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A Marketplace for Populism: The Moral Politics of Digitization in India’s Informal Economy
No full textDigital India is a flagship policy of the Government of India to foster “economic growth combined with social inclusion.” Central to Digital India is the Aadhaar card, a biometric identification now distributed to 1.3 billion Indians, and a real time mobile payment technology, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), that has significantly replaced cash transactions. This technological transformation was imagined and implemented against the social backdrop of India's large informal economy. Prior scholarship has shown that technological promises to improve governance and economic opportunities are often not fully realized and create new sources of friction, especially for marginalized communities. Nevertheless, digital technologies have been taken up by actors in the informal economy, such as street vendors in urban areas. In this dissertation, I ask: How has digitization altered informal workers’ economic and political subjectivity, and with what consequences for their agency in the market and political sphere? How do citizens rationalize breakdowns in techno-economic promises, and how has digitization become an instrument of populist politics? I explore these questions through fieldwork across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While my ethnography is based in the Sarojini Nagar market of New Delhi, my methodology also includes discourse analysis, controversy studies, legal and policy analysis, archival work, and oral histories.
I find that over time the Indian state has evolved into a heterogenous set of actors and institutions with competing politics. Bureaucrats, administrators, lower-level officials, politicians, ministers, and middlemen all represent overlapping components of “the state,” with benevolent, oppressive or ambiguous relationships to street vendors. Digitization of identity and payments alters the political relationship between street vendors, governing authorities, and the nation-state in four salient ways. First, digitization opens the possibility of being seen and potentially recognized by the benevolent arms of the state. Second, digital payments represent a traceable and transparent alternative to the cash-based corruption the state is seeking to eliminate. Third, digital welfare creates a personified state with direct connections between welfare recipients and political leaders rather than state services being mediated through the bureaucracy. Fourth, in political discourse, street vendors are reimagined from being subjects in need of social transformation to agents of nation-building through a digital economy that is accessible and immediate. Simultaneously, there exists resistance to the digital imaginary of the Indian nation-state by street vendors, critiques of being seen without recognition, distribution without redistribution, and duty without rights. In postcolonial India, the bureaucratic-state apparatus was strengthened to facilitate the progress of the nation and its citizens. Politics in contemporary India recasts these mediating institutions as threats to democracy. Digitization represents an effort to diminish the bureaucratic state that is understood by political leaders, tech-entrepreneurs, and street vendors as inhibiting the nation’s and its citizens’ progress.Public Polic
scissor theories: biology, engineering, art
No full textMost beautiful things we encounter in life (Taylor expansions, Jean Genet’s "Un Captif Amoureux", a California burrito, etc.) do not consist of a lattice of scissor mechanisms carefully interconnected to enable global mechanical deformations. This dissertation studies three objects which do.
More formally, this dissertation examines the geometry, mechanics, and dynamics of systems which share the common geometric motif of a two-bar linkage – what we will call a scissor mechanism. First, we discuss the tail of the T4 bacteriophage – the contractile injection system – and demonstrate a coarse grained analytical model which allows us to treat the geometry and energetics of its contraction process. Next, we turn to the morphology of woven materials, and indicate the surprising geometric complexity of this quotidian regime. Finally, we introduce a class of metamaterials assembled from lattices of scissor mechanisms and trace a mathematical analogy to origami and kirigami which in turn inspires their name: “hasamigami”.Physic
Beholding Greece: Viewing Panhellenic Sanctuaries in Late Antiquity
No full textPrevailing scholarly narratives have characterized Panhellenic sanctuaries in Late Antiquity as enclaves of dwindling pagan worship that were subsequently destroyed or appropriated by Christians. Contrary to these narratives, this dissertation argues that Panhellenic sanctuaries continued to function in Late Antiquity as sites where both Christian and non- Christian visitors could participate in cultural, civic, and intellectual traditions. This dissertation offers a new approach to Panhellenic sanctuaries by examining both archaeological and textual evidence for interactions with the monumental landscapes of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi and the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in the late third through the sixth centuries AD. The results of this study reveal that rather than attempting to obscure monumental testimonies of the ancient Greek pagan past, the stewards of sanctuaries in Late Antiquity maintained the monumental landscapes as distinct, recognizable spaces by selectively preserving monuments, by making new additions that respected existing topography, and by investing in architecture that facilitated visitors’ ability to view the landscape. By situating this pattern alongside practices associated with the intellectual culture of the Second Sophistic in the earlier Roman imperial period, this dissertation proposes that these acts of preserving and framing the monumental landscapes of the sanctuaries in Late Antiquity allowed visitors of different religious commitments to express a shared paideia and draw personal connections to the ancient past through theōria, the contemplative viewing of the mythological and historical landscapes of these renowned sites.Classic
Can Cities Be Smart? Urban Governance in the Digital Age
No full textAmid the federal government’s policy disarray of the 2010s, scholars from multiple fields called for U.S. cities to take the lead in advancing progressive policy aims. In the same decade, responding to the digital revolution, “smart city” initiatives proliferated throughout the country. These initiatives combined aspirations for unlocking the governance potential of cities with excitement about the power of digitization to enhance public goods provision. But the promise of smart urbanism quickly faded as many projects became mired in controversy. Critical academic scholarship, including in Science and Technology Studies (STS), has detailed many of the ethical and political concerns raised by smart cities, such as surveillance, digital inequality and privatization. Yet little comparative work has been done to understand how and why city residents accepted or problematized local smart city projects in different ways, to different ends. At the same time, smart city controversies have been largely neglected in the literature on city-scale governance.
This dissertation addresses these gaps through a comparative study of smart city controversies in the United States in the 2010s. Specifically, it examines three pairs of smart city projects across three key areas of urban life: self-driving mobility in Phoenix and Columbus; digital connectivity in New York City and San Diego; and economic opportunity in Queens and Northern Virginia through the competition for Amazon’s second headquarters. Working with the STS method of comparative problematization, which calls attention to the site-specific character of problem framings, I find that controversies emerged from local processes of epistemic and normative co-production, whereby the abstract and promissory concept of the smart city was interpreted against more durable forms of local meaning-making and value creation. Smart city projects produced conflicts when they imposed visions of urban futures – often formulated by actors at other sites and scales – that were out of alignment with local imaginaries of social progress. These cases reveal new ways in which urban citizens are confronting the process of digitization by voicing different expectations about their capacity to exercise agency in setting the terms of progress, digital or otherwise. It is this collective capacity for upholding what I call the “urban social compact” that will determine whether, in the face of digital transformation, cities can be smart.Public Polic
Situating Racialized Genders: An Analysis of Identity Development, Cultural Influences, and State-level Policy Impact on the Health of Transgender People of Color
Full text linkThis research provides an in-depth exploration and definition of the multifaceted experiences of transgender (trans and nonbinary) individuals of color in the United States (US), balancing both a broad legislative analysis and a focused qualitative perspective. This dissertation explores how to more rigorously define the epidemiological concept of “exposure” to impact upon health inequities for individuals who experience oppression on multiple axes (e.g., race and gender). Initially, this research employs a polytomous latent class analysis to classify US states into three categories—Mostly Protective, Mixed, and Mostly Harmful—based on trans rights and structural racism policies. By drawing upon data from the Movement Advancement Project’s Gender Identity Tally and a structural racism legal database, the analysis reveals that even within seemingly inclusive states, protective measures are not uniformly applied, pointing to the necessity of comprehensive, intersectional policy evaluations. These insights underscore the variable impacts of state policies, advocating for more inclusive legislative frameworks that adequately consider the intersecting identities of race and gender.
The second study shifts to a qualitative focus, examining the experiences of 8 Black transmasculine individuals in the Black culturally rich and historically significant city of Detroit, Michigan—a pivotal site during the Great Migration – and surrounding counties in Southeastern Michigan. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and object elicitation, the study investigates how participants, aged 25-35 years, navigate the tapestry of Black gender norms, family belonging, and community interactions in shaping their masculine and Black identities. A key finding is the role of alcohol serving not only as a medium for gender affirmation and personal identity exploration but also as a crucial element in familial and community bonding and coping with structural anti-Black oppression. Amid structural discrimination, alcohol emerges as a tool for coping and solidarity, facilitating connections and collective support within the family and community.
Together, these quantitative and qualitative insights offer a holistic view of how historical, cultural, and political determinants intersect with localized, cultural dynamics to influence the well-being and identity development of marginalized communities. The research stresses the importance of crafting policy solutions that are both broad in scope and finely attuned to the specific needs and challenges faced by these communities. By detailing the interplay between legislation and lived experience, the study advocates for interventions and policies that are both inclusive and sensitive to the diverse realities of trans individuals of color, particularly those identifying as Black and transmasculine.Population Health Science
Guarding Against Heedlessness: Time and Temporality Among the Early Ottomans
No full textThis dissertation explores the multifaceted nature of early Ottoman temporal culture, arguing against its characterization as a monolithic entity. Temporal culture here refers to the system of practices, beliefs, and attitudes through which Ottomans experienced time in their everyday lives as well as the cosmic sense shaped by religious frameworks. I argue ultimately that Ottoman temporal culture was characterized by a bimodal approach, balancing intersecting frameworks of time. The critical distinction I aim to draw is that bimodal, unlike binary, dichotomy, or duality, implies a more nuanced scenario in which the two parts are not necessarily opposites; there is room for overlap.
Chapter One sets the groundwork by challenging the notion of modern time as wholly divorced from natural phenomena, using the regulation of atomic clocks by leap seconds as an example. This contextualizes the history of temporal systems, focusing on variable “temporal hours” and fixed “equal hours.” The chapter argues that the Ottomans employed both systems pragmatically, illustrating that temporal (also known as seasonal) hours—aligned with natural cycles of light and dark—were not less sophisticated than equal hours associated with mechanical clocks. While clocks were present in Ottoman society from the late sixteenth century, their adoption of equal hours cannot solely be attributed to technological determinism. This chapter underscores how temporal practices served diverse societal needs.
Chapter Two examines the Ottoman use of multiple calendars, introducing the concept of “calendrical pluralism” to describe the coexistence of systems like the Hijrī, Rūmī, and Folk calendars. Each calendar had distinct origins, purposes, and contexts, reflecting the multicultural and syncretic nature of medieval Anatolian society where such calendrical pluralism could flourish. The Ottoman Rūmī calendar, derived from the Julianized Seleucid Era, was widely used well before its official adoption in 1677 and was influenced by Syriac and Greek traditions. Additionally, the Folk Calendar, linked to agricultural cycles and festivals such as Ḫıḍrellez, exemplifies the integration of Mediterranean seasonal divisions into Ottoman temporal culture. This chapter demonstrates how these calendars operated along various bimodals, such as solar-lunar and seasonal-aseasonal, emphasizing the adaptability and complexity of Ottoman timekeeping.
Chapter Three highlights the Hijrī calendar and its development as a purely lunar system. The calendar’s aseasonal nature is interpreted as a spiritual admonition against attachment to the transient, earthly realm, aligning with Islamic eschatological themes. The chapter also analyzes the Qurʾanic absence of the term zamān, often used to denote abstract time, and instead highlights terms like ʿaṣr and dahr, emphasizing the timelessness of the afterlife. Drawing on Sufi teachings, the chapter introduces the figure of the ibn-i vaḳt (son of time), who embodies the spiritual ideal of living in the eternal present. For ordinary believers, however, this ideal was tempered by anxieties about the temporal world and the afterlife, a theme further explored in subsequent chapters.
Chapter Four shifts to popular Ottoman literature, examining works by Aḥmed Bīcān and Yazıcıoğlu Meḥmed, who synthesized Sufi mysticism and Hanafī orthodoxy into vernacular texts for recent converts to Islam. Alongside these, the chapter considers melhemes (meteorological prognostication manuals), which combined cosmic prognostication with spiritual comfort, reflecting the shared goal of addressing temporal and eternal anxieties. The figure of Ḫıḍır and the festival of Ḫıḍrellez serve as case studies of Ottoman syncretism, integrating Islamic, Christian, and local traditions into a cohesive temporal-spiritual framework.
Finally, Chapter Five explores early Ottoman historiography, particularly historical almanacs embedded in astrological texts. These almanacs, employing a reverse-dating system, linked past events to cosmological patterns, aligning historical narratives with Ottoman state-building ambitions. By situating the empire within a purposeful chronology, these texts echoed the Sufi emphasis on the present as the intersection of the past and future. This chapter demonstrates how state-centered histories paralleled individual spiritual frameworks in providing continuity and meaning.
This dissertation does not claim to uncover all Ottoman temporal bimodals but instead highlights how these intersecting frameworks resisted the formation of a unified temporal culture. By examining calendrical, spiritual, meteorological, astrological, and historical traditions, it reveals how Ottoman temporality defied simple categories and instead inhabited multiple bimodal frameworks, offering insights into broader questions of time, culture, and meaning in the premodern world.Middle Eastern Studies Committe
Perceived Value of Bioacoustics dMRV in Nature-Based Carbon Solutions
Full text linkThe carbon credit market is forecasted to grow significantly in both size and
complexity, driven by continued global efforts to mitigate climate change. To facilitate
the marketplace, carbon serves as the anchor of value for each credit regardless of the
capture or reduction method. Nature-based credits (NbC) depend on the natural systems
that provide not only carbon sequestration, but also ecosystem services. Carbon credits
created through project-level interventions in natural systems (Nature-based solutions,
NbS) with added benefits, such as biodiversity, tend to trade at a price premium;
nevertheless, questions about durability and the lack of standardized monitoring,
reporting, and verification (MRV) plague consumer confidence in NbS. Demand for
MRV quality improvements in NbS has inspired advancements in digital Monitoring,
Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) technology; however, there is insufficient
exploration of the sector’s perceived value of these tools.
I investigated the linkages between perceived value and willingness to pay among
stakeholders in the NbS carbon market. My research focused on bioacoustics dMRV as
one such potential solution, whose application is relatively nascent in NbS carbon
projects. Advancements in hardware and software have rapidly expanded the utility of
this technology by increasing audio sensitivity beneath ecosystem canopies and
expediting signal processing with new AI software. Bioacoustics is an underutilized tool
that may help satisfy demand for improved MRV quality in NbS projects by enabling
robust biodiversity data collection where field studies have previously been prohibitive.
My goal was to inform stakeholders about this rapidly evolving tool, as NbS project
quality, MRV, best practices, protocols and standards are under review for revision.
I used a mixed-methods exploratory sequential design to gather both qualitative
and quantitative data. My stakeholder sampling approach was holistic, including not only
those directly involved with NbS projects (such as developers and buyers), but also
secondary stakeholders who shape the broader carbon project sector (such as technology
service providers, insurance and ratings providers, corporate strategists, and ecosystem
specialists). Stakeholders were interviewed and surveyed to assess themes, including
perceived value and willingness to pay for bioacoustics dMRV. Triangulation of
qualitative and quantitative data revealed both opportunities and barriers to adoption.
Results confirmed hypotheses 1, 2, and 3. Hypothesis 4 uncovered a semantic
caveat (willingness for ‘price premium’ is supported, willingness for ‘additional budget’
is not). The averages of quantitative survey responses aligned with interviews and
background research; however, the high response disparity suggests a lack of consensus
across the sector as a whole. A notable link between price, value, and risk was identified
as an opportunity to reframe the cost of bioacoustics dMRV not only in terms of co-
benefits but also as an indicator of carbon durability risk.
These results indicated that stakeholders see value in more robust biodiversity
MRV data; it can significantly boost consumer confidence in NbS, increase investment
volume, and command price premiums, thereby enabling not only carbon mitigation but
also the preservation and improvement of ecosystems. When quality improvements
become standardized, quality credits will become the standard, not the exception, and
every NbS investment will work harder and better for nature and humanity.Extension Studie
How to become a tardigrade? Combining paleontology and developmental biology to understand tardigrade body plan evolution
No full textTardigrades, also colloquially known as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of microscopic invertebrates that are characterized by having a segmented body plan and four pairs of lobe-like legs. Phylum Tardigrada is subdivided into the classes Heterotardigrada, which have high morphological disparity including various external cuticular specializations such as plates and spines, and Eutardigrada, which have a simpler plump-like appearance without external cuticular structures. Together with onychophorans and euarthropods, tardigrades form part of a larger clade known as Panarthropoda, with tardigrades having the distinction of being the only completely microscopic group in this context. Our current understanding on how tardigrades first evolved, and the processes leading to their morphological differences with the other panarthropods remains limited due to the scarcity on research that tackles these questions. In my dissertation, I performed an interdisciplinary approach that combined paleontological work and developmental genetics to shed light on the evolution of the tardigrade body plan. In Chapter 1, I described the youngest fossil tardigrade to date (in ~16 Ma amber) and showed that it had character combinations that are not present in extant relatives. This rejects the leading interpretation that tardigrades have remained morphologically static for millions of years. In Chapter 2, I redescribed the first two fossil tardigrades to be discovered, both preserved in a Cretaceous-age amber (~72 Mya) and resolved their phylogenetic relationships within tardigrades. This allowed me to effectively use one of them as a calibration point to calculate divergence time estimates (i.e., a proxy for when certain body plans existed) of the phylum and its major groups in deep time. In Chapter 3, I examined the gene expression patterns of distal limb patterning genes during embryonic leg development to infer which genes are involved in limb morphogenesis. Comparing the patterns to other panarthropod models suggest that tardigrade legs have a distal identity relative to the legs of onychophorans and euarthropods. In Chapter 4, I investigated the identity and fate of the eutardigrade embryonic tail – a feature that disappears during development. My results show that the tail gets internalized and potentially becomes the hindgut. Lastly, in Chapter 5, I redescribed the mid-Cambrian lobopodian Aysheaia pedunculata and provided support for its affinity as a stem-group tardigrade. This resolved relationship provided paleontological evidence for tardigrade miniaturization during their early evolutionary history, allowed the reconstruction of the ancestral tardigrade body plan, and revealed the morphological changes that have occurred in the lineage that led to the extant tardigrades. Overall, my dissertation utilized samples across the entire Phanerozoic to have different temporal perspectives – looking at the past and the present to ask how tardigrades have changed throughout their evolutionary history, and to uncover the macroevolutionary and genetic processes responsible for the stabilization of their distinctive body plan.Biology, Organismic and Evolutionar
Cash Country: A Revolutionary Biography of the Tunisian Dinar
No full textCash Country is an ethnography of money in times of political upheavals. Following the 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia and across the Arab region, I investigate how Tunisia’s national currency, the dinar, has become a public object. From widely commented-upon devaluations, media scandals on disappearing banknotes, currency trafficking at borders, new practices of hoarding money, and changing monetary policies, I argue that the Tunisian dinar structures revolutionary aspirations and their disenchantments, tying political horizons to unchanging economic conditions. Cash Country devises a methodology to “follow the money”, centering its materiality and circulations. I track the struggles that invest the dinar’s material forms, from cash whose visual aspect strives to mirror the transition between political regimes, to attempts by financial actors to digitalize currency. I follow the dinar from inside the Central Bank, showing how the institution transforms into the mediator of financial capitalism at home, to the nation’s borders where the dinar’s illicit circulations run in friction with transnational surveillance regimes.
Cash Country’s premise is the relation between money and its material forms, the exercise of materializing a universal media into a localized currency. I expand from the social theory of money which understands money as an object that evades definition because it exists mutually as a universal medium and a locally embedded form. I pay attention to social actors’ attempts to define money by bridging the gap between the idea of money – universal and commensurable – and its materialization into a national currency – depreciated and barely convertible. I argue that if the dinar has become a site of effervescence and interventions, it is because it articulates the scales people are caught in, between the frame of the national, where revolutionary transformations are imagined to take place, and the workings of global capitalism from where the imaginable gets produced. By following the social life of money, Cash Country writes a different story of uprisings and their afterlives in North Africa and the Middle East. Instead of assessing the successes or failures of revolutions, this dissertation highlights how struggles for freedom are struggles that invest the terms of capitalism. As political transitions give way to economic encroachment, Cash Country reveals how money operates as an object that structures horizons of possibility today.Middle Eastern Studies Committe
Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Higg Materials Sustainability Index Through Stakeholder Perception Assessment
Full text linkThe textile industry greatly impacts the environment, contributing to climate change by releasing 1.2 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) annually with the potential to increase by 60% by 2030. In addition, water use, water pollution and loss of biodiversity from dyeing and finishing of textiles accounts for 17-20% of all industrial pollution (Global Fashion Agenda, 2019), and depletes non-renewable resources. For instance, popular materials such as polyester and cotton have negative environmental and social impact, because polyester required large amounts of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources, and conventional cotton requires fertilizers and pesticides and large amounts of water (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). These are just two examples indicating that selection of materials, specificity of item design and innovation, can contribute to more efficient use of resources, and eventually lead to waste reduction.
The Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) is a tool that is designed to help apparel and footwear companies to explore new fibers and finishes. It provides guidance in selecting materials with lower environmental impact, thus making the industry more sustainable and more transparent. The purpose of my research was to establish an understanding of how Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) stakeholders perceive the Higg MSI textile material scoring. My main research questions were to determine if the textile materials’ Higg MSI scores aligned with stakeholders’ perceptions, and if the Higg MSI was an effective tool helping SAC internal stakeholders to make informed decisions.
I hypothesized that by analyzing survey responses I would find insignificant inconsistencies between respondents’ perceptions and the existing scoring. Furthermore, I hypothesized that the Higg MSI scoring methodology was a trusted decision-making tool effectively used in the textile industry. To test my hypotheses, I developed three complementary surveys to collect data for the analysis. I wanted to learn how well SAC members understood and what beliefs they have about the environmental impact of selected textile materials. After collecting all responses, I aggregated the data and conducted analysis to establish variability and central tendency. I found a lot of variability in responses per material and detected misalignment between the Higg MSI scoring and the modal values of the responses. Next, I grouped analyzed materials based on their origins and looked for trends in responses. The analysis demonstrated that respondents expected natural materials to perform better than synthetic materials. In addition, I determined that the environmental performance of synthetic materials was not well understood by respondents.
As a result, I determined that SAC stakeholders disagreed with some of the Higg MSI scoring due to lack of information, unclear methodology and plausibility of data used in establishing aggregated scores. I compiled these findings and outlined possible solutions needed to address this emergent misalignment between members’ perceptions and the Higg MSI methodology.Extension Studie