will also encourage future conservation and phytochemical research, potentially leading to the development of novel drugs. However, past ethnobotanical studies conducted in Ethiopia mainly focused on rural areas, and limited coverage to document the ethnobotanical knowledge at the rural‒urban interface. Therefore, this study was conducted to document and analyze traditional ethnobotanical knowledge on medicinal plants among three selected ethnic groups in peri-urban areas of south-central Ethiopia. In addition, we attempted to investigate the range of cultural similarity and disparity between the studied ethnic groups in relation to traditional medicinal plants and diseases treated. Methods Data were collected using semistructured questionnaires and in-depth interviews of 189 key informants, floristic species inventories, and field observations. Several cultural importance indices and Rahman’s similarity indices were applied to analyze the relevance of medicinal plants and cultural similarity among the ethnic groups. Results A total of 189 therapeutic plants representing 159 genera and 69 families were identified and documented across the three studied ethnic groups. Of these, the Sidama, Gedeo, and Oromo ethnic groups reported 28, 34, and 38%, respectively. Most medicinal plants were represented by herbs (36%), followed by shrubs (31%), trees (27%), and herbaceous climbers (7%). Rahman's similarity index (RSI) revealed considerable ethnobotanical knowledge variation among ethnic groups. Oromo and Sidama showed the highest disparity (63.8%), followed by Gedeo and Oromo (63.2%). Of the total collected therapeutic plants, 78 most important medicinal plants were selected for the cultural importance analysis, which revealed that Croton macrostachyus Hochst. ex Delile scored the highest point in the Gedeo and Oromo ethnic groups and Zingiber officinale Roscoe in the Sidama ethnic group. Whereas Cinnamomum verum J.Presl , Psidium guajava L., and Melia azedarach L. are the least. Conclusion The present study revealed the presence of cultural differences in medicinal plant knowledge practices and therapeutic plant use among the studied ethnic groups in rural–urban interface areas of south-central Ethiopia. The diverse healing potential of plants would support future pharmacological investigations, emphasizing the need for adequate documentation of indigenous knowledge and versatile flora to prevent their further loss.

For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an \"anarchist history,\" is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of \"internal colonialism.\" This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

Through an explorative overview of a number of approaches to what remoteness is, in terms of language, discourse, and fantasy, how it is established spatially and temporally by movements and perspectives, by how connections are set up, and by how boundaries are drawn and crossed, this paper argues that remoteness is a) produced rather than discovered; b) an asymmetric relation between two parties from which emanates certain features, practices, and affective modes; c) a category to think with rather than an object for such thinking; d) a device that frames and structures the positioning and experiencing of time and place; and e) a part of the logic that organises the world in terms of power and control. Of longstanding concern in island studies is what constitutes ‘the island’. Much of the discussion is built on an undertheorised and broadly accepted dichotomisation between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’ understandings of islands. What the overview suggests is a third position: ‘the island’ as an intensively multirelational phenomenon constituted by the constant sliding between islands as physical places and all the figures of thought attached to such places.

In the first month of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden took the same strategy as most other countries, working to “flatten the curve,” by slowing transmission so that the healthcare system could cope with the disease. However, unlike most other countries, much of Sweden’s implementation focused on voluntary and stepwise action, rather than legislation and compulsory measures, leading to considerable attention in the international media. Six main narratives emerged in the international media reporting on Sweden during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) Life is normal in Sweden, (2) Sweden has a herd immunity strategy, (3) Sweden is not following expert advice, (4) Sweden is not following WHO recommendations (5) the Swedish approach is failing and (6) Swedes trust the government. While these narratives are partially grounded in reality, in some media outlets, the language and examples used to frame the story distorted the accuracy of the reporting. This debate examines the ways in which international media both constructs and represents a pandemic, and the implications for how researchers engage with news and social media. Cross-country comparison and the sharing of best practice are reliant on accurate information. The Swedish example underlines the importance of fact checking and source critique and the need for precision when presenting data and statistics. It also highlights limitations of using culture as an explanation for behavior, and the pitfalls of evaluating policy during a pandemic.