Even though the incidence of conflicts between Fulani nomadic pastoralists and sedentary communities in Nigeria has risen significantly in the last decade, there is a notable lack of research examining how these conflicts influence distrust towards members of the Fulani ethnic group and Muslims. Using novel survey data from Kaduna, the state with the third-highest incidence of pastoral conflict in Nigeria, this study addresses that gap. Regression analyses show that exposure to pastoral conflict increases distrust towards the Fulani and Muslims. This suggests a contagion effect whereby the Fulani are conflated with the broader Muslim population, due to the Muslim identity of nomadic Fulani pastoralists. Disaggregating the data by religious affiliation reveals a pattern: conflict exposure raises distrust only among Muslim respondents, while effects are statistically insignificant among Christians. Among Muslims, the positive effect suggests that pastoral conflict erodes in-group cohesion. The null effect among Christians may reflect the way in which pastoral conflicts align with pre-existing religious fault lines.

The editors of the special issue on panpsychism and pan(en)theism introduce the issue. This includes brief summaries of each of the articles.

Previous estimations of the associations between fruits and vegetables (F/V) intake with diabetes markers showed mixed results, possibly partly because of the subjective assessment of dietary intake. We aimed to examine the relationship between plasma carotenoids and α-tocopherol (as objective markers of F/V intake) and fasting glucose. This was a population-based cross-sectional study in 592 adults in Cameroon. Self-reported F/V intake was assessed using the WHO STEPS questionnaire, and the biomarkers were analysed by HPLC. The mean age of participants was 38·5 (sd 8·6) years (63·7 % women). The median (IQR) number of times participants self-reported consuming fruits in a typical week was 2(1–5) and vegetables was 4(2–7) times/week. Plasma total carotenoids was positively correlated with self-reported intake of fruits (r = 0·13) and vegetables (r = 0·29), both P-values < 0·01. In unadjusted analysis, the difference in fasting glucose comparing the highest against the lowest tertile of the biomarkers concentrations was −0·28 (95 % CI −0·56, −0·001) mmol/l for total carotenoids and −0·31 (–0·59, −0·03) mmol/l for plasma α-carotene. The associations became stronger after adjusting for sociodemographics, lifesyle factors and cholesterol (–0·36 (–0·73, −0·002) mmol/l for total carotenoids and −0·41 (–0·79, −0·03) mmol/l for α-carotene). There was no evidence of an association between α-tocopherol and fasting glucose. We showed an inverse association of total carotenoids and α-carotene, objective indicators of F/V intake, with fasting glucose; suggesting that higher F/V intake may be beneficial for diabetes prevention in African populations where F/V intake is low.

The date of the Thera eruption has been a subject of intense debate since the mid-20th century. In recent years, the disagreements have escalated with the introduction of IntCal20. The increased number of annual measurements around the time period of the eruption has highlighted potential fluctuations in the atmospheric radiocarbon record, shedding new light on the date of the disastrous event. The Centre for Isotope Research in Groningen has already contributed data from this time period to IntCal20, and here, we report a new set of annual data of approximately 90 radiocarbon measurements between 1660 and 1507 BCE. We investigate the potential anomalies in the calibration curve and compare our dataset with those from other leading laboratories. Although we do not find compelling evidence of any rapid increases in radiocarbon production during this period, the results do point to the presence of minor differences between datasets which could be species, region or laboratory pretreatment related. By quantifying such offsets, we assess their impact on chronological models related to the eruption of Thera.

This article explores how the 2024 Trump campaign persistently invoked the so-called “great replacement” narrative to promote a politics of racial fear. As the article details, this messaging relied upon the mutability of the replacement narrative – highlighting a supposed plot by the Democratic Party to “import voters” from Latin America in order to corrupt the democratic process. This strategy yielded a variety of civic costs. By foregrounding the language of democracy, the campaign laundered xenophobic fears for widespread consumption. More broadly, the article details how this episode illustrates a core strategy of far right media politics: to capture and repurpose the civic language of liberal democracies to serve illiberal aims.

This essay shows how the United States racialized refugees through photography. American policy makers and news media have deployed photography as a definitive tool in characterizing Haitian “economic migrants” as “bad” refugees in opposition to “good” or “model” refugees from Vietnam. A cluster of black bodies on an unseaworthy boat came to represent an economic and hygienic threat, unlike the Vietnamese who are political victims of an oppressive communist regime. To critique our optical framework regulated by the Cold War racial politics, this essay historicizes how refugees were produced by American warfare and militarism. In the United States, war making, race making, and refugee making are mutually constitutive.

Thanks to the rich findings of Swiss archaeological practice, Tacitus’ narrative for the violent encounter between the Vitellian army and the Helvetians in 69 c.e. (Hist. 1.67–9) can fruitfully be embedded in different material contexts from the late first century b.c.e. and the early first century c.e. (funerary practice, numismatic finds, military architecture, consumption, social relations). The resulting picture is that of the Helvetian civitas as a political community endowed with autonomy and state-like capacities within the Roman empire: militaria are the index of local militarism rather than auxiliary service. This model might be applied more widely within the western provinces and the Roman empire in general.

A general asymptotic theory is established for sample cross moments of nonstationary time series, allowing for long-range dependence and local unit roots. The theory provides a substantial extension of earlier results on nonparametric regression that include near-cointegrated nonparametric regression as well as spurious nonparametric regression. Many new models are covered by the limit theory, among which are functional coefficient regressions in which both regressors and the functional covariate are nonstationary. Simulations show finite sample performance matching well with the asymptotic theory and having broad relevance to applications, while revealing how dual nonstationarity in regressors and covariates raises sensitivity to bandwidth choice and the impact of dimensionality in nonparametric regression. An empirical example is provided involving climate data regression to assess Earth’s climate sensitivity to CO$_2$, where nonstationarity is a prominent feature of both the regressors and covariates in the model. To our knowledge, this application is the first nonparametric empirical analysis to assess potential nonlinear impacts of CO$_2$ on Earth’s climate while allowing for nonstationarity in both the regressors and covariates.

Lepidopteran stemborers are among the most destructive pests of maize, sorghum, and sugarcane in Africa. Yet, data on their species composition and host range in Rwanda remain limited. This study provides the first comprehensive assessment of stemborer diversity, seasonal dynamics, and altitudinal distribution across eastern (low altitude), central (mid-altitude), and northern (high altitude) Rwanda. Surveys were conducted during both the rainy (maize growing) and dry seasons of 2023–2024, targeting infested maize fields and surrounding wild vegetation. A total of 2691 stemborer individuals were recovered from nine host plants, with 1474 (54.8%) from wild and fodder vegetation and 1217 (45.2%) from maize plantations. Species richness was highest in the mid-altitude zone, while overall abundance peaked at low altitudes. Busseola fusca was the most abundant in the high-altitude zone, Chilo partellus in the low altitude, and Sesamia spp. was concentrated in the mid-altitude. Seasonal variation significantly influenced population dynamic, with the highest abundance (1251; 46.4%) recorded during the dry season. Notably, Pennisetum purpureum (Napier grass) hosted 1156 (42.9%) of all specimens, highlighting its role as a key refugium during maize off-seasons. These findings underscore the ecological importance of wild vegetation in sustaining stemborer populations and suggest that wild vegetation, altitudinal, and seasonal factors must be considered in designing integrated lepidopteran stemborer pest management strategies.

In a series of detective novels published between 1957 and 1969 Chester Himes portrayed diverse individuals struggling for survival, wealth, and status in a fictionalized postwar Harlem, combining what Richard Wright called a “bio-social” perspective with an antiracist aesthetics that falsified simplistic racial categories. In this essay, I trace Himes’s renderings of bodily difference and transformation, highlighting features neglected by contemporaries such as Ellison and Baldwin as well as more recent critics and readers who frame Himes’s writings as protests against anti-Black violence. I conclude that Himes’s Harlem novels did not simply reflect violent realities of African American lives but instead exhibited unresolved conflicts between antiracist imperatives, namely a recognition of individual complexities on the one hand, and organized struggle against racially discriminatory institutions and practices on the other.

In alignment with the vision for the future of the European Union (EU) put forth by the European Green Deal in 2020, and EU efforts to tackle global deforestation and forest degradation, the EU Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) was adopted in June 2023. The EUDR is designed specifically as a unilateral, yet transnational, intervention to limit access to the EU market or the exports from the EU of seven key forest-risk commodities whenever they are linked with deforestation, forest degradation, or illegality. Drawing on decolonial and critical food systems scholarship, this article critically examines the EU’s position in combating global deforestation and forest degradation by positioning the EUDR in historically shaped and unequally constructed agri-food chains. Whereas the EU’s plan to decrease deforestation and forest degradation linked with its substantive consumption of products from the global south is an innovative step from the point of view of transnational governance of environmental degradation, we find that the historical amnesia, the emphasis on global trade, and the push for ‘green value chains’ fail to address the root causes of deforestation. Moreover, we contend that the EU legislator overlooked the potential of using transnational governance to rethink agri-food systems, including by promoting re-regionalization in the name of food sovereignty and the right to food.

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu announces that he would be the happiest of mortals if he could help men cure themselves of their prejudices. Though he demands that we understand prejudice’s role in his work, scholars have not excavated his whole strategy regarding it. Preliminary investigations have concluded that he sought to destroy prejudices because he had a high estimation of popular reason. This article argues that, while he does seek to eliminate prejudices that support despotism, he also encourages salutary ones for liberty. His whole strategy regarding prejudices shows that his use of them reflects a modest assessment of reason. By demonstrating that two of his well-known strategies for political reform—reinterpreting Christianity and encouraging commerce—concern salutary prejudices, this article reveals the centrality of prejudices to his political project overall.