Melodies of God : Significance of the Soundscape in Conserving the Great Zimbabwe Landscape

Sacred cultural landscapes require a holistic approach in terms of their conservation. They are intimate spaces which are susceptible to cultural erosion if the focus is on a few elements that heritage practitioners think are important. Mainstream conservation theories and processes, developed from western philosophies, however, emphasises on the preservation of material remains. But there intimate connections between people and place which if eroded can result in erasure of memory and ultimately the un-inheriting of the heritage place. Soundscapes, the relationship between people and the sounds around them, is a novel way to understand these intimate and emotional connections that people have in places. Using the Great Zimbabwe World Heritage site, I examine how local communities cultivate deep connections and sustain memory of place through their preservation of the intangible. A series of events at Great Zimbabwe have clearly shown that the soundscapes represent intimate connections between local communities and the cultural landscape and how the preservation of this soundscape can enhance the conservation of the tangible heritage in this sacred landscape. This paper examines how the soundscape of the Great Zimbabwe cultural landscape is used to preserve memory and sustain connections between the people and the landscape

Social and Ritual Activity In and Out of Place: the 'Negotiation of Locality' in a Sudanese Refugee Settlement

This article argues that peoples’ affective relationships with the specific physical territories that they inhabit are informed by and constructive of the social relations and practices which are enacted in them. When people are forced to leave their homes, the ways in which they engage with their physical, socio-cultural, political and spiritual landscapes are necessarily transformed. Based on ethnographic research with a group of long term Sudanese refugees in Uganda, the article shows how challenges to socio-cultural, ritual and political identities and activities are just as great as the more tangible challenges to protection and subsistence for refugees. The article examines a number of key socio-cultural activities including funeral rituals and agricultural practices, exploring the extent and ways in which ‘place making’ in exile involves the active mediation of external factors at a several levels as well as processes of compromise and substitution with respect both to material culture unavailable in the settlement, and also with in relation to social relations and practice

Mycolactones: immunosuppressive and cytotoxic polyketides produced by aquatic mycobacteria

Mycolactone structural variants, produced by Mycobacterium ulcerans and related mycobacteria, are caused by rearrangements among the highly homologous domains and modules within the MlsB polyketide megasynthase, that in turn alter the immunosuppressive and cytotoxic potency of these natural products