Paul-Louis Simond’s 1898 experiment demonstrating fleas as the vector of plague is today recognised as one of the breakthrough moments in modern epidemiology, as it established the insect-borne transmission of plague. Providing the first exhaustive examination of primary sources from the Institut Pasteur’s 1897–98 ‘India Mission’, including Simond’s notebooks, experiment carnets and correspondence, and cross-examining this material with colonial medical sources from the first years of the third plague pandemic in British India, the article demonstrates that Simond’s engagement with the question of the propagation of plague was much more complex and ambiguous than the teleological story reproduced in established historical works suggests. On the one hand, the article reveals that the famous 1898 experiment was botched, and that Simond’s misreported its ambiguous findings for the Annales de l’Institut Pasteur. On the other hand, the article shows that, in the course of his ‘India Mission’, Simond framed rats as involved in the propagation of plague irreducibly in their relation to other potential sources of infection and not simply in terms of a parasitological mechanism. The article illuminates Simond’s complex epidemiological reasoning about plague transmission, situating it within its proper colonial and epistemological context, and argues for a new historical gaze on the rat as an ‘epidemiological dividual’, which highlights the relational and contingent nature of epidemiological framings of the animal during the third plague pandemic.

This paper investigates two New Kingdom Egyptian texts pertaining to labour regulation: the Karnak Decree of Horemheb and the Nauri Decree of Seti I. They focus on combating the unauthorized diverting of manpower and represent the oldest Egyptian texts (fourteenth–thirteenth century BCE) explicitly concerned with the legal dimension of managing the workforce. After a brief historical overview, the paper outlines each text's key content and stylistic features. It shows that while some of these are likely native to Egypt, others may have been imported from Mesopotamia. More specifically, it appears that the sentence structure is native Egyptian, but the sanctions deployed are likely of foreign origin, aligning more closely to the contemporary punitive tradition of Mesopotamia. This is probably no coincidence, given the close contact between Egypt and the broader Near East at that time. This uptake of foreign ideas may have achieved more efficient labour regulation by enforcing stricter rules for non-compliance while simultaneously maintaining a veneer of Egyptian authenticity in line with official state ideology.

John Witte, Jr.’s book The Blessings of Liberty contains an important message about the origins and continuing relevance of religious liberty. Based on careful historical analysis of the development of religious liberty in England and the US, Witte demonstrates the importance of Protestant thinking both to the right and to human rights more generally. In the process he refutes both Christian and post-Enlightenment sceptics. His discussion of contemporary US and European law shows how much the right is still needed today, despite the claims of contemporary scholars that freedom of religion and belief is a redundant right.

As the climate and biodiversity crises gain unprecedented attention, many governments across the global north are taking legislative steps to address deforestation in supply chains linked to their domestic consumption or commercial activities, among them, the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU).1

This article examines the emergence of modern psychiatric discourse under the culturally Islamic yet radically secular context of the early Turkish republic (1923-1950). To do so, it focuses on the psychiatric publications of Mazhar Osman [Uzman] (1884-1951), the widely acknowledged “father” of modern Turkish psychiatry; and aims to genealogically trace his scientific project of reconceptualizing ruh, an Arabo-Turkish concept that predominantly refers to transcendental soul, rendering it physiologically within the framework of biological-descriptive psychiatry. The article consequently addresses the elusive and multilayered psychiatric language emerged in Turkey as a result of modern psychiatry’s interventions into a field that was previously defined by religion and indigenous traditions. Attempting to contextualize republican psychiatric discourse within the cultural and socio-political circumstances that has produced it, the article sheds light on how the new psychiatric knowledge propagated by Mazhar Osman was formulated in constitutive contradistinction to religious or traditional discourses, explicitly associating them with the Ottoman past and its alleged backwardness, hence reverberating with the Kemalist project of modern Turkish state building. Furthermore, by focusing on the complexities of the Turkish psychiatric language and the contestations it has generated, the article aims to reflect on the ways in which the Turkish psychiatric language was (and presumably still is) haunted by earlier forms of Islamic knowledge and traditions, despite modern psychiatry’s as well as modern secular state’s systematic and authoritative attempts to erase them for good.

In the late Soviet period, a great deal of research was conducted on older people’s health, with the Institute of Gerontology Academy of Medical Sciences (AMN) USSR in Kyiv spearheading a great deal of this. Of particular interest was older people’s ability to work beyond retirement age, the issue of premature ageing, as well as physical activity, diet and living conditions. Many of these interests came under the concept of ‘gerohygiene’, which also reflected the Soviet Union’s prophylactic approach to eldercare (and healthcare more generally). Discussions about older people and Soviet research on gerohygiene are important for furthering our understanding of ideas around healthy ageing and the Soviet project more generally. The Soviet, and indeed socialist, research on gerohygiene sheds light on ideas around active ageing, premature ageing and work practices for older people. It also shows that the role of old people belonged to the wider Soviet effort of contributing to the communist project and shaping society. In this article, I define and examine the broad concept of ‘gerohygiene’ and then assess how gerohygiene applied to older people’s health in relation to both physical activity and labour.

This project investigates the intonation of canonical (information-seeking) and non-canonical wh-in-situ echo questions conveying repetition and surprise in Northern Peninsular Spanish. Data from 14 female participants were collected via a contextualised elicitation task. The following correlates were examined: (i) the melodic curve of the wh-in-situ question, (ii) the nuclear peak (in Hz), (iii) the wh-tonal range (i.e. the difference between the lowest nuclear Low and the highest boundary High), and (iv) the nuclear contour. Results show that all wh-in-situ questions investigated display similar melodic curves and nuclear contours, but canonical questions have significantly lower nuclear peaks and wh-tonal ranges than non-canonical questions. Echo-repetition and echo-surprise questions also differ in nuclear peak and wh-tonal range. We propose a tentative analysis, whereby canonical in-situ questions have a final H% boundary tone, in contrast to non-canonical questions, which have an extra-High (upstepped) final boundary tone (¡H%).

As opposed to overdemanding principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too much, there are overpermissive principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too little. Determining the extent to which one should sacrifice often comes with the need of understanding what is of moral significance. By analysing different readings of moral significance, and singling out one specific interpretation of moral significance which links moral significance to gaining or losing a considerable amount of welfare, I demonstrate that one of the well-known principles of Peter Singer, the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice, is overpermissive as it exempts deliberately cultivated morally significant lavish pursuits from the domain of sacrifice. Overpermissiveness not only renders moral principles unreasonably broad but also causes burdens to be distributed unjustifiably in a comparative sense, where some parties are assigned a moral obligation whereas others are not.

Contemporary population ethics is dominated by views that aggregate by summing, whether of well-being or of some construct based on well-being. In contrast, average well-being is generally considered axiologically irrelevant. To many of us, however, the number of future people does not seem important, as long as it is sufficient to enable rich and varied life experiences, and as long as the population continues throughout time. It therefore seems relatively plausible to aggregate future well-being by averaging. In particular, it seems plausible to value high average well-being at any particular time, and to do so for all future times. I present a time-sensitive version of the Average View that underpins such axiological intuitions. I also address a series of issues and objections that confront such a view.

On 25 June 2021, a historic fisheries Agreement entered into force: The Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO). Nine countries and the European Union agreed to refrain from any commercial fishing in the CAO and to jointly undertake a scientific effort to understand ecosystem dynamics, including fish populations. This was the first multilateral Agreement to take a legally binding, precautionary approach to protect an area from commercial fishing before fishing had begun. The Agreement is a textbook example of the precautionary principle as it works to take “preventive action in the face of uncertainty.” However, despite the precautionary principle’s popularity with natural resource academics, it is rare for countries to forego economic benefits and to adopt this approach in managing resources. So, what made this Agreement possible? And what can we learn from this Agreement that could provide guidance on other resource management challenges? This paper explores the unique conditions that made this Agreement possible and examines how success was achieved by the interrelationships of science, policy, legal structures, politics, stakeholder collaboration, and diplomacy. In summary, this paper concludes that a series of factors helped make this Agreement possible, including but not limited to: scientific breakthroughs coupled with science-based legal frameworks; proactive partnerships between industry, environmental non-profits, and government; willingness of international stakeholders to learn from prior mistakes; and a nation willing to be the first-mover in foregoing future economic profits within their own Exclusive Economic Zone to order to benefit ecosystems beyond their waters.

In the past four decades or so, China scholars have shone a new light on the history of labour in late imperial China, particularly on the role of the household as a unit of production and on the contribution of women to commercial production and family income. Beyond members of the kin group itself, attention is seldom paid to the individuals brought into the Chinese households solely to provide additional manpower. To “break the carapace” of the late imperial Chinese household, this article focuses on the often-omitted “household workers”, that is, on its enslaved (nubi) and hired (gugong) constituents. It approaches the topic from the angle of the vulnerability of these non-kin “workers” to punishments and violence. To evaluate their vulnerability to punishment and gauge the disciplinary powers of the household heads, it examines the relationship between punishments and “household workers” in Ming law. It then explores lineage regulations, before moving closer to the ground by mobilizing a wider variety of day-to-day sources, such as contracts and narrative sources produced in the context of the late Ming and early Qing crisis.

The mainstream studies of the East Asian tributary system have been exhibiting a stance that tends to stress the importance of Confucianism in forming and sustaining the tributary system throughout its long history. However, there are still several questions (especially those of a theoretical nature) that historians have yet to answer: How could Confucianism have contributed to the formation and sustenance of this tributary system? Why could this Confucian-based tributary system be recognized and employed in relations with non-Confucian frontier tribes? Why could this system have worked with both the nomadic tribes on the northern frontier and the South-East Asian countries that were neither Confucian nor nomadic? Drawing on the results of ritual studies in anthropology, Chinese historiography and Chinese philosophy, this author seeks a broader methodology that can be used to conceptualize the tributary ritual and its constitutive power structure, which forms the foundation of the central part of the East Asian world order. This paper is a theoretical attempt to find a non-Sinocentric way to interpret the formally Sinocentric tribute system in premodern East Asia.

This article presents an empirical study of six grievance mechanisms in multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). It argues that key characteristics of each grievance mechanism as well as the contexts in which they operate significantly affect human rights outcomes. However, even the most successful mechanisms only manage to produce remedies in particular types of cases and contexts. The research also finds that it is prohibitively difficult to determine whether ‘effective’ remedy has been achieved in individual cases. Furthermore, the key intervention by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), to prescribe a set of effectiveness criteria for designing or revising MSI grievance mechanisms, itself appears ineffective in stimulating better outcomes for rights-holders. Drawing on these findings, the article reflects on the future potential and limitations of MSI grievance mechanisms within broader struggles to ensure business respect for human rights.

With the abolition of the guild system and the rise of a new legal regime based on free contract, a central dilemma emerged in Europe: how to enforce labour control in this new era of individual economic freedom. This article examines how this issue was addressed in the State of Milan, where ideas about freedom of contract championed by state reformers such as Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria were met with continued requests from merchant-manufacturers to apply corporal punishment and threat of imprisonment to ensure workers’ attendance. Analysing the new regulations, the ideological credos of the new regime, and the effectiveness of the reforms as they played out on the ground in the silk industry, this article shows that the chance that labour relations could be managed within a civil law regime appeared to be in direct contrast with the dominant conception of workers’ conditions, in particular their lack of propriety and good faith. As credit-debt bonds and limitations to weavers’ mobility stood as the most effective means to ensure labour coercion, a closer look at the daily interactions in the workshop allows us to shed new light on the rationality of workers’ practices like Saint Monday, cast by contemporary commentators in merely moralistic terms.