Undoing Networks

How do we think beyond the dominant images and imaginaries of connectivity? Undoing Networks enables a different connectivity: "digital detox" is a luxury for stressed urbanites wishing to lead a mindful life. Self-help books advocate "digital minimalism" to recover authentic experiences of the offline. Artists envision a world without the internet. Activists mobilize against the expansion of the 5G network. If connectivity brought us virtual communities, information superhighways, and participatory culture, disconnection comes with privacy tools, Faraday shields, and figures of the shy. This book explores non-usage and the "right to disconnect" from work and from the excessive demands of digital capitalism

“With Facebook, you have a voice:” Neoliberalism and Activism in Mark Zuckerberg’s Georgetown Address

In October of 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg streamed a speech from Georgetown University defending the company’s practice of not regulating or rejecting blatantly false political advertisements placed on their site. The speech, part of his “transparency tour” to allay concerns about the growing social power and stunning irresponsibility of Facebook, presents a troubling articulation of “voice” along neoliberal lines that atomizes the individual, separates activism from communities, and conflates activity on Facebook with free expression. In this essay, we use rhetorical scholarship on voice to illuminate how Zuckerberg’s speech both relies on and retrenches neoliberal rationality to flatten difference and resistance in the public sphere. Following that analysis, we highlight the broader implications for Zuckerberg’s redefinition of voice for the study of rhetoric and democracy

Childfreedom as Climate Action. Experiences of Pronatalist Pressures and Gendered Expectations Among Members of the BirthStrike Movement.

Postponed access: the file will be accessible after 2022-02-10Childfreedom is becoming an increasingly important topic of research worldwide, particularly since it is understood as a deviation from dominant pronatalist culture. Still, childfree choices related to climate change remains under-researched. When the BirthStrike movement was launched in 2018 by climate activist Blythe Pepino, it connected the issues of climate change to reproductive matters, as arguments for childfreedom as alleviating climate change were made. The thesis presents a phenomenological study of seven members of the BirthStrike movement’s childfree choice. Specifically, the research objectives include exploring members of BirthStrike’s understanding of childfreedom as climate action, and the motivations for and experiences leading to their childfree choice. Furthermore, the study explores how life purpose and meaning is constructed in pronatalist surroundings framing parenthood as the meaning of life. Lastly, the study explores how participants understand and do gender through renegotiating links between parenthood and gender expression. Using a qualitative methodology, participants were interviewed in-depth. Data generated was coded and interpreted inductively, with using theories of doing and undoing gender as well as the concepts of reproductive governance, intimate citizenship, and everyday resistance. Findings include a reframing of parenthood as constraining and having children as, considering the climate crisis, irresponsible. Furthermore, participants value agency, autonomy, and self-actualisation, preferring to question rather than conform to pronatalist norms. BirthStrike provided people anxious about climate change comfort by confirming that likeminded individuals validated their reluctance to procreate. The study concludes that participants present an alternative moral regime to that of pronatalism, wherein childfreedom is viewed as responsible and morally justified compared to parenthood if presented in relation to the climate crisis. Climate change fosters climate anxieties, but the participants’ childfree choice provides a way of mitigating negative emotions as it gives them time and ability to focus on what is meaningful and purposeful to them.Master's Thesis in Global DevelopmentGLODE33

Refining the Blunt Instruments of Cybersecurity: A Framework to Coordinate Prevention and Preservation of Behaviours

Background. Cybersecurity controls are deployed to manage risks posed by malicious behaviours or systems. What is not often considered or articulated is how cybersecurity controls may impact legitimate users (often those whose use of a managed system needs to be protected, and preserved). This characterises the ‘blunt’ nature of many cybersecurity controls. Aim. Here we present a synthesis of methods from cybercrime opportunity reduction and behaviour change. Method. We illustrate the method and principles with a range of examples and a case study focusing on online abuse and social media controls,relating in turn to issues inherent in cyberbullying and tech-abuse. Results. The framework describes a capacity to improve the precision of cybersecurity controls, identifying opportunities for risk owners to better protect legitimate users while simultaneously acting to prevent malicious activity in a managed system. Conclusions. We describe capabilities for a novel approach to managing sociotechnical cyber-risk, which can be integrated into typical risk management processes, to allow for side-by-side consideration of efforts to prevent and preserve different behaviours in a system, by examining their shared determinants

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising a Generation Outside the Gender Binary

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that is trying to break the harmful cycle that reifies the gender binary by removing gender from early socialization of their children. These parents re-do the relationship kinship has with gender by de-emphasizing sexual differences, creating inclusive language, and de-gendering material and visual culture. Their impacts on the gender binary are inconclusive, but their revolutionizing how the family interacts with gender opening more possibilities for a gender reform without limits

Discursive Constructions of Whiteness, Non-White Cultural Others and Allies in Facebook Conversations of Estonians in Finland

Peer reviewe

How Are Women Farmers Doing and Undoing Gender?: An Exploration of Women\u27s Gender Practices in Farming

The number of women farmers in the US continues to grow even at a time when the number of men farmers is decreasing. But even as women are experiencing growing representation in this historically men-dominated occupation, they are more likely to operate smaller farm operations, own less land, and earn less than men farmers. Additionally, there are barriers to accessing the full farmer identity due to their invisibility in the largely patriarchal structure of agriculture. In this dissertation, I endeavor to learn more about how women farmers navigate the gendered structure of farming, including barriers to accessing occupation-related resources and their farmer identity, and how women farmers are “doing” or “undoing” gender. Utilizing in-depth qualitative interviews, I interviewed 32 women farmers from 11 states and the country of Italy. I find that three main gendered structural barriers were experienced by the women farmers in this study, including access to capital-related resources, learning how to farm, and the women’s perception of conventional agriculture as a masculine occupation. I contributed to the growing “doing and undoing gender” literature by showing that the women in this study were actively engaged in interactions within and outside of their occupation that both conformed to and resisted traditional gendered expectations, demonstrating that doing and undoing gender is contextual and more of a spectrum than mutually exclusive categories of either/or. I also contributed to the “doing difference” literature by including women farmers of color, whose perspectives have been absent from previous research of women farmers. Their narratives included examples of discrimination and unequal treatment due to their race and gender, demonstrating a clear need for an intersectional analysis of women farmers. I conclude with a discussion of these implications and make policy recommendations based on knowledge gained from this research and offer suggestions for future research