Who knows who we are? Questioning DNA analysis in disaster victim identification

The use of DNA analysis as a mode of identification of disaster victims has become increasingly predominant to other, traditional, methods of identification in recent years. Scientific advances of the technological processes, high-profile use in identification efforts across the globe (such as after 9/11 or in the Asian Tsunami of 2004), and its inclusion in popular media, have led to its popular adoption as one of the primary modes of identification in disaster scenarios, and to the expectation of its use in all cases by the lay public and media. It is increasingly argued to be integral to post-disaster management. However, depending on the circumstances, location, and type of disaster, this technology may not be appropriate, and its use may instead conflict with socio-political and cultural norms and structures of power. Using examples primarily from Cambodia and Iraq this article will explore what these conflicts may be, and in doing so, question the expanding assumption that DNA analysis is a universally appropriate intervention in disaster victim identification. It will argue instead that its use may be a result of a desire for the political and social capital that this highly prestigious technological intervention offers rather than a solely humanitarian intervention on behalf of survivors and the dead

The Stories behind the Struggle: A Closer Look at First Experiences with Opioid Misuse

The opioid crisis is a national public health emergency. Over 47,000 people in the U.S. died of opioid overdoses in 2017. Improving our knowledge about how people first come to misuse opioids can help to inform prevention and treatment interventions. This research brief shows that opioid misuse most often begins before age 25, most people obtain the opioids they misuse from friends and family rather than a health care provider, and experimenting and coping with life stressors are the most common motivations for starting opioid misuse

The Stories behind the Struggle: A Closer Look at First Experiences with Opioid Misuse

The opioid crisis is a national public health emergency. Over 47,000 people in the U.S. died of opioid overdoses in 2017. Improving our knowledge about how people first come to misuse opioids can help to inform prevention and treatment interventions. This research brief shows that opioid misuse most often begins before age 25, most people obtain the opioids they misuse from friends and family rather than a health care provider, and experimenting and coping with life stressors are the most common motivations for starting opioid misuse

‘How can I be post-Soviet if I was never Soviet?’ Rethinking categories of time and social change – a perspective from Kulob, southern Tajikistan

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Kulob region of southern Tajikistan, this paper examines the extent to which the existing periodization ‘Soviet/post-Soviet’ is still valid to frame scholarly works concerning Central Asia. It does so through an analysis of ‘alternative temporalities’ conveyed by Kulob residents to the author. These alternative temporalities are fashioned in especially clear ways in a relationship to the physical transformations occurring to two types of housing, namely flats in building blocks and detached houses. Without arguing that the categories ‘Soviet’ and ‘post-Soviet’ have become futile, the author advocates that the uncritically use of Soviet/post-Soviet has the unwanted effect of shaping the Central Asian region as a temporalized and specialized ‘other’

Habit, Memory, and the Persistence of Socialist-Era Street Names in Postsocialist Bucharest, Romania

The critical study of toponymy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of urban places following revolutionary political change. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes. Renaming, however, might not always be successful, and this article examines this issue with reference to a market in Bucharest, Romania. Originally named Piaţa Moghioroş during the socialist era to commemorate a leading Communist Party activist, the market was renamed in the postsocialist period. Yet, more than two decades on, the original name remains in widespread everyday use. Using a mixed-method approach, we seek to advance the critical toponymies literature by exploring the persistence of the socialist-era name within everyday practice. Although many authors have highlighted the issue of popular resistance to an unpopular renaming, we find little evidence of conscious resistance, and instead we explore the importance of habit within everyday practices as an explanation, drawing on an understanding of habit derived from sociocognitive psychology. This perspective proposes that habits are stable and hard to break if the broader context in which they are situated is stable. We suggest that this explanation, rather than popular contestation, has more to offer in understanding the persistence of the toponym Piaţa Moghioroş. We thus highlight the importance of considering how the “users” of place names react to the changes of such names and create their own meanings in relation to them in ways unintended by elites

On the Matter of Time

Drawing on several disciplinary areas, this article considers diverse cultural concepts of time, space, and materiality. It explores historical shifts in ideas about time, observing that these have gone full circle, from visions in which time and space were conflated, through increasingly divergent linear understandings of the relationship between them, to their reunion in contemporary notions of space-time. Making use of long-term ethnographic research and explorations of the topic of Time at Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study (2012–13), the article considers Aboriginal Australian ideas about relationality and the movement of matter through space and time. It asks why these earliest explanations of the cosmos, though couched in a wholly different idiom, seem to have more in common with the theories proposed by contemporary physicists than with the ideas that dominated the period between the Holocene and the Anthropocene. The analysis suggests that such unexpected resonance between these oldest and newest ideas about time and space may spring from the fact that they share an intense observational focus on material events. Comparing these vastly different but intriguingly compatible worldviews meets interdisciplinary aims in providing a fresh perspective on both of them

Not Quite Right: Representations of Eastern Europeans in ECJ Discourse

Although the increasing responsiveness of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘ECJ’) jurisprudence to western Member States’ concerns regarding Central and Eastern European (‘CEE’) nationals’ mobility has garnered academic attention, ECJ discourse has not been scrutinised for how it approaches the CEE region or CEE movers. Applying postcolonial theory, this article seeks to fill this gap and to explore whether there are any indications that ECJ discourse is in line with the historical western-centric inferiorisation of the CEE region. A critical discourse analysis of a set of ECJ judgments and corresponding Advocate General opinions pertaining to CEE nationals illustrates not only how the ECJ adopts numerous discursive strategies to maintain its authority, but also how it tends to prioritise values of the western Member States, while overlooking interests of CEE movers. Its one-sided approach is further reinforced by referring to irrelevant facts and negative assumptions to create an image of CEE nationals as socially and economically inferior to westerners, as not belonging to the proper EU polity and as not quite deserving of EU law’s protections. By silencing CEE nationals’ voices, while disregarding the background of east/west socio-economic and political power differentials and precariousness experienced by many CEE workers in the west, such racialising discourse normalises ethnicity- and class-based stereotypes. These findings also help to contextualise both EU and western policies targeting CEE movers and evidence of their unequal outcomes in the west, and are in line with today’s nuanced expressions of racisms. By illustrating the ECJ’s role in addressing values pertinent to mobile CEE individuals, this study facilitates a fuller appreciation of the ECJ’s power in shaping and reflecting western-centric EU identity and policies. Engaging with such issues will not only allow us to better appreciate—and question—the ECJ’s legitimacy, but might also facilitate a better understanding of power dynamics within the EU. This study also makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions. It expands (and complicates) the application of postcolonial theory to contemporary intra-EU processes, while illustrating the usefulness of applying critical discourse analysis to exploring differentiation, exclusion, subordination and power within legal language