Development and governance in the age of neoliberal networks

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2008.Includes bibliographical references.This study brings together science and technology studies, political anthropology, and Latin American studies, by studying the practices and political reasoning of neoliberal networks in Peru. It analyses the extension of such networks by studying the relationships and subjectivities cultivated under two contemporary state-led projects: an initiative promoting intellectual property rights among traditional artisans as tools for rural development, and a national effort to encourage the uptake of free/libre and open source software based resources. Promising to modernize government and prepare citizens for the global, information-based economy, these projects frame their reforms as new, contemporary models for economic development. This work demonstrate how key to the success of such projects is the remaking of rural and urban citizens into "free" and modern individuals who are able to independently self- realize using the tools and logics of information networks. It argues that such plans rely on the ability to bring diverse actors - including state planners, transnational corporations, traditional artisans, rural communities, urban technology experts, and transnational activists -- into strategic alliance, or what can become coded as relations of promiscuity. What brings these partnerships together and seduces such disparate actors into alliance isn't so much the promise of increased technology access. It is instead the promise of "freedom" and the opportunity for diversely situated subjects to realize themselves as "modern individuals."by Anita Say Chan.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

Genomic investigations of unexplained acute hepatitis in children

Since its first identification in Scotland, over 1,000 cases of unexplained paediatric hepatitis in children have been reported worldwide, including 278 cases in the UK1. Here we report an investigation of 38 cases, 66 age-matched immunocompetent controls and 21 immunocompromised comparator participants, using a combination of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and immunohistochemical methods. We detected high levels of adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) DNA in the liver, blood, plasma or stool from 27 of 28 cases. We found low levels of adenovirus (HAdV) and human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) in 23 of 31 and 16 of 23, respectively, of the cases tested. By contrast, AAV2 was infrequently detected and at low titre in the blood or the liver from control children with HAdV, even when profoundly immunosuppressed. AAV2, HAdV and HHV-6 phylogeny excluded the emergence of novel strains in cases. Histological analyses of explanted livers showed enrichment for T cells and B lineage cells. Proteomic comparison of liver tissue from cases and healthy controls identified increased expression of HLA class 2, immunoglobulin variable regions and complement proteins. HAdV and AAV2 proteins were not detected in the livers. Instead, we identified AAV2 DNA complexes reflecting both HAdV-mediated and HHV-6B-mediated replication. We hypothesize that high levels of abnormal AAV2 replication products aided by HAdV and, in severe cases, HHV-6B may have triggered immune-mediated hepatic disease in genetically and immunologically predisposed children

Retiring the Network Spokesman: The Poly-Vocality of Free Software Networks in Peru

National legislation to mandate the use or consideration of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in government institutions is increasingly emerging as a strategy for FLOSS advocates in Latin America and the broader developing world. Such movements for the political use and regulation of FLOSS mark a distinct turn in the objectives and work of FLOSS advocates, whose activities largely focused on the dissemination of FLOSS as a technological artifact. This paper investigates the network of diverse actors involved in promoting FLOSS legislation in Peru, one of the first nations where a movement for FLOSS legislation emerged. It emphasizes that crucial to the work of FLOSS’ network actors is not their merely technological productivity, but their cultural and political productivity – that is, their ability to produce diverse body of meaning made both evident and mobile in narratives of FLOSS use and adoption

Hacking Digital Universalism: Networked Memory, Data Wipes & the Deep Present

Digital Humanities Forum 2015: Peripheries, Barriers & Hierarchies, University of Kansas, September 26th, 2015. Anita Say Chan is at the University of Illinois.Channeling the promise global interconnection, and framed as the mark of contemporary optimization, “the digital” has come to represent the path towards the future for diverse nations, economies, and populations alike. In the midst of its accelerating pursuits across distinct global spaces, however, little has been made of the “universalist” underpinnings that mobilize digitality’s global spread, or of the distinct imaginaries around digital culture and global connection that emerge outside the given centers of techno-culture. This paper will attend to experiments in innovation spaces from the periphery, including the development of rural hack lab spaces in Peru, that distinctly engage local histories and memory of knowledge work around nature, technology, and information to disrupt the dominant logics of innovation and reorient ICT for Development (ICT4D) frameworks. By fostering collaborations between Latin American free software activists across a range of rural and urban site, and between transnational media producers and indigenous communities, such networks press a cosmopolitcal urging to “think with the unknown,” and open up possibilities for uncovering distinct collective futures through an interfacing with multiple local pasts