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Bread and Reciprocity: Gift Exchange and Community Formation Among Sourdough Bakers
No full textThis thesis explores how sourdough baking operates simultaneously as a site of labor, community formation, and gift exchange. Drawing on participant observation at two New England bakeries, as well as interviews and personal experiences, I argue that sourdough bread baking fosters a gift economy that challenges capitalist norms by emphasizing care, reciprocity, and community over profit. I examine how sourdough serves as both a material and symbolic link between bakers and embeds shared knowledge and emotional connection into daily labor. The research also highlights the role of women in reclaiming and redefining domestic crafts, particularly in the context of COVID-19’s resurgence of home baking. By analyzing bread baking through the frameworks of gift theory and Marxist feminism, this thesis reveals how seemingly simple acts, like feeding a sourdough starter or sharing a loaf, reflect broader struggles over value, care, and community resilience in contemporary life
Deterrence Without Peace: Nuclear Weapons and the Rising Threshold of Warfare
No full textNuclear weapons fundamentally changed the international political landscape, leading to the emergence of deterrence theory and the notion of the Long Peace. This paper challenges these claims, arguing that nuclear weapons facilitated a more violent and volatile international system rather than stability. Drawing on constructivist theory, this paper develops the Threshold of Violence framework – a normative model which asserts that nuclear weapons elevated the perceived upper limit of tolerable violence in international politics. This raised threshold generated three trends in the nuclear era: increased frequency of proxy wars, escalating levels of benefactor involvement, and greater severity of conflicts fought with conventional weapons in proxy states. This paper examines three case studies: the Spanish Civil War as a pre-nuclear baseline, the Korean War as an early nuclear-era proxy conflict, and the ongoing War in Ukraine. This analysis finds that nuclear weapons normalized conventional and proxy warfare by reclassifying them as ‘lesser’ forms of warfare, while dismissing the massive costs borne by proxy states. In doing so, the paper offers a normative reinterpretation of the Stability-Instability paradox and challenges the claim that nuclear deterrence has delivered peace
Navigating Cultural Differences in Community-Based Conservation: A Malagasy Case Study
Full text linkThis SIP explores the tension between avoiding cultural imperialism and remaining true to ideals, particularly of gender equality in the creation and funding of community-based conservation organizations in patriarchal societies. To tether these loftier ideas to practice, I use my internship with Planet Madagascar in Ankarafantsika National Park as a case study, and explore it through the lenses of feminist, pragmatist, and post-colonial philosophers
