Email from Ngeti Smith, James H; Mwadime, Ngeti
2014., 20140905, 2014, 2014-09-05
eBook
Email from Ngeti is a captivating story of sorcery, redemption, and transnational friendship in the globalized twenty-first century. When the anthropologist James Smith returns to Kenya to begin ...fieldwork for a new research project, he meets Ngeti Mwadime, a young man from the Taita Hills who is as interested in the United States as Smith is in Taita. Ngeti possesses a savvy sense of humor and an unusual command of the English language, which he teaches himself by watching American movies and memorizing the Oxford English Dictionary. Smith and Mwadime soon develop a friendship that comes to span years and continents, impacting both men in profound and unexpected ways. For Smith, Ngeti can be understood as an exemplar of a young generation of Africans navigating the multiplicity of contemporary African life—a process that is augmented by globalized culture and the Internet. Keenly aware of the world outside Taita and Kenya, Ngeti dreams big, with endless plans for striking it rich. As he struggles to free himself from what he imagines to be the hold of the past, he embarks on an odyssey that takes him to local diviners, witch-finders, Pentecostal preachers, and prophets. This is the fascinating ethnography of Mwadime and Smith, largely told through their shared emails, journals, and recorded conversations in the field. Throughout, the reader is struck by the immediacy and poignancy of coauthor Ngeti's narrative, which marks a groundbreaking shift in the nature of anthropological fieldwork and writing.
Results of biostratigraphic and geochronological investigations in eastern Nagaland and Manipur, NE India, provide new constraints on the tectonic evolution of the western margin of the Burma ...microplate. U/Pb zircon ages indicate that the Naga Hills ophiolite developed in a suprasubduction zone setting as part of an intraoceanic island arc developed during late Early Cretaceous (mid‐Aptian) time and is younger than similar rocks exposed along the Indus‐Yarlung Tsangpo suture zone. Radiolarian microfossils provide Jurassic and Cretaceous age constraints for Tethyan ocean floor sediments that were subducted beneath the forming ophiolite. Timing of the emplacement of these rocks onto the passive margin of eastern India is constrained by Paleocene/Eocene radiolarians in sediments over which the ophiolitic assemblage has been thrust. Previously undated schists and gneisses in the Naga Metamorphics are of Early Ordovician age, and their sedimentary protolith was most likely derived from sources in the south of Western Australian and East Antarctica. After Barrovian‐style metamorphism, these rocks were uplifted and eroded becoming an important source of detritus shed into the Eocene Phokphur Formation. This unit also contains abundant clasts sourced from the disrupted basement of the Naga Hills ophiolite, which it overlies. It also contains Permo‐Triassic‐aged detritus eroded off an enigmatic source that was possibly a continental convergent margin arc system somewhere along the northern margin of Gondwana.
Key Points
Naga Metamorphics are of Early Ordovician age, and their protolith was derived from south Western Australian and/or East Antarctic sources
Paleocene/Eocene radiolarians in mélange confirm timing of Naga Hills Ophiolite (Aptian) emplacement onto the east Indian passive margin
The Phokphur Formation contains enigmatic Permo‐Triassic detritus possibly from a continental arc on the northern margin of Gondwana
Bewitching development Smith, James Howard; Smith, James Howard
2008., 2009, 2008, 20080101
eBook
These days, development inspires scant trust in the West. For critics who condemn centralized efforts to plan African societies as latter day imperialism, such planstoo closely reflect their roots in ...colonial rule and neoliberal economics. But proponents of this pessimistic view often ignore how significant this concept has become for Africans themselves. In Bewitching Development, James Howard Smith presents a close ethnographic account of how people in the Taita Hills of Kenya have appropriated and made sense of development thought and practice, focusing on the complex ways that development connects with changing understandings of witchcraft.Similar to magic, development's promise of a better world elicits both hope and suspicion from Wataita. Smith shows that the unforeseen changes wrought by development—greater wealth for some, dashed hopes for many more—foster moral debates that Taita people express in occult terms. By carefully chronicling the beliefs and actions of this diverse community—from frustrated youths to nostalgic seniors, duplicitous preachers to thought-provoking witch doctors— Bewitching Development vividly depicts the social life of formerly foreign ideas and practices in postcolonial Africa.
Core Ideas
Studying the critical zone requires targeted research on water, energy, gas, solutes, and sediments.
The SSHCZO targets a 165‐km2 watershed on sedimentary rocks in the northeastern United ...States.
One SSHCZO subcatchment, Shale Hills, provides extraordinary data describing a shale CZ.
The Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory (SSHCZO) was established to investigate the form, function, and dynamics of the critical zone developed on sedimentary rocks in the Appalachian Mountains in central Pennsylvania. When first established, the SSHCZO encompassed only the Shale Hills catchment, a 0.08‐km2 subcatchment within Shaver's Creek watershed. The SSHCZO has now grown to include 120 km2 of the Shaver's Creek watershed. With that growth, the science team designed a strategy to measure a parsimonious set of data to characterize the critical zone in such a large watershed. This parsimonious design includes three targeted subcatchments (including the original Shale Hills), observations along the main stem of Shaver's Creek, and broad topographic and geophysical observations. Here we describe the goals, the implementation of measurements, and the major findings of the SSHCZO by emphasizing measurements of the main stem of Shaver's Creek as well as the original Shale Hills subcatchment.
Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging focuses on the Heraka, a religious reform movement, and its impact on the Zeme, a Naga tribe, in the North Cachar Hills of Assam, India. Drawing upon ...critical studies of 'religion', cultural/ethnic identity, and nationalism, archival research in both India and Britain, and fieldwork in Assam, the book initiates new grounds for understanding the evolving notions of 'reform' and 'identity' in the emergence of a Heraka 'religion'. Arkotong Longkumer argues that 'reform' and 'identity' are dynamically inter-related and linked to the revitalisation and negotiation of both 'tradition' legitimising indigeneity, and 'change' legitimising reform. The results have deepened, yet challenged, not only prevailing views of the Western construction of the category 'religion' but also understandings of how marginalised communities use collective historical imagination to inspire self-identification through the discourse of religion. In conclusion, this book argues for a re-evaluation of the way in which multi-religious traditions interact to reshape identities and belongings.
The Superstition Hills Fault (SHF) exhibits a rich spectrum of slip modes, including M 6+ earthquakes, afterslip, quasi‐steady creep, and both triggered and spontaneous slow slip events (SSEs). ...Following 13 years of quiescence, creepmeters recorded 25 mm of slip during 16–19 May 2023. Additional sub‐events brought the total slip to 41 mm. The event nucleated on the northern SHF in early‐May and propagated bi‐laterally at rates on the order of kilometers per day. Surface offsets reveal a bi‐modal slip distribution, with slip on the northern section of the fault being less localized and lower amplitude compared to the southern section. Kinematic slip models confirm systematic variations in the slip distribution along‐strike and with depth and suggest that slip is largely confined to the shallow sedimentary layer. Observations and models of the 2023 SSE bear a strong similarity to previous slip episodes in 1999, 2006, and 2010, suggesting a characteristic behavior.
Plain Language Summary
Studying the mechanical properties and behavior of faults is essential for understanding earthquake ruptures. In this study, we investigate a recent slip event on the Superstition Hills Fault (SHF), which has a well‐documented record of slip. A notable aspect of the SHF is that it periodically undergoes “slow slip events” (SSEs), where the fault slips and releases energy without any accompanied ground shaking. During May‐July 2023, the SHF experienced a major SSE for the first time in 13 years. Our analysis shows that it was the largest documented SSE on the SHF and released equivalent energy to a magnitude 4.5 earthquake. We also find that the spatial pattern of fault slip is very similar to several previous slip events in 1999, 2006, and 2010, suggesting that the SHF has a tendency to slip in a characteristic manner.
Key Points
We document a recent spontaneous slow slip event (SSE) on the Superstition Hills Fault using creepmeter, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, Global Navigation Satellite System, and field measurements
Over 41 mm of slip occurred from mid‐May to mid‐July 2023, with moment release corresponding to a Mw 4.5 earthquake
The kinematics of the 2023 event are remarkably similar to several previous SSEs, suggesting a characteristic rupture process
It is a review of the book Democracy in Darjeeling that is about the socio-political, philosophical, religious, and institutional growth in Darjeeling over the years. It is a careful study of the ...numerous educational patterns, community and cultural processes that define the plurality of the place, as well as retain the individual essence all throughout. Darjeeling is an integral metaphor in North Bengal, and it is not just a space, but a palpable entity in itself. Democracy, Pluralism and Globalisation have their own effects on Darjeeling and that is what the author has tried to enliven through his work.
The abundance of H in planetary building blocks is of fundamental importance for constraining the evolution of the terrestrial planets. It is commonly assumed that chondrites are the principal ...sources of Earth’s H; however, recent studies have suggested that primitive achondrites and achondrites may retain a small complement of H. There are few constraints on the H budgets of primitive achondrites, which represent the transition from unmelted to melted planetesimals, but prior work suggests that bulk parent body H contents are several orders of magnitude lower than typical chondritic values. Therefore, to provide further constraints on H retention during the transition from unmelted to melted planetesimals, we have measured the H contents of olivine, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, and plagioclase from a suite of acapulcoite-lodranite clan meteorites. Acapulcoite-lodranite clan meteorites represent the “prototypical” primitive achondrite parent body and have bulk major element compositions more akin to the Earth than previously studied primitive achondrites (e.g., the ureilites). We find that the H2O contents of olivine (∼5–12 µg/g H2O), orthopyroxene (∼3–10 µg/g H2O), and clinopyroxene (∼5–8 µg/g H2O) are broadly similar, while plagioclase (∼2.5–5 µg/g H2O) tends to be offset to lower values. Using a simple, single-stage batch-melting model, we calculate a preferred maximum acapulcoite-lodranite parent body H2O content of 38 µg/g, which is similar to other estimates for primitive achondritic and achondritic parent bodies. Furthermore, assuming chondrite-like precursor materials, our data are consistent with efficient loss of H prior to or during the onset of melting of early-formed planetesimals. This requires that Earth’s H-budget was dominated by building blocks that underwent minimal thermal processing.
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