This article examines the local context that led to the expulsion of Jews from Eastern Thrace in 1934. Going beyond the conventional state-centric narratives, it unearths the local socio-economic tensions that triggered the locals to target their Jewish neighbors. It highlights three major factors that fueled already-existing nationalist sentiments in the region: some Jewish merchants’ involvement in usury, Turkish–Muslim agricultural producers’ growing indebtedness due to the devastating impact of the Great Depression, and the government’s failure to support producers with appropriate credit policies. Faced with the danger of indebtedness and dispossession, the locals in this context deemed the small Jewish community as “the easy target,” scapegoating it for their ongoing problems amid Turkey’s nationalist political climate in the 1930s.

This article examines the evolution of bioethics over the past four decades since the publication of John Harris’ seminal work, “The Value of Life” (1985). It argues that while the core principles articulated by Harris remain relevant, bioethics has undergone significant transformation across four key domains. First, the expanding frontiers of biotechnology have necessitated engagement with complex issues beyond individual clinical ethics. Second, there has been a widening of the circle of moral concern to encompass nonhuman animals, disability rights, and global health equity. Third, bioethics has become increasingly entangled with public policy and governance. Finally, the field has seen substantial academic proliferation and institutionalization. These developments have pushed bioethics to adapt its frameworks and methodologies while maintaining fidelity to foundational principles. This article concludes by considering the future challenges and opportunities for bioethics in an increasingly complex technological and social landscape.

As the most populous city in China, Shanghai’s human waste disposal underwent a dramatic transition between 1949 and 2010. While human waste continued to be sold to farmers as fertilizer, the authorities attempted to modernize the methods of manual removal, promoting nightsoil dump stations and vacuum trucks from the early 1970s. These new methods soon became widespread. However, urban human waste gradually lost its value as fertilizer from the late 1970s, chiefly because of the popularization of chemical fertilizers, at which point Shanghai was faced with serious human waste issues. Encountering this unforeseen shift, the municipality had to accept the reality that there were no longer rural markets for urban human waste, and that it would have to start treating human waste as refuse. In contrast to the Western model, Shanghai’s approach to modernizing human waste disposal was distinctive, having been influenced by factors beyond the city.

Gambling has been Macau’s principal industry and a major source of income for the city for nearly 180 years. However, surprisingly little has been said about its urban impact and connections to a wider economy of vice, e.g. opium, pawnbroking and prostitution, which was consolidated in the second half of the nineteenth century mostly by the hands of a Chinese entrepreneurial elite. This article takes a novel approach to examining Macau’s early colonial development by historicizing the city’s modern economy from a different, mostly neglected urban angle. It shows that the development of vice businesses promoted the diversification of commercial activity, real estate development and the creation of public facilities, defining a type of ordinary urbanization, business-led rather than government-oriented, that affected Macau’s urban character and identity in durable ways.

Hunting pits are common archaeological features in northern landscapes, mainly researched from a morphological perspective, as dateable material is scarce. This has resulted in a limited and generalized understanding of hunting pits. While human land use in non-agrarian settings is often subtle, it can still be understood in terms of distribution and management by using relational approaches that address spatial organization and the nature of land use. This study, based on extensive field surveys and GIS analyses and guided by the concept of landscape domestication, has identified the characteristics of approximately 1500 previously unrecorded hunting pits in the Arctic region of Sweden. It examines how hunting pit systems, their selective spatial distribution, and strategic arrangement can be seen as expressions of landscape domestication. The author concludes that, through profound knowledge and deliberate resource management, communities invested in the landscape, generating dense spatial and temporal manifestations in the form of hunting pits. These systems reflect an elaborate hunting technique involving the whole landscape.

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) exemplify a dual-use neurotechnology with significant potential in both civilian and military contexts. While BCIs hold promise for treating neurological conditions such as spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the future, military decisionmakers in countries such as the United States and China also see their potential to enhance combat capabilities. Some predict that U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) will be early adopters of BCI enhancements. This article argues for a shift in focus: the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) should pursue translational research of medical BCIs for treating severely injured or ill SOF personnel. After two decades of continuous military engagement and on-going high-risk operations, SOF personnel face unique injury patterns, both physical and psychological, which BCI technology could help address. The article identifies six key medical applications of BCIs that could benefit wounded SOF members and discusses the ethical implications of involving SOF personnel in translational research related to these applications. Ultimately, the article challenges the traditional civilian-military divide in neurotechnology, arguing that by collaborating more closely with military stakeholders, scientists can not only help individuals with medical needs, including servicemembers, but also play a role in shaping the future military applications of BCI technology.

There is scientific consensus that an earthquake of a magnitude of at least 7 will soon occur on the North Anatolian Fault, which runs south of İstanbul. This earthquake would render one-fifth of İstanbul’s buildings uninhabitable, which means that approximately 200,000 buildings would be expected to suffer moderate or severe damage. As a part of preparedness for the anticipated earthquake, people in İstanbul are invited to have their buildings risk tested. This article, pivoting on cultural anthropology and science and technology studies, investigates how earthquake-proneness of buildings in İstanbul is technically and legally examined and determined. It ethnographically analyzes the risk assessments and demonstrates that the risk is enacted differently through distinctive engineering practices and legal regulations in different networks. When the two different risk assessment processes are examined in İstanbul, a building that is categorized as risky due to its earthquake vulnerability could be regarded as sturdy in the other assessment.

İstanbul was the only one of the capital cities of the defeated Central Powers to suffer a military occupation for almost five years between 1918 and 1923. The question posed in this Postscript is whether occupied Istanbul resembled cities within the orbit of the British and French empires of the time? The tentative answer we propose is that Istanbul was a cosmopolitan city turned into a colonial outpost of the British and French empires. Within this context, aspects of the cultural life of Istanbul took on a number of political colourations, examined by the authors whose essays precede the Postscript.