Infrastructural Relations: water, political power and the rise of a new ‘despotic regime’

It is 60 years since Karl Wittfogel highlighted a key relationship between political power and the ownership and control of water. Subsequent studies have suggested, commensurately, that exclusion from the ownership of essential resources represents a fundamental form of disenfranchisement – a loss of democratic involvement in societal direction. Several areas of theoretical development have illuminated these issues. Anthropologists have explored the recursive relationship between political arrangements and cosmological belief systems. Narrow legal definitions of property have been challenged through the consideration of more diverse ways of owning and controlling resources. Analyses of material culture have shown how it extends human agency, as well as having agentive capacities itself; and explorations of infrastructures have highlighted their role in composing socio-technical and political relations. Such approaches are readily applied to water and the material culture through which it is controlled and used. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research on water in Australia and the UK, this paper traces changing relationships between cosmological beliefs, infrastructure and political arrangements over time. It suggests that a current trend towards privatised, transnational water ownership potentially opens the door to the emergence of new 'despotic regimes'

HOW MAINSTREAMING AND MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES EMPOWER PLACE-BASED APPROACHES TO REFUGEE INTEGRATION: THE CASE OF ALTENA, GERMANY

This thesis explores the importance of strong place-based techniques for refugee integration. The integration of refugees, when understood as a two-way process between the host community and refugees, is vital in moving away from dehumanized, national level representations, towards a more realistic view of refugees as individuals who are attempting to live and belong in their new communities. The German system mainstreams integration efforts at the national level by formulating policies of education, health care, and employment for the population as a whole (rather than specifically for refugees as a group). This system empowers towns and municipalities to apply more targeted, effective approaches to integration that fit the specific needs of their communities. Multilevel governance structures also aid in the ability of local level governments to apply targeted integration approaches, as they prevent potentially ill-fitting top-down initiatives from disrupting place-based measures. This thesis examines Altena, a German town known for its progressive integration techniques, through secondary sources and interviews with the mayor and integration team. Their efforts include valuing practicality over formality; emphasizing communication between civil society, the local government, and refugees; creating open, accessible social spaces; and conducting integration initiatives with the spirit of moral responsibility. Ultimately, this thesis examines how processes of multilevel governance and mainstreaming empower the local level to create policies and programs that promote more targeted forms of integration. From Altena, we learn just how valuable this relative autonomy is for the local level.Master of Art

Thermal fluctuation field for current-induced domain wall motion

Current-induced domain wall motion in magnetic nanowires is affected by thermal fluctuation. In order to account for this effect, the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation includes a thermal fluctuation field and literature often utilizes the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to characterize statistical properties of the thermal fluctuation field. However, the theorem is not applicable to the system under finite current since it is not in equilibrium. To examine the effect of finite current on the thermal fluctuation, we adopt the influence functional formalism developed by Feynman and Vernon, which is known to be a useful tool to analyze effects of dissipation and thermal fluctuation. For this purpose, we construct a quantum mechanical effective Hamiltonian describing current-induced domain wall motion by generalizing the Caldeira-Leggett description of quantum dissipation. We find that even for the current-induced domain wall motion, the statistical properties of the thermal noise is still described by the fluctuation-dissipation theorem if the current density is sufficiently lower than the intrinsic critical current density and thus the domain wall tilting angle is sufficiently lower than pi/4. The relation between our result and a recent result, which also addresses the thermal fluctuation, is discussed. We also find interesting physical meanings of the Gilbert damping alpha and the nonadiabaticy parameter beta; while alpha characterizes the coupling strength between the magnetization dynamics (the domain wall motion in this paper) and the thermal reservoir (or environment), beta characterizes the coupling strength between the spin current and the thermal reservoir.Comment: 16 page, no figur

On the Matter of Time

Drawing on several disciplinary areas, this article considers diverse cultural concepts of time, space, and materiality. It explores historical shifts in ideas about time, observing that these have gone full circle, from visions in which time and space were conflated, through increasingly divergent linear understandings of the relationship between them, to their reunion in contemporary notions of space-time. Making use of long-term ethnographic research and explorations of the topic of Time at Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study (2012–13), the article considers Aboriginal Australian ideas about relationality and the movement of matter through space and time. It asks why these earliest explanations of the cosmos, though couched in a wholly different idiom, seem to have more in common with the theories proposed by contemporary physicists than with the ideas that dominated the period between the Holocene and the Anthropocene. The analysis suggests that such unexpected resonance between these oldest and newest ideas about time and space may spring from the fact that they share an intense observational focus on material events. Comparing these vastly different but intriguingly compatible worldviews meets interdisciplinary aims in providing a fresh perspective on both of them

More than a Pretty Face: How Turkish Women's Magazines Function as Social Spaces

Beating on the banks of the Bosphorus is the cultural heart of Turkey - the hustling and bustling city of Istanbul. Looking over one shoulder you will see high-rises and mega malls sprawling to the furthest edges, and over the other shoulder will rise the domes and spires of grand mosques puncturing the skyline. The diverse geography of this historic city is a physical, architectural reflection of the political, social, religious, and economic shifts Turkey has endured throughout centuries of change in government and society. These changes not only manifest in physical spaces, but also produce numerous social spaces that are just as varied as the landscapes in which they are formed. This thesis utilizes visual analysis as a method for exploring how patterns of social, political, economic, and religious change in Turkey lead to the formation of new products and identities, and in turn, how these changes spur people to claim certain social spaces. As the public image of Turkish women has historically served as an indicator of change and modernity in Turkish society, this thesis examines images in Turkish women’s magazines in order to gain an idea about particular realities that may inform the creation of new Turkish social spaces, especially for women.Bachelor of Art

Water Demand Management in England and Wales: constructions of the domestic water-user

YesMeasures to manage demand include implicit and explicit messages about domestic water-users which have important potential impacts on their perceptions and practices. Drawing on recent literature, this paper identifies three different ¿dimensions¿ along which demand management measures¿ constructions of the water-user may vary: these relate to whether the water user is passive or active, whether they are motivated by individual or common needs, and whether they perceive water as a right or a commodity. Demand management measures currently used in England and Wales are then discussed and analysed. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of communications associated with demand management, and in particular, notes the need to consider the cumulative impact of messages and their interactions with people¿s existing understandings

A simplicial gauge theory

We provide an action for gauge theories discretized on simplicial meshes, inspired by finite element methods. The action is discretely gauge invariant and we give a proof of consistency. A discrete Noether's theorem that can be applied to our setting, is also proved.Comment: 24 pages. v2: New version includes a longer introduction and a discrete Noether's theorem. v3: Section 4 on Noether's theorem has been expanded with Proposition 8, section 2 has been expanded with a paragraph on standard LGT. v4: Thorough revision with new introduction and more background materia

Upstream-binding factor is sequestered into herpes simplex virus type 1 replication compartments

Previous reports have shown that adenovirus recruits nucleolar protein upstream-binding factor (UBF) into adenovirus DNA replication centres. Here, we report that despite having a different mode of viral DNA replication, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) also recruits UBF into viral DNA replication centres. Moreover, as with adenovirus, enhanced green fluorescent protein-tagged fusion proteins of UBF inhibit viral DNA replication. We propose that UBF is recruited to the replication compartments to aid replication of HSV-1 DNA. In addition, this is a further example of the role of nucleolar components in viral life cycle