Coping With the Chaos (Bardak): Chaos, Networking, Sexualised Strategies and Ethnic Tensions, in Almaty, Kazakhsatan.

The aim of thesis is to describe and analyse the main elements of the post- Soviet chaos (bardak) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. My focus is the ways in which the dispossessed people understand and react to what they term 'chaos' and their own dispossession and the variety of coping strategies they have adopted to survive in the new, harsh economic and political environment. My account draws on 15 months 'multi-site' ethnographic fieldwork in Almaty from July 1995 to Oct 1996. What dispossessed describe as 'chaos' are the circumstances of their plunder: a situation which they think has been deliberately created by members of the former Soviet elite and a variety of Westerners. It is, I argue, a situation created and exploited by the Kazakhstan state official and others, locally known as 'the mafia' (mafiia) as part of their response to the collapse of the USSR, and the new liberal economic policies associated with the new style of 'global capitalism'. Their response also includes many forms of corruption, and a willingness to use violence against increasingly impoverished majority of the population. I particularly focus on networking and sex work as two important strategies through which the dispossessed cope with the poverty and social insecurity. One finding of considerable importance is that while network-based competition for resources has given a new surge to ethnic tensions in Kazakhstan, such tensions are counterbalanced among the dispossessed by their feeling of belonging to the same Soviet 'imagined community' (Sovetskii narod). Central to such feelings is a strong shared nostalgia for the Soviet era. This nostalgia signals a fear of, and constitute a form of protest against, some elements of post-Soviet change such as the implementation of market economy, widespread prostitution, the presence of foreigners, the emergence of new forms of class differentiation and the prevalence of consumerist culture and the monetisation of life worlds, particularly with respect to sexual relations. The dispossessed not only reject these changes but attribute them to corrupt 'alien' evil forces: alien persons, the alien consumerist culture and the 'wild capitalism' (diki kapitalism). An examination of the complex responses of dispossessed to these 'alien' forces is the theme which unites this dissertation. In particular I document the ways in which both the imagined Soviet community, and those of other imagined ethnic communities are gendered through discourses and practices related to sexuality and marriage. I also describe how the dispossessed, of whatever the ethnic or religious backgrounds, often feel themselves to have far more in common with each other, and with others of the dispossessed throughout the territory of the former USSR, than with their co-ethnics or co-religionists outside this territory

The Discourse of Digital Dispossession: Paid Modifications and Community Crisis on Steam

This article is a chronicle and analysis of a community crisis in digital space that took place on Valve Corporation’s digital distribution platform, Steam. When Valve and Bethesda (publisher and developer of Skyrim) decided to allow mods to be sold by mod makers themselves, there ensued a community revolt against the commodification of leisure and play. I put this crisis of play and work in dialogue with Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession,” firmly placing it within a longer history of disruptive capital accumulation strategies. I then conduct a discourse analysis of community members on reddit, as they make sense of and come to terms with this process of dispossession. Arising in the discourse was not class consciousness per se, but instead a pervasive feeling of helplessness and frustration as games, play, and leisure began to feel like work

The Information Economy and the Labor Theory of Value

This article discusses aspects of the labor theory of value in the context of the information industries. First, taking the Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI) of Marx’s labor theory of value as methodology, the paper calculates economic demographics at the level of socially necessary labor time and prices of an example case. Second, the paper questions the assumption that the labor theory of value cannot be applied to the information industries. This paper tests this hypothesis with an analysis of the development of labor productivity in six countries. The paper concludes that the labor theory of value is an important tool for understanding the information economy and the peculiarities of the information commodity

Characterization of the behavior of carotenoids from pitanga (Eugenia uniflora) and buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) during microemulsion production and in a dynamic gastrointestinal system

Uncommon tropical fruits are emerging as raw-material for new food products with health benefits. This work aimed at formulating and processing microemulsions from pitanga (Eugenia uniflora) and buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) fruits, since they are very rich in carotenoids (particularly lycopene and -carotene), in order to encapsulate and increase carotenoids bioaccessibility. Pitanga and buriti microemulsions were produced by applying a direct processing (high-speed homogenization at 15,000 rpm and ultrasound with 20 kHz probe at 40% amplitude) of the whole pulp together with surfactant (Tween 80 or Whey Protein Isolate at 2%) and corn oil (5%). All treatments (HSHUS for 04, 40, 44, 48 minmin) applied were able to increase the amount of carotenoid released. However, the processing also decreased the total amount of carotenoids in the whole pulp of studied fruits. The impact of processing during microemulsion production was not severe. The overall data suggest that the presence of surfactant and oil during processing may protect the carotenoids in fruits and microemulsions. Final recovery of total carotenoids, after passing the samples through a dynamic gastrointestinal system that simulates the human digestion, was higher for microemulsions than for whole pulps. High losses of total carotenoids in buriti and -carotene and lycopene in pitanga occurred during jejunum and ileum phases. The present work confirms that it is possible to increase -carotene and lycopene bioaccessibility from fruits by directly processing microemulsions (p<0.01).This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP through research funding [Grant #2015/15507-9] and Ph.D. scholarship for Paulo Berni [Grant #2014/15119-6] and a Research Internships Abroad (BEPE) support [Grant #2016/13355-0]. The author Ana C. Pinheiro is recipient of a fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) [Grant SFRH/BPD/101181/2014]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital orphans: Data closure and openness in patient- powered networks

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.In this paper, we discuss an issue linked to data-sharing regimes in patient-powered, social-media-based networks, namely that most of the data that patient users share are not used to research scientific issues or the patient voice. This is not a trivial issue, as participation in these networks is linked to openness in data sharing, which would benefits fellow patients and contributes to the public good more generally. Patient-powered research networks are often framed as disrupting research agendas and the industry. However, when data that patients share are not accessible for research, their epistemic potential is denied. The problem is linked to the business models of the organisations managing these networks: models centred on controlling patient data tend to close networks with regard to data use. The constraint on research is at odds with the ideals of a sharing, open and supportive epistemic community that networks’ own narratives evoke. This kind of failure can create peculiar scenarios, such as the emergence of the ‘digital orphans’ of Internet research. By pointing out the issue of data use, this paper informs the discussion about the capacity of patient-powered networks to support research participation and the patient voice.We are indebted to the anonymous reviewers and the editor, who with their supportive and constructive comments helped us to better clarify and highlight the argument of the article. We would like to also thank friends and colleagues who have offered valuable comments and suggestions on early drafts of this paper. We would like to especially thank Barbara Prainsack, Sabina Leonelli, Alena Buyx, and David Teira. This research is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement number 335925, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grant number 01GP1311