Two anthro alums among blog’s top dissertation picks in 2014
Two anthro alums among blog’s top dissertation picks in 2014
- February 25, 2015
- Works by Shaozeng Zhang and Ather Zia selected for focus on major global issues
Shaozeng Zhang and Ather Zia, both anthropology Ph.D. recipients in 2014, were named
among anthropologyworks’ best 50 cultural anthropology dissertations of 2014. The blog defined “best” as
dissertations on topics relating to major global issues. Dissertation descriptions
can be found below. Zhang is currently a special assistant professor in the Department
of Anthropology at Colorado State University and Zia is an anthropology instructor
at the University of Northern Colorado. anthropology works is a project of the Culture
in Global Affairs (CIGA) research and policy program of the Elliott School of International
Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. It is currently run
by Barbara Miller, cultural anthropology and international affairs professor, George
Washington University.
“The Financialization of Amazonia: Scientific Knowledge and Carbon Market in Brazil,”
by Shaozeng Zhang. University of California, Irvine. Advisor: George E. Marcus.
This dissertation is about the epistemic and policy evolution of the environmental
financial mechanism of REDD+ (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation) in Brazil. Zhang examines the mobilization, production and competition
of various forms of knowledge(s) in designing and testing this economic invention.
Ethnographic accounts of REDD+ knowledge production and mobilization reveal that multiple
modes of knowing collaborate and negotiate with each other. Ethnographic research
brings forth the productive, but yet informal, culture of cross field collaboration
in scientific knowledge production.
“The Politics of Absence: Women Searching for the Disappeared in Kashmir,” by Ather
Zia. University of California, Irvine. Advisor: Victoria Bernal.
This study focuses on the Kashmiri women activists of the Association of the Parents
of the Disappeared Persons who organized in 1994 to search for the disappeared. The
everyday gendered politics of mourning emerges as what Zia conceptualizes as affective
law, which reveals a fine-grained understanding of women’s agency. The women use performative
politics which converges in the spectacle of mourning and allows them to transcend
the limitations of the heavily militarized society.
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