Search Results for: CASTAC

From Foraging to Keeping Bees in Northeast Brazil

Cydney Seigerman August 27, 2024
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“This,” explained Chico Filho, gesturing to the lush, flowering Caatinga shrubland surrounding us, “is the bees’ pasture.” Chico Filho, a state extension officer and avid beekeeper, was reflecting on the changes in small farmers’ perception and actions toward the Caatinga, the biodiverse ecoregion unique to Northeast Brazil characterized by shrubs, thorn trees, and ongoing deforestation. The faint buzzing of bees accompanied our conversation as Chico Filho led a farmhand (and fellow beekeeper) and me along a path through the Caatinga to one of the apiaries (bee yards) on Fazenda Normal. (read more...)

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Commodifying Disability as an Experience

Mine Egbatan August 20, 2024
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Since February 2023, I have been conducting fieldwork on disabled women’s access to and experience of infrastructure under the current populist authoritarian government in Turkey. My research has taken me, among other places, extensively throughout Istanbul, the city with the largest disabled population in the country. I have traveled primarily by public transportation to meet with my interlocutors, most of whom are blind, allowing me to experience urban infrastructures alongside them. While passing through Gayrettepe Station, one of the busiest subway stations in Istanbul due to its location in a business district and near an upscale shopping mall, I observed a sentence written on a black background with white neon points: “Learning is possible through encounters” (Öğrenmenin yolu karşılaşmaktan geçer). This area is home to a museum called “Dialogue in the Dark” and “Dialogue in the Silence,” which provides a multisensory corporeal experience of blindness and deafness targeting non-disabled people as an audience. The museum draws inspiration from other “Dialogue in the Dark” museums located in Europe, and was established by a civil society organization. These museums are significant initiatives aimed at helping non-disabled people understand how “others” experience the built environment, thereby raising awareness about the inequalities and injustices that disabled people may encounter in their daily lives. Disability activism is relatively new in Turkey and values any effort that contributes to the recognition of disability as an identity, which has not been widely acknowledged. Indeed, creating a space for encounter is crucial for cultivating a culture of pluralism, understanding, and care for one another, all of which are crucial for a democracy. In some countries, populist movements are explicitly hostile to disabled folks, and/or ridicule them (e.g. Trump in the US), however, this is not the case in Turkey (disabled women face other challenges, as we will see). So, such initiatives regarding disabled people are quite welcome, as they may contribute to Turkey’s democratization and the inclusion of non-normative bodies and existences. (read more...)

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Medicine Disoriented

Amanda Quan August 15, 2024
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Once a week, I get to play doctor. Setting aside the endless anki cards and slide decks familiar to all medical students in their preclinical training, I turn instead to my patient interview skills and exam maneuvers as I enter the Kanbar Center. Located on the lower floor of the UCSF campus library behind an unassuming door, the Kanbar Center opens into a large simulation center where we hone our clinical skills with the help of standardized patients. Inside, the quiet, carpet-lined hallways of our library give way to a busy assemblage of medical cabinets, recliners, assorted supplies, and sterile rooms outlined by equipment-adorned walls. This signals our official entry into The Clinic. Against this backdrop, my peers and I don our white coats and adjust our stethoscopes before stepping into the simulation. (read more...)

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The Cloud is Too Loud: Spotlighting the Voices of Community Activists from the Data Center Capital of the World

Madelyn Zander August 13, 2024
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What does it mean to speak about the cloud? While the term tends to conjure images of fluffy white objects, the cloud in technological terms is a complex physical infrastructure that comprises hundreds of thousands of servers distributed around the globe that provide on-demand access to data storage and computing resources over the internet. The problem with describing this physical infrastructure as the cloud is that it abstracts away the data centers, subsea fiber optic cables, copper lines, and networked devices that enable our digital interactions, as well as the consequences that the expansion of this infrastructure poses to people and to the environment. Scholars of infrastructure have written about the cloud’s incredible energy and water consumption to power and cool servers, as well as its massive carbon footprint (Carruth 2014; Edwards et al. 2024; Hogan 2018; Johnson 2023). However, less attention has been given to the cloud’s auditory presence, a problem of growing concern for people who live alongside cloud infrastructure. In this post, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2021 with community activists in Northern Virginia, a place known as the “data center capital of the world,” to bring the cloud’s emerging sound pollution problem into focus. (read more...)

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Challenging Normalized Surveillance: “Birds on the Wire” Surveillance in Mexico

Mariel Garcia-Montes August 6, 2024
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In Mexican slang, “hay pájaros en el alambre” (there are birds on the wire), is an expression used to imply that a private conversation is at risk of being intentionally overheard. Birds on the wire can mean anything from one’s auntie overhearing a conversation from the other room, to a phone being wiretapped at long range by a state agency. In everyday parlance, this phrase does a lot of work to signal a broader awareness and cultural acceptance of surveillance. If, in conversation, someone is reminded of the birds on the wire, they are expected to beware—not for the birds to go away. Perhaps the statement produces a chilling effect of sorts, rather than an expectation of privacy. (read more...)

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Contra la Normalización de “Pájaros en el Alambre”: Vigilancia en México

Mariel Garcia-Montes August 6, 2024
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En el argot mexicano, hay pájaros en el alambre es una expresión que indica que una conversación privada está bajo riesgo de ser escuchada por terceros. En el mismo argot,  a tales terceros se les llama orejas; a su labor, escucha. Hay pájaros en el alambre puede abarcar desde tías que escuchan una conversación desde otro cuarto de la casa hasta un teléfono intervenido por una agencia estatal. En el lenguaje cotidiano, esta frase apunta al conocimiento y a la expectativa cultural de este tipo de vigilancia. Si en una conversación alguien dice que hay pájaros en el alambre, se espera que sus interlocutores tengan cuidado con sus palabras; no que los pájaros se vayan. Se podría decir que inspira más a la autocensura que a la expectativa de privacidad. (read more...)

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시장을 질문하기: 한국의 ‘캐밍’(벗방) 시장은 어떻게 성장했을까?

Yuna Hwang August 1, 2024
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‘캐밍’과 ‘벗방’ 디지털 기술의 발달과 함께 다양한 행위자들이 언제, 어디서든 자유롭게 온라인 공간에 접속할 수 있는 인프라스트럭처가 구축되면서 온라인 공간은 개개인의 일상 전반을 변화시켰다. 성적 욕망과 거래의 영역 역시 디지털 기술을 매개하여 확장 및 변화해왔는데, Sanders et al.(2018)은 이러한 성적 거래의 다양한 양태를 “인터넷-기반 성 노동(internet-based sex work)”으로 범주화하고 성적 서비스를 홍보하거나 매개하기 위해 인터넷을 사용하는 경우는 직접적인(direct) 성 노동으로, 온라인 또는 가상의 환경에서 발생하는 성적 활동을 간접적인(indirect) 성 노동으로 구별하기를 제안한바 있다(Sanders et al., 2018: 15). 영어로는 웹캐밍(webcamming) 또는 캐밍(camming)이라 불리는 이와 같은 성적 노동은 신체적 접촉 없이 디지털 기기를 매개로 성적인 서비스가 거래되는, 간접적인 성노동의 대표적인 형태로, 이들을 매개하는 플랫폼은 새롭게 등장한 성적 거래의 장으로 여겨진다(Jones, 2020: 3; Henry&Farvid, 2017: 119). 한국에서 벗방은 ‘아름다운’ 외형을 지닌 여성 BJ가 시청자와 소통하며 춤을 추고 노래를 하거나 성적인 행동을 하는 ‘여캠’(여성이 진행하는 캐밍)의 한 종류이지만, 여캠의 다른 방송들보다 강도 높은 노출과 적나라한 성적 퍼포먼스가 진행된다는 점에서 차별화된다(Lee, 2021:1). 또한 하나의 영상에 (read more...)

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Questioning the Market: How Does the South Korean “Camming” (Beot-bang) Market Grow?

Yuna Hwang August 1, 2024
한국어 번역문은 여기에 있습니다.
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With the development of digital technologies, online spaces have transformed many aspects of individuals’ lives by creating infrastructures that allow various actors to freely access these spaces anytime, anywhere. The realm of sexual desire and transactions has also expanded and transformed through the mediation of digital technologies. Sanders et al. (2018) propose categorizing various aspects of these sexual transactions as “internet-based sex work,” distinguishing between the use of the internet to promote or mediate sexual services as direct sex work, and sexual activity that occurs online or in a virtual environment as indirect sex work (Sanders et al., 2018: 15). This type of sexual work, known in English as “webcamming” or “camming,” is a typical form of indirect sex work, where sexual services are traded via digital devices without physical contact. The platforms that mediate this work are considered the new marketplaces for sexual transactions (Jones, 2020: 3; Henry and Farvid, 2017: 119). (read more...)

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