8 research outputs found
Pathologies of Care: HIV Treatment and Prevention in Turkey
No full textUniversity of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. 2023. Major: Feminist Studies. Advisors: Susan Craddock, Karen-Sue Taussig. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 200 pages.This dissertation investigates the ambivalent, elusive, and contradictory nature of care that produces abandonment and harm but dialectically gives rise to vital modes of belonging and carefulness. In Turkey, the number of HIV diagnoses has increased by 620%, and AIDS- related deaths have more than doubled over the last decade. Yet, formal regimes of HIV care block access to testing, condoms, and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis; impose monogamy as a scientifically legitimate prevention method; deny (health)care to LGBTQI+s and people living with HIV; and refuse sexual health education. This dissertation draws on twenty months of embedded ethnography, public and private archives, medical records, newspaper articles, official government reports, and fifty in-depth interviews with governmental, nongovernmental, medical, and pharmaceutical sector workers. Through the concept of pathogenic care, this investigation uncovers how conservative and neoliberal ethics and mechanisms of public health aggravate the conditions of those living with HIV and increase the risk of transmission for others, especially the marginalized, who are socio- immunologically more vulnerable. In other words, this research demonstrates that HIV care has become pathological in Turkey by facilitating a joint epidemic of HIV and HIVfobi, i.e., status-based stigma and discrimination. By setting a sterile distance between themselves and the so-called “contagious others,” formal regimes of HIV care create zones of abandonment where particularly queer and trans communities are left vulnerable to HIV transmission and socio-medical discrimination. This study makes three central arguments with important theoretical and public health implications: (1) the Turkish HIV epidemic is not an inevitable result of dissident/terrorist sexualities, foreign lifestyles, or human immunodeficiency virus; (2) public health mechanisms, institutions, and actors in place to provide HIV treatment and prevention have become unexpected vectors of HIV transmission under neoliberal Islam; (3) the fear of medical and social contagion and the consequent impulse to immunize life against “risky” others lie at the center of Turkey’s failed public health response to the growing HIV epidemic.Atuk, Tankut. (2023). Pathologies of Care: HIV Treatment and Prevention in Turkey. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/258775
The Volatile Possibilities and Empty Gestures of Care Under Military Occupation
No full textThe Occupied Clinic could hardly be any timelier. Kashmir has been under siege by the Indian national government for thirty years, and its residents disenfranchised. In 2019, in part to suppress the region’s independence movement, Narendra Modi and his BJP made international headlines when they stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy. In a land that lives under continuous military occupation and has witnessed countless curfews, Saiba Varma asks, ‘what kind of care leaves people in pieces?’. The Occupied Clinic is the result of arduous fieldwork conducted under occupation in the Kashmir Valley, during the period 2009-2016. In this eloquent ethnography of clinic and its militarization under siege, Varma raises critically, ‘what is possible—clinically, ethically, socially, and politically—under occupation? What forms of care?’
The social costs of quantum futures
No full textJune2025School of Humanities, Arts, and Social SciencesThis thesis defines quantum anticipatory regimes and traces their genealogy from the Cold War. It argues that Cold War computing culture and expert communities developed ways to “technologically manage” the future, using computer-generated knowledge to produce simulated threats that empowered the government to mobilize uncertainty as an anticipatory power. Past American expert anticipatory regimes persisted beyond the Cold War through a cultural acceptance of computers as experts and algorithms as national infrastructure and as strategic resource. This thesis, therefore, anticipates and theorizes the evolution of expert anticipatory regimes in the promissory image of quantum computing futures. Furthermore, it posits gentrification as the evolutionary process of how American anticipatory regimes create their futures through technology. Through a discourse analysis of press releases, news coverage, and public events hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the city of Chicago, it highlights how these entities imagine their own quantum futures and interprets the social cost of these futures as a function of gentrification, where marginalized communities and alternatives visions of the future are displaced. Ultimately, the desire and capital push for quantum computing futures is not just a national infrastructure project, but a conceptual restructuring of the guiding epistemology in how this country perceives the future. Quantum anticipatory regimes are the next evolution in how this country manages perceptions of what the future should be.M
\u27Monkeypox, where is your rage?\u27: The racialization, sexualization, and securitization of global health
No full textWith the purposes of identifying the underlying challenges of global and public health governance of outbreaks, this paper explores three key themes that emerged in response to the 2022 mpox epidemic: the belated change of disease nomenclature from monkeypox to mpox; the classification of mpox as a sexually transmitted infection (STI); and the unpreparedness of health agencies to vaccinate impacted populations. The paper makes the case that, because of the global and public health tensions arising from racialized nomenclatures, sexualized classifications, biosecuritized borders, and monopolized vaccines, national and international agencies failed in providing an adequate and comprehensive response to the latest mpox pandemic, which contributed further to the pathologization of already vulnerable and stigmatized population groups
Semi-supervised rail defect detection from imbalanced image data
No full textRail defect detection by video cameras has recently gained much attention in bothacademia and industry. Rail image data has two properties. It is highly imbalanced towards the non-defective class and it has a large number of unlabeled data samples available for semisupervised learning techniques. In this paper we investigate if positive defective candidates selected from the unlabeled data can help improve the balance between the two classes and gain performance on detecting a specic type of defects called Squats. We compare data sampling techniques as well and conclude that the semi-supervised techniques are a reasonable alternative for improving performance on applications such as rail track Squat detection from image data.Railway EngineeringPattern Recognition and Bioinformatic
Probabilistic defect-based risk assessment approach for rail failures in railway infrastructure
No full textThis paper develops a defect-based risk analysis methodology for estimating rail failure risk. The methodology relies on an evolution model addressing the severity level of rail surface defect, called squat. The risk of rail failure is assessed by analyzing squat failure probability using a probabilistic analysis of the squat cracks. For this purpose, a Bayesian inference method is employed to capture a robust model of squat failure probability when the squat becomes severe. Moreover, an experimental correlation between squat visual length and squat crack depth is obtained in order to define four severity categories. Relying on the failure probability and the severity categories of the squats, risk of future failure is categorized in three different scenarios (optimistic, average and pessimistic). To show the practicality and efficiency of the proposed methodology, a real example is illustrated
Building Of Ankara As The New National Capital
No full textAnkara, doğulu bir dünyadan çıkıp, akılcı bir dünyaya yönelmek istenen yönetim merkezidir. Bu kentten beklenen sadece bir simge olmak değil de, yeni dünya anlayışının tüm işlevlerini yerine getirebilecek ve ona uygun yaşam biçimini yansıtacak bir başkent olmaktır. Bu nedenle de, mevcut tarihsel ve organik gelişmeyi bünyesinde taşıyan eski Ankara'dan bağımsız olarak kurulması zorunludur. 1924 yılında benimsenen bu görüş, kentbilimsel ya da teknik bir yoruma dayanmaktan çok, siyasal bir belirlemedir. Buna uyumla başkentin kuruluş programının ana hatlarının, hatta bazı detay verilerinin, zamanın siyasal ve yönetsel mekanizmalarından kaynaklanması gerekmiştir. Hatta bu programlara göre hazırlanan planlar arasından en uygununu seçmede de mantıksal olarak aynı yönetsel mekanizmalar etken olmuştur. Cumhuriyetin ilk yıllan yeni Türkiye'nin kuruluşunu yönlendiren jeneralist-aydınlann ağır bastığı dönemdir. Zira bilgi alanlarında uzmanlaşma belirginliği, özellikle teknik dallardaki uzmanlık bilinci o sırada yeni oluşmaktadır.The building of Ankara as the Capital of Turkey is a multi-dimensional endeavor realized at the cost of great efforts and finances. It is meant to be a symbol of the Republic and taken up at the State level. The years between 1923-1929,a period in the Republican era, is full of striking events. The declaration of Ankara as Capital and the preparation of its Master Plan are two of these important events. The International Master Plan Competition had three entrants among which Hermann Jansen was the author of the prize winning project. Thus the era of the planned urban development starts. Ankara Building Directorate is an institution deliberately created for the execution of this Master Plan. Yet it suffered from severe shortcomings. Lack of technical staff and non-existence of technical knowledge gave way to mediocre Master Plan results, with immense difficulties in implementation. The consequences of the early handicaps have been felt for many years to come
