We have retrieved weights from the Child Health records of an annual cohort of 3418 full-term children, aged 18-30 months in order to define a lower limit of normality for weight gain for both clinical and research purposes. There was a strong tendency for children at the extremes of the distribution to move inwards towards the average: only 26% of those below the 3rd centile for weight at six weeks were still below it at one year. We describe a method based on conditional standards to correct for this "regression to the mean" and produce a measure of the discrepancy between a child's predicted and actual growth: the "thrive index". The value of the thrive index below which only a minority of children fell provided a lower threshold for normality. While most children below the 3rd centile for weight at 9-24 months of age also had subnormal weight gain, 41% of those with subnormal weight gain had not fallen below the 3rd centile.

a b s t r a c tA growing interest in affect holds much promise for anthropology by providing a new frame to examine and articulate subjective and intersubjective states, which are key parts of human consciousness and behavior. Affect has its roots in the social, an observation that did not go unnoticed by Durkheim and since then has been kept in view by those social scientists interested in the emotions, feelings, and subjectivity. However, the challenge for ethnographers has always been to articulate in words and conceptualize theoretically what is only felt and sensed. What we are calling "evocative ethnography" is an ethnography that meets this challenge to make room for, and hold onto, feelings and affect in its description and explanation. The papers in this special issue accomplish that, as well as provide some anthropological insights into affect theory. k e y w o r d s : affect, affect theory, anthropology of emotions, subjectivity, intersubjectivity i n t r o d u c t i o n 1 1 1 i n t r o d u c t i o n

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Weights were retrieved from child health records for an annual cohort of 3418 children, aged 18-30 months, to explore the relationship between deprivation and weight gain. Their level of deprivation was classified, using census data for their area of residence, as affluent (11%), intermediate (69%) or deprived (20%). Children from deprived areas were smaller at all ages with a widening gap: by one year of age, they were three times as likely as affluent children to be below the third centile for weight. The thrive index, a measure of the degree of centile shift, showed a slight gain over the first year in affluent and intermediate children, while in deprived children it decreased (p = 0.001). Deprived children were 2.2 times more likely than intermediate children to have failure to thrive, as manifest by subnormal thrive index values (p = 0.00008). Unexpectedly, children from affluent areas also showed slightly increased rates. We suggest that this may be explained by higher rates of breast feeding in affluent areas.