30 research outputs found
Water and sociality in Khayelitsha: an ethnographic study
No full textThis study examines forms of social relationships created around unequal municipal water distribution in South Africa. Using the case of Khayelitsha, the study investigates residents' use of water to sustain their livelihood and build personhood. Water mobilises the formation of relationships in myriad ways. How residents, collectively and individually, imagine, negotiate and construct their future pathways around resources available to them in a social group is explored. Ethnographic tools are used to address how social formations are created around municipal water in Khayelitsha. The study looks into how inequalities related to access to water in Cape Town are produced with inequitable development patterns. Using incompleteness and conviviality as framework, the study seeks to understand how ideas of social formation, belonging, marginality, and physical and social mobility are produced, reproduced and contested around water. By focusing on the strategies deployed by residents, this study also seeks to describe the challenges of inadequate water access experienced by residents in less- provisioned areas. The multiple relations with, and complexities of, municipal water are chronicled, as well as how Khayelitsha residents think about, relate and respond to water. The empirical data reveal several structural issues characterising the formation of social relations: incompleteness, impoverishment, marginalisation, water access and minimal opportunities. Despite many challenges, frustration, and heavy reliance on communal taps, tanks, water trucks, and hydrants, shack dwellers particularly cherish an ideal of self-sufficiency with the limited amount of water they access. In this quest, they maintain social relations and resistance to the political economy of water. They achieve this by mobility from one settlement to another, maintaining a strong sense of community, belonging, social relationships, and household interdependence, connected to a sense of incompleteness and, to a more considerable extent, Ubuntu. This social practice is manifested in various forms: neighbourliness, water usage at communal points, land occupations, and strikes, amongst others. By combining the structural issues and aspects of social practices provided above, water is seen as a substance that constructs social formations through the phenomena of incompleteness and conviviality. The data were collected during several field visits between February 2020 and March 2021 through observation of interactions and participation in residents' social activities and formal and informal interviews and group discussions with a representative sample of residents in Khayelitsha
Taxonomic novelties in Andean Senecioneae (Compositae)
No full textThis work has been funded by FONDECYT (Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico) from Chile by means of a postdoctoral fellowship of the first author (project Nº3170270)Two new Andean species belonging to the tribe Senecioneae (Compositae) are described herein, i.e., Dendrophorbium azoguesense from Ecuador and D. varicosum from Bolivia. The species Pentacalia todziae is recorded for the first time in Ecuador and the names Dendrophorbium onae and D. onae var. leonis synonymized to D. scytophyllum. Taxonomic discussions and diagnostic characters to differentiate each species are provided, as well as a distribution map and pictures of living plants when available.Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (Chile)Depto. de Biodiversidad, Ecología y EvoluciónFac. de Ciencias BiológicasTRUEpu
150 Immediate results of percutaneous mitral commissurotomy (Experience of Center of cardiology-University Hospital Ibn Rochd-Casablanca-Morocco)
No full textIn developing countries mitral stenosis is a frequent heart disease. The therapeutic management of mitral stenosis has been substantially improved through the development of percutaneous mitral commissurotomy, whose safety and efficacy have been demonstrated in many studies.The aim of this work is to study the immediate results of percutaneous mitral commissurotomy (PMC) in patients with severe mitral stenosis managed in Center of cardiology-University Hospital IBN Rochd-Casablanca.Of 150 patients there were 20 men and 130 women including 10 pregnant women (third trimester of pregnancy), their mean age was 35±10 years. One hundred were in NYHA class II, 40 in class III and 10 in class IV. Eighty patients with atrial fibrillation.All patients had transthoracic echocardiography before and after the procedure and transesophageal echocardiography before the PMC. Wilkins score calculated in all patients with an average 7±4. Grade 1+ mitral regurgitation was present in 70 and grade 2+ in 13. Mitral regurgitation grade I or II developed in 8 patients. The PMC was converted into a mitral replacement surgery in one patient. Tamponade occurred in one patient. No patient died.Mitral surface area and hemodynamic parameters improved significantly after PMC; mean left atrial pressure fell from 18.76±6.18 to 10.65±4.38mmHg (P<0.001), mean transmitral gradient from 14.03±4.70 to 4.63±2.05mmHg (p<0.001) and mitral valve area from 0.99±0.22 to 1.88±0.41cm2 (p<0.001).In conclusion, PMC is a safe and effective treatment in a wide range of patients with mitral stenosis
Capturing degrees of centring of refugees in an academic literacy course in post-Apartheid South Africa: A retrospective look at course design through the lens of Actor-network Theory
No full textIn 2018, we received state funding for ‘curriculum reform’ to design an academic literacy course that would orient students to legitimate ways of reading and writing in the academy while fostering critical citizenship. Thus, drawing on the view of literacy as a social practice, the course design was shaped around relatable content, in this case, the issue of border-crossing. At that time, some media coverage and popular opinion perpetuated an essentialist view of refugees as a socio-economic and health threat in South Africa and other parts of the globe. Unfortunately, this is still prevalent locally and elsewhere. We understand border-crossing as both physical and conceptual while also acknowledging the internal displacement as well, dating back to the apartheid regime when borders were created within South Africa along ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial lines’. We also acknowledge how the social death (Patterson, 1982) experienced by some previously marginalised South Africans has had repercussions on how they view refugees. In this social context, we sought to design and implement an academic literacy course that was socially responsive in post-apartheid South Africa, marked by rapid social changes, and coupled with cases of xenophobia targeting refugees from other parts of Africa. To analyse how the course responded to these broader issues, we employed an actor-network theory lens, drawing specifically on Callon’s (1984) description of translation, the process through which a stable actornetwork is created. We took a retrospective look at the course over five years, focusing on the changes from the first to subsequent iterations. In our reflections, we superimposed Callon’s (1984) four moments of translation, namely problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation, on the design process. In doing so, we surfaced the design and strategies to create a stable actornetwork of associations between human and non-human actors. Through our retrospective look, we argue that for the design of a stable network, in other words, a practical academic literacy course that responds critically to cross-border migration through reading and writing, “the refugee” must be implicated in these four moments. Furthermore, we highlight how “the refugee” oscillated between various “degrees of centring” during these moments as part of the strategies employed by translators (course designers) to stabilise the network
Wind of Change: l'era del cambiamento nella musica e nella letteratura albanese dei primi anni ’90
No full textThe "winds of change" is a metaphor used for approaching aspects of Albanian music and literature in the immediate years after the communist regime fall. The author focuses in particular on the period between 1990 and 1994, the transitional phase when there was a departure from the aesthetic and ideological frame that had long influenced the arts, consenting a long-awaited possibility of free self-expression. The disintegration of the old cultural system allowed different agencies, witnessing some interesting developments. Although initially fuzzy, they aimed at recovering repertoires that the communist regime had silenced
