The artist Carl Abrahams and the cosmopolitan work of centring and peripheralizing the self

Winner of the 2013 J.B. Donne Essay Prize.The article looks at the work and life of Jamaican artist and 'citizen of the world' Carl Abrahams. Responding to Gell's argument that art should be thought of as a 'technology of enchantment', and to a wider approach that seeks to explain art by reference to cultural context, the article takes Abrahams own weltkenntnis, or world knowledge as its focus. The weltkenntnis of an artist, or indeed any person, is often at odds both with their surrounding cultural situation and the technical means they have to express themselves. It is never entirely possible to reduce a particular form of self-expression either to the wider worldview or to a particular set of technical effects. The article explores the conceptual tensions involved in Abrahams' claims to be a cosmopolitan artist and his work of centring and peripheralising himself in colonial and post-colonial Jamaica.PostprintPeer reviewe

Times of the self in Kingston, Jamaica

Revival Zionists – a small spiritist following in Jamaica – describe how their relations with spirits allow them to bring personal spiritual gifts to bear on every day or ‘temporal’ experience. Taking a hint from Kant that ‘time itself does not change but only something which is in time’, the article considers the timely logic of these ‘gifts’. In a social-economic situation characterised by paucity of material resources but plenitude of labour-time, spiritual gifts reappear as a valued ground for a person's reputation. Likewise, we may also see them as one example of an attempt to organise the relationship between homo noumenon and homo temporalis.PostprintPeer reviewe

Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. Han F. Vermeulen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. 746 pp.

Vermeulen shows that the expansive moment of ethnography and ethnology was the 1740s, and the scholars involved were Germans who worked in and on peoples in the Russian empire. This was the period in which the keywords ethnographia (or völker-beschreibung) as the description of peoples and ethnologie as the comparison of peoples or nations acquired its technical status as a kind of scientific inquiry in its own right, and began to be complexified into distinct subtypes with varied methodological directions.PostprintPeer reviewe

Testing freedom : ontological considerations

Who or what can be free, or not free? The question may seem mind-boggling on close inspection. To the extent that meaning is defined through reference, or acts of naming, different meanings of freedom deployed in daily life derive their significance from specific and contingent instructions that allow the particularities of freedom to be constituted. So we must begin by exposing ourselves to what Malinowski called the ‘universe of semantic chaos’ in which ‘freedom’ appears if we are to hope to approach freedom itself (1947). Further, this article argues that in order to address the complexities of freedom to their limits, an exploration not only of semantics (considerations of meaning) but also of its relation to ontology (considerations of existence) cannot be neglected.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Introduction : testing freedom

PostprintPeer reviewe

Assessing natural resource management through integrated environmental and social-economic accounting: The case of a Namibian conservancy

Local natural resource management in its diverse manifestations holds core to its principles that the marginal and vulnerable households are empowered to manage valuable natural resources to improve social and economic equality and conserve biodiversity. Yet studies aiming to identify the impacts often show inconsistent results. Through constructing an integrated Environmental and Social Accounting Matrix (ESAM), we aim to assess how natural resources are used in different sectors and by different livelihoods, thus delivering different direct and indirect benefits to the community. The study was conducted in Namibia’s Sikunga Conservancy, which manages wildlife and fish resources in the Zambezi region. Our village-level ESAM shows an economic structure that strongly disadvantages remote households and identifies a small sector of the economy that benefits significantly from the use of natural resources. The ESAM approach is able to isolate undesirable socioeconomic developments such as unequal benefit sharing, which hinders community development. © 2016, © The Author(s) 2016

Дополнительные функции родительного падежа в греческом языке

Целью данной работы является изучение возникновения дополнительных функций родительного падежа в греческом языке, как следствие взаимодействия кафаревусы и димотики

Sources and export of particle-borne organic matter during a monsoon flood in a catchment of northern Laos

International audienceThe yields of the tropical rivers of Southeast Asia supply large quantities of carbon to the ocean. The origin and dynamics of particulate organic matter were studied in the Houay Xon River catchment located in northern Laos during the first erosive flood of the rainy season in May 2012. This cultivated catchment is equipped with three successive gauging stations draining areas ranging between 0.2 and 11.6 km2 on the main stem of the permanent stream, and two additional stations draining 0.6 ha hillslopes. In addition, the sequential monitoring of rainwater, overland flow and suspended organic matter compositions was conducted at the 1 m2 plot scale during a storm. The composition of particulate organic matter (total organic carbon and total nitrogen concentrations, δ13C and δ15N) was determined for suspended sediment, soil surface (top 2 cm) and soil subsurface (gullies and riverbanks) samples collected in the catchment (n = 57, 65 and 11, respectively). Hydrograph separation of event water was achieved using water electric conductivity and δ18O measurements for rainfall, overland flow and river water base flow (n = 9, 30 and 57, respectively). The composition of particulate organic matter indicates that upstream suspended sediments mainly originated from cultivated soils labelled by their C3 vegetation cover (upland rice, fallow vegetation and teak plantations). In contrast, channel banks characterized by C4 vegetation (Napier grass) supplied significant quantities of sediment to the river during the flood rising stage at the upstream station as well as in downstream river sections. The highest runoff coefficient (11.7%), sediment specific yield (433 kg ha−1), total organic carbon specific yield (8.3 kg C ha−1) and overland flow contribution (78–100%) were found downstream of reforested areas planted with teaks. Swamps located along the main stream acted as sediment filters and controlled the composition of suspended organic matter. Total organic carbon specific yields were particularly high because they occurred during the first erosive storm of the rainy season, just after the period of slash-and-burn operations in the catchment

Experimental characterization of a cohesive zone model using Digital Image Correlation

International audienceIn recent years, cohesive-zone models have been formulated and used to numerically simulate the fracture of solid materials. Cohesive-zone models presented in the literature involve a 'jump' in the displacement field describing crack onset within a predefined interface network corresponding to interfaces between elements of the finite element (FE) mesh. The introduction of a virtual displacement jump is convenient to numerically manage micro-crack or void initiation, growth and coalescence. Until now, the forms of interface laws were mainly chosen in connection with the overall responses of specimens when subjected to standard loadings. In this study, a cohesive-zone model identification method is proposed based on the local material behaviour derived from kinematical measurements obtained by digital image correlation (DIC). A series of tensile loadings were performed for several damageable elastic-plastic materials on standard tensile specimens. Kinematical data analysis enabled early detection and tracking of the zone where the crack occurs. The results of this study highlight the potential of DIC to quantify damage and show how damage assessments can be inserted in cohesive-zone model identification

Rapid cortical oscillations and early motor activity in premature human neonate.

International audienceDelta-brush is the dominant pattern of rapid oscillatory activity (8-25 Hz) in the human cortex during the third trimester of gestation. Here, we studied the relationship between delta-brushes in the somatosensory cortex and spontaneous movements of premature human neonates of 29-31 weeks postconceptional age using a combination of scalp electroencephalography and monitoring of motor activity. We found that sporadic hand and foot movements heralded the appearance of delta-brushes in the corresponding areas of the cortex (lateral and medial regions of the contralateral central cortex, respectively). Direct hand and foot stimulation also reliably evoked delta-brushes in the same areas. These results suggest that sensory feedback from spontaneous fetal movements triggers delta-brush oscillations in the central cortex in a somatotopic manner. We propose that in the human fetus in utero, before the brain starts to receive elaborated sensory input from the external world, spontaneous fetal movements provide sensory stimulation and drive delta-brush oscillations in the developing somatosensory cortex contributing to the formation of cortical body maps