Browsing by Author "Daggett, Cara New"
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- The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of WorkDaggett, Cara New (Duke University Press, 2019-08)In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett argues that only by transforming the politics of work--most notably, the veneration of waged work--will we be able to confront the Anthropocene's energy problem. Substituting one source of energy for another will not ensure a habitable planet; rather, the concepts of energy and work themselves must be decoupled.
- Bodies and Borders: Gendered Nationalism in Contemporary PolandPalermo, Rachel Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-10)The 11th of November 2018, marked the 100th year anniversary of Poland regaining independence in 1918, following nearly 123 years of partition. To commemorate this centennial anniversary, museums and cultural institutions around the country hosted exhibitions presenting national identity and narratives. In this thesis, I compare two such exhibitions in Warsaw, one hosted by the Warsaw National Museum and the other housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum. I argue that the employment of feminine figures as allegorical representations of the nation within the Krzycząc: Polska! Niepodległa 1918 (Shouting: Poland! Independence 1918), exhibition of the Warsaw National Museum, serves as an illustrative example of how women have historically, and continue to be, made physical and symbolic bearers of an exclusivist version of Polish national identity. The Niepodległe (Independent Women) exhibition housed in the Warsaw Modern Art Museum, on the other hand, presents an alternative, and more inclusive, means of national identity formation through acknowledging the heterogenous roles and identities taken up by the actual women of the nation.
- Discourses and Notions of Identity in United States Foreign Policy: Israel and the 2014 Gaza WarJohnson, Elizabeth Anne (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-21)This paper examines U.S. political and social discourse on the 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict and attempts to better understand U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, specifically on Israel. By examining official U.S. government documents, media articles, and pop culture platforms, this project identifies dominant narratives within the United States on Israel and the Palestinian territories. The complicated notions of identity that were discursively expressed within the United States on the 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict are deconstructed and discussed to further the academic discussion on U.S. relations in the Middle East.
- The Ethics of (Dis)connection: Understanding 'Care' Through Phenomena of DespairRespess, Shaun (Virginia Tech, 2021-11-12)This dissertation examines the outbreak of depression in the United States through an ethical lens of care and disconnection. Discussions in bioethics and collaborating fields largely speak of mental health as a series of phenomena attributable to individuals, subsequently using terms like 'disease' and 'disorder' to denote abnormality in those persons affected by distress. Alternatively, I respond to the ongoing "crisis of care" through a critique of neoliberalism and biomedicalization. I argue that widespread despair is the result of a collective way of life wherein persons are detached from fundamental physical and psychosocial needs by nature of fallacious cultural commitments and techniques. I implement constructivism to empirically ground a new application of care ethics to be considered by normative ethicists. In addition to merging several established traditions such as feminist philosophy and the capabilities approach, I also contribute a comprehensive model for understanding basic needs and the distribution of caring responsibilities/roles. Further, the project enhances the field of applied bioethics by featuring a practically-specific relational approach that is built from the experiences of those embedded in daily decision-making. The dissertation critiques the theoretical soundness of psychiatric and psychological classifications and the practical efficacy of prominent solutions such as antidepressant medications and various psychotherapies. I further assert that these depictions of mental health misrepresent the experiences of those affected by depression, and thus share their stories of derealization, isolation, frustration, resentment, and hopelessness through a lens of disconnection. These feelings apply to caregivers as well: the commodification of care alongside of the constraints attached to "professionalism" are used to inhibit their autonomy, exploit their labor, and detach them from relationships with charges and other carers. This leads to issues such as moral distress, burnout, and vicarious traumatization, all of which foster despair. Finally, I respond to these collective concerns with a new framework consisting of an expanded account of fundamental needs and an analysis of "care-abilities": the capabilities one has to meet their needs and to fulfill the needs of others who depend on them. I then supplement this account with a detailed distribution of skills and responsibilities attached to the particular caring roles that one might occupy. This ethical framework is intended to be advisory and malleable to contextual practice rather than prescriptive.
- Exploring Environmental Justice Issues in Latino communities in the Treasure Valley in IdahoCamargo Palomino, Ana Maria (Virginia Tech, 2019-06-18)This thesis explores environmental justice issues in Latino communities in the Treasure Valley in Idaho. Given the little work focused on environmental justice issues of Latino communities, specifically in the Treasure Valley in Idaho. This thesis aims to, firstly determine whether environmental justice issues of Latino communities are relevant to environmental and social organizations in the Treasure Valley. As part of this, I also aim to unpack why environmental issues in Latino communities are or are not relevant to local social and environmental organizations. I suspected this may be connected to the complex immigration status of Latino groups, however, I discovered that the lack of funding and research, and community awareness challenged these organizations to attend to environmental justice issues. Second, this thesis aims to bring visibility to the Latino community that is often neglected in policy and research regarding environmental justice, which has mostly focused on African-American communities. Finally, a third and related aim is to contribute to the development of a wider vision of environmental justice issues of minority groups by expanding this framework to Hispanic-Latino communities in the Treasure Valley, Idaho.
- Overrepresented Man: Genre, Violence, and HegemonyFallon, Jordan Keats (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-09)This thesis explores the intersections between practices of epistemic production and distribution and material violence. Following the work of Sylvia Wynter, a framework of "genre" is engaged to provide an account of intersectional social identities, disproportionately distributed hegemonic violence (including both state and non-state actants), and the traditions and technologies of anti-colonial theoretical modeling, material praxis, and political work engendered by the rich, interdisciplinary body of Black Feminist thought. To address the continued practices of social, political, and material violence which sustain the Wynterian onto-epistemological "Overrepresentation of Man," an emergent archipelagic politics of heterogenous coalition-building presents a viable path of becoming for liberatory political projects.
- The Politics of Operationalizing the World Health Organization Activities: Global Politics, Health Security and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response NetworkSherrod, Rebecca J. (Virginia Tech, 2018-12)Infectious diseases attract a lot of mediatic, cultural and political attention. But are those diseases like Ebola, or ‘disease x’ actually what kills us? Since 1946, the WHO is the most authoritative figure in the fights against infectious disease outbreaks. So how does the WHO maintain this power and authority after tremendous budget cuts, competition for authority, and a shift to non-communicable disease epidemiology? This thesis uses a mixed-methods approach of quantitative analysis of ‘Disease Outbreak News’ reports, and qualitative analysis of key WHO literature, to develop the alternative narrative answering those questions. This thesis found that the WHO activities surrounding the collection and distribution of data create a political and institutional environment in which the WHO seems to be the only logical solution to prevent them. Additionally, the narrative put forth by the WHO prioritizes the ‘alert and response’ and operational capabilities of the organization to further expand authority in outbreak response. This study concludes that the WHO, through the collection and distribution of knowledge, and efforts to increase operational capability as seen through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), seeks to maintain normative authority and power as an international organization.
- Renewable Energy: The Roles of States, Social Movements, and Policy in California and GermanyWhite, Robert Edward (Virginia Tech, 2018-05-30)This project examines the development of renewable policy in California and Germany through the theoretical lens provided by John Dryzek's democratic theory of social movement engagement with the liberal democratic nation-state. Specifically, this thesis considers the impact of social movements on what the theory identifies as five core imperatives of state. The argument uses a qualitative, comparative, process tracing methodology, supported by critical discourse analysis, to analyze environmental social movement engagements with the state in relation to the development of renewable energy policymaking in the state of California and in the Federal Republic of Germany between 2000 and 2017. Whereas Dryzek and colleagues argue that environmental movement activism may have prompted a new, sixth, environmental conservation imperative of state, this thesis differs. Rather, the analysis finds that if indeed such a sixth imperative is emergent, it might better be defined as a resource conservation imperative. That is, in California and in Germany, it is not so much the environment but rather access to abundant and economically sustainable natural resources that states aim to conserve.
- Towards Decolonial Climate Justice: An Analysis of Green New Deal and Indigenous PerspectivesCrew, Melissa Lynn (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-15)The Green New Deal has gained international significance as the only prominent climate legislation in the United States. The Green New Deal has also become emblematic of a larger movement for climate justice; however, further analysis of the Green New Deal and its assumptions indicates that it falls short of enacting meaningful justice for those most effected by climate change, but least responsible for causing it. This shortcoming is due to the absence of calls to decolonize. Because of the large role U.S. militarism and imperialism play in contributing to the climate crisis, decolonization must be central to climate justice projects. Marx's concept of the metabolic rift and the phenomenon of humans' separation from nature through colonial acts of dispossession and enclosure of land plays an important role in thinking through the ways the Green New Deal recognizes this same phenomenon but fails to go deeper and recognize broader implications of the metabolic rift for continued U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the rocky legacy of the environmental justice movement raises questions as to whether working with the settler state can lead to meaningful justice. Though the Green New Deal is an operation of state recognition of the climate crisis as connected to other social inequalities, it does not overcome the settler state's reliance on racial capitalism and continued exploitation of people and the environment. A climate justice program that is in fact centered on decolonization and indigenous sovereignty is available and must be supported.