Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Operation Summer Care: Territories Of The Stewardship-Hospitality Complex, George Papamattheakis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Operation Summer Care studies the expanding interest that the hospitality industry takes in the biogeophysical environment. Natural surroundings have long been an essential operational precondition of tourism in the global sunbelt, but contemporary environmental anxieties increasingly motivate different strata of hosts to take a more active role in environmental management. Usually the domain of the state, biogeophysical entities and their spaces—plants and animals, sand formations, wetlands, entire ecosystems and protected areas—are measured, ordered, and managed by actors adjacent to the tourism industry. At the same time, the socio-technical mechanisms of environmental intervention and calculation are conveniently framed as practices of …

Desalination And Development: Locating The Missing Masses In Dakar’S Water Network, Marina Riad

Scripps Senior Theses

The introduction of desalination technology to the water network in Dakar, Senegal marks a monumental change in how state and commercial interests aim to solve systemic problems using novel technologies. Desalination aims to transform the ocean surrounding Dakar into potable water, a vital resource in the growing metropolis. However, this desalination project must integrate itself within a network of social, historical, political, commercial, and ecological influences shaping the role of desalination in urban Dakar. With millions of dollars and an entire ocean mobilized towards solving Dakar’s water problems, it may come as a surprise that this project will only provide …

An Exploration Into The Design Of A Portable Music Player For People With Alzheimer’S And Dementia, Jaxon V. Silva

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

An exploration into the design of a portable music player for people with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Climate Care: Pathways For Coastal Community Resilience, Jessica Reilly-Moman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change increasingly impacts coasts worldwide. The ability of coastal ecosystems and the human communities who are part of them to absorb disturbance and maintain function or transform, or resilience, is of critical importance to managing these impacts. However, to date, climate resilience largely has focused on biophysical impacts and technocratic solutions, while issues of social and environmental justice and human well-being become more acute and entrenched. Consequently, I ask: How can coastal communities cope with climate change? To answer this question, I leverage traditional, emergent, and novel social research methods in Mexico, Central America, and Maine. Using ethnography, interviews, …

Mapping The Suitability Of Cal Poly's Insulated Solar Electric Cookers (Isec) In Ghana, Togo, And Jamaica, Julia G. Kraatz

Social Sciences

The World Health Organization estimates that 3 billion people depend on biomass fuels for cooking, heating, and other day-to-day activities, which causes approximately 4.3 million people annually to die from illnesses attributable to indoor air pollution. The issue is especially pressing for women and children in developing countries, because women care for the home and are consequently responsible for attaining household fuels and cooking. In 2015, ISECs (Insulated Solar Electric Cookers) were developed at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, as a technology that utilizes solar electricity to directly cook food in a well-insulated chamber. They are capable of …

Augmented Reality As A Tool For Industrial Heritage Education And Interpretations, Garand A. Spikberg

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Combining Augmented Reality with spatially and temporally robust Historical Spatial Data Infrastructures may have the potential to provide users with interpretive and educational opportunities they otherwise would not have. Adapting research oriented historical GIS projects such as the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure to usage as interpretive material through the utilization of “off the shelf” augmented reality applications such as AuGeo has the potential to expand the utility and reach of that research data outside of the lab, while providing new interpretive opportunities by allowing users to see that data in its original spatial context and giving them the …

Shadow Standards And The Logic Of Costs: Care, Stewardship, And Data In U.S. Community Health, Margarite J. Whitten

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the delegation of responsibility for providing health care to particular categories of marginalized populations in the United States in the absence of a uniform and universal health care system. It explores how the U.S. federal government governs patient populations at a distance by mandating that healthcare providers collect, produce, and report on patient data. Drawing from eighteen months of ethnographic research in Massachusetts clinics for the homeless and the frail elderly between 2014-2015, I argue that when marginalized patients are unable to satisfy the neoliberal ideal of self-governance to maintain their health in cost-effective ways, providers are …

Sedimenting Territory: A Political Geology Of Oil, Earth, And Spatial Politics In Turkey, Zeynep Oguz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building on the recent turn to the material and earthly aspects of resources and political power in environmental anthropology and political geography, this work historically and ethnographically examines the kinds of territorial politics that oil’s materiality, geological qualities, and infrastructures have generated in Turkey. Despite being surrounded by oil-rich neighbors in the Middle East, Turkey’s domestic oil reserves supply only 7 percent of the country’s oil, all of which has been drilled in the Kurdish provinces of Batman, Diyarbakır, and Adıyaman in Turkey’s southeast, where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural …

Cultivating Knowledge: Agrarian Science And Ecological Engagements In Southern Ontario Agriculture, Kelly Linton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Agriculture and climate change are interconnected processes, with agriculture implicated in rising green house gas emissions, deforestation, soil and water pollution, and reductions in biodiversity. Conversely, changes within ecology (including a warming climate), alter growing conditions for farmers. Farmers face changes in both temperature and precipitation, as well as an increase in adverse weather events that significantly threaten productivity and livelihoods.

Based on 40 unstructured interviews as well as informal conversations conducted among farmers in southern Ontario, Canada between the spring of 2014 and the winter of 2017, this dissertation seeks to contribute to a growing body of work that …

War And Peace In American Seduction: Seduction Communities, Heterosexual Masculinity, And Mediated Intimacy In New York City, Anders Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Don Juan clearly didn’t need any training in flirting skills, but many American men feel they need help. In nearly every major city of North America exists a seduction community: a community of men who train each other to pick up women. Along with digital means for meeting strangers, these communities have emerged over the past 15 years from a subculture to become a globalized industry in seduction training spanning from Brooklyn to Beijing. From online forums and subscription-based clubs to week-long intensive training courses known as bootcamps, hundreds of thousands of men participate in these groups at different levels …

Losing Louisiana: Race, Techno-Science, And The Disappearing Geographies Of The Lower Mississippi River Delta, Monica Patrice Barra

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic and historical research in southeast coastal Louisiana (USA), this dissertation explores the racial histories, engineering and scientific practices, and geophysical processes that have shaped land loss and coastal restoration in the lower Mississippi River Delta. Rather than treating land loss simply as a natural process or matter of environmental restoration, this ethnography examines its cultural, material, and political dimensions, especially for communities of color that have already experienced long histories of loss — of property, livelihood, and political rights. A focus on the geophysical transformations of the river - dictating land growth, sinking, and …

Making Experts: An Ethnographic Study Of “Makers” In Fablabs In Japan, Vaughn M. Krebs

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

“Makers” around the world cohere in a digital and physical network of technology hobbyists. “Makers" are open-source hardware enthusiasts who use machines like 3D printers and laser cutters - manufacturing tools that have only recently become accessible to laypeople - to make things. “Makers" share a vision for a world where everyone would be able to make almost anything, supplanting top-down economic systems and channels of production. This ethnographic research examines a subset of the “maker” community: “makers” in “FabLabs” in Japan. These “FabLabs” are small workshops that house the machines that “makers” need and make them open to the …

Knowing Water: Science And The Politics Of Knowledge Production Along The Saw Kill, Carlo Diego Raimondo

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Beginning with globally oriented ideological constructions of water as resource, this project explores the materiality of water and how it comes to understood within our current geological era. Specifically exploring the politics of scientific knowledge production, I follow the methodological processes of the Bard Water Lab as they monitor water quality of a local stream, exploring how different apparatuses of observation are utilized in order to make a stream a legible and knowable object.

“A Healthy Gorilla Makes A Healthy You”: Preventing And Predict-I-Ng The Next Pandemic Disease, Mark Anthony Williams Jr.

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

When Malbec Became Argentine: An Analysis Of The Quality Wine Revolution In Mendoza, Dominique Lee

Scripps Senior Theses

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Argentine wine industry experienced a shift from quantity to quality production which occurred while economic policies in Argentina opened economic opportunities for investment in the country. With these new opportunities, the industry began to focus on producing quality wine because of the desire to export and compete in the international market. As foreign investment entered Mendoza, the heart of Argentine wine country, new ideas and knowledge about wine production began to disseminate into the region and everyday practices. The shift from quantity to quality production was a paradigm shift in that it ushered …

Menageries Multiple: An Introduction To Zoological Multiplicity In The Modern American Zoo, Emily D. Gratke

Scripps Senior Theses

American zoological parks have been sites of intense consumer and scholar interest since their origination in the 20th century. Today, zoos reside at a tenacious hub of ideologies, practices, and priorities contributed to by various stakeholder groups. I propose that the foundational cause of this tension is zoological multiplicity: the theory that through human practices and perceptions, animals can embody multiple identities. Via an exploration of zoological multiplicity in American zoos with specific focus on zoo management, zoogoer, and animal activist stakeholder groups, this project proposes the widespread acknowledgment and understanding of zoological multiplicity as a method to improve animal …

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy Of War And Medicine, Sandra Lee Trappen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine undertakes study of how global conflict and violence shape the entire range of social production, from commodities and culture to social goods and social theory. The research presented in this work draws from cutting-edge theories in body and science studies, in addition to theories of affect and biopolitics to address how war became a problem solving paradigm in medicine. Combat casualties are shown to serve as a material nexus for medical knowledge production. Although the focus here is on medicine and medical innovation in particular, these developments are connected to …

Understanding How Intentionally Unplugging From Cell Phones Shapes Interpersonal Relationships And The Undergraduate College Experience, Jadelin P. Felipe

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of what motivated college students—the Unplugged Students—to intentionally use their cell phones less and how they understood the impact that unplugging had on their interpersonal relationships and college experience. Nine undergraduate college students from four private schools were interviewed in one-on-one semi- structured interviews. These students, considered non-users, provided a particularly useful perspective as these students made a conscious choice to counteract social norms and experienced both being plugged in and unplugged. Cell phones and the act of unplugging proved to make up a complex and more nuanced topic than …

Computer Science Education At The Claremont Colleges: The Building Of An Intuition, Lauren Burke

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I discuss how the undergraduate computer scientist is trained, and how they learn what I am calling computational intuition. Computational intuition describes the methodology in which computer scientists approach their problems and solve them through the use of computers. Computational intuition is a series of skills and a way of thinking or approaching problems that students learn throughout their education. The main way that computational intuition is taught to students is through the experience they gain as they work on homework and classwork problems. To develop computational intuition, students learn explicit knowledge and techniques as well as …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …

Sounding Identity: Soundscapes, Music, And Technoculture In The Chinese Diaspora Of Panama, Corey Michael Blake

Masters Theses

Present in Panama since the 19^th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency …

Differences In Cultural Perception In Websites, Andrew Allen

Open Access Theses

The goal of this research was to determine what elements of websites are tied to the value of individualism and collectivism when viewed by two different national cultures. The research determined whether two participant groups (United States or Chinese) looked at the same or different website elements when experiencing the website. The Website Experience Analysis protocol was used to create a questionnaire that the students filled out as they experienced the website, allowing the researcher to determine what elements of the website they were experiencing when focusing on a particular cultural or organization-public relation value. This research found that culture …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Let’S Play: Understanding The Role And Significance Of Digital Gaming In Old Age, Julie A. Skalsky Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Despite a marked increase in the use of digital games among older persons, there is insufficient research that provides insight into the gaming experiences of this population. A major demographic shift within the senior gaming market has ushered in a new perspective on the use of digital games as a tool for physical and cognitive health, and improved socialization. It is proposed that individual notions of play, which are developed over the life course, influence digital game play engagement and interaction preferences, and contribute to well-being. This study explored how self-perceptions of play over the course of the senior gamer’s …