This article is about silence in French cemeteries. Cemeteries are often expected to be silent to allow for peaceful meditation, and local rules and regulations do show a well-established expectation for quietness. However, while historically expelled from the city’s limits, cemeteries have been increasingly integrated within the urban matrix and its noisier environment. This raises the question of the contemporary metropolis contempt for the dead and their spaces.

This study examines how the renewal of Blaha Lujza Square in Budapest changed everyday life in a busy public space. Using photos, interviews, observations, and online discussions, it explores what residents feel has been lost. Findings suggest social life has not disappeared but shifted toward faster, more temporary, and digitally mediated interactions, showing how renewal reshapes how people connect.

The paper shows how a centuries-old traditional festival can stabilize people’s sense of security in a world marked by crisis. Based on qualitative research in rural Germany, we analyse how the Schäferlauf enables individuals to anchor their identities through embodied and place-based practices, including wearing traditional costumes and preparing the festival. We show that security is not only imagined or narrated but also something people do.

Public libraries in cities offer a variety of uses. They are places where people with different interests must explore and negotiate their being together. This paper focuses on the specific nature of this sociality. Based on two independent library research projects conducted in Bremen, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, we demonstrate how community emerges as an idea and a sense of togetherness from distributed care practices that revolve around a library etiquette.

Right-wing parties are succeeding in redefining academic freedom and combating critical science. They mix up the principle of academic freedom with their idea of freedom of ideology. But researching uncomfortable truths about climate change and global inequalities are not ideological if they are fact checked. The defense of academic freedom by academic institutions is essential for dealing with global crises and injustices.

This intervention examines how socio-ecological transformation is contested within local governance. Drawing on ethnographic material from Zeitz (East Germany), it introduces anti-transformation as a mode of political practice in which legitimate administrative concerns are mobilized at decisive institutional moments. Rather than open rejection, resistance operates through procedures, timing, and institutional settings, reshaping political outcomes from within governance processes.

Regions shape how people vote. This study analyzed elections across Europe to understand which parties thrive in which types of regions. Using cluster analysis, six region types were identified based on socioeconomic indicators. Radical-right parties perform strongest in disadvantaged and industrial regions, while conservative parties peak in industrial areas, and social-democratic parties are weakest there but strongest in rural regions. This study shows that place shapes party competition.

This article relates a conflict between customary landowners and the Ivorian state over the social housing site in Songon-Kassemblée, a peri-urban area in the District of Abidjan. Based on documentary research and field surveys, this study shows the preponderant role of customary landowners in negotiations related to land issues as well as the modification of the interplay of actors during the development process of this urban fringe.

We look at how cellular agriculture (CellAg) companies use visual storytelling to embed research on and the production of lab-grown meat within larger environmental themes. The videos highlight lab-grown meat as a necessary shift from traditional farming towards a more sustainable food production. We identified six main narrative patterns, such as technological advancement, scale of production, and ethical benefits, showing how CellAg companies promote their technology as eco-friendly and viable.