 Alexander D. Barder
Dissertation Title: Empire Within: International Hierarchy, Imperial Laboratories and State Formation Committee: Siba Grovogui, Jennifer Culbert, William E. Connolly, Beverly Silver, Joel Andreas Defense Date: August 15, 2012 Dissertation Summary:
This project looks at how the transnational diffusion of norms, practices and/or knowledges occur and how such processes bridge the divide between the international and the domestic. It does so by examining diffusion under conditions of international hierarchy and how diffusion impacts state formation. Given that many approaches to international theory assume an autochthonously constituted “West” there is a tendency to ignore how diffusion from the global periphery impacts Western state formation. At the same time, histories of empire-building or hegemony remain largely unexplored to uncover transnational processes of innovation and diffusion. Taking both claims as starting points, this project investigates how international hierarchy (as either imperialism or hegemony) has historically resulted in the experimentation and innovation of various norms and practices that impact state-formation of various imperial or hegemonic powers. I show that imperial spaces are as much spaces of experimentation and social innovation as spaces of exploitation. These spaces produce norms and practices not only in the periphery but also in the metropole. I examine three case of where these imperial or hegemonic reverberations influence state institutions. First, I trace genealogically the materialization of the concentration camp and how it was applied in Europe before the second world war. Second, I look at the emergence of the modern surveillance state as the product of imperial innovations in India and the Philippines. Third, I focus on the application and experimentation of neoliberalism in Chile during the 1970s. Lastly, I explain how under contemporary conditions of American hegemony and the past decade of the Global War on Terror, we can see American experiences abroad reshaping the domestic sphere in various ways. Curriculum Vitae Email:alex.barder@gmail.com;abarder1@jhu.edu |
William (Bill) Dixon Information coming soon... |
 Jake Greear
Dissertation Title: Ecocritical Practices: Walking, Working, and Tinkering Committee: Jane Bennett, William E. Connolly, Daniel Deudney Defense Date: May, 2013 Dissertation Summary:
My dissertation examines the privileged status within environmental political thought of certain concrete "practices of the self” that are held up as ways of enacting, restoring, or cultivating a better relationship to the natural world. Specifically, I read Henry David Thoreau on walking, Wendell Berry on farming, Martin Heidegger on work, and Aldo Leopold on scientific field ecology. From these traditional eco-philosophical practices I turn to “tinkering” as an alternative mode of ecological praxis. Here I look at some contemporary urban practices that attempt to renegotiate embodied interactions with the built environment, including parkour, urban exploration, and steampunking. More broadly, my research is focused on exploring the public philosophy of environmental politics, with a particular focus the intertwined histories of scientific ideas, technological innovation, political thought, and environmental consciousness. My publications include an essay on Hannah Arendt’s political thought and ecological geopolitics (forthcoming in The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Theory, Modern Power, World Politics: Critical Investigations). Curriculum Vitae Email: jgreear1@jhu.edu |
 Noora Lori
Dissertation Title: Unsettling State: Non-Citizens, State Power, and Citizenship in the United Arab Emirates Committee: Michael Hanchard, Kellee Tsai, Erin Chung, Robert Vitalis (external, University of Pennsylvania) Defense Date: May 1, 2013 Dissertation Summary: My project examines how migrant labor impacts democratization processes in the United Arab Emirates, where non-citizens comprise over 96 percent of the labor force. Unlike previous studies that show how stringent residency and naturalization policies impede the social mobility and political organization of migrant groups, this study demonstrates that migration policies also shape the way citizens mobilize and contest the state. “Unsettling State: Non-citizens, State Power, and Citizenship in the United Arab Emirates” is a political history and ethnography of the UAE’s security apparatus focusing on its management of the guest worker program from 1960 to 2011. The research details how elites in the federal security apparatus have adopted a range of formal and informal institutions that prevent migrant workers from permanently settling and becoming citizens. I argue that by enforcing temporary migration policies, the federal security apparatus has been able to consolidate its power over the other Emirates and adapt the tactics of migrant unsettlement to respond to contestations by its own citizens. One example of these tactics is the federal Ministry of Interior’s enforcement of stringent naturalization policies, which makes formal citizenship contingent upon security assessments of one’s allegiance to the ruler. By equating allegiance and citizenship, the regime has been able to respond to political agitations with denaturalizations and deportations. Curriculum Vitae Email: Nooralori@gmail.com; Noora@jhu.edu Websites: http://www.acls.org/research/fellow.aspx?cid=b05a2d46-8290-e111-bd9e-000c293a51f7 and
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/2463/noora_lori.html |
Michael McCarthyInformation coming soon... |
 Nobutaka Otobe
Dissertation Title: Stupidity in Politics: Its Unavoidability and Potentiality Committee: William E. Connolly, Jane Bennett, Paola Marrati (Humanities Center and Philosophy) Defense Date: December 2012 Dissertation Summary: Stupidity permeates our perception of politics. However, few studies on politics focus on stupidity. My dissertation bridges this gap, exploring the problem and indispensability of stupidity. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze’s remarks on stupidity in Difference and Repetition, I first locate the problem in politics. I argue that stupidity is an ineluctable problem that conditions our experience of politics and thinking. What stupidity reveals is the political character of thinking. Then, I examine the writings of some thinkers in the history of political thought (Rousseau, Kant, and a Japanese thinker, Kobayashi), who attempt to efface stupidity in their arguments about individuality, judgment, and regret. I show how stupidity problematizes these edifices of thought. Finally, I present a mode of political theorizing that acknowledges the potentiality of stupidity. By doing so, we enrich political theory, democratic moments in politics, and our ordinary lives. Curriculum Vitae Email: nobutaka.otobe@jhu.edu Website: http://otobe.commons.yale.edu |
