ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4
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- All Subjects: Biology
- All Subjects: Critical ethnography
- Creators: Robert, Jason
Description
This study aims to unearth monological and monocultural discourses buried under the power of the dominant biomedical model governing the HIV/AIDS debate. The study responds to an apparent consensus, rooted in Western biomedicine and its "standardizations of knowledge," in the production of the current HIV/AIDS discourse, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, biomedicine has become the dominant actor (in) writing and rewriting discourse for the masses while marginalizing other forms of medical knowledge. Specifically, in its development, the Western biomedical model has arguably isolated the disease from its human host and the social experiences that facilitate the disease's transmission, placing it in the realm of laboratories and scientific experts and giving full ownership to Western medical discourse. Coupled with Western assumptions about African culture that reproduce a one-sided discourse informing the social construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa, this Western monopoly thus constrained the extent and efficacy of international prevention efforts. In this context, the goal for this study is not to demonize the West and biomedicine in general. Rather, this study seeks an alternative and less monolithic understanding currently absent in scientific discourses of HIV/AIDS that frequently elevates Western biomedicine over indigenous medicine; the Western expert over the local. The study takes into account the local voices of Sub-Saharan Africa and how the system has affected them, this study utilizes a Foucauldian approach to analyze discourse as a way to explore how certain ways of knowledge are formed in relation to power. This study also examines how certain knowlege is maintaned and reinforced within specific discourses.
ContributorsAbdalla, Mohamed (Author) / Jacobs, Bertram (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Klimek, Barbara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation investigates the convergence of the nation-state, biomedicine and (bio)capital around the construction of sickle cell disease as a subaltern disorder in the caste-based society of India. It inquires how sickle cell disease that developed evolutionarily due to environmental factors—and that is also globally racialized as a “Black disease”—has come to be associated with subaltern communities, particularly the indigenous, traditionally non-Hindu Adivasi communities of India. Such a subaltern association characterizes Adivasi biologies as inherently genetically “risky” thereby providing a biopolitical mandate to the Hindu-majoritarian Indian State to carry out biomedical interventions through promissory biocapital in the name of democratic inclusion. I center on the illness narratives of subaltern sickle cell sufferers to highlight how the caste-ization of sickle cell bodies in biomedical and policy discourses, and the attendant biocapital prospecting of subaltern biologies, are nonetheless challenged by communities through their lived experiences. Viewing this association from the Adivasi standpoint—marked by continuous dispossession and displacement—illuminates not only the biopolitical governance of subaltern reproduction by the Indian State. A primary objective of my dissertation project is also to use precarity as an epistemic site for interrogating the scopes and limits of a novel biopower formed by the nexus between the State, national biomedicine and transnational biocapital. This dissertation is therefore an attempt at unearthing the subjugated knowledges of Adivasi communities regarding alternative modes of existing in the world that continuously resist the assimilatory power of race, caste and capital. In ethnographically centering narratives of suffering among doubly (socially/economically) marginalized communities, the project illuminates the contradictions between public health measures that emphasize on sickle cell management through biomedical technologies of reproductive screening and the material conditions of sickle cell sufferers struggling to access basic medical care. This dissertation therefore juxtaposes policy interventions against community articulations of reproductive freedom that posits community health work as the fulcrum for developing reproductively just ecologies. At the same time, in utilizing multi-modal and multi-sited ethnographic methods, the project also contributes towards developing decolonial and digital ethnographic methods that are attentive to the aggravated precarity of marginalized communities in a pandemic prone world.
ContributorsDas, Sanghamitra (Author) / Smith, Lindsay A. (Thesis advisor) / Quan, H.L.T. (Committee member) / Maienschein, Jane (Committee member) / Prasad, Indulata (Committee member) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Prior to the first successful allogeneic organ transplantation in 1954, virtually every attempt at transplanting organs in humans had resulted in death, and understanding the role of the immune mechanisms that induced graft rejection served as one of the biggest obstacles impeding its success. While the eventual achievement of organ transplantation is touted as one of the most important success stories in modern medicine, there still remains a physiological need for immunosuppression in order to make organ transplantation work. One such solution in the field of experimental regenerative medicine is interspecies blastocyst complementation, a means of growing patient-specific human organs within animals. To address the progression of immune-related constraints on organ transplantation, the first part of this thesis contains a historical analysis tracing early transplant motivations and the events that led to the discoveries broadly related to tolerance, rejection, and compatibility. Despite the advancement of those concepts over time, this early history shows that immunosuppression was one of the earliest limiting barriers to successful organ transplantation, and remains one of the most significant technical challenges. Then, the second part of this thesis determines the extent at which interspecies blastocyst complementation could satisfy modern technical limitations of organ transplantation. Demonstrated in 2010, this process involves using human progenitor cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to manipulate an animal blastocyst genetically modified to lack one or more functional genes responsible for the development of the intended organ. Instead of directly modulating the immune response, the use of iPSCs with interspecies blastocyst complementation could theoretically eliminate the need for immunosuppression entirely based on the establishment of tolerance and elimination of rejection, while also satisfying the logistical demands imposed by the national organ shortage. Although the technology will require some further refinement, it remains a promising solution to eliminate the requirement of immunosuppression after an organ transplant.
ContributorsDarby, Alexis Renee (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This thesis reviews the initial cases of fetal surgery to correct myelomeningocele, a severe form of spina bifida, and discusses the human and social dimensions of the procedure. Myelomeningocele is a fetal anomaly that forms from improper closure of the spinal cord and the tissues that surround it. Physicians perform fetal surgery on a developing fetus, while it is in the womb, to mitigate its impacts. Fetal surgery to correct this condition was first performed experimentally in the mid-1990and as of 2020, it is commonly performed. The initial cases illuminated important human and social dimensions of the technique, including physical risks, psychological dimensions, physician bias, and religious convictions, which affect decision-making concerning this fetal surgery. Enduring questions remain in 2020. The driving question for this thesis is: given those human and social dimensions that surround fetal surgery to correct myelomeningocele, whether and when is the surgery justified? This thesis shows that more research is needed to answer or clarify this question.
ContributorsEllis, Brianna (Author) / Maienschein, Jane (Thesis advisor) / Ellison, Karin (Thesis advisor) / Robert, Jason (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020