\n<\/p>\n
Somatosphere welcomes you to the July edition of \u201cIn the Journals.\u201d Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals.<\/p>\n
Cultural Anthropology<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Out of Time? Chronocracy and Ageism in Brexit\u2013COVID-19 England<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Cathrine Degnen<\/p>\n Generation or relative age is a common way humans define social difference. In Europe and North America, old age is frequently perceived as a period of decline and loss, a condition \u201csuccessful aging\u201d paradigms exhort individuals to avoid for as long as possible. Explicit and implicit ageist beliefs, discourses, and practices marginalize later life, portraying it as undesirable and inferior. This essay explores how imagined generational relationships with time\u2014younger people as future facing, older people as out of time\u2014enrol linear, future-oriented temporal perspectives in reproducing ageism. The aftermath of the Brexit referendum, followed closely by the COVID-19 pandemic, serve as my ethnographic examples. These two extraordinary events permit me to highlight how chronocracy (Kirtsoglou and Simpson 2020)\u2014that is, the denial of coevalness or coexistence in time through everyday temporal\u00a0regimes\u2014reinforces unequal power dynamics, and to explore how generational groups are differently valued in contemporary England.<\/p>\n Act Blur, Live Longer: Muslim Artists Blurring the Categories of Singapore\u2019s Smart City<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n James McGrail<\/p>\n In 2024, Singapore was again named \u201cSmartest City in Asia,\u201d a position achieved through the strategic deployment of surveillance infrastructures and technocratic governance. This article explores the practices of three Muslim artists whose work challenges the limiting categorizations produced by the intertwined logics of Smart Nation governance and state racialization. Based on fieldwork conducted since 2022, I argue that by offering their work plausible deniability through the strategy of \u201cblurring,\u201d these artists operate in the highly surveilled context of Singapore by being unclear publicly. This not just marks a strategy of evasion. By engaging with the anthropologies of Islam and surveillance, I argue that these artworks disrupt established categories, revealing the inherent complexities of identity obscured by technological efficiency and racial categories. Through these works, which go beyond the visible, these artists create space to imagine something otherwise by complicating the neat categorization of the Singapore state.\u00a0<\/p>\n Poisonous Images: Taranto\u2019s Environmental Crisis between the Visible and the Invisible<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jasmine Clotilde Pisapia<\/p>\n This article explores poisonous images\u2014images that both register and trouble the visibility of toxicity in Taranto, Italy, one of Europe\u2019s most polluted cities due to the continent\u2019s largest steel factory. Centered on photographs taken in the city\u2019s contaminated cemetery, the essay asks how slow violence can be apprehended ethnographically when pollution remains unevenly perceptible and causally elusive. I argue that the photographic image, beyond its forensic or legal promise, functions as an ethnographic hinge between matter and meaning, visibility and refusal, foregrounding aesthetics as a political as much as a sensory problem. Through three photographic acts produced by cemetery workers, a local performance artist, and myself (as anthropologist), the article proposes \u201cflickering\u201d as an anthropological method\u2014attuned to the intermittence between visible\/invisible, absence\/presence, and the oscillation of death in everyday life. These poisonous images do not stabilize evidence: they pulse in and out of consciousness, capturing uncertainty and unequally distributed exposures and sensibilities. The cemetery emerges as both site and figure for grasping the metamorphosis of death amid the environmental crisis, where mourning and inheritance remain perpetually unsettled.<\/p>\n The Traffic in Repairmen and a Case of Gender Impropriety in Post-War Sarajevo<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Halide Velio\u011flu<\/p>\n In postwar Sarajevo, repair is mainly a masculine activity, and people lean on communal networks to get things fixed under dire economic circumstances. Yet increased numbers of women without men in their households as an effect of the war necessitate the mediation of other women in facilitating access to men\u2019s labor. Women of social capital who have access to men gain prestige by proffering male repair services. Examining the case of a gender-nonconforming woman provides rich insight into the pivotal role that \u201cgender propriety\u201d plays in establishing systems of daily care, normalcy,\u00a0and social order in Bosnia. The mundane gendered work of repairing broken things ultimately depends on cultivating, sustaining, and sometimes recalibrating relationships among women.<\/p>\n \u201cTo hell with symbols!\u201d: Men, Pigeons, and the Violence of Interpretation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Robbie Peters<\/p>\n This article examines men who race pigeons in the back alleys of an Indonesian neighborhood amid government crackdowns on gambling. It introduces the equivocal pigeon: a bird these men present as a-symbolic, or incapable of saying things for or about them. The equivocal pigeon is an intellectually provocative animal that upsets commonsense ideas about birds and men and meaning and turns the city inside out by bringing its back alleys into view but not into understanding. The article shows how racing pigeons achieve this feat by drawing men into busy alleys while shrouding them in a thicket of opaque interactions. It views the city from its alleys, where the pigeon confounds postcolonial ways of knowing and governing people. Building on Javanese ways of not knowing, it shows how the pigeon is a meaning-defying animal that protects men from what they call the violence of interpretation (kekerasan interpretasi<\/em>).<\/p>\n Wounds in Utopia: The Politics of Gay Football in 4T Mexico<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Max D. L\u00f3pez Toledano<\/p>\n LGBT+ football teams have proliferated in Mexico in recent years, allowing communities who previously struggled with feeling at the margins of the nation to make new claims to respectability and national belonging. At the same time, these have developed surprising alliances with political parties, blurring in some cases the relationships of partisan representation that Mexican electoral politics are built on. These patterns, I contend, have been largely enabled by the sociopolitical transformations of Mexico\u2019s 4T movement, which has instilled a climate of change surrounding cultural hierarchies of gender and sexuality. In this context, emergent fractures within queer groups have shed light on the contradictions of \u201cMexican humanism,\u201d Mexico\u2019s newly coined political philosophy. Exhibiting the characteristics of a human security regime, Mexico\u2019s 4T acts as backdrop to a broader array of political paradoxes that accompany the country\u2019s gay football scene\u2014a space of \u201cwounds in utopia,\u201d where wounds, healing, and violence may all coexist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Alienating \u201cDead Capital,\u201d Eating Moral Principle: Patriarchal Obligation, Land Sale, and Desires of Abandon on Kenya\u2019s Urban Frontier<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Peter Lockwood<\/p>\n North of Nairobi, the city\u2019s sprawl enters a landscape of impoverished smallholders, causing land prices to skyrocket. Kenya\u2019s economic commentators urge these part-time proletarians to sell their land\u2014deemed unproductive \u201cdead capital\u201d\u2014as an antidote for rural poverty. Senior men from the region insist this ancestral land cannot be sold, because retaining it while working for wages constitutes the cornerstone of\u00a0masculine personhood. However, in a world of peri-urban destitution, where wages cannot provision desires for middle-class lifestyles, masculine principles of land retention are being abandoned for experiences of abandon. Male landowners alienate family land to fund lifestyles of conspicuous consumption, especially in alcohol. The consumption of dead capital to furnish desires of abandon suggests that Nairobi\u2019s urban expansion is made possible by such binge economies of land on its peri-urban peripheries. The conclusion proposes consumption as a theory of changing moral orientations to the short term when people encounter economic dead ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hierarchical Precarity: Dance Hosting, Labor Struggles, and Masculine Insecurities in China<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Juan Chen<\/p>\n Young Chinese male migrant workers partner with middle-aged women in dance halls, and sell intimacy and romantic relationships in everyday locations as \u201cdance hosts.\u201d Dance hosts experience considerable job precarity and masculine insecurities. While frequently expressing a desire to leave, most hosts remain in the profession\u00a0and perpetuate their precarious existence. This article explores the relationship between precarity as a labor condition and precarity as an ontological experience among dance hosts. I argue that while precarious labor may stabilize daily living, it also causes new insecurities that destabilize people\u2019s lives. This article theorizes the concept of\u00a0hierarchical precarity\u00a0to explain labor motivation and suggests that the decision to engage in precarious labor hinges on its capacity to address one\u2019s most pressing insecurities, outweighing the additional precarity it creates. I conclude by highlighting how gender relates to different forms of labor struggle and workers\u2019 agency in navigating the hierarchically ranked precarity and masculinities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bitter Sweetness: Compelling Greenhouse Farming and the Inter-Mobility among Middle-Aged Farmers in North China<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Yue Liao<\/p>\n This article examines how middle-aged Chinese farmers navigate their position between a highly mobile new urban elite and the traditionally immobile elderly peasantry through a set of practices I term inter-mobility. Based on ethnographic research in Huanglu village, I explore how their adoption of new greenhouse technologies is shaped by both the shifting political-economic landscape of post-socialist China and their desire to align kin-based solidarities with emerging values of progress. I argue that these farmers use greenhouse farming to cultivate a strategic, in-between position, distinguishing themselves from the perceived stasis of the older generation while upholding familial commitments, unlike the perceived rootlessness of younger urban entrepreneurs. This inter-mobility is animated by an ethos of yongxin, which frames their entrepreneurial risk-taking as a form of intergenerational care. The study highlights how China\u2019s broader societal transformations generate not just new agricultural technologies but also new subjectivities within its stratified mobility regimes.<\/p>\n Recalling the Suicide: Affective Storytelling and the Ethics of \u201cGood\u201d Womanhood<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Anjali Krishan<\/p>\n Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Delhi, this article examines middle-class married women\u2019s stories about the suicides of their female neighbors. Paying attention to \u201cwhat moves\u201d women emotionally and \u201cwhat matters\u201d to them in recounting their stories of life and willful death, these stories are ethical commentaries on what constitutes \u201cgood\u201d womanhood, specifically \u201cHindu\u201d womanhood. Anthropological scholarship in South Asia has established that supposedly good womanhood hinges on how successful middle-class women are in pursuing a modern, globalized \u201cgood life\u201d while being rooted in traditional, predominantly Hindu, cultural norms and values. This analysis of suicide storytelling demonstrates that women are not passive subjects of this binary; instead, they actively adjudicate the ethical validity of mainstream constructs of good Hindu womanhood, in the process questioning middle-class understandings of what constitutes a life worth living and whose suffering matters. Such ethical questioning allows the narrators to make political claims for recognition\u00a0and rights while performing a subtle critique of the prevailing gender politics within Modi\u2019s India.<\/p>\n Rust and Reparations: Memory, Labor, and the Politics of Repair in Senegal\u2019s Railway Workshop<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Charline Kopf<\/p>\n This essay examines the multivalences of repair in Senegalese railway workshops, where workers maintain and modify aging wagons from suburban and former transnational rail services, originally imported from France, and later from India and Pakistan. I trace three interrelated dimensions of repair. First, I show how repair operates as both replacement and improvisation, challenging the assumption that maintenance necessarily counteracts decay; instead, it can accelerate deterioration. Second, I analyze repair as reappropriation, focusing on workers\u2019 \u201ctropicalization\u201d of foreign technologies to fit local conditions. Finally, I explore how the inevitability of failure, stemming from the machines\u2019 inherent faults, demands creative mending and continuous perseverance. These practices generate not only new objects assembled from scrap but also narratives of West African railway workers whose engineering contributions have long been marginalized in colonial and postcolonial histories. Material patching thus becomes an act of reparation, asserting technical authorship and forging alternative histories of infrastructure, labor, and expertise.\u00a0<\/p>\n East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Welcome to\u30c8\u30d4\u30a2Topia!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Erika Szymanski, Koichi Mikami & Jane Calvert<\/p>\n We have written the introduction to this special issue on responsible research and innovation (RRI) in the UK and Japan as a visitor\u2019s guide to an imaginary island holiday park to emphasize how we have centered the situatedness<\/em> of practices that contribute to responsibility in science and technology. Our overarching argument is that RRI cannot be discussed as a program without foregrounding its location, and that RRI therefore needs \u201calternative practices\u201d\u2014heuristics that inspire adaptation in context\u2014above \u201cbest practices\u201d that might be exported from historic centers of investment to historically marginalized peripheries. We have also gravitated to experiment and play as strategies to find more space for intellectually rich, personally satisfying, and collectively enjoyable work amid pressures for STS researchers to take on rote service work under RRI mandates. We welcome you to the place\u2014\u30c8\u30d4\u30a2topia\u2014that our collaboration has built and invite you to travel with us through the alternative practices we have sketched out here.<\/p>\n Histories of Scientific Responsibility in Japan and the United Kingdom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Yuko Fujigaki, Ryuma Shineha, Robert D. J. Smith & Steve Sturdy<\/p>\n We historicize talk of social responsibility in relation to science and technology. By charting the multiple and contested notions of responsibility that scientists have espoused from the early twentieth century to the present, we show how scientists have used the word strategically, at different times and in different contexts, to project their preferred views of how science should relate to wider society. Comparing Japan and the UK enables us to highlight both the context-specific meanings that scientists have associated with responsibility, and the way that such meanings have come into conversation with one another. By so doing, it also helps us think about the purpose and implications of current and emerging configurations of \u201cresponsible\u201d research and innovation\u2014including how those configurations may shield scientists from certain kinds of responsibility while embracing others.<\/p>\n The Rise of Public Engagement in Japan and the UK: Reconsidering Conventional Narratives through a Cross-country Dialogue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Koichi Mikami, Erika Szymanski, Jusaku Minari, Robert Smith & Niki Vermeulen<\/p>\n This paper juxtaposes major historical developments in public engagement in Japan and the UK to unsettle the idea that the UK experience of how \u201cpublics\u201d have been accounted for in science policy might be taken as a common or representative story. In comparison to the UK and European moves \u201cfrom deficit to dialogue,\u201d recent events in Japan are much less well-known internationally, and do not follow the same pattern. Rather than being either \u201cahead\u201d or \u201cbehind,\u201d Japan\u2019s experience has connected similar concepts or approaches in different ways. We highlight these contrasts to challenge and open up dominant Western narratives, to create space for considering how movements for public engagement with science\u2014or what has been called \u201cthe participatory turn\u201d\u2014may unfold in different ways across different contexts. Simultaneously, we point to idiosyncrasies in the UK experience that may not always be observed as such. In so doing, we demonstrate that connections\u2014or, as it may be, the absence of connections\u2014between public engagement, science policy, and social responsibility cannot be taken for granted and must be addressed in specific contexts.<\/p>\n Two Tales of Long-term Collaboration: Social Scientific Involvement in Artificial Intelligence in Japan and Synthetic Biology in the UK<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Arisa Ema & Jane Calvert<\/p>\n Researchers in science and technology studies (STS) are increasingly being called upon to contribute to research programs in the natural sciences and engineering, often under the heading of ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI), or more recently, responsible research and innovation (RRI). There has been little work to date that compares these experiences across countries and contexts. In this paper, we present two accounts of STS involvement\u2014in artificial intelligence in Japan and synthetic biology in the UK. Although we work in two different technoscientific fields in two different countries, similarities emerge. Our accounts both show the importance of long-term, low-stakes collaborations, built up organically over time\u2014collaborations that trouble the distinction between being either an \u201cinsider\u201d or an \u201coutsider\u201d to a technoscientific field. We argue that RRI is more likely to be expansive and imaginative if it is done in the context of such collaborations, and that it is important for research funders to cultivate the conditions that make them possible. We end by calling for more tales from STS researchers of their experiences of RRI and ELSI across countries and contexts, to provide tools and resources for future collaborative work.<\/p>\n The Soba Restaurant and the Oyster Bar: Peripheral Spaces for Responsible Research and Innovation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Robert Smith, Ken Kawamura, Erika Szymanski, Ryuma Shineha & Jane Calvert<\/p>\n As STS researchers working closely with scientists and engineers, we have been invited into, created, reluctantly entered, and stumbled upon many kinds of spaces, some of which might be considered spaces for responsible research and innovation. Here we discuss a selection of these spaces, drawing on our work in synthetic biology in the UK and molecular robotics in Japan. They include a multidisciplinary workshop, a public engagement event, an art performance, and several panels at scientific conferences on the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by our fields of study. Many of the spaces were owned and controlled by scientists and engineers, and our participation in them was constrained by pre-existing frames. But even in those spaces we designed ourselves it was difficult to challenge institutionalized practices and dominant understandings of the relationship between the natural and social sciences. We often found that those places that were most conducive to provocative, productive and critical cross-disciplinary dialogue were at the peripheries of formal events. We explore the importance of peripheral spaces for RRI, drawing on the examples of interactions that took place at a soba restaurant and an oyster bar.<\/p>\n Informal, Institutional and Interdependent Openings for Responsible Research and Innovation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sujatha Raman & Dan Santos<\/p>\n Cross-cultural comparisons generate valuable insights about how the social sciences can shape technoscientific domains and trajectories. In this Special Issue Commentary, we reflect on the rich insights contained in the articles exploring social scientific experiences with responsible research and innovation (RRI) in Japan and the UK, and organize our reflections around three types of opening for thinking about and approaching RRI going forward. First, we affirm the importance of exploring informal spaces for cultivating RRI, especially for consolidating connections and opening up opportunities. Secondly, and relatedly, we argue that possibilities for informality are intertwined with the institutional (e.g. projects, practices, norms), and much can be learned from comparing different experiences at this nexus. Finally, we draw attention to the productive potential of investigating interdependencies for enabling novel ways of approaching RRI, with respect to both forging collaborations between social and biophysical researchers, and in framing and undertaking public engagement initiatives.<\/p>\n Ethos<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Charisma revisited: Or why narcissism matters<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jeff Bennett<\/p>\n In 1990 Charles Lindholm published his landmark study of\u00a0Charisma, shedding new light on a complex and controversial topic. Today, more than 30 years later, understanding charisma has become newly important as authoritarian leaders and populist politics have begun to reshape the global political landscape. This paper returns to Lindholm\u2019s original study to address the two phenomena Lindholm felt were most important \u2013 namely, the personality configurations of charismatic leaders and their followers and group psychodynamics. Unlike Lindholm, however, I approach these phenomena from the vantage point of intersubjective self psychology, a post-Freudian theoretical framework that is particularly well-suited for analyzing the popular appeal of figures like Jim Jones and the group dynamics that bonded the members of the People\u2019s Temple to the movement. To make this point, Lindholm\u2019s original case studies are referenced throughout the paper and a distinction between destructive and reparative leadership is made to highlight the difference between \u2018leading\u2019 and \u2018trailing\u2019 edge orientations as they pertain to charismatic leaders and their movements.<\/p>\n Can a lizard ride on a housefly?: Navigating uncertainty and moral life in an Accra Zongo, Ghana<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Emily A. Williamson<\/p>\n How can uncertainty become a resource for ethical life rather than a threat to it? Focusing on a Zongo community in Accra, Ghana\u2014also known as a \u201ctraveler\u2019s camp\u201d or \u201cstranger\u2019s quarters\u201d\u2014this article examines how people use a creative form of communication called the practice of folding to sustain relationships shaped by conditions of uncertainty. I define this practice as a form of indirect communication that brings together opposing ideas, materialities, and geographies that are not typically associated with one another. Contributing to literature at the intersection of uncertainty, language, and morality, I argue that the practice of folding cultivates and sustains intersubjective uncertainty, inviting participants to keep doubt, questioning, and possibilities in active tension. It enables a particular form of ethical attunement I term an ethics of traveling-with\u2014an obligation to continually shift perspectives in order to understand other points of view, thereby delaying or even refusing resolution. These findings offer new insights into moral life in contexts of fragility, improvisation, and interdependence, challenging the common assumption that moral striving necessarily seeks resolution, judgment, or evaluation.<\/p>\n Divine intimacy, frustration and the madness of the city: Changing transhuman kinship in China<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Keping Wu & Robert P. Weller<\/p>\n This essay shows the affective resonances of the collision of gods, humans, and rapidly shifting landscapes in a newly urbanized part of Suzhou, China. The first section discusses how ties to spirits are not just metaphors or projections of human kinship, but literal parts of a kinship system that invoke responsibilities of care, based on links of both affect and blood. The second turns to how such intimacy is not always pleasant, and how the closest relationships to gods often begin with sickness and suffering, and in some cases with death leading to deification. Examples of these intimacies include Amei\u2019s painful calling to be a spirit medium (and thus a god\u2019s daughter) and her niece Xiangling\u2019s death and deification as the concubine of the god who took her. The last section turns to the rapid urbanization of the area over the past two decades, which has destroyed all the local temples along with the villages they served. This dis-placement has created a new affect of frustration in the daughters of the gods, due to the interruptions of their responsibilities of care. In the case of Xiangling\u2019s mother, the frustration spiraled into madness after the urbanization process destroyed the statue of her deified daughter. Integrating Navaro-Yashin\u2019s analysis of spaces of ruin with insights from scholars working on the emotional tensions built into intimacy, we reveal how the dis-placements of rapid urbanization have transformed those intimacies to create an affective and embodied ruination.<\/p>\n A sea of anchors: towards (more) global psychological anthropologies<\/em>\u2014Introduction to a virtual special issue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Thomas Stodulka, Anni Kajanus, Suzana Jovicic<\/p>\n This commentary reflects on the contemporary trajectories and futures of psychological anthropology through the metaphor of a \u201csea of anchors.\u201d Rather than reproducing binaries of center and margin, we conceptualize \u201canchors\u201d as temporary and dynamic points of orientation through which theories, methods, collaborations, and infrastructures condense and circulate unevenly across regions and disciplines. Building on contributions to the 2026 Ethos<\/em> virtual issue, we argue for more decentralized, accessible, and collaborative forms of psychological anthropology that move beyond disciplinary silos while remaining attentive to enduring asymmetries in global knowledge production. We examine how psychological anthropologists navigate critical and often marginal positions between anthropology, psychology, and related fields, and how this intermediary position enables productive forms of interdisciplinary mediation, critique, and collaboration. At the same time, we emphasize that decolonizing psychological anthropology requires more than theoretical critique alone: it demands transformations in citation practices, research infrastructures, collaboration, and institutional accessibility. Contemporary psychological anthropology, we suggest, is uniquely positioned to engage constructively with both the humanities and sciences while critically interrogating universalizing psychologies, extractive epistemologies, and emerging global inequalities. By advocating for a plurality of interconnected \u201canchors,\u201d we envision psychological anthropology as a politically engaged, empirically grounded, and globally collaborative field capable of fostering alternative forms of scholarly exchange and future-oriented anthropological practice.<\/p>\n International Journal of Social Psychiatry<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Why Should We Revive Narrative Psychiatry in the Shadowy Times of Artificial Intelligence? And How?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Dinesh Bhugra, Fabiana Ricci and Antonio Ventriglio<\/p>\n Narrative psychiatry is dead\u2026 is it really? Can it be revived in the present era, in which growing enthusiasm for the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare is shifting the focus towards symptom checklists and algorithmic approaches? On the one hand, AI is expected to facilitate clinical work and enhance efficiency for many clinicians and healthcare professionals; on the other, its rapid integration may generate substantial challenges for certain medical specialities.<\/p>\n Medicine is grounded in the principle of primum non nocere (Anon, 2008). As Trudeau in the 19th century famously observed, the role of the physician is \u2018to cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always\u2019 (as cited in Siegel, 2018). However, with medical and surgical advances emerging at an unprecedented rate, clinical attention has increasingly shifted towards interventions and investigations, a trend further reinforced by the growing adoption of AI, which tends to privilege symptom-focused and algorithm-driven approaches. Have we lost the art of medicine? Have the traditional aims of medicine gradually given way to an imperative to cure always? Similarly, has the principle of relieving often been replaced by an expectation to relieve always? Some of these shifts reflect genuine advances in our understanding of the brain and body, while others arise from the changing social expectations and transformations in societal structures. The social contract between medicine, particularly psychiatry, patients, their carers and society at large remains a fundamental yet frequently neglected dimension of clinical practice (Lidz et al., 1988). Healthcare professionals and policymakers must ensure that this contract is grounded in shared understanding and explicitly negotiated expectations.<\/p>\n Involving International Experts in DSM-6: A Geopsychiatric Approach<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Neil Krishan Aggarwal, Antonio Ventriglio, Dinesh Bhugra, and Albert Persaud<\/p>\n In January 2026, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced its intention to involve international experts for the sixth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, tentatively titled DSM-6. Oquendo et al. (2026), writing on behalf of the Future DSM Steering Committee, emphasized that because expert consensus on the interpretation of available data remains the guiding model of the DSM, careful consideration must be given to who is designated as an expert shaping its future direction. They argued that this is essential to ensure the integration of more globally inclusive epistemologies and scientific approaches. In the same article, Oquendo et al. (2026) further maintained that adopting a cultural lens enables the decentering of Western epistemologies and fosters the incorporation of more inclusive, globally informed perspectives, thereby strengthening the cross-cultural validity of DSM diagnostic criteria. Consistent with this objective, Wainberg et al. (2026) reported that the Future DSM Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Environmental Determinants of Mental Health Subcommittee has invited global experts to present on current knowledge and to delineate future directions. Concurrently, Oquendo et al. (2026) cautioned that any modifications to diagnostic criteria or codes must be implemented in a manner that preserves global clinical utility and avoids unintended adverse consequences for patient care. These writings raise questions about the engagement of international experts with DSM-6 committees, how globally inclusive this process will be, and the extent to which their recommendations will be implemented. In this paper, we advocate that the interdisciplinary orientation of Geopsychiatry offers practical guidance to integrate global epistemologies and scientific approaches in DSM-6.<\/p>\n Caregivers\u2019 Perspectives Regarding the Use of Psychotropic Medication in Children and Young Adults: A Systematic Review<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Phoebe M. Downey, Jack C. Collins, Sarira El-Den, and Claire L. O\u2019Reilly<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n The use of psychotropic medications in children and adolescents is increasing worldwide. However, caregivers\u2019 perspectives regarding the use of these medications in young people remain underexplored.<\/p>\n Aims:<\/strong><\/p>\n To explore caregivers\u2019 perspectives towards the use of psychotropic medications in the treatment of mental disorders in young people.<\/p>\n Method:<\/strong><\/p>\n A systematic search was conducted across five databases (MEDLINE (ALL), Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Scopus) using a search strategy encompassing the concepts \u2018psychotropic medications\u2019, \u2018mental health\u2019, \u2018attitudes\u2019, \u2018young people\u2019, and \u2018caregivers\u2019 to identify relevant records published up to 25 March 2024. Records were screened by title and abstract against predefined criteria, followed by full-text review. Data were synthesised and presented in tables. Quality assessment was conducted using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n After screening 1,296 records, 17 studies were eligible for inclusion. Findings were categorised into caregiver attitudes (n<\/em>\u2009=\u200912), experiences (n<\/em>\u2009=\u20092), and preferences (n<\/em>\u2009=\u20099) regarding the use of psychotropic medications in young people. Most caregivers reported negative attitudes, with scepticism, fears of adverse effects and addiction, and doubts regarding efficacy commonly mentioned, including in those whose children had experience with psychotropic medication. Some caregivers were open to the use of psychotropic medications in their children if it was deemed necessary, however, psychotherapy was overwhelmingly the preferred treatment modality. The methodological quality of included studies was mixed; while many met criteria for appropriate sampling and analysis, few used validated measures, and high risk of bias due to non-response and reporting limitations was common.<\/p>\n Conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n This review emphasises the importance of acknowledging and addressing caregiver concerns and actively involving them in the decision-making process. The substantial heterogeneity in study designs, measures, and participant characteristics reinforces the need for future research to employ validated instruments alongside both qualitative and interventional approaches to capture caregiver perspectives and the contextual factors that shape them.<\/p>\n Making a Home for Individuals With Serious Mental Illness: A Systematic Review<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Emi Patmisari, Yunong Huang, Ros Wong, Mark Orr, Sumathi Govindasamy, Emily Hielscher, and Helen McLaren<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n Housing is widely recognised as a key social determinant of mental health and recovery, yet the concept of home<\/em> remains under-theorised and inconsistently applied in practice and policy.<\/p>\n Aims:<\/strong><\/p>\n The aim of this systematic review is to examine home<\/em> for people with serious mental illness (SMI), focussing on various stakeholder perspectives reported in literature.<\/p>\n Methods:<\/strong><\/p>\n Records from CINAHL, Emcare, ProQuest, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science (n<\/em>\u2009=\u20095,309) were double screened, resulting in 26 peer-reviewed studies for inclusion. Thematic analysis identified fifteen themes synthesised according to perspectives of four different populations: individuals with SMI; their family members; landlords; staff; and sector experts.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n Contrary to a house, home was described as shaped by emotional safety, personal control, daily routines, and the quality of social relationships. Findings underscored the need for relational, flexible, and context-sensitive housing approaches that support autonomy, continuity, and belonging.<\/p>\n Conclusions:<\/strong><\/p>\n This review contributes to a more nuanced understanding of home as a multi-dimensional and negotiated concept, from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, with implications for mental health policy, service design, and future research.<\/p>\n Evaluation of Parents\u2019 Self-Compassion Levels and Parenting Styles<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Sema Sal and M\u00fckerrem Kabata\u015f Y\u0131ld\u0131z<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n Parenting plays a critical role not only in supporting children\u2019s healthy growth and development but also in contributing to a meaningful and fulfilling life.<\/p>\n Aims:<\/strong><\/p>\n This study evaluates how parents\u2019 self-compassion levels, which significantly influence their well-being, affect their parenting styles.<\/p>\n Methods:<\/strong><\/p>\n The research was conducted using a cross-sectional and descriptive design. Data were collected through an online form between April and October 2024, using a general information form, the Self-Compassion Scale, and the Multidimensional Parenting Styles Scale. Data analyses were performed using SPSS 25.0. Descriptive statistics, including mean, standard deviation, minimum\/maximum values, frequency, and percentage, were used to summarize the findings.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n The effect of parents\u2019 self-compassion levels on parenting styles was analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicate that most parents exhibit high levels of self-compassion and positive parenting behaviors. Additionally, as self-compassion levels decrease, negative parenting behaviors tend to increase.<\/p>\n Conclusion:<\/strong><\/p>\n These findings suggest that self-compassion is a key factor in the parenting process, and supporting parents\u2019 self-compassion levels may contribute to developing more positive parenting behaviors. Therefore, it is recommended that psychosocial support and awareness programs be developed to enhance parents\u2019 self-compassion levels.<\/p>\n Professional Perspectives on Mental Distress: Exploring Attributional Differences and Their Association With Stigmatizing Attitudes Among Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and Social Workers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Martin Wolgast, Katarina Fredriksson Tham, Maja Straht, and Henrik Levinsson<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n Mental health professionals often differ in their explanatory models of mental distress, which may influence their attitudes toward individuals experiencing such conditions. Stigmatizing attitudes among providers can adversely affect therapeutic relationships, service quality, and recovery outcomes.<\/p>\n Aims:<\/strong><\/p>\n This study investigates the attributional frameworks\u2014biological, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, and social-realist\u2014endorsed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers in Swedish adult psychiatry. It further examines how these explanatory preferences are associated with stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with mental distress.<\/p>\n Method:<\/strong><\/p>\n A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 715 licensed psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers. Attributional orientations were measured using a revised version of the Maudsley Attitude Questionnaire (MAQ-R), and stigma was assessed with the revised Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC-R). Group differences were analyzed using General Linear Models, and associations between attributional frameworks and stigma were explored through linear regression. Given the cross-sectional design, causal inferences cannot be drawn from the observed associations.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n Psychiatrists reported significantly stronger endorsement of biological attributions compared to psychologists and social workers, while psychologists favored cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic explanations. Social workers exhibited the strongest preference for social-realist attributions. Endorsement of biological and cognitive-behavioral models was positively associated with higher stigma scores, although these associations may reflect broader occupational or systemic influences. In contrast, social-realist attributions were associated with lower stigma. Psychodynamic attributions showed no significant association.<\/p>\n Conclusions:<\/strong><\/p>\n Differences in attributional frameworks among mental health professionals are associated with variation in reported stigmatizing attitudes. These findings underscore the importance of addressing explanatory diversity in interdisciplinary training and suggest that nuanced understandings of etiology may inform stigma-reduction efforts. Future research should explore the role of contextual and institutional factors, as well as potential confounders, in shaping these relationships.<\/p>\n Empowering Gen Z\u2019s Mental Health in a Hyperconnected World<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Dani Fadillah and Bai Long<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n Generation Z faces unprecedented mental health challenges in a hyperconnected digital environment. While technology offers benefits such as access to resources and support networks, it also poses risks including anxiety, depression, and social comparison. Comprehensive studies integrating diverse methods to examine these challenges remain limited.<\/p>\n Aims:<\/strong><\/p>\n This study investigates the intersection of digital engagement and psychological well-being among Generation Z, with a focus on identifying risks and exploring proactive strategies for resilience.<\/p>\n Methods:<\/strong><\/p>\n A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining (1) bibliometric analysis of 1,103 Scopus-indexed publications (2020\u20132024) using VOSviewer, (2) qualitative content analysis of 500 social media posts across TikTok, Twitter\/X, and Instagram, and (3) semi-structured interviews with eight experts in psychiatry, psychology, and digital education. Data were triangulated to enhance validity.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n The bibliometric analysis revealed three dominant research clusters centered on psychopathology, resilience and public health, and developmental\/family-oriented perspectives. Social media discourse emphasized risk narratives, self-presentation pressures, peer support, and digital detox practices. Expert interviews highlighted rising clinical risks, identity strain, untapped peer support, and gaps in policy and education. Triangulated findings show convergence on risks, but also divergence where lived experiences and expert perspectives foreground coping strategies and resilience overlooked in the academic literature.<\/p>\n Conclusions:<\/strong><\/p>\n Hyperconnectivity functions as both a stressor and a source of resilience for Gen Z. A multidimensional approach involving individuals, educators, policymakers, and digital platforms is necessary to promote digital well-being and strengthen youth mental resilience in the hyperconnected world.<\/p>\n ChatGPT-4 in Psychiatric Discharge Summaries: Toward a More Comprehensible and Emotionally Sensitive Clinical Communication<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Julio Torales, Marcelo O\u2019Higgins, Beatriz Di Martino, Diana Kunihiro, Liz Carbajal, Fabiana Pereira, Enrique Franco, Anthon Daniel Torres-Romero, Antonio Ventriglio, Jo\u00e3o Mauricio Castaldelli-Maia, Tom\u00e1s Caycho-Rodr\u00edguez, and Iv\u00e1n Barrios<\/p>\n Background:<\/strong><\/p>\n Psychiatric discharge summaries are vital for ensuring continuity of care, yet they are often written in technical language that can be difficult for patients to understand and may cause emotional distress or reinforce stigma. With increasing patient access to medical records, there is a pressing need to develop communication tools that are both comprehensible and emotionally safe.<\/p>\n Aim:<\/strong><\/p>\n This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic fidelity, linguistic clarity, emotional sensitivity, treatment comprehension, and readability of psychiatric discharge summaries rewritten by ChatGPT-4 based on real clinical cases.<\/p>\n Methods:<\/strong><\/p>\n This was the first study in South America to examine the use of a generative language model for rewriting psychiatric discharge summaries. A mixed-methods, observational cross-sectional design was applied. Twenty-five anonymized clinical cases were rewritten using ChatGPT-4. Three psychiatrists independently assessed each AI-generated summary across four dimensions: diagnostic fidelity, clarity of language, perceived emotional risk, and understanding of treatment. Readability was evaluated using the Fern\u00e1ndez-Huerta Index and the INFLESZ Scale. A thematic analysis of evaluators\u2019 written comments was also conducted.<\/p>\n Results:<\/strong><\/p>\n Summaries generated by ChatGPT-4 were rated positively, particularly for clarity and treatment explanation. Significant improvements in readability were observed across all diagnostic groups (p<\/em>\u2009<\/p>\n Conclusions:<\/strong><\/p>\n ChatGPT-4 can enhance the accessibility and emotional appropriateness of psychiatric discharge communication, supporting more patient-centered care. Nevertheless, professional oversight remains critical to ensure clinical accuracy and contextual sensitivity. Future research should include patient feedback, assess long-term outcomes, and explore hybrid human-AI collaboration models.<\/p>\n Journal of Critical Public Health<\/a>\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Bait and switches in academic publishing<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Kirsten Bell<\/p>\n In this editorial, I would like to reflect on the phenomenon I am calling here \u2018bait and switches\u2019 in academic publishing. Rather than representing an anomaly, I want to suggest that it\u2019s simply business as usual for corporate publishers. While few are in the position to be able to substitute a lower-tiered open access journal for a higher ranked subscription one, they have realised \u2013 or, at the very least, assumed \u2013 that branding is all that matters to academics.<\/p>\n Becoming embedded: A process evaluation of weight management services developed with, not for, communities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Hannah Newman, Louca-Mai Brady, Elspeth Mathie, Kathryn Almack & Wendy Wills<\/p>\n There is growing interest in whole systems-based approaches to obesity, yet little understanding about how these can be achieved or about the tensions inherent in navigating the social, emotional, and behavioural issues within behaviour change interventions. We were commissioned to evaluate a programme of place-based, whole-systems approaches to tackling obesity and health inequalities for adults, children and families in areas with higher-than-average obesity rates and socioeconomic deprivation. Underpinned by an embedded ethnography approach, this process evaluation explored how best to engage diverse communities in service delivery and development using evidence-informed approaches, and whether services can be co-produced with communities and people with lived experience. Our approach combined: focus groups and interviews with staff, service users, commissioners and other external partners (n=64); participant observation; membership of a Strategic Oversight Group; and qualitative research training for staff.\u00a0 This unique project demonstrates factors important for shaping a whole systems approach, including the value and challenges of community engagement, and the limitations caused by how services are commissioned. Consideration is needed regarding how systems and structures can facilitate or create barriers to \u2018embedded\u2019 research and the implementation of whole systems approaches, involvement and co-production, and take account of wider determinants of health and inequalities.<\/p>\n Continuity of biopolitics in late Soviet and post-Soviet Russia: What policy documents can tell us<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Olga Temina , Olga Zvonareva & Klasien Horstman<\/p>\n From a critical public health perspective, public health serves as an instrument of biopolitics in modern societies. Through public health measures, citizens\u2019 bodies are regularised to exhibit desirable characteristics. However, what is considered desirable differs between epochs and political configurations. In this article we aimed to discern what kinds of subjects were envisioned as ideal and what configurations of public health were consequently produced in the late Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. Through the analysis of legislative documents that have regulated Russian public health since their first codification in 1971 until now, we traced transformations of the state\u2019s biopolitical agenda. We demonstrate how the Soviet paternalistic state aimed to provide health(care) for all while coercing those who did not share its ideals of health. We show how the liberalisation and marketisation of the 1990s attempted to transform citizens into responsible patient-consumers, and how, nowadays, public health regulation balances neoliberal ideas of health and Soviet notions of control. \u2018Reading off\u2019 legislative documents highlights how public health is transformed in line with biopolitical agendas, which exist in continuity and are deeply rooted both in the agendas of the past and imaginaries of the future.<\/p>\n Synthetic certainization in medical controversy: Evidence synthesis, NICE recommendations and the drug-device complex in stroke prevention<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Gowree Balendran & John Abraham<\/p>\n The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends rivaroxaban for stroke prevention in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation in England. While not a directive to practitioners, that advice is widely regarded as authoritative and intended to guide practice. Yet a medical device, INRatio2-PT for monitoring coagulation\/blood-clotting and producing crucial data on rivaroxaban in its key clinical trial, was defective. Following discovery of the defective device, a medical controversy about the therapeutic value of rivaroxaban ensued. Drawing on social science theories of medical controversies, such as \u2018chronic contestation\u2019, \u2018closure\u2019, \u2018corporate bias\u2019, and \u2018countervailing powers\u2019, this article describes the unfolding of the INRatio2-PT\/rivaroxaban controversy and seeks to explain it. We explore the role of key protagonists based on documentary and interview data. Our findings about the media partly support \u2018countervailing powers\u2019 theory, while those regarding industry and regulators support \u2018corporate bias\u2019 theory. We found little evidence of chronic contestation of medical knowledge-claims. Rather, we contend that a sociological process of closure through synthetic certainization of knowledge-claims that rivaroxaban is efficacious and cost-effective evolved via the combined political power and interests of the medical-industrial complex, capitalist industry, and the regulatory state. Synthetic certainization, together with a regulatory ideological commitment to innovation, curtailed contestation and discouraged the medical profession from facing troubling uncertainties.<\/p>\n Excess mortality in England and Scotland in 2022: The long shadow of austerity and the return to an unacceptable pre-pandemic baseline<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Daniel R. R. Bradford, Denise Brown, Gerry McCartney, Margaret Douglas, Ruth Dundas & David Walsh<\/p>\n Concerns exist that mortality remains elevated after COVID-19 peaks. This study examined whether mortality in England and Scotland in 2022 exceeded predictions from austerity-era (2012\u20132019) and pre-austerity (2001\u20132010) trends. Time trend analysis was conducted using data from 2001\u20132022. The outcomes were observed and expected age- and sex-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs). Expected 2022 ASMRs were calculated from austerity-era and pre-austerity trends. Excess deaths were estimated by comparing observed and expected ASMRs. Observed ASMRs were higher than austerity-era predictions and substantially higher than pre-austerity predictions. In England, excesses for females were 4.4% (4.0\u20134.8) and 38.2% (95% CI: 37.7\u201338.7), and 7.2% (6.8\u20137.6) and 57.0% (56.4\u201357.6) for males. In Scotland, excesses for females were 3.4% (2.2\u20134.5) and 26.6% (25.2\u201328.0), and 2.6% (1.5\u20133.8) and 45.2% (43.6\u201346.9) for males. COVID-19 accounted for 5.3\u20136.5% of deaths in 2022 and explained much of the excess compared to austerity-era trends. ASMRs were 1.68\u20131.94 times higher in the most versus least deprived areas. Deaths attributable to COVID-19 explain much of the excess compared to austerity-era trends. However, 879,430 excess deaths relative to pre-austerity trends, even excluding COVID-19 deaths, highlights the devastating impacts of austerity on public health.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is there a place for hope in the imagined future of public health? A commentary building on Freire\u2019s sociology of hope.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Paul Ward & Belinda Lunnay<\/p>\n By examining hope through a sociological lens, this commentary frames hope as a critical sociopolitical tool for public health to address structural inequalities and foster healthier communities. We draw on Paolo Freire\u2019s pedagogies of oppression and hope, since they provide a \u2018praxis of hope\u2019. We explore the concept of hope \u2013 explaining what it is, to then consider what it enables \u2013 conveying the ways hope is imperative to human flourishing and imperative in the imagined future of public health. We present a case for public health engagement in developing \u2018hope-based\u2019 practices and policies which means working with communities to identify the factors acting as oppressive forces and then, through critical consciousness development, working towards overcoming these in a move towards hope (and health).<\/p>\n Challenges of researching racism in healthcare<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Hannah Bradby, Suruchi Thapar-Bj\u00f6rkert, Beth Maina Ahlberg & Sarah Hamed<\/p>\n The unprecedented transnational protests following the killing of George Floyd highlighted the need to re-examine institutions that uphold various social injustices experienced by racialised minorities. Black Lives Matter protests thus created a serious reckoning with racism and facilitated global conversations. Against the backdrop of these protests, we evaluate our study of healthcare workers, exploring racialisation in Swedish healthcare including the design and implementation of an anti-racist initiative in healthcare education. We reflect on how the silencing of discussion around racism in Sweden led to difficulties in recruiting participants and the effect of the shift in public discourse following the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020. The project was ultimately successful in recruitment and outreach to professional and regional authorities. However, this success is contrasted by the lack of structural change in embedding anti-racism as a core value in healthcare practice. We conclude by noting that conversations about anti-racism differ from implementing anti-racist practice in commissioning, evaluation, and service delivery.<\/p>\n Science as Culture<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Biologics of resistance: Open Insulin and the limits of bioengineering-as-activism<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Andy Murray<\/p>\n The Open Insulin Project is a community lab-based effort to make affordable insulin using bioengineering. The growth of financialised biotechnology and biomedicine yielded both a crisis of access to motivate and surplus resources to enable Open Insulin. Project volunteers attempted turn spillover expertise and materials against the status quo to produce a \u2018biologic of resistance.\u2019 However, adopting the production of a biologic pharmaceutical as the project\u2019s core ultimately constrained their resistance effort. The focus on the available resources and expertise limited project members\u2019 ability to manage important dimensions of producing usable insulin, including the imposing prospects of purification, scaling, and regulatory approval and the legal nuances of intellectual property. Paradoxically, Open Insulin members found themselves reproducing key features of the financialised biomedical model they aimed to resist, including the embrace of hype and speculation, the depoliticisation of intellectual property, and pressure for accelerated regulatory approval. This case demonstrates how the commonsense logics of contemporary biocapitalism can carry over into resistance movements and limit their capacity. The emergence of community biology and biotechnology initiatives like Open Insulin calls attention to biomedical inequities and provides a vision of biomedicine operating on more altruistic motives. However, it also raises questions about the limits of technological interventions to address inequities in financialised biocapitalism. The embrace of a narrow strategy that privileges technological intervention ultimately resulted in a similarly narrow, incremental form of resistance that shied away from broader systemic critiques.<\/p>\n Good chemistry and its interruptions: about caring scientists and uncooperative molecules<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jonna Brenninkmeijer & Jeannette Pols<\/p>\n Science policy has increasingly organised science as if it were a training ground for excellent individual scientists who can be found through fierce competition for research money and publications. This focus on science as a competition for research excellence is embedded in a specific interpretation of what \u2018good\u2019 scientific practices are. Ethnographic analyses of scientific practices using the notion of care can elucidate what good science implies in practice and how it is perhaps hindered. In a Dutch chemistry lab, researchers cared for good science by working towards socio-material collaboration. They were responsible for each other, their materials, and their chemistry work. They shared knowledge and skills to affect the material world. And they were dependent on the actions of their colleagues, technologies and chemicals. Their work was exciting because of this socio-material collaboration, but also frustrating when resistance of materials or competition hindered their caring practices. That is, good science as a collaborative and knowledge sharing practice was hindered by current values about good science which emphasise research excellence and positive results, especially when chemicals did not collaborate. This asks for an understanding of care and good science that is not merely focussed on successful research practices, but also on the hard (sometimes slow, boring or frustrating) work that does not always feel \u2018good\u2019 or end \u2018well\u2019, but is still part of the research process.<\/p>\n Modes of visual framing in neuropsychological deception detection research<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Larissa Kaiser<\/p>\n In the German context, where legal skepticism toward polygraph-testing intersects with emerging concerns about AI-based deception detection, neuroscientists position their work through methodological restraint and epistemic distancing. Their critical stance toward both visual determinism and applied polygraph-tests serves not only to manage uncertainty, but to claim scientific authority in a contested field. By tracing how visual framing enables both conceptual clarity and epistemic credibility, the analysis contributes to STS debates on the role of visuality in scientific knowledge production. It calls for closer attention to how images, practices, and imaginaries mutually shape what counts as evidence and epistemic possibility in neuroscience.<\/p>\n Challenging epistemic injustices in the 2020 Environmental Performance Index: an engagement<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jos\u00e9 Antonio Ballesteros-Figueroa<\/p>\n This article presents an engagement study rooted in ethnographic fieldwork at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP) during the development of the 2020 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a widely cited global metric for assessing environmental policy performance. As both researcher and participant, I reflect on the tensions and power dynamics that emerged when questioning the epistemic assumptions embedded in the quantification of environmental governance. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and theories of epistemic injustice, I analyze how quantitative devices (QDs) like the EPI reinforce global hierarchies by excluding or subsuming territories with limited data infrastructure or contested sovereignty. The study explores how decisions about what counts as a \u201ccountry,\u201d what data are \u201cvalid,\u201d and who gets to decide these criteria are shaped by sociotechnical, political, and institutional constraints. I document my efforts to co-create more inclusive knowledge practices through the development of threshold questions for evaluating sovereignty, which sought to challenge the index\u2019s default reliance on ISO codes and centralized governance assumptions. Despite the partial success in including some underrepresented territories, many others remained excluded, revealing how data availability and political recognition jointly structure epistemic visibility. This paper argues that efforts to reform global environmental metrics must move beyond technical fixes to confront the historical and structural injustices that shape knowledge production. By illuminating the micro-politics of quantification, the study contributes to broader debates on environmental justice, data ethics, and the responsibilities of researchers in co-producing more equitable representations of the world.<\/p>\n Science, Technology, & Human Values<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Striving for Presence on a Hospital Ward: Phenomenology and Re-Embodiment for a Nurse-Operated Telepresence Robot<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Luna Dolezal, Karl Atkin, Nik Brown, Sanna Mets\u00e4keto, Sarah Nettleton, and Daniel Robins<\/p>\n This article examines the phenomenology of nursing care delivered through V\u00e4lkky, a full-body teleoperated humanoid robot trialed in a Finnish hospital ward in 2023. Bringing science and technology studies into dialogue with phenomenology, we analyze qualitative data from observations, focus groups, and interviews with nurse-operators, managers, roboticists, and one patient involved in the pilot. We argue that V\u00e4lkky\u2019s deployment constituted a \u201crobot drama\u201d in which the frictions between robotic imaginaries and situated clinical practice produced \u201cinfrastructural inversions,\u201d making visible normally tacit dimensions of nursing care. To conceptualize these dimensions, we develop the notion of \u201cexperiential care infrastructures\u201d: the embodied, affective, and relational conditions that underpin care but can be overlooked in task-based approaches to robot design. Our analysis shows that V\u00e4lkky afforded limited experiences of telepresence, and that nurses found the technology to interrupt rather than enable caring relations. We conclude that the design and deployment of telepresence robots in healthcare settings must attend to experiential infrastructures that make ethical and relational care possible.<\/p>\n Navigating Indeterminacy in Wildfire Risk Map Production in the United States<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Miranda Simes<\/p>\n Wildfire risk maps have emerged as a prevalent yet contested scientific object in the United States and internationally. These maps, often a patchwork of bright reds and oranges, depict relative risk scores for different locations. Dozens of these maps from private companies and public agencies have proliferated in recent years, yet members of the public and scientists alike have posed questions about map accuracy: can the maps reliably depict the risk of such infrequent, high-consequence events? In this article, I examine these maps as a contribution to the Science and Technology Studies scholarship on the production of risk assessments. Though they appear orderly and neat, wildfire risk maps are the result of complicated, layered scientific decisions. Drawing on interviews with wildfire risk map producers, I analyze how these maps are socially constructed and materialize future risk. Almost universally, these map producers share a lack of confidence in their approaches to modeling wildfire risk because they view wildfire as unpredictable and risk modeling as faulty. How then do these actors determine what constitutes success or a lack thereof? I find that many, in their attempts to navigate indeterminacy, turn instead to personal knowledge of wildfire risk in the places they live.<\/p>\n Ask the Dust: The Rise of Popular Expology in Pesticide Activism in France<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Jean-No\u00ebl Jouzel, Giovanni Prete, Bastien Soutjis, and David Demortain<\/p>\n This article focuses on social movements\u2019 engagement in the field of environmental health through a particular form of knowledge production: \u201cpopular expology.\u201d This concept reflects the growing development of initiatives aimed at producing data on human exposure to pollutants, rather than establishing the causes of health effects, as \u201cpopular epidemiology\u201d does. To develop our concept, we draw on the case of the French anti-pesticide movement. For more than a decade, organizations from this movement have increasingly invested in the performance of studies designed to demonstrate the presence of pesticide residues. We show that popular expology is encouraged by the difficulties social movements face in producing epidemiological data, by the development of a market for affordable pesticide detection tools, and by the increasing accessibility of toxicological and epidemiological knowledge produced by research and expert institutions. We also analyze two roles that popular expology plays for social movements: on the one hand, embodying invisible pollutions and raising the attention of the media to this issue; on the other hand, demonstrating weaknesses in regulatory risk assessment. This article, therefore, suggests the need for a broadening of our understanding of the use and production of science as a political mode of action for environmental social movements.<\/p>\n Making Soils into Carbon Sinks: A Sociology of Soil Carbon Quantification Through a French Model<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n C\u00e9line Granjou, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Guillemot, Laure Manach, Robin Leclerc, Antoine Dor\u00e9, L\u00e9o Magnin, and St\u00e9phanie Barral<\/p>\n Since COP21 in 2015, carbon neutrality targets have emphasized the enhancement of various carbon sinks, including soils, to help sequester carbon away from the atmosphere. What does it take to make soils into carbon sinks? This article focuses on a French digital model of soil carbon cycling named AMG, which quantifies soil carbon stocks and their evolution under various agricultural practices. We examine how AMG circulates and transforms within a loosely connected network of actors and organizations involved in agricultural development, climate research, land-use planning public administrations, and carbon commodification. We show how the model evolves into three distinct yet interconnected regimes of carbon quantification\u2014in climate academic research, local public action, and carbon markets\u2014that contribute to building and expanding a sociotechnical infrastructure for quantifying soil carbon sequestration potential. Our findings contribute to the literature on environmental quantification and knowledge infrastructures by calling for a shift from viewing knowledge infrastructures as stable and fixed, toward an approach that emphasizes open-ended, flexible, and ongoing processes of infrastructuring. We also contribute to the literature on soil\u2013human relations by emphasizing how this model fosters a new focus on the active role of soils in the global carbon cycle and climate change mitigation.<\/p>\n Social Science & Medicine<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Social capital and vaccine decision-making: A scoping review<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Erynn Monette & Gabrielle Duval<\/p>\n The term social capital has been widely used in social science to explain how relationships, norms, and shared resources shape opportunities within communities. This concept has gained recent prominence in public health research as scholars seek to understand the social dynamics underlying vaccine decision-making and hesitancy. Guided by major theoretical perspectives of Bourdieu, Coleman, and Putnam, this paper examines how social capital has been applied to the study of vaccine uptake and synthesizes research findings about its influence on vaccination behaviours. Sources (n = 581) were gathered from the databases Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and Web of Science and uploaded to Covidence. Following removal of duplicates (n = 124), the titles and abstracts of 457 sources were screened for inclusion of the search concepts \u201cvaccination\u201d and \u201csocial capital\u201d. Full texts of 67 sources were screened for relevant use of search concepts (i.e., study focus on vaccination behaviours and use of \u201csocial capital\u201d as an underpinning theory), resulting in 34 articles for final inclusion. Studies were coded for their theoretical grounding, methodology, and the specific forms of capital examined. Findings indicate that social capital shapes vaccine decision-making in complex and context-dependent ways. While higher levels of trust, cohesion, or civic participation are often associated with vaccine uptake, strong bonding ties and community-embedded norms sometimes facilitate the spread of misinformation and reinforce hesitancy. Overall, the review demonstrates that social capital can function as both a facilitator and barrier to vaccination, underscoring the importance of local context and the need for nuanced, theory-informed approaches to understanding vaccine behaviours.<\/p>\n