There is little research on how nationalism is adopted and deployed to foster but also to challenge sex-, gender- and HIV-related stigma in Thailand and other nation states across Southeast Asia. The available literature highlights how self-help groups for Thai people with HIV function as communities of practice, as sites of learning, and for gaining and preserving knowledge (Tanabe 2008, Liamputtong 2009, 2014). This article contributes to the literature by demonstrating how collectives of same-sex-attracted men and male-to-female transgender people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Thailand learn and teach each other how to alleviate social and personal barriers that impede access to health care. The study adopted qualitative research methods and interviewed 22 participants in five cities in Thailand. This article highlights how collective action, which adopts and reinterprets the symbols and metaphors of Thai nationalism, acts as a ‘deviance disavowal’ strategy (Davis 1961). By deploying Thai nationalism, same-sex attracted men and transgender PLHIV reposition ‘spoiled identities’ and break through the stigma they report after HIV diagnosis. Describing mechanisms of ‘deviance disavowal’ in Thailand may provide an opportunity to deploy strategies to manage stigma that interferes with access to health care in Thailand, and in other nation states, and may be applicable to other stigmatised groups and illnesses.

This article traces the history of India’s first tertiary cancer hospital, Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH). TMH was originally conceived in 1932 as a philanthropic project by the Tatas, an elite Parsi business family in Bombay. The founding of TMH represented a form of philanthro-capitalism which both enabled the Tatas to foster a communal acceptance for big businesses in Bombay and provide the Tatas with the opportunity to place stakes in the emerging nuclear research economy seen as essential to the scientific nationalist sentiment of the post-colonial state. In doing this, the everyday activities of TMH placed a heavy emphasis on nuclear research. In a time when radium for the treatment of cancer was still seen as ‘quackery’ in much of the world, the philanthro-capitalist investment and the interest in nuclear research by the post-colonial state provided an environment where radium medicine was able to be validated. The validation of radiotherapy at TMH influenced how other cancer hospitals in India developed and also provided significant resources for cancer research in early-mid twentieth century India. Ultimately, this article identifies ways in which cancer comes to be seen as relevant in the global south and raises questions on the relationship between local and global actors in setting health priorities.

The article Concussion killjoys: CTE, violence and the brain’s becoming, written by Aryn Martin and Alasdair McMillan, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 30 October 2020 without open access. With the author(s)’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 9 February 2021 to © The Author(s) 2021 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licen ses/by/4.0/.

In this article, we look at how the politics of reproduction take form in Denmark when people are denied access to IVF. Approaching IVF as a selective reproductive technology, we explore IVF’s selective potential in terms of reproductive governance and reproductive citizenship by analyzing decisions by the Danish State Administration about whether people get access to IVF or not. For that purpose, we had access to assessments of people’s inability to parent that are required by law in case doubts about a person’s ability to parent arise when they seek treatment with IVF in Denmark. Through this analysis, we identify three parenthood and citizenship ideals that characterize reproductive governance and the politics of reproduction in Denmark: (1) the medically sane/sober self whose parenting and societal decisions are not influenced by self-altering medical diagnoses and/or treatment, (2) the independent, capable, and productive self that pursues a meaningful life in societal terms, and (3) the responsible self that actively invests into reproductive futures. Based on this analysis, we argue that people are unduly excluded from reproduction if they are identified as not living up to these ideals because of the intersections of their gendered, bodily, social, and economic positioning.

Heibaika (Mandarin for black-and-white cards) are tools that Taiwanese parents use for infants below 3 months old. These cards are claimed to stimulate vision and enhance the brain. Although the scientific efficacy of heibaika is questionable, the wide circulation of these cards illustrates the ways some try to urge laypeople to imagine and picture the infant brain. Thus, the use of heibaika constitutes a good example of neuroparenting and neuroculture, where flourishing neuroscience transforms the parenting culture. In the present study, multiple methodologies are applied, and the emergence of heibaika is identified as a twenty-first century phenomenon popularised by online forums and postpartum care centres, among many other channels. Heibaika are contextualised in the globalisation of neuroparenting through translation since the 1990s and the rising anxiety of contemporary Taiwanese parents. Through interview analysis, parents are classified into believers, sceptics, and cautious experimenters. Their anticipations and worries are further elaborated. The paper concludes by highlighting its three major contributions: the importance of studying lay neuroscience as a way to rethink and problematise the boundary between science and culture, the enrichment of the concept of neuroparenting, and the emphasis on the dimension of globalisation and knowledge transmission.

This paper reports on ethnographic research conducted in a behavioural epigenetics laboratory working on the transgenerational inheritance of “early-life stress” in rodents. The article describes the experimental steps that lead to the production of an understanding of “stress” as a nexus of molecules and experiences, biological and biographical events. In particular, the paper focuses on the experimental protocol of Environmental Enrichment (EE). EE is a housing regime for experimental animals that the lab employs to correct the ‘aberrant’ epigenetic effects of ‘stress’. The use of EE gets narrated as a therapeutic intervention restoring, within the experimental system of the lab, the centrality of the body as entity endlessly modified by the interactions with its (material and social) environments. Drawing from these observations, I detail the lab’s mixed factual and value-laden work going into the production of a biosocial understanding of “stress”. This process, I argue, oscillates between an emphasis on the material, organic and molecular traces of experiences, and circumscribed attempts to deal with the biosocial complexities of this phenomenon in experimentation. As such, the practices reported here may be of interest to current STS engagements with post-genomic science and the way it forays into complex thinking of body–environment entanglements.

The adoption of the randomised controlled trial within public health research to test behavioural and lifestyle interventions means that trial researchers are increasingly expected to balance ambitions of methodological rigour and social relevance in the performance of a trial. Striking this balance is particularly important when it comes to the issue of participant compliance. This article draws from fieldwork among researchers in an exercise trial in Denmark to explore the work entailed in achieving and measuring participant compliance from a distance. By drawing on perspectives from surveillance studies, we focus on the practices, technologies and forms of knowing involved in aligning participant’s bodies and practices with specific data production ambitions. The analysis highlights the work and challenges entailed in retaining participants within the scope of the researchers’ monitoring. In conclusion, we suggest that the firm commitment to produce quantitative data on compliance elides the work, challenges and collaborative practices entailed in achieving compliance and highlighting the challenges of ensuring compliance. The article describes the randomised controlled trial, not as a powerful governmental socio-technical apparatus, but as a fragile, situated, and fundamentally challenged surveillance system. This has important implications for ambitions to consider the complexity of behavioural interventions.