Academic literature on the topic 'Observatories – South Africa'

The historical record of Mediterranean volcanism is arguably the richest available for any region of the world. Documentary records date back to the Classical period, and archaeological records date back further still (Stothers and Rampino 1983; Chester et al. 2000). The Mediterranean is also home to some of the most famous, or indeed infamous, volcanoes on Earth, several of which still present major threats to society today (Kilburn and McGuire 2001; Chester et al. 2002; Guest et al. 2003). A number, for example Santorini, Etna, and Vesuvius, have menaced human populations since Antiquity, and the human response and risk perception today are strongly shaped by a culture, which itself owes much to the volcanic landscapes and eruptions (Chester et al. 2008). The science of volcanology was born, and has since flourished, in the cradle of the Mediterranean. It began, arguably, with the careful descriptions by Pliny the Younger of the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii, and developed through the scientific investigations of Sir William Hamilton in the eighteenth century. The region was the playground of the pioneers of modern volcanological studies in the nineteenth century (e.g. Fouqué 1879), and today it boasts a number of state of the art volcano observatories such as that which monitors Vesuvius. Several volcanoes, eruption styles, geothermal manifestations, and rock types have inspired nomenclature now widely used within the volcanological community: plinian, vulcanian, and strombolian eruptions; low temperature gas emanations known as solfataras; rocks known as pantellerites. The very word ‘volcano’ comes from the Aeolian island Vulcano, where Vulcan’s forge was situated. The sea-filled crater of Santorini was one of the first volcanic ‘calderas’ to be described, by Ferdinand Fouqué in the 1870s. The Mediterranean basin tracks the geological suture between the African plate to the south, and the Eurasian tectonic plate to the north (Chapters 1, 13, and 16). Many regions along this suture have experienced volcanic activity within the past 10–20 Myr (million years), most of it related to the continuing process of subduction that has consumed the northern margin of the African plate.

As countries across the globe pursue economic development, the improvement of individual and societal well-being has increasingly become an overarching goal. In the global South, in particular, high levels of poverty, inequality and deteriorating social fabrics remain significant challenges. Programmes and projects for addressing these challenges have had some, but limited, impact. This occasional paper analyses well-being in Gauteng province from a capability perspective, using a standard ‘capability approach’ consistent with Amartya Sen’s first conceptualisation, which was then operationalis