Filming Mother Nature’s slow death: Representational pitfalls in African ecodocumentaries

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-241
Author(s):  
Alexie Tcheuyap

This article uses ecocriticism and postcolonial theories to investigate the documentary topographies and politics of African ecosystem. Anger in the Wind (Weira), Breaking the Silence: Cleaning the Liquid Waste (Niyel) and The Day of the Great Blaze (Kadry Kodo) illustrate how African documentarians shape their narratives to interrogate some pressing environmental challenges. This article looks at the ways in which the advent of global capitalism has transformed African ecosystems into sites for violent and irreversible destruction and exploitation, leaving postcolonial subjects in situations of deplorable precarity.

Somatechnics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215
Author(s):  
Robert McRuer

Theorists of neoliberalism have placed dispossession and displacement at the centre of their analyses of the workings of contemporary global capitalism. Disability, however, has not figured centrally into these analyses. This essay attends to what might be comprehended as the crip echoes generated by dispossession, displacement, and a global austerity politics. Centring on British-Mexican relations during a moment of austerity in the UK and gentrification in Mexico City, the essay identifies both the voices of disability that are recognized by and made useful for neoliberalism as well as those shut down or displaced by this dominant economic and cultural system. The spatial politics of austerity in the UK have generated a range of punishing, anti-disabled policies such as the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax.’ The essay critiques such policies (and spatial politics) by particularly focusing on two events from 2013: a British embassy good will event exporting British access to Mexico City and an installation of photographs by Livia Radwanski. Radwanski's photos of the redevelopment of a Mexico City neighbourhood (and the displacement of poor people living in the neighbourhood) are examined in order to attend to the ways in which disability might productively haunt an age of austerity, dispossession, and displacement.


1986 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiro Okamoto ◽  
Koichi Chino ◽  
Tsutomu Baba ◽  
Tatsuo Izumida ◽  
Fumio Kawamura ◽  
...  

AbstractA new solidification technique using cement-glass, which is a mixture of sodium silicate, cement, additives, and initiator of the solidification reaction, was developed for sodium borate liquid waste generated from pressurized water reactor (PWR) plants. The cement-glass could solidify eight times as much sodium borate as cement could, because the solidifying reaction of the cement-glass is not hindered by borate ions.The reaction mechanism of sodium silicate and phosphoric silicate (initiator), the main components of cement-glass, was studied through X-ray diffraction and compressive strength measurements. It was found that three- dimensionally bonded silicon dioxide was produced by polymerization of the two silicates. The leaching ratio of cesium from the cement-glass package was one-tenth that of the cement one. This low value was attributed to a high cesium adsorption ability of the cement-glass and it could be theoretically predicted accordingly.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 1656-1673
Author(s):  
V.V. Smirnov

Subject. The article discusses financial and economic momenta. Objectives. I determine financial and economic momenta as the interest rate changes in Russia. Methods. The study is based on a systems approach and the method of statistical analysis. Results. The Russian economy was found to strongly depend on prices for crude oil and natural gas, thus throwing Russia to the outskirts of the global capitalism, though keeping the status of an energy superpower, which ensures a sustainable growth in the global economy by increasing the external consumption and decreasing the domestic one. The devaluation of the national currency, a drop in tax revenue, etc. result from the decreased interest rate. They all require to increase M2 and the devalued retail loan in RUB, thus rising the GDP deflator. As for positive effects, the Central Bank operates sustainably, replenishes gold reserves and keeps the trade balance (positive balance), thus strengthening its resilience during a global drop in crude oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic. The positive effects were discovered to result from a decreased in the interest rate, rather than keeping it low all the time. Conclusions and Relevance. As the interest rate may be, the financial and economic momentum in Russia depends on the volatility of the price for crude oil and natural gas. Lowering the interest rate and devaluing the national currency, the Central Bank preserves the resource structure of the Russian economy, strengthens its positions within the global capitalism and keeps its status of an energy superpower, thus reinforcing its resilience against a global drop in oil prices.


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