The second Trump administration has disrupted global climate politics, turning the United States away from the clean energy and environmental policies of the Biden administration. Consequently, analytical attention is turning, inside and outside of the United States, to a family of concepts referred to as “Climate Realism” (CR), which favors long-run investments in technology and adaptation over near-term climate mitigation efforts. We critically engage with CR and argue that political science identifies four key features of climate politics that shed light on CR’s strengths and weaknesses, and which will persist even in the second Trump era. Despite CR’s flaws, we contend that its emergence in reaction to the second Trump administration highlights some important dimensions of climate politics that deserve greater attention going forward. We highlight three topics for research: the political and practical strategies of the anti-green coalition; the heterogeneity in viable national economic strategies; and the implications for IR of a turn away from meaningful climate mitigation in powerful nations.

Medical device innovation is key to advancing healthcare and fostering economic development. As the global medical technology market expands, the capacity of regions and countries to attract and support innovation has become increasingly significant. This article examines the growing perception that China is becoming a more attractive environment for medical device development than Europe, focusing on key regulatory differences that may influence this shift. It compares the hierarchical structure of legislation, regulatory oversight bodies, and classification procedures, particularly for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, while Europe’s decentralised system of notified bodies offers developers flexibility, China’s centralised regulatory agencies and more adaptable classification system – alongside the absence of stringent AI-specific regulations like the EU’s AI Act – may present a different set of trade-offs and facilitate faster market entry for innovative technologies. Despite these differences, the paper argues that regulation alone does not fully explain China’s rising attractiveness. Other contributing factors, such as its vast market size, significant government support, and broader R&D policies, must also be considered. The analysis concludes that while regulatory structures are influential, they represent just one component of a multifaceted ecosystem that shapes the global geography of medical device innovation.

Brazil partnered with China to foster industrial and technological progress, and to increase autonomy and prestige. The outcome, however, has been de-industrialisation and increased dependency. Nevertheless, the perception persists that Brazil is rising alongside China towards a post-hegemonic, multipolar world. We argue this can be understood through the deep-rooted embedded-autonomy narrative that shapes Brazil’s approach to the world. This positions the United States as the primary obstacle to national goals and China as part of the solution. Brazil reached out in solidarity to China, expecting outsized material and ontological security gains. This outsourcing of anti-dependency played a key role in Brazil’s accommodation of China’s preferences, locking in path dependency. By seriously considering the ideas guiding Brazil’s foreign policy, we examine how the trajectory of Sino-Brazilian relations was sustained despite the apparent mismatch between goals and outcomes.

In the global waste trade, importers buy containers of waste and scrap to meet demand for raw materials, especially in the Global South. But post-processing leftovers generate localized negative externalities. I use the waste trade as a setting to establish that low-capacity states can and do use tariffs as a tool in their environmental policy repertoire. Product-level tariffs can serve as Pigouvian ’sin’ taxes that incentivize private market actors to limit transactions and/or increase state revenue, both channels that can result in improved environmental outcomes. For evidence, I leverage the ‘China garbage shock’: in 2017 China banned imports of twenty-six waste products (HS six-digit), which disrupted economic–environmental trade-offs in other, newly competitive markets awash in diverted imports. Using novel data on 179 traded waste products and product-level tariffs (1996–2020), I demonstrate that those that received the shock raised tariffs in ways consistent with environmental protection.

Excavations at Aketala reveal traces of human activity at the oases of the western Tarim Basin, north-western China, by at least 2200 BC. The recovered artefacts indicate that, by 1800 BC, the Andronovo culture had reached this region, bringing agropastoralism and developing the earliest regional evidence of bronze manufacturing techniques.

This article is a case study of the Kasarani Stadium in Kenya as a heuristic through which to understand President Daniel Arap Moi’s political style and priorities during the first decade of his regime. Drawing primarily from national and international newspapers, the archives of national and international sporting organizations and associations, records of the Kenyan government and biographies of Moi, I explore how Moi gave political meaning to sport to advance his populist politics at home and project Kenya on(to) the international stage. At home, he used sports to define himself as a leader of the ordinary mwananchi (citizen), in touch with the experiences, challenges, and visions of the common Kenyan. Internationally, he used sports to chart Kenya’s foreign policy and fashion himself as an international political personality. The article concludes that the study of sports and sporting infrastructure offers a productive way to write social, political, and cultural histories of postcolonial Africa.

The digital transformation of Chinese companies offers a new frontier for organizational research. Widespread use of workplace platforms creates rich archives of unobtrusive data, providing continuous, real-time insights into organizational life that traditional surveys cannot capture. The central challenge for scholars is turning this data abundance into meaningful theory. This special issue highlights three studies that meet this challenge by using innovative methods to convert granular data into valuable knowledge. The papers employ digital-context experiments, real-time behavioral tracking, and machine-learning-assisted theory building to study phenomena from interpersonal dynamics to crisis productivity. Looking ahead, we explore the potential of unstructured multimodal data and new AI tools to make complex analysis more accessible. We conclude with a research agenda calling for methodological rigor, interdisciplinary collaboration, and a firm balance between technological innovation and theoretical depth.

Rural schools in China have long been in a state of underdevelopment. Studies have mainly addressed this issue from the perspective of rural–urban structural inequality, while neglecting the cultural processes that lead to inequality reproduction. Through the lens of cultural production, this study analyses qualitative data gathered in Gongshui county in central China, revealing how rural teachers and parents construct a negative perception of rural schools, evoked by devalued meanings associated with schools’ physical appearance, teaching staff characteristics and academic performance. Influenced by the discourse on rural inferiority, teachers and parents have cultivated a collective identity of becoming “less” rural and adopt strategies to disassociate themselves from rural education and community. Their cultural production of “bad” rural schools perpetuates and reinforces the underdevelopment of rural schools. This study draws attention to the cultural misconceptions surrounding rurality and the cultural processes by which educational inequalities are produced and reproduced in rural areas, both in China and globally.

This paper provides a historiographical periodization of China’s Long 1980s (1978–1992) by conceptualizing its political and intellectual contexts and illustrating the reformism–conservatism dichotomy across key events throughout this period. The identification of China’s Long 1980s not only illuminates China’s policy trajectories and ideological landscape back then and ever since but also enriches the global scholarship of modernity, Marxism and 20th-century communist experiences.

This article explores the role of international law in Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (CFA). The CFA makes extensive use of international and comparative materials, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). However, it avoids issuing judgments that would clash with Beijing’s core interests and accepts its broad definition of “national security”. This arguably facilitates authoritarian interpretations of the ICCPR and undermines the authority of the Human Rights Committee. Yet, in March of 2025, the CFA granted an appeal and upheld the right to fair trial, emphasizing that the ICCPR continues to enjoy constitutional status in Hong Kong. Moreover, the CFA continues to advance the rights of vulnerable groups, including the LGBT community. The CFA’s contributions to comparative jurisprudence on international human rights law are decidedly mixed. But this is arguably inevitable, given its unusual status as an “apex court” operating in the shadow of Beijing.

The practice of anthropology is based on the ethnographer “being there” in time and space. And the act of writing is the reenactment of “presence” for the reader. “The field” is a romanticized space for empirical exploration. However, technological innovation and connectivity have enabled easy access to new “fieldsites” and vicarious participant-observation without being “present.” The entertainment media ecosystem is now more heterogeneous than ever and is more relevant in everyday life. The depth with which we immerse ourselves in these imaginary worlds speaks volumes about our withdrawal from other forms of engagement with the people, communities, and social problems around us. Romance and fantasy are a means to escape vulnerability and hopelessness, as well as serving as an outlet for the frustrations of failed social mobility. This essay posits that romance is a method for living today, and enjoyment is empiricism for a public anthropology. Romance is more than a genre; it is a guide to understanding how society functions. There is something deeply human about living through our imaginations to escape our present. Enjoying romance as a method to engage with the world offers insight into political infrastructures, social hierarchies, and elite intrigue. Life is full of afflictions, and romance is more than a salve; it offers a strategy for navigating social relations.