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In this review article, Philippe Clancier's recent monograph on the history of the overlooked Late Bronze and Early Iron-age polity of Sūḫu lying on the Middle Euphrates is examined. It is demonstrated that the central contention of two identically named polities of Sūḫu ("Eastern" and "Western Sūḫu" respectively), ruled by two competing dynasties with differing political relationships to Assyria, is not supported by the textual record. As a corrective, a new comprehensive political history of Sūḫu in the early first millennium BC is presented here, as a basis for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revealing complexity in the world—but also creating it—is at the heart of anthropology. It shapes our engagement with theory and ethics, writing and visual style, and choice of research subjects. But does it create blind spots? I respond to this question by discussing studies of violence, and my ethnographic material in progress on British ex‐soldiers. Owing to the ethical norm of suspending moral judgment of our research participants, we tend to avoid portraying their unlikable traits, internal contradictions, or troubling actions that do not advance our arguments. Ethnography often reveals florid complexity in structures or systems, but it creates simpler depictions of the people who inhabit these forms. Yet, since anthropology has long aimed to holistically capture the truth of social life, it should allow more space in ethnographic narrative for complicated protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reigns of Adad-nārārī II (911–891) and his son Tukultī-Ninurta II (890–884) are vital to understanding the rise of Neo-Assyria; yet, reconstruction of these is hampered by the scarce and fragmentary sources available. This study surveys the reigns of these two kings, and examines five fragmentary early Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions from the city of Aššur published in 2009 by Frahm within Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts 3, providing solid ascriptions of three of these to Adad-nārārī II and two to Tukultī-Ninurta II on philological and historical grounds. These findings are then integrated into present knowledge of this period in order to present new portraits of these kings' respective reigns. This results in a clearer historical articulation of Adad-nārārī II's remarkably successful incumbency, particularly shedding light on his early victories. In turn, Tukultī-Ninurta II's difficult reign spent consolidating his father's territorial gains can also be better understood. Interestingly, various innovations can be ascribed to this latter king, not least the 'calculated frightfulness' for which his son would become so (in)famous within Assyriology. Finally, some repercussions of these findings for the study of 10th and 9th century royal inscriptions are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being one of the most prominent and best-documented northern client states of the Ur III state, the city of Asimānum/Šimānum remained unlocalized. Here, we demonstrate through both historical-geographical and philological argumentation and archaeological evidence that it must correspond to later Middle and Neo-Assyrian Šibaniba, modern Tell Billa, northern Iraq. Building upon this finding, we propose a new history of Tell Billa during the Early and Middle Bronze Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mandatory individual arbitration, as a condition of employment, binds many U.S. employees after the Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis. In effect, fundamental employment protections--such as relief under current anti-discrimination statutes--are privatized. Now, only a legislative fix will break those bonds. Congress and state legislatures have ventured into the fray, though preemption problems plague the latter, and both seem fixated on either excessively narrow categories (harassment claims in employment) or politically distasteful, broad solutions (no individual arbitration allowed in employment or consumer contracts). This Article acknowledges the quandary that the Epic decision, and the Court's longstanding obeisance to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), have visited upon employees and employers. The Article then considers practices in other industrialized democracies, which often feature specialized employment courts. This Article recommends a hybrid. If the United States can fashion specialized employment tribunals, perhaps without calling them that, and simultaneously offer employees an effective path to opt out of employment arbitration, then employers and those workers who want arbitration can enjoy the fruits of the FAA while other employees can pursue their claims in the fashion contemplated by the drafters of federal and state employment statutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in hospitals that offer cosmetic surgery to the poor, this article examines the causes of a rapid growth in plastic surgery rates in Brazil over the past two decades. It argues that problems with diverse social origins manifest themselves as aesthetic defects, which are diagnosed and treated by the beauty industry. But plastic surgery also incites the consumer desires of people on the margins of the market economy and mobilizes a racialized 'beauty myth' (a key trope in national identity) in marketing and clinical practice. Beauty practices offer a means to compete in a neoliberal libidinal economy where anxieties surrounding new markets of work and sex mingle with fantasies of social mobility, glamour, and modernity. En s'inspirant d'un travail de terrain ethnographique dans les hopitaux proposant de la chirurgie esthetique accessible aux revenus modestes, l'auteur etudie les causes de la diffusion rapide de la chirurgie esthetique au Bresil sur les vingt dernieres annees. Il avance que les problemes lies a la diversite des origines sociales se manifestent sous la forme de defauts esthetiques, qui sont diagnostiques et traites par l'industrie de la beaute. La chirurgie esthetique suscite cependant aussi les desirs de consommation de la part des citoyens qui se trouvent en marge de l'economie de marche et fait intervenir dans le marketing et la pratique medicale un <> racialise qui est un grand theme recurrent de l'identite nationale. Les chirurgiens esthetiques offrent un moyen de devenir competitifs dans une economie neoliberale de la libido, ou les angoisses liees aux nouveaux marches du travail et du sexe se melent aux fantasmes de mobilite sociale, de seduction et de modernite., Only intellectuals like misery. The poor prefer luxury. Joao Trinta, Carnivalesco, Carnival parade designer The patients here have this philosophy of the masses: the beautiful live and the ugly die. [...]

Brazilian intellectual history, the commercial and medical beauty industry is observed by approaching the role of mixture in Brazilian social life from the angle of aesthetics. It is argued that race and beauty shape the global medical and commercial beauty industry among the popular classes of a developing nation thus revealing it as a distinct logic of race and beauty that contrasts with multiculturalism.

Engaging with debates about the re-emergence of the race concept in science, this article opens up facial plastic surgery's expertise of racial phenotypes to inquiry. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of medical discourse, it analyses how this expertise is made and put into practice in three nations with large cosmetic surgery markets: the US, Korea, and Brazil. Plastic surgery has drawn on the scientific knowledge of race from fields such as anthropology and anthropometry to make racial features (nose and eyes) into an object of medical intervention. Race has been enacted differently, however, in the three national contexts we discuss according to the changing politics of difference and beauty ideals. While contemporary surgery attempts to sidestep the ethical problems raised by earlier scientific racism and whitening practices, it continues to pathologize non-white racial features by operating on traits it sees as "excessive" or merely typical, rather than beautiful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]