A reduction in the demand for meat and particularly red meat has the potential to significantly enhance the sustainability and health of many people's diets. In the current work, I examine situational predictors of meat consumption in nationally representative nutrition surveys from three Western European countries: Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. More specifically, I examine whether the situational factors – the meal type, the day of the week and the location of the food consumption occasion – are predictive of whether meat and red meat are consumed. The results indicate that all three factors are linked to meat and red meat consumption with the patterns varying substantially across the different case study countries and in some cases also the gender of the consumer. The results emphasise the value of mapping situational correlates to inform situated interventions aimed at influencing meat consumption, while also highlighting important differences across both cultures and people.

The significance of food is beyond its gastronomic value. Food symbolises a community's enriched past and holds cultural expressions and traditional knowledge. The linkage of food with religious beliefs, geo-climatic factors, social standards, and various health benefits builds the reputation of the food, which is essentially attributable to its geographic origin. Following the ratification of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the contracting states that have enacted Geographical Indications (GI) legislation (particularly those in Asia) have come forward to protect foodstuffs as GI in order to safeguard their communities and their traditional knowledge associated with foodstuffs. Against this background, the present article attempts to compare foodstuff GIs in eight selected Asian countries with a sui generis system of GI protection as TRIPS compliance. The comparative analysis of the evolution and scope of foodstuff protection, pre-registration and post-registration impact, and quality maintenance provides important insights into convergence and divergence among the selected Asian countries. The study further identifies policy implications for the sustenance of GI.

Facing ageing challenges, long-term care (LTC) has become a focus of policymaking and policy analysis in China. However, the burgeoning literature obscures a lack of understanding of LTC policymaking, implying a linear and neutral process. This depoliticisation is unrealistic and contributes little to understanding the diversity of LTC policies and improving inclusive LTC provision. Focusing on the core institutional arrangement, LTC insurance (LTCI), this article explores a highly politicised policymaking process and reveals complex political deliberations behind different LTCI choices across regions. Underpinned by the multiple streams approach, which supports a systematic comparison of the policy process, this article identifies four key factors from a relational perspective that influence LTCI policymaking, including the tension between evidence and politics in the construction of LTC issues, the tension between policy effectiveness and stability in the assessment of policy options, strong or weak political will, and the presence or absence of municipal government.

The literature on civility navigates the gravitational pulls of binary camps: civility sceptics tend to emphasize how it operates as an instrument of power; civility optimists tend to emphasize its emancipatory potentials. While some scholarship has attempted to reconcile these perspectives by showing how civility can be both negative and positive, such theorization tends to describe this relation in terms of ambivalence. While these approaches rightly indicate that normative judgments about civility are largely a matter of perspective, the concept of twisted civility developed here focuses on the ways in which actors become trapped by the dynamic shifts of force embedded within civility. Comparisons across seemingly incommensurate examples suggest that such multidirectional dynamics are not culturally specific but rather more generalizable. Building our theoretical conception of twisted civility from a comparative approach based on research in Kuching and Saigon, and then using the concept to consider examples from the United States and Denmark, this article also reverses the direction of theorizing typically employed in scholarship on civility. Using postcolonial Southeast Asia as the source of theory rather than its afterthought, the method here uses anthropological comparison to generate theory and to problematize assumptions that universalize Euro-American trajectories of civility.

Some human settlements endure for millennia, while others are founded and abandoned within a few decades or centuries. The reasons for variation in the duration of site occupation, however, are rarely addressed. Here, the authors introduce a new approach for the analysis of settlement longevity or persistence. Using seven regional case studies comprising both survey and excavation data, they demonstrate how the median persistence of individual settlements varies widely within and among regions. In turn, this variability is linked to the effects of environmental potential. In seeking to identify the drivers of settlement persistence in the past, it is suggested that archaeologists can contribute to understanding of the sustainability and resilience of contemporary cities.

Ticks are a group of blood-sucking ectoparasites that play an important role in human health and livestock production development as vectors of zoonotic diseases. The phylogenetic tree of single genes cannot accurately reflect the true kinship between species. Based on the complete mitochondrial genome analysis one can help to elucidate the phylogenetic relationships among species. In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome of Dermacentor steini (isolate Longyan) was sequenced and compared with the mitochondrial genes of 3 other Chinese isolates (Nanchang, Jinhua and Yingtan). In Dermacentor steini 4 isolates had identical or similar mitochondrial genome lengths and an overall variation of 0.76% between sequences. All nucleotide compositions showed a distinct AT preference. The most common initiation and stop codons were ATG and TAA, respectively. Fewer base mismatches were found in the tRNA gene of D. steini (isolate Longyan), and the vicinity of the control region and tRNA gene was a hot rearrangement region of the genus Dermacentor. Maximum likelihood trees and Bayesian trees indicate that D. steini is most closely related to Dermacentor auratus. The results enrich the mitochondrial genomic data of species in the genus Dermacentor and provide novel insights for further studies on the phylogeographic classification and molecular evolution of ticks.

Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This essay argues that there is also a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth, and the way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognizing these considerations justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis, which I contrast with the conceptual intuitionistic approach associated with egalitarianism.

In multi-panelled higher jurisdictions, a larger, extended formation of judges tends to be established within the court. It bears various names: the grand chamber, the extended chamber, the expanded composition, the reunion of several chambers, a court sitting en banc, an extended section or a division of a court. In larger but not too large jurisdictions, the same role is adopted by the plenary. For ease of reference, I shall refer to all such extended judicial formations with the generic name ‘grand chamber’.

To bear the same name does not necessarily mean to perform the same function. As a Czech lawyer, I have always intuitively assumed that the role of such a body within an apex court is to unify the case law. In the Czech Republic, as well as in a number of other supreme continental jurisdictions for that matter, there tends to be only one reason for the presence of a grand chamber within a supreme court: to unify the diverging lines of case law and to set a clear line of precedent. However, that has never really been the job description, least of all the practice, of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘Court’). This begs the question: what may then be other structural reasons for the existence of such a body within an apex jurisdiction? What is the specific role, function, and ensuing justification for the Grand Chamber of the Court?

This article offers some personal reflections on that question. It is structured as follows: it begins with a short comparative overview of some of the grand chambers within European (national) courts, overseas in the common law world, as well as at the European Court of Human Rights, in order to tease out the functional rationale for various types of extended judicial compositions within those systems (Part I). Next, two types of such functional justifications for grand chambers in the form of ideal models are identified (Part II). Finally, those justifications are then considered in light of the legislative design and the current practice of the Grand Chamber of the Court, before concluding with two modest suggestions (Part III).