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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
Description
In nineteenth-century France, in rural areas, women washed laundry in the nearest streams or in the sea and hung the linens where they could, on lavender bushes, rocks and grass fields, where it had a quaint, if not artistic quality. In villages, laundresses washed linens in fountains, or other water sources, which were often found at or near the center of town. In either case, laundresses operated in public spaces without problem. I argue that, in Paris, changing ideas about the functioning of city space, the management of public hygiene and decisions about the use of public space, made laundresses and laundry operations matter out of place in the city. This study will demonstrate the changes laundering and laundresses underwent during the nineteenth century in Paris, making them out of place. City administrators and public health officials changed the occupation and places where laundry could be done as they sought to render laundry and laundresses invisible within Paris. In the early nineteenth century the Préfet de la Seine forbade women from using the river banks. In the mid-nineteenth century complaints about the disgraceful aspect of women laundering on the river prompted the Préfet to try to eliminate bateaux-lavoirs. In the late nineteenth century the discovery of microbes focused attention on laundry and laundresses and their potential to transmit diseases prompting another wave of hygiene regulations and questions about closing bateaux-lavoirs and lavoirs. The Préfet and Conseil d'Hygiène's struggle to make them invisible by moving them into approved facilities continued until the end of the nineteenth century. Studying laundresses and laundry sheds light on how the shifts in politics, changes in acceptable uses of public space and public hygiene affected working women. It illustrates the manner in which public hygiene- the Conseil de Salubrité and later the Conseil d'Hygiène, functioned and to what degree they could demand changes to the city in the name of hygiene. Through identifying subtle policy shifts, historians may learn how laundry demonstrates policies on the use of urban space, public hygiene or issues about work.
ContributorsGrüring, Jaimee Kristin (Author) / Fuchs, Rachel G (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Victoria E (Committee member) / Wright, Johnson K (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation project addresses one of the most critical problems in the study of religion: how new formations of religion are constructed and constituted. My work builds on the recent revisions of the secularization theory, which demonstrates the alternative and hybrid ways people seek out religion in modernity. To this end, my project examines the emerging popularity and phenomenon of international meditation centers in Thailand, focusing on encounters between international meditation center teachers and their international students. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews at these sites throughout Thailand, my project explores the social processes of religious change and adaptation, and the construction of religious meaning. I detail the historical conditions that led to the formation of persisting ideas of Buddhism by tracing the continuities between Orientalist interpretations and modern-day spiritual seekers. My work contributes to a greater understanding of the most recent articulation of this engagement and interaction between Buddhism and the international community and adds to the burgeoning scholarship that reconsiders the relationship between religion and modernity. I investigate this relationship in regard to international meditation centers in Thailand through three angles: promotional materials concerning meditation in Thailand, experiences of international meditators, and teachings of international meditation center teachers. I contextualize this ethnographic analysis with an evaluation of the relationship of Buddhism to discourses of modernity and Orientalism as well as a historical inquiry into the rise of lay meditation in Thailand. Throughout I argue that international meditators' engagement with meditation in Thai temples constitutes a hybrid religiosity where the decontextualized practice of meditation is mixed with both non-religious and other religious beliefs and practices. Social discourses and practices involving meditation, even in a Buddhist country, demonstrate the deconstruction of traditional religiosity in modernity and the rise of hybrid religiosity. Through the decontextualization of meditation and the discourse of the practice having no religious boundaries, meditation becomes mixed with tourism, therapy, healing, as well as other religious and secular practices. This research contributes to studies of Theravada Buddhism as well as modern, global religions and the contemporary intersection between religion and tourism.
ContributorsSchedneck, Brooke (Author) / Schober, Juliane (Thesis advisor) / Rush, James (Committee member) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
"Wide adaptation" is an agricultural concept often employed and seldom closely examined. Norman E. Borlaug, while working for the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) on an agricultural project in Mexico in the 1950s, discovered that some tropical wheat varieties could be grown over broad geographic regions, not just in Central and South America but also in the Middle East and South Asia. He called this wide, or broad, adaptation, which scientists generally define as a plant type that has high yields throughout diverse environments. Borlaug soon made wide adaptation as a core pillar of his international wheat program. Borlaug's wheat program rapidly expanded in the 1960s, and he and his colleagues from the RF heavily promoted wide adaptation and the increased use of fertilizers in the Middle East and India. These events led to the green revolution, when several countries rapidly increased their wheat production. Indian wheat cultivation changed radically in the 1960s due to new technologies and policy reforms introduced during the green revolution, and farmers' adoption of 'technology packages' of modern seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation.
Just prior to the green revolution, Indian wheat scientists adopted Borlaug’s new plant breeding philosophy—that varieties should have as wide an adaptation as possible. But Borlaug and Indian wheat scientists also argued that wide adaptation could be achieved by selecting only plants that did well in high fertility and irrigated environments. Scientists claimed, in many cases erroneously, that widely adapted varieties still produced high yields in marginal, or resource poor, areas. Many people have criticized the green revolution for its unequal spread of benefits, but none of these critiques address wide adaptation—the core tenant held by Indian wheat scientists to justify their focus on highly productive land while ignoring marginal and rainfed agriculture. My dissertation describes Borlaug and the RF's research program in wide adaptation, Borlaug's involvement in the Indian wheat program, and internal debates about wide adaptation and selection under favorable environments among Indian scientists. It argues that scientists leveraged the concept of wide adaptation to justify a particular regime of research focused on high production agriculture, and that the footprints of this regime are still present in Indian agriculture.
Just prior to the green revolution, Indian wheat scientists adopted Borlaug’s new plant breeding philosophy—that varieties should have as wide an adaptation as possible. But Borlaug and Indian wheat scientists also argued that wide adaptation could be achieved by selecting only plants that did well in high fertility and irrigated environments. Scientists claimed, in many cases erroneously, that widely adapted varieties still produced high yields in marginal, or resource poor, areas. Many people have criticized the green revolution for its unequal spread of benefits, but none of these critiques address wide adaptation—the core tenant held by Indian wheat scientists to justify their focus on highly productive land while ignoring marginal and rainfed agriculture. My dissertation describes Borlaug and the RF's research program in wide adaptation, Borlaug's involvement in the Indian wheat program, and internal debates about wide adaptation and selection under favorable environments among Indian scientists. It argues that scientists leveraged the concept of wide adaptation to justify a particular regime of research focused on high production agriculture, and that the footprints of this regime are still present in Indian agriculture.
ContributorsBaranski, Marcin (Author) / Kinzig, Ann P. (Thesis advisor) / Mathur, Prem N. (Committee member) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Committee member) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation describes the public sphere that coalesced in the Soviet jazz scene during Josef Stalin’s reign. Scholars debate the extent to which Soviet citizens, especially under Stalin, were coerced into cooperating with the regime through terror; willingly cooperated with the regime out of self-interest; or re-aligned their speech, behavior, and thoughts to conform to Bolshevik ideology and discourse. In all cases, citizens were generally unable to openly express their own opinions on what Soviet society should look like. In this dissertation, I attempt to bridge this gap by analyzing the diverse reactions to jazz music in Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. I argue that audience engagement with jazz and discussions about the genre in the Soviet press and elsewhere were attempts to grapple with bigger questions of public concern about leisure, morality, ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and patriotism in a socialist society. This jazz public sphere was suppressed in the late 1940s and early 1950s because of Cold War paranoia and fears of foreign influences in Soviet life. In its place, a counterpublic sphere formed, in which jazz enthusiasts expressed views on socialism that were more open and contradictory to official norms. This counterpublic sphere foreshadowed aspects of post-Stalinist Soviet culture. To support my arguments, I employ archival documents such as fan mail and censorship records, periodicals, memoirs, and Stalin-era jazz recordings to determine the themes present in jazz music, how audiences reacted to them, and how these popular reactions overlapped with those of journalists, musicologists, bureaucrats, and composers. This project expands our understanding of when and where public spheres can form, challenges top-down interpretations of Soviet cultural policy, and illuminates the Soviet Union and Russia’s ambivalent relationship with the West and its culture.
ContributorsBeresford, Benjamin J. (Author) / Von Hagen, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Manchester, Laurie (Committee member) / Schmelz, Peter (Committee member) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation discusses children and childhood in Soviet Kazakhstan from 1928 to 1953. By exploring images of, and for, children, and by focusing on children’s fates during and after the famine of 1930-33, I argue that the regime’s success in making children socialist subjects and creating the new Soviet person was questionable throughout the 1930s. The reach of Soviet ideological and cultural policies was limited in a decade defined by all kinds of shortcomings in the periphery which was accompanied by massive violence and destruction. World War 2 mobilized Central Asians and integrated the masses into the Soviet social and political body. The war transformed state-society relations and the meaning of being Soviet fundamentally changed. In this way, larger segments of society embraced the framework for Soviet citizenship and Soviet patriotism largely thanks to the war experience. This approach invites us to reconsider the nature of Sovietization in Central Asia by questioning the central role of ideology and cultural revolution in the formation of Soviet identities. My dissertation brings together images of childhood, everyday experiences of children and memory of childhood. On the one hand, the focus on children provides me an opportunity to discuss Sovietization in Central Asia. On the other hand, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of Soviet childhood: it is the first comprehensive study of Soviet children in the periphery in English. It shows how images and discourses, which were produced in the Soviet center, were translated into the local context and emphasizes the multiplicity of children’s experiences across the Soviet Union. Local conditions defined the meaning of childhood in Kazakhstan as much as central visions. Studying children in a non-Russian republic allows me to discuss questions of ideology, cultural revolution and the nationalities question. A main goal of the dissertation is to shift the focus of Sovietization from the cultural and intellectual elite to ordinary people. Secondly, by studying the impact of the famine and the Great Patriotic War, I try to understand the dynamics of the Soviet regime and the changing conceptions of culture and identity in Soviet Kazakhstan.
ContributorsKasikci, Mehmet Volkan (Author) / Manchester, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Kefeli, Agnes N (Committee member) / Edgar, Adrienne L (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020