Unorthodox kin Leite, Naomi
2017., 20170307, 2017, 2017-02-28
eBook
"Unorthodox Kin is a groundbreaking exploration of identity, relatedness, and belonging in the context of profound global interconnection. Naomi Leite tells the gripping story of Portugal's urban ...Marranos, who trace their ancestry to fifteenth-century Jews forced to convert to Catholicism, as they come to understand their place within the Jewish world. Focusing on the work of imagination and face-to-face encounters between urban Marranos and Jewish tourists and outreach workers, Leite deftly examines how perceptions of self, kinship, and belonging evolve across local and global social spaces. An ethnography of affinities, the book maps diverse contexts and criteria by which people come to identify with a particular social category, the forms of interaction that give rise to alienation or affiliation, and practices through which some are made strangers and others kin. Beautifully written and methodologically innovative, Unorthodox Kin is a model study for the anthropology of kinship, tourism, religion, and globalization."
Mineral natural waters and spas have been used for therapeutic purposes for centuries, with Portugal being a very rich country in thermal waters and spas that are mainly distributed by northern and ...central regions where Beira Interior region is located. The use of thermal waters for therapeutic purposes has always been aroused a continuous interest, being dependent on physicochemical fingerprinting of this type of waters the indication for a treatment in a specific pathological condition. In the present work, besides a literature review about the physicochemical composition of the thermal waters of the Beira Interior region and its therapeutic indications, it was carried out an exhaustive multivariate analysis—principal component analysis and cluster analysis—to assess the correlation between different physicochemical parameters and the therapeutic indications claims described for these spas and thermal waters. These statistical methods used for data analysis enables classification of thermal waters compositions into different groups, regarding to the different variable selected, making possible an interpretation of variables affecting water compositions. Actually, Monfortinho and Longroiva are clearly quite different of the others, and Cró and Fonte Santa de Almeida appear together in all analysis, suggesting a strong resemblance between these waters. Thereafter, the results obtained allow us to demonstrate the role of major components of the studied thermal waters on a particular therapeutic purpose/indication and hence based on compositional and physicochemical properties partially explain their therapeutic qualities and beneficial effects on human health. This classification agreed with the results obtained for the therapeutic indications approved by the Portuguese National Health Authority and proved to be a valuable tool for the regional typology of mineral medicinal waters, constituting an important guide of the therapeutic armamentarium for well and specific-oriented pathological disturbs.
Between 1730 and 1750, Domingos Alvares traversed the colonial Atlantic world like few Africans of his time--from Africa to South America to Europe. By tracing the steps of this powerful African ...healer and vodun priest, James Sweet finds dramatic means for unfolding a history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world in which healing, religion, kinship, and political subversion were intimately connected.Alvares treated many people across the Atlantic, yet healing was rarely a simple matter of remedying illness and disease. Through the language of health and healing, Alvares also addressed the profound alienation of warfare, capitalism, and the African slave trade. As a result, he and other African healers frequently ran afoul of imperial power brokers. Nevertheless, even the powerful suffered isolation in the Atlantic world and often turned to African healers for answers. In this way, healers simultaneously became fierce critics of Atlantic imperialism and expert translators of it, adapting their therapeutic strategies in order to secure social relevance and even power. By tracing Alvares' frequent uprooting and border crossing, Sweet illuminates how African healing practices evolved in the diaspora, contesting the social and political hierarchies of imperialism while also making profound impacts on the intellectual discourse of the "modern" Atlantic world.
Tamar Herzog asks how territorial borders were established in the early modern period and challenges the standard view that national boundaries are settled by military conflicts and treaties. Claims ...and control on both sides of the Atlantic were subject to negotiation, as neighbors and outsiders carved out and defended new frontiers of possession.
One of the recognized challenges in chemical extraction of mercury from soil is the diversity of procedures that are currently available in literature and that differ in terms of the extractant ...solution used, soil:extractant ratio and duration of extraction. Therefore, this study focused on establishing the role of operational parameters for extraction of the available and labile fractions of mercury from soils, considering different soil:extractant ratios and the kinetics of extraction. The suitability of 1.0molL−1 ammonium acetate at pH7 and 0.1molL−1 HCl as extractants for the available fraction and the extraction of the labile fraction using 0.5molL−1 hydrochloric acid was investigated. No statistical differences were found between ammonium acetate and 0.1molL−1 HCl; therefore both extractants can be used for estimating the available fraction. It was also observed that a soil:extractant ratio of 1.5g of soil to 100mL of extractant favors mercury extraction. For the available fraction an extraction of 30min seems enough, as no further significant change was observed in the quantity of mercury extracted thereafter. For the labile fraction increase the extraction duration to at least 24h is recommended.
The data was fitted into kinetic models, and it was observed that the two first-order reactions and the diffusion models help to understand the behavior of mercury extraction from soil, clearly showing that in all cases the rate of mercury extraction was faster in the first 10h and declined after that period. The characteristics of the soil influenced the extraction of mercury, and it was verified that pH and particle size of the soil influenced the mercury extraction process, as results suggested that an acidic soil might have a reduced ability to strongly retain metals and soils with higher porosity showed lower rates of mercury extraction.
•Operational parameters' role on available and labile Hg fractions extraction from soil•Different soil:extractant ratios and extractant solutions were considered.•Kinetic experiment to optimize extraction duration and study the rate of extraction•pH and particle size of the soil influenced the Hg extraction process.
Between May and October of 1917, three young shepherds were reportedly visited six times by an apparition of the Virgin Mary near the town of Fátima in Portugal. At the final apparition event, ...approximately 70,000 visitors gathered to witness a prophesied miracle intended to convince the public that the children's visions were of divine origin. The miracle took the form of a solar anomaly; witnesses claimed that the sun began to "dance." Exploring the early development of the cult of the Virgin of Fátima and the overthrow of the liberal, secular government by pro-Catholic elements, Jeffrey Bennett offers the first book-length scholarly study of the cult's relationship to the rise of authoritarian politics in Portugal.When the Sun Dancedoffers a fascinating look at the cultural dynamics that informed one of the most turbulent periods in the nation's history.
For more than four centuries, Macau was the centre of Portuguese trade and culture on the South China Coast. Until the founding of Hong Kong and the opening of other ports in the 1840s, it was also ...the main gateway to China for independent British merchants and their only place of permanent residence. Drawing extensively on Portuguese as well as British sources, The British Presence in Macau traces Anglo-Portuguese relations in South China from the first arrival of English trading ships in the 1630s to the establishment of factories at Canton, the beginnings of the opium trade, and the Macartney Embassy of 1793. The British and Portuguese—longstanding allies in the West—pursued more complex relations in the East, as trading interests clashed under a Chinese imperial system and as the British increasingly asserted their power as “a community in search of a colony”.
The effects of fire in the landscape are commonly assessed through the evaluation of ash properties. Among other properties, colour is one of the methods more frequently used. However, little is ...known about the effect of fire severity on ash chemical and extractable elements. Ash is an important source of nutrients in terms of landscape recovery after fire. In this study we analysed the effects of fire severity (estimated using ash colour) on ash chemical properties, CaCO3, pH, Total Carbon (TC), Total Nitrogen (TN), C/N ratio and some ash water-extractable elements, such as Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Sodium (Na), Potassium (K), Total Phosphorous (TP), Total Sulphur (TS) and Silica (Si) collected in Portugal (N=102) after three wildfires that occurred in the same ecosystem, composed mainly of maritime pine, Pinus pinaster, and cork oak, Quercus suber. The results showed significant statistical differences among ash colour at a p<0.05 for ash water-extractable K and Si, at a p<0.01 for ash water-extractable Ca, Mg, Na and TS, and the major differences were observed (at a p<0.001) for ash CaCO3, pH, TC, TN, C/N ratio and water-extractable TP. Ash CaCO3, pH and water-extractable TS increased with fire severity and ash TC, TN, C/N ratio and water-extractable TP showed a decrease. In the remaining elements, no trend is identified. Major concentrations of ash TC, TN, C/N ratio and water-extractable Ca, Mg and K were identified in very dark brown and black ash. CaCO3, pH and water-extractable TS were identified in higher quantities in light grey ash. These findings show that fire severity is an important determinant of the type and amount of water-extractable nutrients present in ash that later can be incorporated into the soil and become available for plant growth.
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