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This paper concerns itself with some of the consequences of legislatively supported public health interventions into smoking. These have emerged from the legislative environment of 'smokefree' in Australia, and centrally concern the constitution of public space under its operation; the conceptualisation of risk which circulates within it; and the way in which agency may be imagined in public health framings of smoking. I make a critical anthropological analysis of the ways in which risk, agency and a certain kind of public are imagined and brought to bear on smokers in particular ways. The paper is equally an invitation into the social practice of smoking, as it is undertaken by smokers and as I have ethnographically encountered smoking practice since I began work in the area in 2005. Both the critical analysis and the invitation are difficult to make in a context where research on smoking is increasingly expected to contribute to a public health cessation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of placebo has had a long history in medicine, and has evolved over time with the introduction of randomised controlled trials for testing health treatment, the increasing research done around the psychotherapies, the development of complementary and alternative medicine approaches to health, as well as the conceptual contributions from academic disciplines like psychology and anthropology. In recent years, discourses about placebo have pursued a number of key directions, and the current review paper explores these developments. For example, psychology has looked at placebo in terms of classical conditioning and the role of anxiety. Anthropology on the other hand has focused on the role of meaning and ritual in the placebo effect and psychotherapy research has encouraged an examination of the effects of the therapeutic relationship. Our review paper concludes by outlining directions ahead for future scholarship and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]