In 1919, a parliamentary act reconstructed the relations between the British state and the Church of England. The passage of this act had considerable constitutional, political, ecclesiastical, and religious significance, and it is best understood by considering all of these aspects together. The church obtained a new statutory status, a large degree of self-government, and a special legislative procedure that augmented the privileges of its ecclesiastical establishment. All this was achieved without the intense political struggles that had accompanied many church and state issues during the previous hundred years. The apparent ease of the Enabling Act's passage was symptomatic of transformations in the relationship between the Church of England and nonconformity, in public religion, and in the character of British politics. But it was also the outcome of an impressive feat of persuasion and organization. Although the act did not secure the intended degree of spiritual independence, as became painfully evident during the parliamentary prayer book crisis in 1927–28, it placed the church establishment in a more secure position, allowing it to reform its administration and finances and to gain further advantages and new forms of relevance in future years.

In this paper, I will argue that a number of well-known health interventions or initiatives could be considered anarchist, or at the very least are consistent with anarchist thinking and principles. In doing this I have two aims: First, anarchism is a misunderstood term—by way of example, I hope to first sketch out what anarchist solutions in health and healthcare could look like; second, I hope to show how anarchist thought could stand as a means to improve the health of many, remedying health inequalities acting as a buffer for the many harms that threaten health and well-being. On this second point, I will argue that there are a number of theoretical and instrumental reasons why greater engagement with anarchism and anarchist thinking is needed, along with how this could contribute to health and in addressing broader injustices that create and perpetuate poor health.

The study of stonemasons’ marks in ancient constructions, a subject that has been systematically investigated since the 1980s to the present, tends to focus on a few standard uses and consider other seemingly random patterns as issues of preservation, leaving the archaeological potential of such marks largely untapped. This article presents a methodological approach to explain these apparently arbitrary patterns and a diachronic analysis of local labour organization at Sagalassos in south-western Turkey in four case studies: the Upper Agora, Lower Agora, Hadrianic Nymphaeum, and Makellon. The spatial analysis of the stonemasons’ marks and examination of the stone carving techniques and epigraphic data suggest that the different marks were either produced by the same individuals and/or formed part of the same construction process.

Requests by patients for providers of specific demographic backgrounds pose an ongoing challenge for hospitals, policymakers, and ethicists. These requests may stem from a wide variety of motivations; some may be consistent with broader societal values, although many others may reflect prejudices inconsistent with justice, equity, and decency. This paper proposes a taxonomy designed to assist healthcare institutions in addressing such cases in a consistent and equitable manner. The paper then reviews a range of ethical and logistical challenges raised by such requests and proposed guidance to consider when reviewing and responding to them.

Position papers on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics are often framed as attempts to work out technical and regulatory strategies for attaining what is commonly called trustworthy AI. In such papers, the technical and regulatory strategies are frequently analyzed in detail, but the concept of trustworthy AI is not. As a result, it remains unclear. This paper lays out a variety of possible interpretations of the concept and concludes that none of them is appropriate. The central problem is that, by framing the ethics of AI in terms of trustworthiness, we reinforce unjustified anthropocentric assumptions that stand in the way of clear analysis. Furthermore, even if we insist on a purely epistemic interpretation of the concept, according to which trustworthiness just means measurable reliability, it turns out that the analysis will, nevertheless, suffer from a subtle form of anthropocentrism. The paper goes on to develop the concept of strange error, which serves both to sharpen the initial diagnosis of the inadequacy of trustworthy AI and to articulate the novel epistemological situation created by the use of AI. The paper concludes with a discussion of how strange error puts pressure on standard practices of assessing moral culpability, particularly in the context of medicine.

Some albums entail more than meets the ear. In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy surround representative works of Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) and Claude Debussy (1862–1918) with contextualizing selections from contemporaries. Compellingly rendered by Ransom Wilson and François Dumont, these discs document six decades of innovation. They also illuminate intriguing connections as well as fascinating contrasts among familiar and unfamiliar works. And each celebrates the art of the French flute. But there's more.

In a single serving of boba tea, the non-human actors of the tall plastic cups, plastic dome lids, and the giant plastic straws dominate, but receive little attention. This article uses recent theories and discussions of new materialism to bring together cultural analysis of the boba tea consumption phenomenon that could be relevant for reflecting on a sustainable future. The article contributes to social research of waste by focusing on the mediating functions of plastic before it becomes waste. My central argument is that plastic is not merely a physical and impartial container in the contemporary food and beverage industry. It plays an indispensable role in the visualization, mass mediation, and consumption of the boba tea beverage. While current waste research often focuses on the “afterlife” of plastic waste as it relates to underclass waste workers, recycling economy and global waste trade, this article highlights the performative function of plastic as it changes the way we imagine time, gender, and waste. I show it is the plastic cup that enables boba tea to be so visually and gastronomically satisfying in an age when the photogenicity and “Instagrammability” of food and beverage have become more relevant to taste and distinctions.

This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeting. Reading Robb and Harris's original article leaves the impression that there is an essentialist ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Bronze Age’ gender, the former being under-theorized, unclear, and unstable, the latter binary, unchangeable, and ideological. While Robb and Harris have clearly advanced the discussion on gender, the perspectives and case studies presented here, while critical of their views, take the debate further, painting a more complex and diverse picture that strives to avoid essentialism.

Pekka Louhiala crosses disciplines and decades to present a remarkably detailed review of the existing literature on placebos, placebo effects, and related concepts. The problem at hand—and Louhiala does aptly frame it as a problem—is a striking lack of consensus among researchers, scholars, and clinicians regarding virtually all aspects of the placebo topic. In capturing the complexity of this problem, Louhiala expertly compiles an extensive catalog of placebo literature that effectively gives the reader both a map of the territory and a legend to decipher it. He does not, however, give us clear directions to find our way out of the conceptual maze. The focus is often more on the problems than their solutions, which is simultaneously the most notable weakness and the greatest strength of the book.

In today's Europe, commemorations can be times at which to affirm international reconciliation, based notably on the knowledge produced by historians who are becoming progressively cosmopolitan. However, commemorations are also used by national-populist political parties for electoral purposes and can lead to tensions with neighbouring states. This was the case in Trieste in September 2019, when the city council executive (controlled by a right-wing national-populist coalition) decided to erect a statue of Gabriele D'Annunzio, 100 years after he had occupied the nearby city of Fiume (now Rijeka) in Croatia. This commemoration led to a series of debates among historians, especially in Italy. Based on a critical discourse analysis and an interdiscursive approach to narratives produced by historians for colleagues and for the broader society, the current research investigates the use of cosmopolitanism in the field of history when in parallel a commemoration is coordinated by national-populist forces in a public space.

Debt imprisonment was one of the tools a creditor had to enforce a debt. When creditors believed that their debtors were defaulting, they could imprison debtors to ensure they would not disappear and debts would be settled. As a practice, debt imprisonment was never fundamentally challenged in the Middle Ages though the way it was executed did come under scrutiny. In the city of Bruges, the city magistrate regulated the practice. As debt imprisonment was an essential part of the commercial framework in Bruges, the city tried to avoid princely interference. However, merchants could also complain to princely courts about their imprisonment. If the city hesitated to address unjust practices in the existing framework, it risked losing these cases to princely courts. As princely institutions increased their control over debt imprisonment, the city government kept the mechanism of debt imprisonment while, for example, Antwerp sought alternative tools for creditors. The adaptations that did happen in Bruges were not the result of the requests of merchants, but a means of rather safeguarding its own jurisdictions from princely courts.

The centenary of the March on Rome has prompted Modern Italy's Contexts and Debates section to focus on the public uses of history in reference to interwar Fascism. We are looking into the ‘Past, Present, and Future of the Italian Memory of Fascism’, to borrow the title of Guido Bartolini's interviews that were published in our issue 27 (4), 2022. While commemorations and anniversaries shouldn't inherently influence academic research agendas, a broader understanding of public memory can help us to understand the current political mood in Italy. For example, it can explain why the centennial and other comparable ‘fascist’ anniversaries now have little meaning for most of the Italian public and are scarcely addressed by politicians. Indeed, most Italians seems to suffer from political amnesia. The condition is so serious that not even a dramatic occurrence such as the victory of the proudly post-fascist Fratelli d'Italia party at the election of September 2022 has proved able to cure it. Happening just a few days before the centenary of the March on Rome, the electoral results were surely expected to elicit a strong reaction by left-wing politicians and intellectuals – perhaps a mass demonstration, like the one that took place in Milan on 25 April 1994, in the aftermath of the first victory of Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition, when another post-fascist party, Alleanza Nazionale, took power. Yet nothing of that sort has happened in 2022. Why?

Literary culture after 1945 took shape in a context where a handful of colonial empires were replaced by (at present count) nearly two hundred sovereign nation-states whose domestic politics, foreign policy, and cultural life were profoundly shaped by their relationship to the Cold War superpowers. One of the striking features of the historiography of this post-1945 world is that its two most salient themes—the Cold War, and decolonization—have so often been treated in isolation from each other. Postcolonialism and Cold War studies have, as Monica Popescu tells us, followed “separate, largely non-intersecting paths” (6). Yet even a superficial summary of the key geopolitical developments of the postwar period suggests that the Cold War and decolonization are not just interconnected, but mutually determining. When you take into account the decolonizing world, in some places afflicted by devastating proxy wars in this period, it must be said (it has often been said) that the Cold War was cruelly misnamed. This dual history has shaped our political language. A term like the West, as it is used in academic debates as well as in political, journalistic, and policymaking fields, developed its particular set of associations by contrast with the communist Eastern bloc on the one hand and with the (post)colonial global south on the other. Yet these two versions of the non-Western don’t always line up: although anticolonial movements often sought to align themselves with the international communist movement, many proudly independent postcolonial nation-states were explicitly anti-communist (like the neoliberal regimes in Singapore and South Korea). Other postcolonies grappled with the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China as a colonial power.