Drinking Water Supply in the Middle Drâa Valley, South Morocco. Options for Action in the Context of Water Scarcity and Institutional Constraints

In the light of global environmental change, aridity in the South of Morocco is expected to increase while water availability is projected to decrease. Human activities, especially irrigation agriculture, are further impacting on resource degradation. Though the government has attempted to respond to these challenges, the rural South remains poorly developed. Water institutions are created on national and regional level to improve drinking water supply in rural settlements, but seem unable to respond to the most pressing problems. The access to safe drinking water is not guaranteed and water management is ineffective. Katharina Graf, supervised by Professor Dr. Bernd Diekkrüger (Department of Geography, University of Bonn) and Professor Dr. Martin Rössler (Department of Ethnology, University of Cologne), studies the drinking water supply in rural southern Morocco and explores the local options for action against a background of institutional constraints and increasing water scarcity. In 1995 a new water policy was adopted to improve the access to safe drinking water in rural Morocco. Since then, household water management has been based on two water facilities: a conventional draw well and a domestic tap connection. Assuming a scenario of increased water usage, Katharina Graf compares two villages located in the arid Middle Drâa Valley to assess to what extent rural water withdrawal and management are influenced by the above mentioned global, national and regional trends. She looks at these factors and their inter-linkages through an actor-oriented approach to investigate the options local actors have in managing the scarce resource. Drawing on both New Institutionalism and the Natural Resource Management approach, she analyses rural patterns of drinking water management. The analysis suggests that water management is dysfunctional due to the prefabrication of water institutions outside of the village context, while the rising withdrawal is determined by a local adaptation to it. The latter process draws on existing informal institutions which fill the gaps left by formal ones, and together these institutions constitute a flexible but fragile water management solution. The options for local action subject to these constraints appear reduced and leave doubts on the ability of rural households to flexibly manage an ever scarcer water availability. Michael J. Casimi

Systemische Vernetzung urbaner und ländlicher Räume – Erkennen, Formulieren, Entwerfen

Im Rahmen von Planungsvorhaben beschränken sich Kontextanalysen oftmals nur auf räumliche Veränderungsprozesse von „Land“ oder „Stadt“. Damit hierbei alle gesamtgesellschaftlichen Aspekte zielführend mitgedacht werden können, sollten diese bewusst frühzeitig maßstabsübergreifend erfasst werden. Das Aufbrechen fokussierter Planungssichten stellt hierfür einen notwenigen ersten Schritt dar. Die Systemgrenze der Betrachtungsweise sollte dabei grundlegend erweitert werden. Somit können frühzeitig wichtige Akteursgruppen und sozial-räumliche Wechselwirkungen in das Sichtfeld treten, deren ansonstenvernachlässigte Belange nur schwer bzw. nicht mehr in die laufende Planung zu integrieren sind. Analysen von verschiedenen Personen-, Waren-, Informationsströme etc. dienen als Ansatz einer vernetzten Betrachtung von „Land“ und „Stadt“. Diesem Gedanken folgend wird ein ganzheitlicher analysebasierter Planungsansatz, der zu einem integrierten Lehrkonzept für Architekturstudenten forschungsnah aufbereitet wurde, vorgestellt. Als Basis und Alleinstellungsmerkmal gegenüber der klassischen Entwurfsausbildung wird eine breitgefächerte Potentialanalyse an den Anfang einer planerischen Entwurfsaufgabe gestellt. Praxisnahe Lehrveranstaltungen, basierend auf den frühen Phasen der Projektentwicklung, schulen mit verschiedenen planerischen Instrumentarien die Studierenden, um planerische Problemstellungen zu regionalen und überregionalen Verflechtungen (Stadt-Landbeziehungen) sowie Eingriffe auf verschiedenenMaßstabsebenen wie Nachbarschaft und Quartier zu identifizieren und problemgerecht zu qualifizieren. In der weiteren Bearbeitung entsteht hieraus ein integrales, bauliches und räumliches Entwurfskonzept

SOCIAL INFLUENCE IN TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION RESEARCH: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH AGENDA

Social influence has been shown to profoundly affect human behavior in general and technology adoption (TA) in particular. Over time, multiple definitions and measures of social influence have been introduced to the field of TA research, contributing to an increasingly fragmented landscape of constructs that challenges the conceptual integrity of the field. In this vein, this paper sets out to review how social influence has been conceptualized with regard to TA. In so doing, this paper hopes to inform researchers’ understanding of the construct, provide an overview of its myriad conceptualizations, constructively challenge extant approaches, and provide impulses for future research. A systematic review of the relevant literature uncovers that extant interpretations of social influence are 1) predominantly compliance-based and as such risk overlooking identification- and internalization-based effects, and 2) primarily targeted at the individual level, thereby neglecting the impact of socially rich environments. Building upon these insights, this paper develops an integrated perspective on social influence in TA research that encourages scholars to pursue a multi-theoretical understanding of social influence at the interface of users, social referents, and technology

Cooking with(out) others? Changing kitchen technologies and family values in Marrakech

Domestic cooking is changing the world over. Kitchen technologies and the smartphone transform the way we cook and whom we cook with. Coupled with urbanisation and the shrinking of households, cooking seems to be an increasingly solitary practice. At the same time, these processes did not change who cooks; across the globe it is mostly women who prepare the daily meal for their families. Yet, rather than treating domestic cooking solely as a gender relations issue, this article presents ethnographic research with low-income domestic cooks in Marrakech, Morocco, to argue that unequal generational relations are also important drivers of change in family life. Paradoxically, rather than cook alone or simplify meals, kitchen appliances and social media were employed to continue preparing elaborate family meals. Through a thick description of the preparation of a spread called amlou and of pizza, this article explores why domestic cooking remains centralto idealised notions of womanhood and family life in Marrakech and beyond. It introduces the concept of culinary connectivity to understand how new technologies were employed ininter-generational negotiations of cooking knowledge and power. Moreover, while the crafting of culinary connectivity enables young generations of low-income womento emancipate themselves from age-based power in the home, these practices also enmesh them in new relations of dependence on money and the market. By making cooking central to understanding the (re)production of everyday family life in the context of poverty, this article contributes to cross-cultural studies of food and to regional debates about the family

Taste knowledge: couscous and the cook's six senses

In this article, I explore how cooking knowledge is constituted and show that a sense of taste is central to it. Drawing on the thick description of domestic couscous preparation in Marrakech, Morocco, I treat taste both as a multisensory form of knowing that includes a sixth sense, temporality, and as a broader set of values that inform everyday food preparation. The notion of taste knowledge highlights that there is much more to a cook's knowledge than the act of cooking, and that food and the broader environment play an active part in it. Importantly, taste knowledge only fully emerges as an activity in which past, present, and future experiences are evaluated against material and social changes. Finally, taste knowledge shows that phenomenologically inspired research allows an understanding of broader cultural, economic, and political processes and how these shape, and are shaped by, the work of low-income, yet highly knowledgeable, women

A new family of rational surfaces in P4

AbstractWe describe a new method of constructing rational surfaces with given invariants in P4 and present a family of degree 11 rational surfaces of sectional genus 11 with 2 six-secants that we found with this method

Re-examining the contested good: proceedings from a postgraduate workshop on good food

Following the 2017 postgraduate research workshop hosted by the SOAS Food Studies Centre, in collaboration with University of Warwick Food GRP, this article brings together nine research briefs written by various participants. Inspired by the workshop's provocative theme, “What Is Good Food?”, each author explores how food categories are shaped and negotiated in different contexts and across scales. In this multi-authored article, the question of “good” food is first presented as contingent upon nutritional, economic, political, ritual, or moral conditions. Each author then reveals how globally defined notions of food's goodness are often resisted on the ground by producers and consumers, beyond the notions of ethics or “alternative” food movements that have often been the emphasis of previous literature dealing with the topic of good food. Taken together, this article scrutinizes the effects of various hierarchies of power and invites readers to reassess why and how good food continues to be a contested category

Greening der Berufe und nachhaltige Arbeitswelt

GREENING DER BERUFE UND NACHHALTIGE ARBEITSWELT Greening der Berufe und nachhaltige Arbeitswelt / Graf, Susanne (Rights reserved) ( -