Creole water supply: states, neoliberalism, and everyday practices in a secondary African city

This thesis examines the evolution of water provision in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, between 2006 and 2014, including the role of state and non-state actors, policy models and everyday practices in shaping the city’s piped supply scheme. The overall aim is to use perspectives from a small African city to evaluate understandings of urban water infrastructure circulating in the fields of geography and urban studies. Based on ethnographic work in Guinea-Bissau involving 11 months of participant observation and 94 interviews with state officials, workers in international organisations and the city’s water operator, and water users, this thesis argues that the dominance of critiques of neoliberalism and the limited theorisations of the state prevailing in current analyses are key limitations for service provision in small cities in poorer contexts. To address these weaknesses, this thesis adopts an analytical framework that combines the concepts of ‘variegated neoliberalism’ and ‘assemblages’ with an attention to the ‘everyday’, in order to develop an understanding of a ‘creole’ mode of governance characterised by its intermixing of influences. In addition, it draws on anthropological explorations of the state that examine state practices and interactions with non-state actors without fixing these in pre-conceived analytical categories. This thesis shows that the state has shaped water provision in Bafatá not through following policy and regulatory frameworks, but through the decisions and practices of governmental officials and their interactions with nonstate organisations. It also demonstrates that development interventions have significantly influenced water provision in Bafatá. However, policy models circulating in the city have been routinely assembled with and reshaped by alternative logics, motivations and practices, and therefore transformed beyond their original agendas. Lastly, water provision is analysed from the perspective of everyday water practices, demonstrating the multiplicity of factors shaping access to water, including perceptions of quality of water, and the simultaneous disruption and continuity of ingrained sharing practices through the introduction of meters

Functionalizing self-assembled GaN quantum dot superlattices by Eu-implantation

Self-assembled GaN quantum dots (QDs) stacked in superlattices (SL) with AlN spacer layers were implanted with Europium ions to fluences of 1013, 1014, and 1015 cm−2. The damage level introduced in the QDs by the implantation stays well below that of thick GaN epilayers. For the lowest fluence, the structural properties remain unchanged after implantation and annealing while for higher fluences the implantation damage causes an expansion of the SL in the [0001] direction which increases with implantation fluence and is only partly reversed after thermal annealing at 1000 °C. Nevertheless, in all cases, the SL quality remains very good after implantation and annealing with Eu ions incorporated preferentially into near-substitutional cation sites. Eu3+ optical activation is achieved after annealing in all samples. In the sample implanted with the lowest fluence, the Eu3+ emission arises mainly from Eu incorporated inside the QDs while for the higher fluences only the emission from Eu inside the AlN-buffer, capping, and spacer layers is observed. © 2010 American Institute of PhysicsFCT-PTDC/CTM/100756/2008program PESSOA EGIDE/GRICESFCT-SFRH/BD/45774/2008FCT-SFRH/BD/44635/200

Intersectionality challenges for the co-production of urban services: notes for a theoretical and methodological agenda

The co-production of urban services, such as water, energy or sanitation, is a vital tool to advance service delivery and to challenge socioeconomic structures that reproduce urban inequalities. This article examines the crossovers between debates on intersectionality and the co-production of urban services. Intersectionality is a critical lens for an engaged critique of the dynamics of exclusion that may challenge service co-production. The paper draws attention to three key insights: 1) the need for an explicit questioning of processes to define vulnerability, particularly when they rely on bounded, fixed identity categories; 2) a recognition of the complex and multiple lived experiences of inequality and marginalization in any given context; and 3) a conceptualization of social identity as constituted through dynamic processes and always open to revision

Revitalization of a small textile factory from the XIX century

The cultural heritage of a region is a priceless asset in creating an identity and the definition of a unique future. Craftsmanship particularly that concerned with textile has been a constant tradition in the Minho region. Such environment has led to the creation of a textile industrial museum: Museum of Textile Industry of Bacia do Ave. Such heritage has been central to Father Airosa since the early days when, at the Instituto Monsenhor Airosa, by the end of 19th century, he decided to use the work in weaving as route for his rehabilitation project with girls from street. Even today his project endures and works as a school to form young girls that need help due to social reasons. This paper describes a work developed in a collaboration project between the Minho University and Instituto Monsenhor Airosa (IMA), having the Museum of Textile Industry of “Bacia do Ave” as a consulting partner. The objective is to reorganize the Institute weaving job-shop and create a museum with the XXI century Jacquard weavers loom brought from Lyon by Monsenhor Airosa. In this job-shop work, the fifty years Jacquard weavers loom still manufacture the famous industrial art. This paper emphasis is put on the job-shop reorganization that makes to order bedspread, face towel and table-cloth, napkin and raw cloth. The diversity and complexity of these products is small but exclusive that the Institute wants to spread in handcraft fairs and shops adopting repetitive production