An Ethnographic Examination of Belonging and Hype in Web3 Communities

Advocates of the Web3 movement want the next stage of the internet’s evolution to be characterized by the decentralization of virtual assets and the democratization of digital participation via possibilities afforded by blockchain technology. In this ethnography, the researcher contrasts the ideologies and material practices of individuals and communities composing said Web3 schema, including enthusiasts of the emergent metaverse, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and blockchain-based institutions called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that rely on a blend of human and algorithmic governance to operate. Based on fieldwork in London, England during the summer of 2022, this thesis uncovers patterns of hype making and hype ambivalence that inform belonging within Web3 spaces and conversely establish parameters for exclusion. The auratic qualities of NFTs the researcher acquired at Proof of People, a three-day NFT and metaverse festival hosted in London’s Fabric nightclub, are also investigated. With data compiled from a mix of in-person and virtual settings, the claims presented in this thesis arrive at a critical moment for crypto. Universal devaluation of blockchain assets following a market freefall in 2021 has battered the decentralized movement, but the Web3 informants featured herein remain optimistic about the vitality of a digital paradigm in its alleged nascency

From Anti-Imperialism To Human Rights: The Vietnam War And Radical Internationalism In The 1960s And 1970s

This dissertation explores changing forms of internationalism among the French and U.S. radical left from the 1960s through the late 1970s. In the 1960s, Vietnamese resistance to U.S. imperialism inspired French activists to forge an international antiwar alliance with U.S. activists opposing their government’s aggression. Together, they created a form of anti-imperialist internationalism based on the right of nations to self-determination. Despite transnational protest, the United States escalated the war, leading many activists to argue that the best way to aid Vietnamese national liberation was to translate that struggle into their own domestic contexts. In so doing, they triggered a wave of upheaval that reached new heights in May 1968. But when this anti-imperialist front faced repression and imprisonment in France and the United States, these same radicals began to advance individual rights alongside anti-imperialist revolution in the early 1970s. Once they learned of South Vietnam’s heightened repression of political dissenters, they grafted their new attention to rights onto the antiwar movement, demanding the restoration of civil liberties. Yet in arguing that South Vietnam violated fundamental democratic rights, anti-imperialist internationalism increasingly took the form of criticizing the internal affairs of a sovereign state. In this way, anti-imperialists lent legitimacy to a rival form of internationalism that shared the progressive aspirations of anti-imperialism but rejected nationalism in favor of human rights. When genocide, internecine war, and refugee crises in Southeast Asia undermined faith in national liberation in the late 1970s, former French radicals sided with the U.S. government to lead a global movement championing human rights against the sovereignty of nation-states like Vietnam. By tracing this history of solidarity with the Vietnamese liberation struggle from the 1960s to the 1970s, this dissertation explains how and why human rights came to displace anti-imperialism as the dominant form of internationalism. It shows that the Vietnam War was a truly global phenomenon, that the trajectory of the left in countries like France was powerfully shaped by developments in what was then called the Third World, and that the rise of human rights was closely connected to transformations within anti-imperialist internationalism

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationIn the existing academic literature on "genocide" there is an emphasis on moralistic arguments toward public acceptance of using the term genocide popularly in relation to specific events. This practice is unaccompanied by a recognition that the created genocide discourse is the product of a biased process, and that it is empowered to affect international law without being legally sanctioned to do so. Since the currently available scholarly information on "genocide" is grounded in self-assured presentations that the works of the genocide scholarship are social-scientific and reflective of the conscience of humanity, there is a lack of significant knowledge regarding the political use of the term genocide in the governing of global affairs. By employing a power-based theory, this study offers an interpretive analysis of available historical data to understand how "genocide" has been used as a tool for the advancement of international law. It shows that the term genocide has functioned as soft power through which hard power has been particularized toward legal power. Meaning, "genocide" has been used to bring governance closer to international law by appealing to group identity. Such a view of a dialectical progress identifies the power of "genocide" in the context of international law and invites new considerations of how the idea of international law may yet attain the combined qualities of authority and legitimacy in the quest for unified standards of governance worldwide