Search

By provisioning materials things such as water, power, information, and waste disposal, infrastructures have been instrumental in materializing the promise of modernity and development on a global scale (Larkin 2013; Anand 2017; von Schnitzler 2016; Mitchell 2002; Prakash 1999; Khan 2006; Anwar 2014). Waste infrastructures are the socio-technical assemblages through which Lahore’s modernity and development have been imagined across historical moments. The city’s daily waste generation is disposed of by either sanitation workers who are almost entirely Christian or waste workers from the informal sector that are drawn from lower status groups such as khānah badosh (nomad or "gypsy" groups), changar, and others. My dissertation argues that, despite being an elementary aspect of urban life, this form of caste labor – waste work – comes to be viewed, along with those who perform it, as non-valuable. In exploring these paradoxical logics, I develop the theory of “essential waste” to argue that waste, something often viewed as mere excess, is foundational to Lahore’s reproduction in multiple ways. Based on fieldwork with a variety of actors and archival research, I explore the work, institutions, and infrastructures by which waste, in a variety of forms, is disposed of and/or circulated. Drawing on anthropological theories that prioritize how actions represent forms of value within a dispensation of social and political life (Turner 1979; Munn 1986; Graeber 2001; Pedersen 2013), disposal and circulation of these materials are crucial to how value in different forms is materialized out of what is deemed to be non-value. I thus examine how the notion of essential waste plays itself out across the state, which materializes value out of waste through infrastructures of disposability, and the informal economy, which marketizes these materials through infrastructures of circulation. Moreover, as subaltern groups have situated themselves within these infrastructures, this dissertation sheds light on the relationship that these groups have to political power in contemporary Pakistan. This dissertation argues that waste comes to be transformed into different forms of value, which then reproduce the city and its population in highly uneven, though deeply enmeshed ways.

This study explores the anthropological study of Islam through an ethnographic analysis of the Tablighi Jama'at - a transnational piety movement. Recent anthropological writings on Islam have approached Islam as a discursive tradition and, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, have detailed the ethical formation of the subject. Embedded within these formulations are important notions of power, knowledge, truth, and authority, which are fundamental features of Islamic beliefs and practices. In the ethnographic sections of the study, I will apply this framework in the analysis of the Tablighi Jama'at. Although the movement is very much the product of a particular moment, which I will demonstrate in my historical overview, the Tablighi Jama'at has been able to expand on a global level. These two aspects will be clarified by demonstrating how the Tablighi Jama'at's formal methodology and creed are put into practice at a mosque in San Diego. In order to do so, I will rely heavily on semiotics, or the process of signification, and I will demonstrate how semiotics forms are vital elements to the success of these types of piety movements. Thus, in the final section of this study, I will revisit the debates about signification surrounding the nature of authorizing discourses, and will aim to show how semiotics allows us to connect the discursive traditions of Islam, with its authorizing and authoritative discourses, with immanent utterances and practices in the world

Governmental and private funding for research in many fields has resulted in a significant body of scientific evidence. Scientific evidence is made available in the form of thousands of peer-reviewed articles in online digital libraries. This evidence is principally used by researchers, students and on occasions for eventual societal impact such as commercial exploitation and popular science communication. How can we engage the general public in understanding scientific evidence while assuring the provenance from a reliable source? Based on the principles of gamification this thesis addresses the question using a web and mobile framework called Scientific Hangman. Scientific Hangman creates a direct link between scientists and the general public. It contains a web administration tool for scientists to create puzzles and a mobile game based on the traditional game of hangman for general public, adolescents for example, to solve the puzzles in a fun manner. The puzzles in our game are created by researchers through the web administration tool based on their research and an active link to the publication is mandatorily made part of the clue. Players play the game in an attempt to guess a word given a clue that is simple and informative at the same time. We evaluated our first prototype on a focus group at the Cancer Registry of Norway by communicating information from invitation letters for cervical cancer screening. Based on the feedback from focus group we improved the game in design, user experience and interface and added gamification elements to make it fun for the player. We evaluated the improved version to test its perceived ease of use, enjoyment and usefulness by employing the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Our results from evaluation of gamified mobile app shows 79.9% and 59.9% agreement on usefulness and enjoyment respectively. However, it shows low agreement of only 42.8% on ease of use feature. On the other hand, evaluation of web administration tool on ease of use and usefulness shows agreement of 82.9% and 80% respectively. We discuss results and also provide a future direction for forthcoming research in gamification of scientific evidence.