Afro‐Cuban Religion,Ethnobotany and Healthcare in the Context of Global Political and Economic Change

‘Globalisation’, driven by neoliberal‐based policies, can be seen to have significant impacts on ethnobotanical practices, particularly through the commercialisation of traditional knowledge and rise in identity‐based social movements. Despite its relative political and economic isolation in comparison to more ‘neoliberalised’ areas of Latin America, local‐level shifts occurring in post‐Soviet Cuba are similar to those occurring elsewhere in the region. Afro‐Cuban ritual activities have proliferated, particularly in Havana, leading to an increased dependence on the rich magico‐medicinal pharmacopoeias employed in hybridised religions such as santería and palo monte – suggesting that ‘globalisation’ may have profound, albeit indirect, implications for even the most economically marginalised countries such as Cuba.     

Reliability and validity of the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys on party positioning

This research note reports on the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES), which measure national party positioning on European integration, ideology, and several European Union (EU) and non‐EU policies. The reliability of expert judgments is examined and the CHES data are cross‐validated with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, the 2003 Benoit‐Laver expert survey and the 2002 Rohrschneider‐Whitefield survey. The dataset is available on the CHES website.     

The Sovereignty of Things: Nationalism and Its Materials in Mexican Photography (1920s–1940s)

The ubiquity of the artefact in Mexican photography needs to be understood as the locus of key originary concepts and as a point of purchase for metaphotographic reflexivity and not merely as an emblematic prop or decorative marginalia. The article discusses the way in which strategies of focus, composition and visualisation, along with the selection or ‘find’ of particular objects and materials, made palpable the abstractions of self‐hood and cultural singularity through the disclosure of form, light and texture. It considers how the practice of the close‐up itself became a cultural trope and how, paradoxically, the pursuit of sovereign objects and autochthonous production in modernist photography elicited a response that infringed visibility in favour of proximity.