The gendered dimensions of an ‘herbicide revolution’: a feminist analysis of herbicide adoption in central India

This article interrogates the production of 'fraud' at the interface between welfare and migration regimes. Taking the welfare micropublic of children's social care in the UK as a case study, we focus on encounters between migrant families subject to the 'no recourse to public funds' immigration condition and London local authorities. Through analysis of policy documents and ethnographic data, we trace the counter-fraud turn within the local state in the 2010s. We argue that a shift away from 'the child in need' and towards destitution as the threshold for support saw children's rights legislation reinterpreted through the lens of 'fraud', implicitly racialising impoverished migrant children as undeserving of essential support. Paying close attention to questions of undeservingness, defined in part through attributions of fraud, we highlight the ways in which migrant parents are subject to suspicion by social services. We suggest that existing literature on the 'problem' of welfare fraud helps us to contextualise this shift but does not yet sufficiently address the production of fraud at the welfare-migration nexus. Drawing on more contemporary ethnographic material, we show how the counter-fraud turn has been deepened and expanded. We argue that extensive counter-fraud practices have been developed through processes of discretion at the local level, producing and normalising major shifts in the enactment of policy that remain relatively hidden in the absence of more contextualised ethnographic research. Migrant families have thus been rendered ever-suspicious, either gatekept from essential support due to their 'fraudulence' or subject to ongoing monitoring if they receive support, caught up in the impossible labour of disproving their own 'fraudulence'. Finally, we show that counter-fraud approaches arise from the interface between welfare and migration regimes in ways that bolster the logics of both immigration controls and welfare retrenchment, whilst amplifying the reach of the counter-fraud turn.

ABSTRACT The literature on vertical and voluminous spaces analyzes primarily the lithosphere and the biosphere as spaces of extraction. However, ethnographies of cloud seeding can introduce a new perspective on extraction from the sky. In the UAE, the state exerts its vertical sovereignty by extracting from below, through its well-known oil industry, and, in recent decades, from above, through a thriving cloud-seeding program, the UAE Rain Enhancement Program. Using three years of ethnographic data, as a UAE-based anthropologist, I argue that ethnographies of cloud seeding engage concepts of obliqueness, voluminous remains, vertical state control, and territorial referentiality. The logic of rain enhancement presents clouds as a reserve of water, referencing water security, and by extension, national security. This enables territorial claim over atmospheric depth, making verticality a tool for state control. Rain enhancement actors in governance, science, and the industry frame the atmosphere not as inert space, but as voluminous, resource-rich matter, integrated within capitalist circuits.

The article examines the variability and provides a comparative-historical analysis of the lexeme chechen (sesen, tsetsen, sheshen), attested in many Turkic and Mongolic languages of the peoples of Eurasia. The relevance of the study lies in the need for an in-depth investigation of linguistic and cultural convergence processes in the Turkic-Mongolic area, as well as in the insufficient development of comparative-historical and linguocultural analysis of this lexeme in contemporary scholarship. The aim of the study is to identify the historical, everyday, sacral, and linguocultural features of this lexeme through a comparison of its phonetic forms and semantic meanings in Altaic languages. The novelty of the research lies in the comprehensive analysis of the lexeme chechen based on extensive material from Turkic and Mongolic languages, including lexicographic, folklore, and ethnographic sources, as well as in revealing the relationship between its phonetic variants and its sacral-semantic meanings within the cultural traditions of the peoples of Eurasia. The methodological framework of the study is based on comparative-historical, typological, and linguocultural methods, as well as elements of etymological and semantic analysis. The material includes lexicographic sources, folklore texts, and ethnographic data of Turkic-Mongolic peoples (Altaians, Tuvans, Teleuts, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Bashkirs, Uyghurs, Sakha (Yakuts), Mongols, and Buryats). The results of the study demonstrate that the lexeme chechen and its phonetic variants share a common semantic core associated with the concept of a special individual endowed with sacral qualities and performing the function of a spiritual mediator. Regular patterns of phonetic variation and semantic differentiation of the term have been identified depending on historical and ethnographic conditions, economic activities, and worldview systems of different peoples. It is concluded that the lexeme chechen originally had a generalized meaning of “a bearer of a special gift connected with higher powers,” which, in the course of historical development, acquired various functional and cultural nuances. The results obtained contribute to a more precise understanding of cultural contacts, migration processes, and mechanisms of spiritual convergence in the Turkic-Mongolic world.

This article, which is methodological in nature, draws on a materialistic approach to the development of family relations in society, assuming that these relations depend on the socio-economic conditions of people's lives. The article examines the main social aspects of people's lives, conditioned by the division of society into separate families. Based on ethnographic data and research, a general description of the evolution of family relations is provided, beginning with the tribal period of human development. The changing social role of women both within families and in public life is analyzed, with the emergence of patriarchy and the evolution of human civilization. The social essence of the process of women's emancipation in the modern historical era and the role of feminist ideology in this process are demonstrated. The modern nuclear family is considered both in terms of its inherent social relations and the contradictions generated by these relations, and in terms of the influence of family relations on the development of society. The issue of homosexuality is addressed in terms of its impact on public life and family relations. Finally, the prospects for the further evolution of the monogamous family. All aspects of this article's topic are examined primarily in relation to the populations of democratic countries undergoing the transition from industrial to post-industrial societies.

To evaluate the implementation of a technology-assisted workflow (TAWF) system across 3 hospitals within an integrated delivery network. The overall goal was to assess the system's impact on compounding compliance, workflow efficiency, and operational standardization. The study was conducted at 3 community teaching hospitals in the northeast United States. Prior to TAWF implementation, regulatory documentation practices were largely manual and varied between sites. The TAWF system was selected for its flexibility, minimal hardware requirements, and adaptability to existing workflows. Implementation included standardized training, staggered go-live dates, and continued adjustments based on site feedback. Outcomes were evaluated using a mixed-methods approach, including ethnographic observation, workflow mapping, and data analytics. After implementation, 2 of 3 sites showed significant improvements in compounding record (CR) compliance. Adjusted workflow mapping revealed TAWF did not increase overall compounding time. Unexpected benefits included barcode scanning and photo documentation, enhanced traceability and safety, and accumulation of centralized data enabling better recall management and financial auditing. TAWF implementation improved documentation compliance, maintained workflow efficiency, and enabled enterprise-wide standardization. The system also delivered unanticipated benefits in medication safety monitoring and enterprise operational oversight. These findings support broader TAWF adoption across the health system and highlight the value of technology in meeting changing regulatory standards while enhancing pharmacy practice.

ABSTRACT This article examines citizen science as situated urban politics in Siena, Italy, through two initiatives engaging students, residents, migrants, volunteers, and researchers in documenting everyday urban life and river ecosystems. Drawing on ethnographic engagement, data walks, and interviews, we argue that citizen science produces more than data: it becomes a relational practice through which participants negotiate belonging, enact presence, and challenge epistemic hierarchies in urban governance. The article shows how digital platforms both enable participation and act as epistemic gatekeepers, making friction a diagnostic and transformative force for more responsive urban knowledge practices.

ABSTRACT This article develops the concept of ‘urgent waiting’ to describe a condition central to temporal bordering in contemporary asylum regimes. We argue that for refugees, delay and urgency are not alternating phases but a single, co-produced governing condition in which stasis and compulsory readiness are simultaneously imposed. To build this theory, we conduct a diachronic analysis of Estonia’s bordering regime, contrasting the attritional ‘slow time’ of its pre-2022 asylum system with the accelerated ‘crisis time’ following 2022. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interview data, we analyse the vernacular practices through which refugees navigate this condition.

• ‘Green jobs’ (GJ) discourse circulates among climate policymakers and campaigners. • I show that the promise of green jobs has limited resonance for some communities. • It lacks resonance for people who are attached to traditional industries. • Repurposing people’s industrial attachments might sow the seeds of support for GJ. • This is important to achieve net zero transformations. ‘Green jobs’ discourse circulates with intensity among climate policy networks in the United Kingdom and internationally. Social actors assume that the promise of the mass delivery of green jobs will help to build public support for a net zero industrial transition among communities with affective ties to high-carbon industries. In this paper, I use interview and ethnographic data collected in a northern English town to critically examine this assumption. Drawing on conceptual work about the nature of ‘attachments’, I show that proposals for the delivery of new green jobs and industries are felt to lack credibility and have limited resonance with some communities. By making this argument, I put forward a novel analysis within energy and industrial geographies about the tension between imagined sustainable futures (envisaged by policymakers and environmental campaigners) and the materiality of attachments to traditional industries (experienced by communities). I conclude by exploring how low carbon infrastructures might be rendered more affecting. One response lies in recognising and repurposing people’s industrial attachments; this necessitates forms of investment attuned to place-specific sensitivities.

ABSTRACT Culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy (CRSP) has been a topic in education for decades. However, much of the research with teacher candidates focuses on large sample sizes and end-product analysis of teacher preparation programs. This paper provides a contextual understanding of the engagement with CRSP at the practicum level through critical inquiry interviews supported by ethnographic data. Findings indicate that there was a need for the teacher candidate to understand the connection between the lived realities of students in their placement and the CRSP framework, as well as for opportunities for the teacher candidate to practice critical self-inquiry as she grappled with a transformation of self as it relates to engagement with CRSP and its tenets.

ABSTRACT Dominant bilingual education theories assume languages compete for cognitive resources and cultural authority, yet faith-based institutions navigate distinctive tensions where language choices carry theological significance beyond pragmatic concerns. This study examines bilingual education practices across four Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) in Indonesia, and in Malaysia. Drawing on a multiple comparative case study design Yin with ethnographic data collection methods – 18 months of fieldwork, 64 semi-structured interviews, and institutional document analysis – we identify three patterns distinguishing pesantren bilingualism: sacred-secular integration, where Arabic and English function as complementary capitals operating across distinct but interconnected fields; network-based mobility through transnational institutional partnerships; and identity calibration, as alumni strategically deploy bilingual repertoires across contexts carrying different legitimacy criteria. Findings reveal ‘polyvalent bilingualism’ – linguistic ecologies where multiple languages amplify and not dilute cultural identity. This challenges Bourdieu’s zero-sum model of linguistic capital competition and extends glocalization theory to faith-based educational contexts, demonstrating how institutions outside the Global North construct innovative responses to globalisation pressures while maintaining cultural distinctiveness.

ABSTRACT What is “the proven uterus,” a concept ubiquitous in US surrogacy? In this article, I interrogate this concept via content analysis of the medical/academic literature and media, and analysis of ethnographic data on US assisted reproduction. I find the seemingly neutral “proving of the uterus” visible in multiple ways in the medical literature has become a marketing term useful for the surrogacy industry, spawning the “proven surrogate.” These terms are embraced and strategically employed in the industry and by US surrogates themselves to increase their position in contract negotiations and to linguistically encapsulate their value on the market.

ABSTRACT Haitian asylum seekers (HAS) at the U.S.-Mexico border have become a focal point for academic, governmental, and media discussions. They have long been affected by border externalization and waiting policies, which have led to economic, political, and emotional precarity. Drawing on ethnographic data, life stories, and in-depth interviews collected using a narrative-biographic approach in Northeastern Mexico, this paper examines the repercussions of U.S. externalization and waiting policies and the sociopolitical production of precarity among HAS waiting in the region. It centers on the story of Leslie as an analytically telling case to illustrate how HAS endure a precarious wait, a compound state of immobility that intersects systemic inequalities, socioeconomic deprivation, affective control, racial neglect, and institutional violence. The analysis reveals how bordering practices and state-imposed immobility are sustained by the state’s strategic deployment of geopolitical coordination, temporal–spatial constraints, legal ambiguity, and affective manipulation, as tools for controlling racialized migrants.

ABSTRACT Corporate sustainability is widely promoted to manage the socio-environmental impacts of agri-food commodities, such as palm oil. Critical scholarship has examined its limitations and how it reinforces environmentally destructive capitalist dynamics. Less attention has been given to the labour corporate sustainability requires to prove raw materials are traceable, certified, and ‘deforestation-free’. This paper ethnographically examines labour in sustainable sourcing initiatives in Mexico's palm oil supply chain. Drawing on Marx, Spinoza, and feminist scholarship, as well as fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, the paper makes two contributions. First, it draws attention to affect in the constitution and alienation of sustainability as managerial labour. Second, it shows how the ideal of work sustains workers' efforts as they contend with the contradictions of their jobs. Ethnographic data shows workers requesting, socializing, and selling sustainability to others. An ethnography of corporate sustainability labour contributes to theorizing how sustainability capitalism is sustained and potentially transformed.

This article explores the process of caste stigma and questions about its reliability. The Chandals were a social group primarily comprising the aboriginal peoples of the Indian subcontinent, later placed at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. In the case of Bengal, the first literary mention of Chandal is found in Charyapada, which is a Bengali-speaking community. Immediately later, two Puranas of Bengal were designated as Adham Shankara and Antyajas, along with the other lower castes. Through the ages, Mukundaram mentioned the occupational changes and their multitasking efficiency shifted their profession from cremation to salt and water chest-nut seller. The ethnographic evidence of the colonial times also provides information about their rituals, occupational efficiency, purity, and an increasing consciousness of social stigma, along with evictions. Exploring the ethnographic data, the article argues that modernity and environment-based ritual knowledge were at an extreme level. Following this tradition and derogatory perception of the upper castes, this article traces the position and legacy of the term Chandal, a lower caste in Bengal.

ABSTRACT This article explores the often-overlooked phenomenon of spirit possession in the Kathmandu Valley among Newar Buddhist women, known as dyaḥmāṃ. Despite their integral role in local Buddhist practices, their practices, like those of other spirit mediums in the Buddhist world, often find themselves at the margins of what counts as Buddhism. Drawing on ethnographic data, this article challenges the dichotomy between possession and Buddhism, arguing that possession is a vital aspect of Buddhist practice rather than its other. By examining the Buddhist framework of the possession rituals of the dyaḥmāṃ, the paper demonstrates how possession traditions are deeply intertwined with Buddhist norms.

Purpose This paper aims to examine “presences” that are practiced and intermingle during so-called hybrid meetings in the context of remote collaborations. It seeks to understand the preconditions and effects of different forms of presence for interactions and situations and to show that hybridity is constituted through everyday practices rather than through technological configurations alone. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a practice-theoretical perspective and draws on ethnographic data (observations, interviews and written reflections). The analysis utilizes the comparison of three technologically different “hybrid meeting” settings (videoconferencing, telepresence robots (TPRs) and TPRs enhanced with virtual reality) to describe interactions and situations in detail, focusing on how presences are enacted, framed and coordinated. Findings The analysis reveals three key insights. First, presences vary gradually across analytically distinct yet practically intertwined dimensions, figuring as forms of presence such as “focused copresence.” Second, practices rather than technologies alone shape presences and situations. Third, situations like “hybrid meetings” are marked by mutually coordinated doings, including the doing of presence and the framing of forms of presence. Consequently, meetings can be understood as grand situations in which multiple presences are dynamically enacted, and hybridity emerges as an outcome of practice. Originality/value The paper reconceptualizes “hybrid meetings” by shifting the analytical focus from technologically induced hybridity to practical enactments of presence and accomplishments in situ, shedding new light on social interactions and social situations. It contributes to microsociological debates on (co)presence and advances research on remote work by offering a practice-based understanding of so-called hybrid meetings.

In this paper, I advance a theorization of recursive racial cruelty by focusing on the suffering of racialized respondents in the US immigration courts and connecting it to the routine functioning of the US empire and colonial racial capitalism. Immigration courts operate within the US Department of Justice (DOJ), where immigration judges hear the government's removal (deportation) cases against non-citizen residents and adjudicate their right to stay in the US. As the legal avenue for settling questions of deportation and asylum, these courts are often posed as humane and just alternatives to the spectacular public displays of cruelty involving militarized raids, abductions, and expedited deportations (sometimes to third-country prisons) that have characterized Trump's two terms in office. Using ethnographic data from 42 cases in Boston from 2020-2022, which took place during both Trump and Biden's presidential terms, I argue that the immigration courts are in fact a parallel public-facing vehicle and staging ground for racial cruelty for the US empire-state. In the immigration courts, a combination of de jure and de facto practices work daily to reinforce a racialized politics of imperial membership. In the process, it also circulates money out of the hands of racialized respondents and their families, so that eventually profit can be made. Furthermore, the racial cruelty exercised in the immigration courts, is recursive in two ways. For each immigrant respondent, such cruelty recurs and builds in every stage of the court proceedings, from the initial hearing to the adjudication of bond to the final deportation order, and through their everyday experience in proximate institutions such as detention centers. As a result of the ongoing effects of US (and more broadly, Euro-American) imperialism in much of the world, racial cruelty also recurs generationally and sometimes transnationally during immigrant respondents' lifetimes. By advancing a theory of recursive racial cruelty, this article contributes to decolonial theory building and bridges sociological literature on US immigration, race, organizations, empire, and political economy.

Abstract Trophic level, which serves as a basic determinant of the evolutionary pathway of animals, including humans, emerges as, primarily, a product of relative energetic returns and food items availability. The concept of trophic level flexibility during the Paleolithic period for the highly adaptable human species represents a prevailing paradigm in the field of paleoanthropology. This paradigm largely relies on the observed variability of trophic levels among recent hunter-gatherer societies. We examine various methodological aspects involved in using ethnographic quantitative data as an analogical source for reconstructing the energetic returns of humans during the Paleolithic period and, consequently, their trophic level. By analyzing datasets from several studies, we highlight potential limitations that may arise when applying such analogies. In the past we argued that Paleolithic humans preferred to acquire the largest available prey. This assertion met with objection, based on ethnographic analogies. In addition to pointing out the limitations to the validity of such analogies, we propose that archaeofaunal records provide detectable reflection of prey ranking and thus their relative energetic returns without the need for detailed numerical reconstruction of energetic returns based on the ethnographic record. We introduce the Kakwani Concentration Index, originally developed in Economics to measure directionality and strength of inequality, as a measure of directionality and strength in the size ranking of prey in Archaeological assemblages to test preference for large prey. We propose that the paradigm of flexibility is based on adaptations that occurred following the Late Quaternary Megafaunal Extinctions during and after which prey size availability patterns have markedly changed. In contrast, as evidenced by the technological persistence of simple hunting tools and assemblages with large herbivores throughout the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, subsistence strategies likely centered on large prey, which can be deduced by the lack of composite projectile hunting tools for a substantial portion of human evolution. The paper re-emphasizes that ethnoarchaeological analogies should be treated as testable hypotheses, and they may hold potential validity for behaviors that exhibit cross-cultural correlates. Ultimately, it suggests that no such correlates are present in some influential hunting energetic returns and human trophic level reconstructions. We argue that the technological, ecological and cognitive non-analog features of ethnographic energetic returns datasets are too great to be predictive of the Paleolithic nutritional pattern.

<p>There is evidence that marginalized UK women and girls continue to be alienated by “traditional” British sports (such as soccer, cricket, rugby, and netball) as they often remain embedded in hegemonic masculinity norms. Although the mainstream UK sports marketplace is both crowded and highly contested, a gap exists for innovative, differentiated sports to enter the field. This research presents ethnographic data collected through site visits, interviews, and participant observation of the Coventry Cougars (an American football club), along with an attitudinal questionnaire. It finds that the Cougars have developed a unique intra-group community, where shared leadership (SL) facilitates informal learning (IL). The ethnographic study builds on the field of creating new opportunities in sport for girls. It suggests that socially bonded women and girls can co-create a powerful, transformative, and competitive organization that thrives in a space vacated by traditional British sporting culture, thus challenging how UK sport is constructed and gendered. The findings promote the assertion that recomposing the generic constrictive diet of female sport (dominated by soccer and netball) can lead to opportunities for women to develop a collective group conscience, positive self-identity, and social bonding.</p>