Kitchen sink dramas: women, modernity and space in Weimar Germany.

This article uses historical evidence about the competing designs of kitchens in 1920s German social housing to argue that historians (and, to an extent, geographers) have overlooked the coercive capacity of space to compel certain forms of social relationship. Such has been the potency of the 'cultural' model in history and geography that the 'material' world has been cloaked by language and symbol. Bourgeois politicians, planners and reformers in 1920s Germany were not only compelled to think about domestic space for the poor for the first time, but had to actually produce the physical space if they wanted to make their ideologies 'live'. This article also shows that if we disaggregate the space of the home into its constituent parts (rather than simply contrasting the private and the public realms), different gender ideologies could be designed into domestic space, forcing families to adopt ways of living and patterns of sociability according to the priorities of, variously, 'Americanizers', socialists, conservatives and liberals. The kitchen designs of Frankfurt are well known, but in fact those of Munich were probably more widespread, and so this work further serves to decentre the canon of Modernism which dominates much discussion of Weimar building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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REFERENCIA:

Fischer, S., & Koshland, C. (2007). Field performance of a nephelometer in rural kitchens: effects of high humidity excursions and correlations to gravimetric analyses. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 17(2), 141-150. doi:10.1038/sj.jes.7500486.

Field performance of a nephelometer in rural kitchens: effects of high humidity excursions and correlations to gravimetric analyses.

Rural kitchens of solid-fuel burning households constitute the microenvironment responsible for the majority of human exposures to health-damaging air pollutants, particularly respirable particles and carbon monoxide. Portable nephelometers facilitate cheaper, more precise, time-resolved characterization of particles in rural homes than are attainable by gravitational methods alone. However, field performance of nephelometers must contend with aerosols that are highly variable in terms of chemical content, size, and relative humidity. Previous field validations of nephelometer performance in residential settings explore relatively low particle concentrations, with the vast majority of 24-h average gravitational PM_2.5 concentrations falling below 40 μg/m³. We investigate relationships between 24-h gravitational particle measurements and nephelometric data logged by the personal DataRAM (pDR) in highly polluted rural Chinese kitchens, where gravitationally determined 24-h average respirable particle concentrations were as high as 700 μg/m³. We find that where relative humidity remained below 95%, nephelometric response was strongly linear despite complex mixtures of aerosols and variable ambient conditions. Where 95% relative humidity was exceeded for even a brief duration, nephelometrically determined 24-h mean particle concentrations were nonsystematically distorted relative to gravitational data, and neither concurrent relative humidity measurements nor use of robust statistical measures of central tendency offered means of correction. This nonsystematic distortion is particularly problematic for rural exposure assessment studies, which emphasize upper quantiles of time-resolved particle measurements within 24-h samples. Precise, accurate interpretation of nephelometrically resolved short-term particle concentrations requires calibration based on short-term gravitational sampling.Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology (2007) 17, 141–150. doi:10.1038/sj.jes.7500486; published online 3 May 2006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology is the property of Nature Publishing Group and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)





REFERENCIA:
Fischer, S., & Koshland, C. (2007). Field performance of a nephelometer in rural kitchens: effects of high humidity excursions and correlations to gravimetric analyses. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 17(2), 141-150. doi:10.1038/sj.jes.7500486.