Doctoral Dissertations
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Browsing Doctoral Dissertations by Department "Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought"
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- Civic Tinkering in a Small City: Imaginaries and Intersections of Art, Place and MarginalityTate, Anthony Scott (Virginia Tech, 2012-03-30)The purpose of this ethnographic case study was to explore the construction and alteration of Roanoke Virginia's cultural imaginary, as well as the engagement of marginal groups and their concerns in those processes. This research examined these issues through the experiences of key actors involved with the creation of Roanoke's first city-wide arts and cultural plan and the creation and growth of the Roanoke-based Marginal Arts Festival (MAF). Cities around the globe are increasingly engaged in transnational projects of place identification, reconfiguration, and attraction: attracting capital, residents, workers, tourists and attention (Cronin & Hetherington, 2008; Hague, 2005; Jensen, 2005, 2007; Pine & Gilmore, 1999; Zukin 1995). Moreover, cities undertake various kinds of identity projects: on-going, dynamic processes through which spaces are produced and reproduced by conscious strategies of place making and identity building (Nyseth & Viken, 2009). Such initiatives are concerted efforts to establish or extend a particular idea, or imaginary, of a city. This study focused on one kind of urban identity endeavor that has become widespread during the past two decades: the effort to shape and market a creative, culture-rich place, to project a specific urban cultural imaginary. This analysis also responded to a straightforward problem, that of the manner through which people, in places pursuing arts and culture as a primary focus for development, come to terms with differing understandings of art and its role in development. This study identified four principal future paths for the analysis of cultural imaginaries and the practice of cultural development: studying and supporting civic tinkering activities, recognizing the relevance of localized imaginaries and urban identity projects, valuing full participation in the project of the city, and conducting place-specific and critical analyses.
- Market Challenges to Democracy: The Political Economy of Hyman P. MinskyKirsch, Robert Emmanuel (Virginia Tech, 2012-07-11)This dissertation seeks to reengage the field of political economy to establish a political response to financial crisis, as well as the resulting social crisis of everyday life, using the political economy of Hyman P. Minsky. As an academic field, political economy is in a strange kind of limbo. The separation of politics and economics is easy enough to see, and even within economics, there is another cleavage between economics proper and the history of economics. This yields some very strange conjectures about what it means to be an "economist," and how things can be a matter for either economic "policy" or "political economy" as if these categories were all jumbled up in a grab bag of available methodologies. This dissertation seeks to carve out some intellectual terrain in what can be called political economy by engaging in an interdisciplinary way, inspired by Minsky, in order to offer a cogent political analysis of financial crises. Minsky gives five possible definitions for political economy: the discipline of Economics, a code name for Marxism, rational choice theory of profit maximization, the management of macroeconomic policy, and finally an interdisciplinary view of political economy that works in concert with other social sciences and humanities in order to identify and remedy social ills such as unemployment and poverty. The reading of Minsky in this dissertation is thus in an explicitly political way in order to bridge the gap between various kinds of economics and the various social sciences. By analyzing and critiquing each of these possible definitions of political economy, it becomes clear that a properly social definition of political economy is the final, interdisciplinary one. This dissertation argues that Minsky had a "preanalytic vision" of the kind of society he wished his political economy to yield, and is a first step in fleshing out a political program for that vision.
- A Postcolonial Inquiry of Women's Political Agency in Aceh, Indonesia: Towards a Muslim Feminist Approach?Taylor, Reed W. (Virginia Tech, 2012-08-13)In this dissertation, I develop a postcolonial theoretical approach to localized Muslim feminism(s) in Aceh, Indonesia, based on interviews with women in Aceh in 2009 and 2010. One of the central aims of this study is to challenge the dominant exclusivist discourse of "Islamic" feminism by providing a viable alternative for "Muslim" feminism(s), derived from collaborative, indigenous, and post-secular politics. I address the need for a religious feminist model of subjectivity that incorporates both the political and ethical dimensions of agency in potentially non-patriarchal and non-state-centric formations. I suggest a communal understanding of religious law as an alternative to conceptualizing religious law (syariah) in terms of a personal ethical code or a system of laws emanating from a state. I propose an alternative discourse of feminist agency and religious identity, one that reaches beyond a secular-liberal epistemology and challenges the hegemonic discourse of state-centrism within a privatized religious identity.
- Techniques of Listening and Acoustic OrdersButera, Michael Vincenzo (Virginia Tech, 2010-11-04)Contested interactions between social acoustic spaces and the appropriate methods of listening within them are pervasive in everyday life. This dissertation answers two questions within this expanding field of inquiry. How are sounds phenomenologically interpreted into perceptual categories? Why are these private categories reflected in shared acoustic space, configuring the possible conditions for future sounds? For the first, I propose a phenomenology of audition within which sounds are categorized into three modes: affective, symbolic, and excessive. This classification technique enables the perceptive listener to objectify, parse, interpret, and respond to the sounding world. Second, I argue that these categories are projected and reflected in the socio-political concept of "acoustic orders". Organizations of sound in social space emerge from the tensions between interpretive agents and pre-existing acoustic configurations; in return, the habits and techniques of auditors are fundamentally influenced by these acoustic orders. Henri Lefebvre's spatial theory will be utilized to develop this descriptive framework. The reciprocity outlined between listener and context suggests dual theoretical revisions. In the first part, phenomenology is shown to benefit from the inclusion of its socially generated influences. Alternately, I argue that acoustic orders exist in part because of spatial actions intended to resolve excessive perceptions into a unified experience.
- Worshiping Leadership: Morality, Revolutionary Values, and the Politics of Magnicidio (Assassination) in the Case of Camilo Torres and Fabio Vásquez with the ELN, Colombia 1963-1978Sanchez Sierra, Juan Carlos (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-28)This research explores cult formation and sect-like worship in the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), around the figures of both the priest and guerrilla fighter Camilo Torres (1929-1966), and Fabio Vásquez, leader and founder of the group in 1963-1978. I examine the relationship between authority and obedience that shaped political leadership in Colombia since the late 19th century. In particular, I consider how collective moral and individual values become ritualized in daily practices and moral discourses fostered by leaders that promoted drastic social change along Colombian history. This analysis of authority and obedience facilitates interpretations into how leaders create allegiances and legitimize violence as a strategy to bring about change in Colombian politics. I argue that the politics of magnicidio demonstrates how the formation of leadership is hampered by the use of selective violence, as a strategy to dismantle or deter political opponents from participation. This happens in both mainstream politics and within insurgent groups. In this vein, I argue that by approaching the figure of Camilo Torres and the reverence to his memory, it is possible to understand the importance of leadership and authority both in a guerrilla group, and in social mobilization, particularly the student movement, intellectual sectors, and the youth. I sustain that reverence to Camilo Torres has been fostered primarily outside the ELN. Although the ceremonies around his figure and the revolutionary project progressively furnished the group with a consistent pattern of belief for individual and group interaction, his leadership in the groups was not substantial. I demonstrate how Camilo Torres surrendered to the leadership of Fabio Vásquez in an attempt to become a suitable guerrillero. I argue that beyond claims for Camilo Torres' political legacy, guerrilla fighters in the ELN used his thought to challenge and undermine Fabio Vásquez' personalistic leadership in 1967-1974. Although the figure of Camilo Torres created internal cohesion, the ELN‘s re-conceptualization of the revolutionary project used his life only as a paradigm of commitment, sacrifice and revolutionary redemption, ignoring the priest's political ideals and assertions on social justice, charity and love. I conclude by exploring Camilo Torres' thought and actions in order to demonstrate how the ELN selectively interprets his legacy, and thereby justify the last months of his life to legitimize radical left leaning fighting.