the Batek are a foraging-trading people living in and around Peninsular malaysia's largest national park, taman Negara. In recent years some of their semipermanent camps near the park headquarters at kuala tahan have become tourist attractions. Batek residents allow groups of malaysian and foreign tourists to visit, and they demonstrate some of their specialised skills, including shooting blowpipes and making fire with rattan vines and dry wood, as well as selling handicrafts. In this article we examine the reasons why some Batek participate in the tourist business, how they integrate it into their overall economy, and how they preserve their distinctive cultural values and practices while offering a simplified picture of their culture to curious outsiders.

In Batek, both iconic and avoidant speech forms only have the desired effect when their sounds are at the same time like, and different to, their referents. This necessary coexistence of likeness and difference in particular speech forms resonates with the sought for coexistence of alterity and affinity in Batek interpersonal relationships. Attention to how likeness and difference coexist in moments when iconic and avoidant speech forms are uttered, thus challenges entrenched, binary notions of alterity and affinity in anthropological practice more broadly. [Alterity, affinity, avoidance, Batek, iconicity, Southeast Asia]

Among egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups across the African continent, musical practices and egalitarian socialities are argued to be mutually implicated with one another. Southeast Asian huntergatherers also practice egalitarianism, however, and their musical practices represent a seeming anomaly alongside those of many African hunter-gatherer groups. Discussion of 'hunter-gatherer musics' that includes Southeast Asian perspectives has therefore been absent, even though cross-cultural, continent-spanning research with hunter-gatherers is common on topics such as politics, economics, and subsistence. Insights into egalitarianism can be gained through attention to the diversity in huntergatherer musical practices. This discussion of Ju|'hoansi (Namibia) and Batek (Malaysia) musical practices demonstrates that egalitarianism can be understood in terms of its flexibility.

Through combining ethnography of human-bird interactions with analysis of Batek discourses on musical instrument playing, this paper describes the emotional entanglements between human and non-human persons in the Batek's forest. The argument is made that sound-making and listening are privileged means of deepening the relationships between people and birds, and that these relationships then come to be part of what defines people's sense of being Batek. Ways of understanding how sound, environment, memory, and emotion intertwine are presented, speaking to broader debates surrounding the role of 'music' in hunting and gathering societies.

Summary Background People with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) are at increased risk of postoperative complications if their HbA1C readings are not well controlled. In the UK, there are clear national guidelines requiring all people with DM to have HbA1C blood testing within 6months before undergoing surgery and that these readings should be below 69 mmol/mol if this is safe to achieve. The aim of this study was to determine whether hospitals in the region were compliant with the guidelines. Methods Data were prospectively collected from seven hospitals across the East of England region from 1st October 2017 to 31st March 2018 (6 months) in all people with DM undergoing elective day case procedures in General and Vascular surgery for benign disease. Results A total of 181 people with DM were included in the study, of whom 77.9% were male patients and the median age was 63 years. The three most commonly performed operations were laparoscopic cholecystectomy (20.9%, n = 38/181), inguinal hernia repair (20.4%, n = 37/181) and umbilical/para‐umbilical hernia repair (11.0%, n = 20/181). In keeping with the national guidelines, only 86.7% (n = 157/181) of patients had an HbA1C tested within 6 months prior to their surgery date. Of the patients who had a preoperative HbA1C, 14 (n = 14/157, 8.9%) had an HbA1C ≥ 69 mmol/mol, and 12 (n = 12/14, 85.7%) of these proceeded to surgery without optimisation of their HbA1C. Conclusion A significant proportion of people with diabetes undergoing elective day case procedures in our region do not have HbA1C testing within 6 months of their procedure as recommended by the national guidelines. In patients who do have a high HbA1C, the majority still undergo surgery without adequate control of their DM. Greater awareness amongst healthcare workers and robust pathways are required for this vulnerable group of patients if we are to reduce the risk of developing postoperative complication rates.