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Law & Mol address train accidents in the British rail network in terms of utopianism. Various railway accidents are detailed along with responses to these accidents. The first mode of striving after the good is dubbed mobile utopia. Absolutism & managerialism are considered. The concept of tinkering is introduced, or instances where there are no discrete elements to be balanced or added up into coherence. Tinkering is seen to be the cite for further exploration in understanding relating to the good. 1 Table, 25 References. J. Backman

How can constructivism and feminism inform and strengthen one another? The author of this text is a constructivist-feminist hermaphrodite, and so s/he addresses this question in the form of an inner dialogue. Instead of taking sex as a characteristic of individuals, s/he analyzes it as something performed locally in ways that vary from one situation to another. Investigating these performances offers constructivism an interesting theoretical opportunity and a chance to turn away from a sterile anti-epistemological stance. For feminism, a radicalized notion of the construction of sexes opens up new political spaces and strategies. Constructivist texts, moreover, have the potential to "do" both the contingency and the necessity of our forms of life in their very style.

In what way is »care« a matter of »tinkering«? Rather than presenting care as a (preferably »warm«) relation between human beings, the various contributions to the volume give the material world (usually cast as »cold«) a prominent place in their analysis. Thus, this book does not continue to oppose care and technology, but contributes to rethinking both in such a way that they can be analysed together. Technology is not cast as a functional tool, easy to control - it is shifting, changing, surprising and adaptable. In care practices all »things« are (and have to be) tinkered with persistently. Knowledge is fluid, too. Rather than a set of general rules, the knowledges (in the plural) relevant to care practices are as adaptable and in need of adaptation as the technologies, the bodies, the people, and the daily lives involved.

In this article we interfere with the naturalization of 'eating' by comparing two modes of engaging with fruits in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. One of these is comer, which translates as 'to eat'. The other is chupar, 'to suck'. In comer, a piece of fruit crosses distinct bodily boundaries and gets swallowed; in chupar, juices spill over hands, while stones or fibres that have made it into a mouth are taken out again. Some fruits, like apples, compel a person to comer; others, like mangoes, invite chupar. But fruits do not decide by themselves how they will be handled: at a dinner table, in public, or in places that need to stay clean, comer is advisable; chupar fits backyards and more intimate company. And then there are gratifications: comer may come with the pride of being educated; chupar offers such pleasures as overflowing juices and childhood memories. All in all, our comparison reveals that 'eating' is not a given precedent, but that comer and chupar evoke different worlds, populated by different entities (bodies, fruits), and coloured by different pleasures. One might say that the ontologies involved are different, but that is not quite strong enough, as the relevant alterities also include activities and normativities, while the boundaries between the worlds of comer and chupar are markedly fluid and shot through with partial connections.

By now, the laboratory tradition, crafting transportable knowledge that allows for comparison, has been amply studied. However, other knowledge traditions, notably that of the clinic, deserve further articulation. The authors contribute to this by unraveling some specificities of rehabilitation practice. How do laboratory and clinical traditions in rehabilitation relate to independence? The first seeks to quantify people's independence; the latter attends to qualitatively different ways of being independent. While measuring independence is a matter of aggregating scores on a priori established dimensions, clinical rehabilitation concerns coordinating different ways of being independent. While independence scales map a linear development in time, rehabilitation participants juggle with time, including uncertain futures in their present. In clinical practice, then, independence is neither a single, coherent, fact nor a clear-cut, stable goal. Instead, professionals as well as patients work by creatively doctoring with the large variety of elements that are relevant to daily life with long-term disabilities.

Antropólogas e antropólogos, ávidos por trazer à tona a originalidade dos povos por elas estudados, afirmam que, em contraste com uma "natureza" única no Ocidente, ontologias ameríndias possuem muitas naturezas. Mas será que relatos fascinantes sobre maneiras ameríndias de fazer-o-mundo [world-making] devem presumir tanto sobre o "Ocidente"? É sobre isso que temos dúvidas. Tomando "Ocidental" não como uma região mas como um estilo, nós exploramos as relações animal/humano ocidentais através da descrição de várias maneiras de colocar em cena [enact] "carne." Usando excertos — cortes — dos nossos materiais etnográficos, contrastamos o investimento no sabor de cordeiros em um açougue espanhol com a preocupação em relação à contaminação de carnes nas normas de segurança da FAO (do inglês Food and Agriculture Organization). A seguir, nós justapomos as "carnes" relevantes em duas aulas em uma escola profissionalizante no altiplano guatemalteco. Em uma, a carne é a peça central de um prato cuidadosamente arranjado, ao passo que a outra se preocupa com os nutrientes que a carne contém. A "carne Ocidental", então, não é uma. É múltipla.

Over the last two decades, anthropological studies have highlighted the problems of 'development' as a discursive regime, arguing that such initiatives are paradoxically used to consolidate inequality and perpetuate poverty. This volume constitutes a timely intervention in anthropological debates about development, moving beyond the critical stance to focus on development as a mode of engagement that, like anthropology, attempts to understand, represent and work within a complex world. By setting out to elucidate both the similarities and differences between these epistemological endeavors, the book demonstrates how the ethnographic study of development challenges anthropology to rethink its own assumptions and methods. In particular, contributors focus on the important but often overlooked relationship between acting and understanding, in ways that speak to debates about the role of anthropologists and academics in the wider world. The case studies presented are from a diverse range of geographical and ethnographic contexts, from Melanesia to Africa and Latin America, and ethnographic research is combined with commentary and reflection from the foremost scholars in the field