Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique : Bodily Memory and the Gendered Aesthetics of Belonging

This book tells the history of the changing gendered landscapes of northern Mozambique from the perspective of women who fought in the armed struggle for national independence, diverting from the often-told narrative of women in nationalist wars that emphasizes a linear plot of liberation. Taking a novel approach in focusing on the body, senses, and landscape, Jonna Katto, through a study of the women ex-combatants’ lived landscapes, shows how their life trajectories unfold as nonlinear spatial histories. This brings into focus the women’s shifting and multilayered negotiations for personal space and belonging. This book explores the life memories of the now aging female ex-combatants in the province of Niassa in northern Mozambique, looking at how the female ex-combatants’ experiences of living in these northern landscapes have shaped their sense of socio-spatial belonging and attachment. It builds on the premise that individual embodied memory cannot be separated from social memory; personal lives are culturally shaped. Thus, the book does not only tell the history of a small and rather unique group of women but also speaks about wider cultural histories of body-landscape relations in northern Mozambique and especially changes in those relations. Enriching our understanding of the gendered history of the liberation struggle in Mozambique and informing broader discussions on gender and nationalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African history, especially the colonial and postcolonial history of Lusophone Africa, as well as gender/women’s history and peace and conflict studies.Peer reviewe

Liberating Taste : Memories of War, Food and Cooking in Northern Mozambique

This article focuses on the sensory and affective dimension of food, cooking and eating in ex-combatants’ life narratives in northern Mozambique. It explores the polytemporality reflected in food memories, and the ways in which the past, present and future are connected in the present experience of remembering. For the ex-combatants, food is strongly linked to their memories of the liberation struggle (1964–74). Drawing on life history research with Ciyaawo-speaking ex-combatants in the north-western province of Niassa between 2012 and 2014, this article traces the changing ideas and meanings of food and eating in their life narratives from their childhood, through wartime to the period of ‘liberation’. After independence, most ex-combatants settled down as subsistence farmers with the expectation that ‘finally’ they would ‘eat well’. Yet, for many, their experience of independent Mozambique has been that of socio-economic and political marginalisation. While food is crucial to survival, this article looks at how food is so much more than just nutrition. In the ex-combatants’ memories, aesthetic aspects of food are closely intertwined with the revolutionary ideas of liberation and socio-economic justice. The meaning of food in the ex-combatants’ narratives, as the article argues, is shaped simultaneously and in complex ways through their personal aesthetic experiences and memories of food as well as the changing political aesthetics.Peer reviewe

On a Peculiar Shaped Concretionary Structure from the Stone Quarry of Mt. Mitakigamori in Haruno-cho, Agawa-gun. Kochi Prefecture, Shikoku, Japan

The peculiar-shaped concretionary structure from the Cretaceous Hayama Formation is described and discussed. It is considered valuable for interpretation of the upper and under surface of strata

Emotions in protest : unsettling the past in ex-combatants’ personal accounts in northern Mozambique

This article focuses on the mutual production of emotions and narratives about the past in the oral history accounts of ex-combatants of the liberation struggle (1964-1974) in northern Mozambique. It draws on life history research among the ageing ex-combatant community in Niassa between 2012 and 2014. It explores the emotional aspects of remembering and meaning making in historytelling, focusing especially on disappointment and anger expressed by many ex-combatants today. More specifically, the article analyses how such negative emotions are negotiated in the ex-combatants’ personal accounts and how these negotiations shape the narration of the liberation struggle. I argue that the ex-combatants’ emotional talk can be read as a bodily protest against the official historisation of their experiences

Overview of organic standards globally, Trends in standard development

We are in a period of rapid development of organic standards globally. Most of the development is in terms of the number of standards, including regulations. Especially for countries with a quasi non-existent organic sector, the trend is towards fast regulatory development, which poses a number of problems. In the private standards, there is a continued trend for differentiation, however balanced by a harmonization trend as a result of the IFOAM Family of Standards

Perceptual Quality Study on Deep Learning based Image Compression

Recently deep learning based image compression has made rapid advances with promising results based on objective quality metrics. However, a rigorous subjective quality evaluation on such compression schemes have rarely been reported. This paper aims at perceptual quality studies on learned compression. First, we build a general learned compression approach, and optimize the model. In total six compression algorithms are considered for this study. Then, we perform subjective quality tests in a controlled environment using high-resolution images. Results demonstrate learned compression optimized by MS-SSIM yields competitive results that approach the efficiency of state-of-the-art compression. The results obtained can provide a useful benchmark for future developments in learned image compression.Comment: Accepted as a conference contribution to IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 201

Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique

This book tells the history of the changing gendered landscapes of northern Mozambique from the perspective of women who fought in the armed struggle for national independence, diverting from the often-told narrative of women in nationalist wars that emphasizes a linear plot of liberation. Taking a novel approach in focusing on the body, senses, and landscape, Jonna Katto, through a study of the women ex-combatants’ lived landscapes, shows how their life trajectories unfold as nonlinear spatial histories. This brings into focus the women’s shifting and multilayered negotiations for personal space and belonging. This book explores the life memories of the now aging female ex-combatants in the province of Niassa in northern Mozambique, looking at how the female ex-combatants’ experiences of living in these northern landscapes have shaped their sense of socio-spatial belonging and attachment. It builds on the premise that individual embodied memory cannot be separated from social memory; personal lives are culturally shaped. Thus, the book does not only tell the history of a small and rather unique group of women but also speaks about wider cultural histories of body-landscape relations in northern Mozambique and especially changes in those relations. Enriching our understanding of the gendered history of the liberation struggle in Mozambique and informing broader discussions on gender and nationalism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of African history, especially the colonial and postcolonial history of Lusophone Africa, as well as gender/women’s history and peace and conflict studies