This ethnographic study reassesses the role of opium in Iran’s economic landscape, challenging dominant narratives that frame opium users as unproductive and burdensome. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2018 in the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ), the research examines how construction workers use opium to endure and enhance productivity under extreme environmental and economic pressures. It critiques a century-long anti-opium discourse—rooted in the Iranian Constitutional Movement (1905–1911) and perpetuated through shifting regimes of criminalization and medicalization—that consistently associates opium use with economic idleness. Through autoethnographic reflection and archival analysis, the article first outlines this dominant discourse, then constructs a counternarrative in which laborers deliberately integrate opium into their daily practices to sustain bodily performance and contribute to Iran’s petroindustrial expansion. Described as “narco-nomad science,” this practice enables the formation of resilient working bodies and repositions opium as an active agent within circuits of capitalist production. Drawing on actor-network theory and assemblage thinking, the study foregrounds the material agency of opium. It offers new analytical frameworks for understanding its role in labor, infrastructure, and the political economy of the PSEEZ.

This article explores the third edition of William Habington (1605-1654)’s lyric poems, Castara (1640). This final edition of Castara—originally published in 1634 as a series of love poems to his wife, Lucy Herbert—was transformed by a prose sketch of ‘A Holy Man’ and twenty-two devotional poems. The article draws on Habington’s recusant roots and his engagement with French, Counter-Reformation Catholicism emanating from Queen Henrietta Maria’s court circle, and argues for an early modern Catholic poetics. It explores why these poems were published in 1640 and argues that this edition of Castara, by one of the ablest Catholics of his generation, offers a unique glimpse into, and understanding of, English Catholicism at the volatile political moment prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War.

This review article discusses five volumes that provide the final report on the excavations in Insula ix at Silchester (the ‘Town Life Project’), which began in 1997 and were completed in 2014:

M Fulford, A Clarke and H Eckardt 2006. Life and Labour in Late Roman Silchester: excavations in Insula ix since 1997 (Britannia Monogr no. 22), Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, London [henceforth Vol 1]

M Fulford and A Clarke 2011. Silchester: city in transition. The mid-Roman occupation of Insula ix c AD 125–250/300. A report on excavations undertaken since 1997 (Britannia Monogr no. 25), Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, London [henceforth Vol 2]

M Fulford, A Clarke, E Durham and N Pankhurst 2018. Late Iron Age Calleva: the pre-conquest occupation at Silchester Insula ix (Britannia Monogr no. 32), Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, London [henceforth Vol 3]

M Fulford, A Clarke, E Durham and N Pankhurst 2020. Silchester Insula ix. The Claudio-Neronian occupation of the Iron Age oppidum: the early Roman occupation at Silchester Insula ix (Britannia Monogr no. 33), Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies London [henceforth Vol 4]

M Fulford, A Clarke and N Pankhurst 2024. Silchester Insula ix: oppidum to Roman city c 85–125/150 (Britannia Monogr no. 37), Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, London [henceforth Vol 5]

There are numerous reports of trilobites that survived macrophagous attacks and whose injuries healed. Significantly, rarely observed, however, are such repaired injuries to the head or especially to the eyes. Here, we report and interpret the healed laceration of a phacopine trilobite eye, revealing details about the genetic program that established the order of lens arrangement in a schizochroal eye. The first and superordinate level is the arrangement of the lenses in vertical and spiral-horizontal rows, which not only seems to be a forced arrangement as a result of eye growth, but which follows a genetically determined program since the order of the lenses is completely restored in one step, even after the visual surface has been destroyed completely. The size of the lenses, and thus their light-gathering capacity, is more flexible and interacts with the context within the pattern of the lenses. The origin of the lesion remains unresolved.

In the Mississippian Southeast and Midwest, large fabric-impressed pans have traditionally been associated with the evaporation of brine to make salt. Although many of these vessels were undoubtedly used for this purpose, their presence at non-salt-making sites suggests that they sometimes served other functions. Using compound-specific isotope analysis, a sample of 74 fabric-impressed pan sherds from 12 sites in the Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee was tested for absorbed organic residues to better understand the role of this vessel form in Mississippian foodways. Four residues from four different sites yielded evidence of C4 plant contribution, indicating that these vessels were likely involved in the preparation of maize. Additionally, 27 interpretable residues suggest a broader range of use, with three samples containing potential indicators of fish or shellfish, pointing to their role in preparing nonmaize foods.

Studying Arik Shapira’s 1982/2003 opera Aqedah (Binding), this article probes the boundaries of Shapira’s resistance to the Zionist ideological apparatus. Having set the banishment of Ishmael (Genesis 21) side by side with the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), Shapira highlighted the intricate network of correspondences between these two stories while restoring balance to Jewish victimhood, which usually excluded Ishmael in favour of politically actualising Isaac. To reflect the brutality embedded in these biblical stories (nationally appropriated or not), Shapira disintegrated the text into syllables to which he assigned mostly even durations and inert pitches; the result was a deliberately unemotional and stringent reportage, whose violent conveyance equalled its desemanticisation. Shapira’s use of musical and textual ready-mades in the third movement of Aqedah is situated here alongside an oratorio that reverences similar ready-mades, and in so doing affirms the nationalisation of the Holocaust (Noam Sheriff’s The Revival of the Dead), and a poem by Yizhak Laor, which marks a dialectical threshold Shapira could never cross. Despite his ensnarement, Shapira’s almost vandalistic approach signalled the separation of art music from territorial nationalism.

Throughout the 21st century, many welfare states have expanded family policies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred significant, though varied, adjustments in family benefits across countries. This study conducts a qualitative comparative policy analysis of ten high-income countries, selected on the basis welfare regime theory, to examine how family policy changed during the COVID-19 crisis and whether these changes marked the beginning of new policy paths. The analysis shows that most institutional responses for families with children were incremental and temporary in nature, serving to reinforce rather than overhaul existing welfare systems. These results align with historical institutionalist theory and its emphasis on path dependence. Despite some convergence in emergency measures, long-standing differences in areas such as childcare availability and benefit generosity persist across the studies welfare state regimes. While the pandemic acted as a catalyst for certain policy innovations, it did not fundamentally disrupt the institutional logic underpinning family policy.

This article focuses on the effects of different communication modes – ‘contestatory’, ‘collaborative’, and ‘open’ (and two control groups – ‘information-only’ and a ‘placebo’ group) on reasoning and opinion formation in the context of conflictive collective decision problems. Focusing on two population-based survey experiments in Germany and Austria on the prioritization of health or freedom (Germany) and the introduction of mandatory vaccination (Austria) in the COVID-19 crisis, we find an important trade-off: while a contestatory and open mode enhances in-depth reasoning, a collaborative mode promotes constructive thinking. Regarding opinion formation, we find that when societal polarization is not extreme, communication modes do not matter for opinion (de-)polarization; here, the exposure to information is all that is needed to move minds. In highly polarized situations, however, open communication is the only way to communicatively reach out to people. Our results contradict both advocates of a contestatory and collaborative renewal of public discourse.

This article analyses the role of comparative analysis in free movement judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It argues that comparative analysis plays an important role in how the CJEU decides the outcome of free movement cases and that free movement law should thus be characterised as a comparative law method. The argument is developed in three steps. First, comparative analysis takes place in all structural parts of free movement cases. It is not exclusively or even primarily limited to the proportionality test. Second, the role of comparative analysis is directly linked to the effective application of the free movement provisions. This means that comparative analysis is not only relied on to engage in standard-setting (‘calibration’) in free movement cases—it is also used to determine which cases should fall within the scope of application of the free movement provisions (‘demarcation’). Third, because of the close relationship between comparative analysis and the effective application of the free movement provisions, it is possible to characterise negative integration as a comparative law method. Although one component of this method is based on the traditional functional method in comparative law, the main comparative method in free movement law is closely linked to cosmopolitan pluralism, because negative integration provides a ‘frame’ or structure through which Member States are required to investigate and respond to the national laws of other Member States. This method can be described as ‘the law of differentiation’, because it identifies, analyses the extent and assesses the legitimacy of differences in national laws in the context of the internal market.

As an ambivalent symbol of America’s relationship with the natural world of wild things, the bear acquired new importance in the years of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency (1901–1909). This article offers an interpretation of the significance of the bear at this time, looking at outdoor sportswriting and the cultural response to Roosevelt’s own bear-hunting exploits in that context. It finds two contrasting ideas of the bear, which appears both as a ferocious beast and as a bearskin trophy, a symbol of nature’s uncontrollable power and also a consumer object. Bear-hunting stories, it is proposed here, thus bridged two worlds: that of wild nature and that of human modernity. This, it suggests, was also the essential cultural function of Theodore Roosevelt’s public persona. Serving as president while assuming the unofficial role of bear-hunter-in-chief, and then becoming indelibly associated with sentimentalized cartoon or teddy bears, his image blurred the distinctions between the White House and the Rocky Mountains, modern life and the natural world. It is suggested in this way that the symbolism of the bear enabled Americans to navigate a way into the twentieth century, avoiding a hard choice between industrial modernity and wild nature by retaining a cultural space for both.

This article examines diasporic Iranian responses to protests sparked by the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini in September 2022. While Amini’s death galvanized widespread dissent inside Iran, it also spurred diasporic Iranian solidarity, often expressed through the call to “be the voice” of Iranian protestors. I analyze two key practices of diasporic narration: first, framing the Woman, Life, Freedom protests as a “revolution” in social media discourse; and second, the circulation of nostalgic video montages idealizing pre-1979 Iran as a lost era of political freedom. Together, these practices reveal how diasporic narratives may dilute protest demands by fitting them into revisionist frameworks. The conclusion reflects on both the potential and limits of diaspora narration in shaping political memory and understanding.

This study explores the relationship between tourism demand, both domestic and international, wine price, and wine consumption across European countries. Recognizing the cultural and economic significance of wine, particularly within Europe, this research examines how tourism spending influences wine consumption over time. Using panel data from 19 European countries between 2005 and 2021, the study finds that foreign tourism spending displays a nonlinear effect on wine consumption, initially decreasing but increasing at higher levels. Specifically, foreign spending initially reduces wine consumption but increases once spending crosses a critical threshold. Additionally, wine price shows a significant impact on consumption. These insights provide valuable implications for wine tourism stakeholders seeking to leverage tourism demand to support the wine sector and local economies.

In the 1990s, a protest rock movement developed on the American continent within informational capitalism, the democratisation of information and communication technologies, and the development of transnational social movements that fought against global powers. To complement the interpretations that understand this type of musical practice as a cultural aspect of social movements, or as commodities that obey the imperatives of the market, I use Auslander’s concept of performance to analyse how these protest rock groups deploy political ideologies linked to international leftist struggles, in the space and time of concerts and other types of mediations. Through an interpretive analysis, I identify some spatial, gestural, corporeal, and sound elements used to act out leftist political ideologies.

Although I am no longer religious, I do not disparage all forms of all religions nor trash all religious people. Still, I want to isolate significant deficiencies in many of those forms. I focus primarily on forms of Christianity since these are ones with which I – and many readers – are most familiar. I then show how non-religious people can achieve what religious ones do, without the baggage, by attending to what is most within our control.