This paper considers the shift from the practice of collective burials to individual (or double) burials in western Europe at the end of the Neolithic/Copper Age, around 2500–2000 BC, through the lens of a particular mortuary site—the artificial cave of Bolores (Torres Vedras, Portugal). It suggests that the practices involved in making and using collective burials played an important role in this transformation towards increasing social differentiation. It explores how a focus on materiality at different scales, both temporal and spatial, might contribute new insights into geographically widespread and relatively co-synchronous social change.

The terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011, carried out by a right-wing extremist, was a shocking event, leaving 77 dead and dozens seriously wounded. It soon gave rise to a range of interpretations and explanations as to the causes and implications of the attack. Engaging with classical anthropological and more recent sociological literature on trust and blame, the article shows that there was no hegemonic narrative or explanation of the attack, and similarly no broad agreement over the steps to be taken in order to reduce the chances of future attacks. Six different attempts to account for the terrorist attack are described, but only two correctly identify demographic change, migration and the rise of xenophobic politics as the underlying causes of the terrorist attack. This suggests that the high level of trust characteristic of Norwegian society is likely to be reduced as a result of accelerating change and accompanying social fragmentation.

Health care systems reflect historical relationships between states and citizens, as well as predominant values and institutions marking a particular social milieu. Theories that place national health care in historical social context tend to exaggerate the forces of globalization and to underestimate the role of local specificities. A health care system and its social context, however, are shaped at the intersection of global, regional, and local factors, rather than by globalization alone. In this article I demonstrate this combined influence by tracking the transition in Soviet to post-Soviet health care Azerbaijan. I show that the dissolution of Azerbaijan’s socialized health care was due not to neoliberal globalization, but rather to the historical constellation of global, regional, and national processes, including the political choice of a petroleum-based development strategy.

Conceptualisations of the state as a reified entity fall short in the case of socialist Laos. Foreign commentators often imagine Lao political life through a discourse of state governance, yet the Lao themselves, in popular narratives, tend to emphasise their day to day interactions with state officials. In their everyday lives, the latter are treated as individuals with which it is possible to interact. This article explores the relations between the Lao people and their government officials, and how those relations have changed in recent history (mainly since 1975). Wedding receptions – vital events in Lao social life, where power is invoked through performance and representation – are taken as case studies for the analysis of authority and legitimacy in a socialist state context.