What can be learned about pandemic preparedness from greater attention to perspectives of people who live in regions labelled as ‘hotspots’ for disease outbreaks? And how might such attention require us to reconfigure science, policy, and practice – as part of a broader shifting of power in pandemics? These are the questions that motivate and are explored through the papers in this special issue on pandemic preparedness, for which this paper serves as Introduction. All the contributions to this special issue present perspectives, experiences, and reflections from African settings, drawing on research co-designed and conducted in close engagement with local communities or in dialogue with African scientists and public health actors. They approach biosocial questions from the concerns of the disciplinary fields of social, medical, and political anthropology, of engaged interdisciplinary social science, and, crucially, of embedded, ‘grassroots’ fieldwork by researchers who have grown up with the communities they are studying. The team bringing these complementary areas of expertise came together for a collaborative programme on ‘Pandemic preparedness: local and global concepts and practices in tackling disease threats in Africa’ supported by a collaborative award from the Wellcome Trust during 2018–2023. This special issue thus forms part of wider advocacy for rethinking pandemic preparedness and for the value of anthropology in informing its meanings and practices, now more than ever.

This article analyses multiple visions and perspectives offered by Chinese-speaking Muslim intellectuals during the Republican era (1912–1949) concerning their status as a Muslim community by looking into their debates on the modernization and secularization of the Turkish Republic under the Kemalist regime. The transformation of the multi-ethnic and religious Qing empire into a Republican Chinese nation-state presented new challenges to the ruling elite, intellectuals, and minority communities. This article explores how Chinese Muslims navigated the complex intellectual landscape as alternative visions and ideologies concerning nation-building, ethnic autonomy, religion, and modernity emerged in China. The article focuses on how Han Chinese intellectuals, the Kuomintang (KMT) elite, and Chinese Muslims selectively interpreted Turkish modernization in different ways to promote their socio-political cause. It analyses the overlaps and the complex, nuanced differences between Chinese Muslim interpretations of Turkey as a success story of the awakened modern Muslim and the KMT ruling elites’ view of Turkey in the 1930s as a model of developmental authoritarianism, highlighting Turkey’s success in establishing a homogenous nation-state that superseded religion with a sanctified state ideology. The article thus demonstrates how Chinese Muslim intellectuals responded to the KMT state’s increasingly authoritarian rule in the 1930s during the Japanese invasion and the subsequent era of the Civil War when the Chinese Communist Party emerged as a powerful alternative to KMT rule and ideology.

This paper explores the importance and implications of a multivocal and ethnographic approach to archaeological praxis and interpretation of artefacts. Drawing from post-colonial and archaeological disenfranchisement perspectives, an attempt has been made to review the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and other agencies’ strategies and their resultant hegemonic dominance over archaeological sites and narratives, thus marginalizing local and indigenous narratives and knowledge systems. Focusing on certain Jain heritage sites of Purulia, biased conservation and preservation strategies have been observed along with the collection of neighbouring local community narratives which revealed a sense of apathy towards archaeological authorities along with a sense of pride towards the material revealing the disenfranchisement of material heritage. The paper thus explicates the importance of the inclusion of multivocality and ethnographic methodologies into the archaeological praxis, allowing for the inclusion of minority narratives and recognizing the importance of multiple ontologies and epistemes.

This article examines the paradoxical impact of emerging communication technologies on social cohesion by investigating the struggle to standardize Ramadan observance among Chinese Hui Muslim communities in the early twentieth century. Reform-minded Hui intellectuals hoped that modern media, such as print periodicals and the telegraph, would disseminate moon-sighting news and unify the diverse temporal practices of Hui Muslims across China, thereby forging a modern, unified Hui identity. However, this article argues that these technologies did not lead to seamless temporal homogenization. Instead, they amplified local divisions and precipitated a crisis of authority by forcing Hui communities to confront a new and divisive question: who and what to trust in a new information landscape? Drawing on case studies of disputes in Guangzhou, Xi’an, Beijing, and Chengdu between 1931 and 1934, the article demonstrates that Hui Muslims’ trust was not monolithic but fragmented along lines of faith in the communication technology, the messenger, and the information itself, which in turn prevented the implementation of a standard Ramadan temporality. By centring the analysis on the social dynamics of trust, this article contributes to the history of technology and media studies, revealing that the adoption of technology is fundamentally a process of building, challenging, and negotiating authority through the fragile and fragmented medium of trust.