Contact Zone

The paper presents the case of the Boljunčica reservoir, which began operation in 1973. It is situated on the Istria peninsula (Croatia). This is a multipurpose reservoir which was built in order to protect the downstream area from flood, to store water for irrigation, and to control sediment transport. The reservoir is situated on the contact zone between water impermeable

The Japanese Coming of Age Day or Seijin no Hi is an annual celebration dedicated for the youth who just turned twenty years old within the last twelve months. This longstanding tradition and rituals originated from the 700 A.D. Tang Dynasty, which became an official holiday in Japan since 1948. It marks the responsibilities and expectations for progress bestowed upon the Japanese youth after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The new young adult is trusted to undertake a more responsible role for the society, and that they accept this responsibility by attending the coming of age ceremony, Seijin Shiki, in their respective prefecture.
Attendees get to wear traditional Japanese clothing such as furisode for women, and hakama for men. Although men have the option to wear hakama or the western formal coat and tie, a practice that started during the postwar era. This study then assesses the presence of both hakama and coat and tie as a manifestation of ‘contact zone’ in Japan. Contact zone is a space where two cultures meet and interact in asymmetrical relations of power like between a master and the slave, and their aftermaths are exhibited in the contemporary period. Appearance of both garments were analyzed using Mary Louise Pratt’s Art of the Contact Zone, which delved on how wearing of two different customary clothing in Seijin no Hi is considered as transculturation. Therefore, this study is about understanding the presence of both as a conscious choice in ushering modern Japanese men in the coming of age ceremony.

Museums have increasingly been promoting their postcolonial status through inclusionist programs in exhibitions, shared curatorship, and use of collections. Where there are indigenous stakeholders, we have seen an unprecedented improvement in the empowerment of source communities in the management, use, and presentation of their patrimony in museums. Since James Clifford's 1997 essay, the phrase “contact zone” is now more or less synonymous with these inclusionist, collaborative programs. This paper, while being openly supportive of such collaborations in museums, is nevertheless critical of the use of the contact zone concept. Returning to Clifford's essay, as well as those of Pratt and others, this paper questions why museum scholars perpetuate only a partial portrait of the contact zone, despite clear warnings about its inherent asymmetry. The goal of this paper is not to undermine the ethically engaged work that has been done, but to expose the dark underbelly of the contact zone and, hence, the anatomy of the museum that seems to be persistently neocolonial.

This paper is a study of the cultural struggle and conflict survived by the protagonists in The Namesake (2003) by Jhumpa Lahiri as they move from their native land to America. It is an application of the theoretical concepts of hybridity and assimilation, as discussed in post-colonial criticism by critics such as Homi Bhabha. The researcher will discuss how the three main characters finally manage to develop new anti-monolithic models of cultural growth and exchange. As a result, they succeed in embracing a new culture while protecting their Bengali heritage. The novel depicts the life of an Indian couple (Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli) who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968. It describes the cultural challenges the heroine faces as she struggles to accommodate to a new Western society. Ashima clings tightly to her Bengali roots and identity, a fact which becomes apparent through the dilemma caused over naming their first baby. However, to survive the challenges of Massachusetts’ society, Ashima welcomes its culture to a certain extent. Thus, she succeeds in overcoming feelings of loneliness and displacement. On the other hand, Ashoke’s adjustment is less complicated. Although he copes with the new Western life faster, his respect for his native traditions is daily observed. His resentment of his children’s attempt to give up their native identity is heartbreaking. Early in the novel, Gogol rejects symbols of his Indian culture, and later he repudiates his parents’ style of life. Finally and after his father’s death, Gogol’s personal growth is associated not only with him welcoming his native culture, but also embracing both cultures in an excellent example of cultural hybridity.

The present article traces the creation of the peculiar concept of the vampiric contagion or “vampirization” through the work of two official commissions which investigated vampires in Habsburg Serbia in 1732. Even though the importance of the documents prepared by the commissions has been duly recognized in intellectual and cultural histories, a closer look at the narrower historical context yields additional insights into how the figure of the vampire was construed. This approach also helps us do justice to the work of the first commission, led by contagion physician Glaser, which usually receives undeservedly little attention in the secondary literature. While acknowledging the Habsburg cameralistic state administration’s efforts at controlling and disciplining the borderland’s population, the article seeks to interpret the vampire as a product of a contact zone, co-created by the local Orthodox population and the borderland’s medical administration.

This article finds in Joinville's late crusading narrative, the Vie de Saint Louis, evidence of past and continuing dialogues and a community of understanding between putative enemies in a theater of war. I argue that the text's mutually derived, Franco-Islamic references and syncretic customs attest to the everyday cross-fertilization and dialogue that took place in the medieval contact zone of Outre-mer irrespective of official crusading ideology emerging from Europe. I then turn to examining closely some of the Vie's many inter-confessional dialogues, showing how the cited Muslim voices of these dialogues reorient meaning within their linguistic environment, casting what Bakhtin called an unofficial “sideways glance” upon what would otherwise be monologic, Latin-Christian discourse. These unofficial, textual sideways glances both open up alternative perspectives within the Vie, and effectively cast an alternative image of the crusading endeavor itself, one in which Muslim and Christian values are mirrored in each other.

In Michael Ng and Yun Zhao, eds., Chinese Legal Reform and the Global Legal Order: Adoption and Adaption (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press)
Abstract:
Over the past century, China has undertaken a series of legal reforms in order to establish a “modern” legal system. Despite the efforts of several generations of reformers, many commentators and scholars continue to find the Chinese legal system lacking in what they consider indispensable to a modern legal system or modern rule of law. They have often attributed this unsatisfactory outcome of China’s century-long legal transformation to incommensurability between Chinese tradition and modern values and institutions as represented by those of the industrialized Western countries since the nineteenth century. Underlying this view is a widespread assumption that there exist natural boundaries between “traditional” and “modern” law and between Chinese and Western law. To better understand the history of Chinese legal modernity, this essay argues that it is important to examine the question of how and why the Chinese legal system was labelled as traditional (and hence presumably incompatible with modern or Western law) in the first place.
As the first stage of China’s efforts to restructure its legal institutions after Western models (often through Japanese interlocutors), the late Qing legal reform of 1902-11 provides a valuable example of how Chinese law was turned into the traditional, inferior other of both Western and modern law. To understand the relevant processes and implications, we need to explore at least three questions: (1) How was Chinese law Orientalized or self-Orientalized and made incompatible with modern law? (2) How did the Chinese negotiate with the Euroamericentric notions of tradition and modernity? (3) How did the late Qing legal reform project contest or contribute to the traditionalization (chuantong hua) of Chinese law? By reexamining the changing sentiments and debates among the late Qing literati and officials during the last four decades of the Qing including the New Policy period of 1902-1911, this essay shows that the traditionalization of indigenous Chinese legal culture was both a cause and product of the legal reform movement over the past century. It also calls for more attention to the frequently overlooked symbolic epistemic violence that accompanied the Euroamericentric discourses of modern law and civilization and conditioned the Chinese legal reforms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I believe that instead of debating whether China has succeeded in “modernizing” its legal system, it would be more fruitful to understand the historical specificities and complexities of Chinese experiences and to problematize the normative assumptions of the dominant discourse of legal modernity.
I first trace how the dominant narrative of modern law came to affect late Qing understanding of Chinese and Western law and culture in the 1870s through the 1890s. Next, I re-examine debates in the Qing legal reform of 1902-11 to analyze how a Chinese legal tradition was constructed in contradistinction to Western or modern law. I offer some brief observations in the last section. Besides studying the issues mentioned earlier, this essay illustrates how real or constructed differences between Chinese and Western law were represented, politicized and institutionalized through the discourse of legal reform and modernity in the Sino-foreign contact zones during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The surface characteristics of the contact zone of tin-plated copper alloy contacts subjected to fretting motion for 8000, 16,800 and 48,000 cycles under unlubricated conditions are presented. The nature of the contact zone, at the verge of wearing out of the tin coating as well as upon the coating is completely worn out, is assessed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis and X-ray dot mapping, and the influence of these changes on the contact resistance is correlated. The study reveals that under unlubricated conditions, fretting caused significant damage at the contact zone. Occurrence of adhesive wear failure is observed at early stages whereas at latter stages, delamination wear is the predominant mode of failure. As the fretting cycle increases, the concentration of copper increases whereas the concentration of tin decreases; oxygen concentration though not appreciable at the early stages, starts to build with increase in fretting cycles, attributing to the increase in contact resistance due to the formation of oxides of copper and tin at the contact zone.

Paleomagnetic analyses were carried out on samples from 19 localities within two different mega-tectonic units in Northern Romania: Tisza-Dacia (11 localities) and ALCAPA (8 localities). The samples cover a range of different lithologies: (1) Late Cretaceous red-coloured marl to marly limestone, (2) Eo-Oligocene flysch sediments, and (3) mid-Miocene (Langhian) tuffite (Dej tuff and related sediments). The Late Cretaceous and mid-Miocene specimens carry secondary paleomagnetic signals exhibiting a counter clockwise deflection of the paleo-declinations by some 30°, while the Eo-Oligocene localities indicate an overall clockwise deflected (between some 45° and >90°) paleodeclination with respect to present-day north. Clockwise rotation postdates the age of sedimentation (Lower Oligocene), as well as (at least partially) thrusting of the Pienides onto the Tisza-Dacia mega-tectonic unit, which occurred between 20.5 and 18.5 Ma. Clockwise rotation predates post-12 Ma counter clockwise rotations inferred for the mid-Miocene localities. Surprisingly, the clockwise rotations of the first rotational stage not only affected the (par-) autochthonous sedimentary cover of the Tisza-Dacia megatectonic unit, but also the allochthonous flysch nappes of the Pienides, i.e. the eastern tip of the ALCAPA mega-tectonic unit. Well-documented opposed rotation of the remainder of ALCAPA necessitates a detachment of this eastern tip of ALCAPA after 18.5 Ma. The most likely location for this detachment zone is along the margins of the Transcarpathian depression. During a second (post-12 Ma) stage, counter clockwise rotations of up to 30° affected the entire working area. Regarding timing and magnitude, these second stage rotations are similar to rotations documented for the East Slovak basin, but different from those reported from the South Apuseni Mountains and the Central and Inner West Carpathians located west of the East Slovak basin. An insgesamt 19 Lokalitäten in Nord-Rumänien wurden paleomagnetische Analysen in zwei grosstektonischen Einheiten durchgeführt: 11 Lokalitäten liegen im Tisza-Dacia Block, 8 sind Teil der ALCAPA-Einheit. Die untersuchten Proben umfassen folgende Lithologien: (1) Oberkretazische rote Kalkmergel, (2) Eo-Oligozäne Flysche und (3) Tuffite (Dej-Tuff und assoziierte Sedimente) des Mitteren Miozäns (Langhian). Die Proben aus der Oberkreide und dem Mittleren Miozän zeigen eine sekundäre Magnetisierung, deren Paläo-Deklination um ca. 30° gegen den Uhrzeigersinn rotiert ist. Die Paläo-Deklinationen der Eo- Oligozänen Proben hingegen weisen Abweichungen zu gegenwärtig Nord mit dem Uhrzeigersinn (45° und >90°) auf. Die Rotation der Eo-Oligozänen Proben fand nach der Sedimentation der jüngsten Proben (unteres Oligozän), und zumindest teilweise nach dem Deckenschub der Pieniden (20.5–18.5 Ma) auf den Tisza-Dacia Block statt. Diese Rotation mit dem Uhrzeigersinn geht der durch die mittel- Miozänen Proben dokumentierten gegenläufigen Rotation (ab 12 Ma) voraus. Die Rotationen der früheren Phase wurden nicht nur in den Sedimenten aus der (par-) autochthonen Bedeckung von Tisza-Dacia, sondern auch in den überschobenen Pieniden nachgewiesen. Dieses Ergebnis ist auf den ersten Blick überraschend, da sie Teil von ALCAPA sind, der Rest von ALCAPA zu dieser Zeit aber in einem gegenläufigen Sinn, also gegen den Uhrzeigersinn, rotierte. Diese gegenläufigen Rotationen erfordern also eine tektonische Ablösung der östlichsten Spitze von ALCAPA vom Rest dieser grosstektonischen Einheit. Der wahrscheinlichste Ort für eine solche Ablösung befindet sich an den Rändern der Transkarpathischen Depression. Die zweite Rotationsphase, ca. 30° gegen den Uhrzeigersinn nach 12 Ma, ist auch aus dem Ost- Slovakischen Becken bekannt. Sowohl die Internen West-Karpathen westlich des Ost-Slovakischen Beckens, als auch das südliche Apuseni Gebirge, zeigen nach 12 Ma ein vom Arbeitsgebiet abweichendes Rotationsverhalten.

The realization of maximum adhesive forces for a railway vehicle is a very difficult process, because it involves using tractive efforts and depends on friction characteristics in the contact zone between wheels and rails. Tractive efforts are realized by means of tractive torques of motors, and their maximum values can provide negative effects such as slip and skid. These situations usually happen when information about friction conditions is lacking. The negative processes have a major influence on wearing of contact bodies and tractive units. Therefore, many existing control systems for vehicles use an effect of a prediction of a friction coefficient between wheels and rails because measuring a friction coefficient at the moment of running vehicle movement is very difficult. One of the ways to solve this task is to use noise spectrum analysis for friction coefficient detection. This noise phenomenon has not been clearly studied and analyzed. In this paper, we propose an adhesion control system of railway vehicles based on an observer, which allows one to determine the maximum tractive torque based on the optimal adhesive force between the wheels (wheel pair) of a railway vehicle and rails (rail track) depending on weight load from a wheel to a rail, friction conditions in the contact zone, a lateral displacement of wheel set and wheel sleep. As a result, it allows a railway vehicle to be driven in a tractive mode by the maximum adhesion force for real friction conditions.

A thermal and non-Newtonian fluid model under elastohydrodynamic lubrication conditions is proposed, integrating some particularities, such as the separation between hydrodynamic and dissipative phenomena inside the contact. The concept of apparent viscosity is used to introduce the non-Newtonian behaviour of the lubricant and the thermal behaviour of the contact into the Reynolds equation, acting as a link element between the hydrodynamic and dissipative components of the EHD film, independently of the rheological and thermal models considered. The apparent viscosity enables the application of the rheological model better adapted to each lubricant, without appealing to special formulations of the EHD problem.The Newton–Raphson technique is used to obtain the lubricant film geometry and the pressure distribution inside the EHD contact. The shear stresses developed in the fluid film are evaluated assuming the non-linear Maxwell rheological model. The surfaces and lubricant temperature distributions are determined using the simplified Houpert's method, applied to the inlet contact zone, and the thermal method proposed by Tevaarwerk is applied in the high pressure contact zone.The non-Newtonian thermal EHD model is applied to the analysis of a contact lubricated with MIL-L-23699 oil. Significant results are obtained for the centre and minimum film thickness, for the inlet shear heating and film thickness reduction factor (φTφT), for the temperature rise of the lubricant and of the surfaces and for the friction coefficient inside the contact, considering wide ranges of the operating conditions (maximum Hertzian pressure, inlet oil temperature, rolling speed and slide-to-roll ratio).Finally, the numerical traction curves determined are compared with the corresponding experimental results, showing very good correlation.

Concentrando-se na análise dos processos identitários no espaço-tempo da língua portuguesa, este trabalho pretende ser um contributo para o estudo do pós-colonialismo. Se a identidade moderna ocidental é, em grande medida, produto do colonialismo, a identidade no espaço- tempo da língua portuguesa reflecte as especificidades do colonialismo português. Trata-se de um colonialismo subalterno, ele próprio colonizado; na sua condição semi-periférica.

William Richardson is known to researchers of Labrador history for his account of a 1771 voyage along the coast of southern Labrador.  A re-examination of the Richardson material at the University of Toronto Libraries revealed a 92-entry Inuttitut vocabulary that has heretofore never been published and is among the earliest collected in the English language.  Many of the entries directly reflect the nature of the relationship between Inuit and Europeans at the time, namely the exchange of furs and sea mammal products for objects of European manufacture.  In order to assess the vocabulary's relevance and authenticity, research on Richardson's naval career is presented, which shows that he voyaged to western Newfoundland and southern Labrador each year between 1765 and 1771.  During these voyages he met not only Inuit, but naval officers, Moravian missionaries, and others familiar with Inuit language and culture, who might have been the source of this material.

Concentrando-se na analise dos processos identithrios no espaco-tenpo da lingua portuguesa, este trabalho pretende ser um conbibuto para o estudo do p6s-colonialism. Se a identidade modema ocidental e, em grande medida, produto do colonialismo, a ...

For centuries the continent of Africa has been characterised by negative images such as poverty, disease and conflicts. Today, however, the People’s Republic of China’s growing presence in Africa, particularly with regards to China–Africa business relations, brings new vitality to the continent. This new movement is not a windfall but rather obtained through the hard work of both African and Chinese people at various levels. Narrating on daily experiences of Chinese merchants and their vivid interactions with people in Botswana, this book decodes the frustrating while rewarding process through which China–Africa relations have been maturing on the grass-roots level. This book not only presents insights and suggestions to both Botswana and Chinese policy makers interested in understanding their constituents’ everyday interactions with each other, but also offers readers interested more broadly in contemporary Chinese experiences in Africa a fascinating glimpse into these cross-cultural encounters. This book is an original and pioneering study of issues that resonate in almost every African country which has responded to a growing Chinese presence. It argues that as the process of globalisation permeates the everyday lives of people, each individual is empowered to be an ‘ambassador’ in shaping international relations.

The dissolved air flotation process is used in water and wastewater treatment. Among many parameters the fluid dynamics determine the capacity of the process. The contact zone is assumed to be important for the removal function, as it is believed to be the location for the aggregation of bubbles and flocs. This paper presents an experimental study on the flow structure in a contact zone of a DAF pilot tank and the influence of contact zone configuration. The flow structure in the contact zone was examined for different horizontal lengths of the zone and for different heights and inclinations of the shaft wall. The hydraulic surface loading was 11 m/h over the total tank surface area and the recycle rate was constant at 10% of the main flow. The examined hydraulic surface loading over the contact zone ranged from 40 to 98 m/h. Water velocities in the longitudinal, central section of the tank were measured with an acoustical Doppler velocimeter in a grid net for the different contact ...

In recent years, many cooling lubricants are classified as health hazards, while their end-of-life treatment poses numerous ecological threats. Dry machining is a solution for greener production and also is a favorable process from an economical point of view. However, compared to other machining processes, conventional grinding has a low material removal rate and involves high specific energy. A major part of the specific energy in grinding is changed to heat that makes harmful effect on surface quality. Therefore, in conventional dry grinding, as there are no cutting fluids to transfer the heat from the contact zone, the temperature of workpiece surface and grinding wheel surface will be increased resulted to thermal damage and poor surface integrity, increasing of wheel wear and inefficient grinding compared to conventional grinding. To make a step forward to pure dry grinding and to eliminate the negative environmental impact of the cutting fluids, a new technique called ultrasonic assisted dry grinding has been used. The advantages of ultrasonic assisted grinding were proved mostly for the brittle material. Our investigations show the improvement on the surface roughness, considerable reduction of the normal grinding force, and thermal damage in case of using ultrasonic assisted dry grinding compared to conventional dry grinding for a soft material, 42CrMo4. A decrease of up to 60% of normal grinding forces has been achieved.