Summary
Guided by Ruth Behar’s provocation to explore how ethnography was born out of the writings of novelists and poets and building on a special issue of Anthropology and Humanism on the art of ...ethnography published in 2007, I explore the histories, potentials, and boundaries of ethnography as a genre and craft. Relying on narrative theory as a resource that can enrich ethnography, I provide a close reading of several ethnographies, focusing on issues of character, time, and plot. I argue that a focus on narrative helps ethnographers put in conversation multiple selves’ shifting roles in ethnography. Narrative provides tools to put in dynamic dialogue these different selves, animate our texts, and write more accessible and enjoyable ethnographies. On another level, consulting with narrative theory is a reminder to claim all our ancestors and take pride in ethnography as a queer genre whose strength lies in its openings and porous boundaries.
The article explores the particularly lively rooftops of Cairo through which interspecies intimacies unfold. On these rooftops, various animals (such as chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, goats and ...rabbits) are raised to be later eaten and consumed for sustenance. I expose the various patterned modalities, terms and codes bringing these different species together in their sustained long-term relationships. I follow these interspecies relations as they narrate wonders of life and death, collaborations, various instantiations of home, social gift exchanges, marital rituals and grieving patterns. Rooftop recipes for relating slowly cook these human-non-human relations as uniquely embedded in a socioecological intricate awareness of surrounding environments of neighbours and families, but also of trees, waste, changing seasons, aging species and growing parents.
Rooftop Recipes for Relating Fikry, Noha
Anthropology of the Middle East,
12/2019, Volume:
14, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The article explores the particularly lively rooftops of Cairo through which interspecies intimacies unfold. On these rooftops, various animals (such as chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, goats and ...rabbits) are raised to be later eaten and consumed for sustenance. I expose the various patterned modalities, terms and codes bringing these different species together in their sustained long-term relationships. I follow these interspecies relations as they narrate wonders of life and death, collaborations, various instantiations of home, social gift exchanges, marital rituals and grieving patterns. Rooftop recipes for relating slowly cook these human-non-human relations as uniquely embedded in a socioecological intricate awareness of surrounding environments of neighbours and families, but also of trees, waste, changing seasons, aging species and growing parents.
Myrrh is the resinous exudate obtained by the incision in
Commiphora molmol
trees (Family Burseraceae). The bactericidal activity of its hexane extract was compared to its essential oil (MEO) using ...viable count technique against
Staphylococcus aureus
(
S. aureus
) and
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
(
Ps. aeruginosa
). MEO exhibited a better activity with > 99.999% killing of both tested strains after 2 h contact time. MEO was tested using the same technique against four multidrug resistant isolates:
S. aureus
(MRSA, sputum),
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
, urine),
Ps. aeruginosa
(wound) and
Klebsiella pneumonia
(
K. pneumonia
, sputum). Highest bactericidal activity was observed against
Ps. aeruginosa
while lowest was against
K. pneumonia
(99.59 and 54.04% killing, respectively after 2 h contact time). A cream and mouthwash were formulated using 5% v/v MEO. The cream showed a better activity against
Ps. aeruginosa
than
S. aureus
(95.11 and 86.76% killing, respectively after 2 h contact time). The in vitro treatment of ca 10
7
CFU/ml
S. aureus
cells suspended in 10% saliva with the mouthwash produced ca 46% killing within the first 15 min reaching ca 99.999% after 30 min. Cytotoxic studies of both the essential oil and hexane extract on human liver cancer (Hep G2), human breast cancer (MCF-7) and colon cancer cell lines (HCT-116) revealed a promising in vitro activity. Highest activity was recorded for the essential oil on MCF-7 with IC
50
10.93 ± 0.32 μg/ml. GC/MS analysis allowed the identification of 17 and 9 compounds representing 92.01 and 99.99% of the hexane extract and essential oil, respectively. Furano-eudesma-1,3-diene (15.99%) and 2-acetoxy-furano-diene (26.82%) were the major identified compounds in the hexane extract and essential oil, respectively. These results indicate that Myrrh essential oil is a promising antibacterial and cytotoxic agent that can be formulated in suitable dosage forms.
Origanum vulgare
L. (Lamiaceae) is a widespread flavoring culinary and medicinal herb. The present study aimed at investigating the antimicrobial activity of
Origanum vulgare
(OV) essential oil (EO) ...through illustrating its biostatic, biocidal and the dynamics of the biocidal activity against 11 different microorganisms. GC/MS of OV EO allowed the identification of 32 compounds representing 99.94% of the oil. The two major identified compounds were terpinen-4-ol (38.35%) and
trans
-sabinene hydrate (10.06%). Different methods were employed to illustrate the biostatic activity of OV EO. Results of the biostatic studies on OV EO using agar and broth dilution methods showed that
Staphylococcus aureus
(
S. aureus
) was the most sensitive organism; with a Minimum inhibitor concentration (MIC) 1.18 mg/ml. Agar diffusion method showed that the highest activity was observed against
Bordetella bronchiseptica
(
Br. bronchiseptica
),
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
(
S. cerevisiae
),
Bacillus subtilis
(
B. subtilus
) and
Staphylococcus epidermidis
(
S. epidermidis
) with inhibition zones 38 ± 1.5, 29.5 ± 0.8, 26.9 ± 0.9 and 26.9 ± 1.1 mm, respectively. Studying the dynamics of 1% v/v OV essential oil emulsion over a period of 6 h revealed that
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
)
, B. subtilis, S. epidermidis
and
S. cerevisiae
had the fastest response. Also increasing concentrations of OV oil emulsion increased the rate of cell killing and the duration of growth lag phase increased correspondingly. These data indicated that OV EO produces a concentration and time-dependent antimicrobial activity.
Antimicrobial properties of plants essential oils are continuously investigated to use them as potential drug candidates to overcome the problem of microbial drug resistance. The aim of this research ...is to study the antimicrobial effects of the essential oils of ten Apiaceous fruits Pimpinella anisum L. (anise), Carum carvi L. (caraway), Apium graveolens L. (celery), Coriandrum sativum L. (coriander), Cuminum cyminum L. (cumin), Anethum graveolens L. (dill), Foeniculum vulgare L. (fennel), Petroselinum crispum L. (pasley), Daucus carota L. var. sativus (yellow carrot) and Daucus carota L. var. boissieri (red carrot).
Results of agar-well diffusion method revealed that the maximum inhibition zones were obtained with cumin, coriander and caraway oils against the standard bacterial strains Escherichia coli, Bordetella bronchiseptica followed by Staphylococcus aureus.
Results of viable count time-kill method revealed that coriander oil had the highest antimicrobial activity with more than 99.99% killing of the exposed cells of the standard E. coli and Bordetella bronchiseptica standard strains. GC/MS was carried out to identify the chemical composition of the most active oils. The percentage of identified compounds by GC/MS was 92.5%, 99.43% and 98.66% for cumin, coriander and caraway oils, respectively. Monoterpenes were the most abundant components in the three oils.
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