These cutting edge essays and case studies on issues like AIDS, medical technologies and overpopulation, are collected here in honour of Charles Leslie, the influential anthropologist.

1. Introduction - From documenting medical pluralism to critical interpretations of globalized health knowledge, policies, and practices Mark Nichter and Margaret Lock 2. Governing bodies in new order Indonesia Steve Ferzacca 3. Too bold, too hot: Crossing 'culture' in AIDS prevention in Nepal Stacy Leigh Pigg 4. The social relations of therapy management Mark Nichter 5.Making sense out of modernity Marina Roseman 6. A return to scientific racism in medical social sciences: the case of sexuality and the AIDS epidemic in Africa Gilles Bibeau and Duncan Pedersen 7. 'We five, our twenty-five': Myths of population out of control in contemporary India Patricia Jeffrey and Roger Jeffrey 8. Establishing proof: translating 'science' and the state in Tibetan medicine Vincanne Adams 9. Notes on the evolution of evolutionary psychiatry Allan Young 10. Utopias of health, eugenics, and germline engineering Margaret Lock 11. Killing and healing revisited: on cultural difference, warfare, and sacrifice Margaret Trawick

Mark Nichter is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Margaret Lock is Professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and in the Department of Anthropology, McGill University.