Viable distributed dish/central plant solar power : Status, new developments, potential

Distributed dish central plant systems for electricity generation are an extremely valuable and viable means for providing electricity at small or large scale. Such systems should be considered more seriously due to their many advantages. When the latest developments for large 400m2 aperture paraboloidal dish collectors (with high efficiency and low cost) are incorporated and combined in suitable arrays feeding central plant, excellent economic potential can arise, sufficent to place such systems at the forefront of solar thermal technologies. Recent studies involving large paraboidal dish arrays (1MWe - 100MWe) feeding central plant have indicated viable system performance for electricity generation and waste heat utilisation. When such units are used with multiple effect desalination plant, desalination costs can be very reasonable if the electricity generated attracts good buy-back terms. Desalination water costs of less than one dollar Australian per kilolitre can be realised for sea water desalination

Beyond coping? Alternatives to consumption within a social network of Russian workers

Research on the post-socialist lived experience of the working poor often focuses on reciprocity and economic survival. It is equally important to examine how social networks facilitate self-provisioning and mutual-aid practices for non-subsistence consumption (decorative, non-utility items) in the face of material want. The ethnography presented here of manufacturing workers in a Russian province shows how selfresourced homemaking and decorative practices, after MacIntyre (1981), constitute an ‘internal good’ – a social activity valued for itself as much as the domestic production it results in. This good is important for workers’ mutual recognition as providers and their status as sufficiently resourceful subjects suitable for inclusion within a social network – itself an important resource for the working poor. The network provides opportunities for alternatives to consumption outside the market economy. Worker identities at work cannot be detached from those at leisure and at home, and even the meaning of the workplace is problematized by its special place within the network

The Metamorphoses of the Dacha: Some Processual Thinking

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