Photography, care and the visual economy of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations

This article examines transnational kinship relations between Gambian parents in the United Kingdom and their children and carers in The Gambia, with a focus on the production, exchange and reception of photographs. Many Gambian migrant parents in the U.K. take their children to The Gambia to be cared for by extended family members. Mirroring the mobility of Gambian migrants and their children, as they travel between the U.K. and The Gambia, photographs document changing family structures and relations. It is argued that domestic photography provides insight into the representational politics, values and aesthetics of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations. Further, the concept of the moral economy supports a hermeneutics of Gambian family photographic practice and develops our understanding of the visual economy of transnational kinship relations in a number of ways: it draws attention to the way in which the value attributed to a photograph is rooted in shared moral and cultural codes of care within transnational relations of inequality and power; it helps us to interpret Gambian’s responses to and treatment of family photographs; and it highlights the importance attributed to portrait photography and the staging, setting and aesthetics of photographic content within a Gambian imaginary

Predictive use of the Maximum Entropy Production principle for Past and Present Climates

In this paper, we show how the MEP hypothesis may be used to build simple climate models without representing explicitly the energy transport by the atmosphere. The purpose is twofold. First, we assess the performance of the MEP hypothesis by comparing a simple model with minimal input data to a complex, state-of-the-art General Circulation Model. Next, we show how to improve the realism of MEP climate models by including climate feedbacks, focusing on the case of the water-vapour feedback. We also discuss the dependence of the entropy production rate and predicted surface temperature on the resolution of the model

Affordability targets: Implications for Housing Supply

This report presents the results of an econometric modelling project, concerned with regional housing affordability, conducted for the ODPM between November 2004 and April 2005. The key outputs of the project are not just this report, but the model itself, the details of which are set out in the accompanying Technical Appendix, available via the ODPM website: www.odpm.gov.uk/housing. The team for the project was large, including fifteen individuals from nine organisations. The project was directed from the University of Reading. In addition to the team, the work was improved by help from an advisory group and a user group, consisting of members drawn from both central government and from the wider academic and policy communities

Methane in the atmosphere of the transiting hot Neptune GJ436b?

We present an analysis of seven primary transit observations of the hot Neptune GJ436b at 3.6, 4.5 and $8~\mu$m obtained with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope. After correcting for systematic effects, we fitted the light curves using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique. Combining these new data with the EPOXI, HST and ground-based $V, I, H$ and $K_s$ published observations, the range $0.5-10~\mu$m can be covered. Due to the low level of activity of GJ436, the effect of starspots on the combination of transits at different epochs is negligible at the accuracy of the dataset. Representative climate models were calculated by using a three-dimensional, pseudo-spectral general circulation model with idealised thermal forcing. Simulated transit spectra of GJ436b were generated using line-by-line radiative transfer models including the opacities of the molecular species expected to be present in such a planetary atmosphere. A new, ab-initio calculated, linelist for hot ammonia has been used for the first time. The photometric data observed at multiple wavelengths can be interpreted with methane being the dominant absorption after molecular hydrogen, possibly with minor contributions from ammonia, water and other molecules. No clear evidence of carbon monoxide and dioxide is found from transit photometry. We discuss this result in the light of a recent paper where photochemical disequilibrium is hypothesised to interpret secondary transit photometric data. We show that the emission photometric data are not incompatible with the presence of abundant methane, but further spectroscopic data are desirable to confirm this scenario.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, Astrophysical Journal in pres

‘Sons of athelings given to the earth’: Infant Mortality within Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geography

FOR 20 OR MORE YEARS early Anglo-Saxon archaeologists have believed children are underrepresented in the cemetery evidence. They conclude that excavation misses small bones, that previous attitudes to reporting overlook the very young, or that infants and children were buried elsewhere. This is all well and good, but we must be careful of oversimplifying compound social and cultural responses to childhood and infant mortality. Previous approaches have offered methodological quandaries in the face of this under-representation. However, proportionally more infants were placed in large cemeteries and sometimes in specific zones. This trend is statistically significant and is therefore unlikely to result entirely from preservation or excavation problems. Early medieval cemeteries were part of regional mortuary geographies and provided places to stage events that promoted social cohesion across kinship systems extending over tribal territories. This paper argues that patterns in early Anglo-Saxon infant burial were the result of female mobility. Many women probably travelled locally to marry in a union which reinforced existing social networks. For an expectant mother, however, the safest place to give birth was with experience women in her maternal home. Infant identities were affected by personal and legal association with their mother’s parental kindred, so when an infant died in childbirth or months and years later, it was their mother’s identity which dictated burial location. As a result, cemeteries central to tribal identities became places to bury the sons and daughters of a regional tribal aristocracy

Towards a codification of practical knowledge

International audienceAs practical knowledge seems to have a central place in organisational issues, we focus on possibilities to study and formalize it. From an unusual theoretical perspective, we view practical knowledge as embodied knowing which only is only manifest through action in a particular situation. Although this knowledge is largely implicit, we try to make what is 'articulable' explicit. After highlighting the stakes involved in the codification of practices, we review the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying the method developed. It is founded on participant observation, a video recording of a situated subjective perspective and an ex post interview using this perspective to aid an actor to make part of his/her practical knowledge explicit. We present its implementation within research on polar expeditions in order to understand how an experienced actor deals with risks. In conclusion, we point out (1) the importance of this kind of data in knowledge management, (2) some lines of further research