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In recent years, HIV/AIDS programming has been transformed by an ostensibly 'new' procedure: male circumcision. This article examines the rise of male circumcision as the 'right' HIV prevention tool. Treating this controversial topic as a 'matter of concern' rather than a 'matter of fact', I examine the reasons why male circumcision came to be seen as a partial solution to the problem of HIV transmission in the twenty-first century and to what effect. Grounded in a close reading of the primary literature, I suggest that the embrace of male circumcision in HIV prevention must be understood in relation to three factors: 1) the rise of evidence-based medicine as the dominant paradigm for conceptualizing medical knowledge, 2) the fraught politics of HIV/AIDS research and funding, which made the possibility of a biomedical intervention attractive, and 3) underlying assumptions about the nature of African 'culture' and 'sexuality'. I conclude by stressing the need to expand the parameters of the debate beyond the current polarized landscape, which presents us with a problematic either/or scenario regarding the efficacy of male circumcision. ; Anthropology, Department of ; Arts, Faculty of ; Reviewed ; Faculty

AbstractIn recent years, tobacco research has become an increasingly politicized field, with 'legitimate' research on this topic expected to further the goals of tobacco control. This paper presents an overview of the state of field of social science studies on tobacco and critiques the growing polarity evident in scholarship on this topic. Moving beyond mainstream public health perspectives, I outline a body of research that challenges dominant understandings of tobacco use and tobacco control. This research can be classified into three main categories: studies that interrogate conceptions of why people smoke, those that examine the impacts of tobacco control policy on smokers, and studies embracing intellectual and philosophical perspectives (especially phenomenology and social constructionism) that place them outside of a public health frame. I end with a broader discussion of the growing instrumentalization of social science research and the need to resist prescriptions that seek to dictate the appropriate form and content of scholarly work.

This paper explores the reasons why Cheondogyo is lionized in contemporary nationalist discourse, when it has such a small following in South Korea today. I argue that Cheondogyo's continuing presence in nationalist and tourist publications can be readily comprehended in light of its connection with the Donghak Revolution of 1894. In the post-colonial era, Donghak/Cheondogyo was embraced by both the North and South Korean states, each seeking to claim a connection with the movement in order to legitimize their respective political goals. More recently, this legacy has also been claimed by the minjung movement as evidence of an incipient minjung consciousness. These political appropriations have ensured that Cheondogyo maintains a level of legitimacy denied to other new religions of Korea. However, the political acceptance of Donghak/Cheondogyo has come at the expense of its religious legitimacy. Thus, while its connection with the Donghak Revolution may have "made" Cheondogyo into a key historical artifact, it has simultaneously been "unmade" as a religious movement with any real relevance to the present. ; Anthropology, Department of ; Arts, Faculty of ; Reviewed ; Faculty

Drug users are generally seen as a vulnerable population requiring special protection in research; however, to date there has been little empirical research into the ethics of research with illicit drug users. Moreover, the available research has tended to treat "drug users" as a homogeneous category, and has failed to consider potential gender differences in users' experiences. Drawing on focus groups with twenty-seven female drug users in Vancouver, Canada, this study examines women's experiences of research and what they see as ethical and respectful engagement. Many study participants talked about feeling dehumanized as a result of prior research participation. Women were critical of the assumption that drug users lack the capacity to take part in research, and affirmed the appropriateness of financial incentives. A variety of motivations for research participation were identified, including a desire for financial gain and altruistic concerns such as a desire to help others. These findings suggest that women drug users' views on ethical research differ from prevailing assumptions among institutional review boards about how research with such populations should proceed.

In this article we argue that the complex connections between gender and fatness have not been fully examined, particularly in so far as they relate to men. We consider the role of early feminist literature in establishing the idea that the fear of fatness is fundamentally tied up with patriarchy and the ways this also underwrites more recent examinations of fatness and gender. Moreover, we assert that popular feminist scholarship has actively produced the assumption that weight is not only a women's issue, but that it is tied up with the very construction of femininity. Through an examination of the cultural history of fatness we show that men have also been caught up in the drive to reshape the body over the last century. However, their concerns have remained largely hidden, framed as they often are in the lexicon of 'fitness' and 'muscularity'. An examination of the limited published material on male concerns with fat reveals that for many men fatness is feminizing – and undermines normative forms of masculinity in threatening ways. We call for further research that considers both female and male experiences of fatness, given the limitations of approaches that focus merely on one or the other.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Our agenda -- Core concepts and disciplinary boundaries -- Overview of chapters -- Notes -- References -- 1 Culture -- Introduction -- Reflections upon culture at the crash-points of disciplinary inquiry -- Culture: a modern construction -- Biomedicine: troubles in the invocation of culture -- Organ transplantation and the cultural encounter -- Assuming culture is here to stay: implications for methodology -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 2 Society -- Introduction -- Where to start: the problem of society and its promise -- Society sui generis: the making of society as a distinct object of concern -- Between individuals: social (inter)action, community and society -- The dualities of structure and the fracturing of the social -- Conceptualizing society through the 'social determinants of health' -- Stillbirth: a new global controversy? -- Breaking the silence: between individuals, society and medicine -- Society: a return to the concept's promise -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 3 Magic -- Introduction -- Explaining the cause-effect relationship -- Beyond 'armchair' theories -- The rise of ritual -- Signs versus things and the question of ritual efficacy -- Implications for contemporary studies of health and medicine -- Cancer and causality -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 4 Production -- Introduction -- Foundations of an approach to production -- The social relations of production and consumption -- Application of the production concept in health and medicine -- The social relations of (re)production -- (Re)production reconsidered: the making of planned caesarean birth -- Between technology, doctors, patients and consumers: production and health in co-constituted futures.

Over the past decade, the phenomenon of "fake" peer reviews has caused growing consternation among scholarly publishers. Yet despite the significant behind-the-scenes impact that anxieties about fakery have had on peer review processes within scholarly journals, the phenomenon itself has been subject to little scholarly analysis. Rather than treating fake reviews as a straightforward descriptive category, in this article, we explore how the discourse on fake reviews emerged and why, and what it tells us about its seeming antithesis, "genuine" peer review. Our primary source of data are two influential adjudicators of scholarly publishing integrity that have been critical to the emergence of the concept of the fake review: Retraction Watch and the Committee on Publication Ethics. Via an analysis of their respective blog posts, Forum cases, presentations, and best practice guidance, we build a genealogy of the fake review discourse and highlight the variety of players involved in staking out the fake. We conclude that constant work is required to maintain clear lines of separation between genuine and fake reviews and highlight how the concept has served to reassert the boundaries between science and society in a context where they have increasingly been questioned.