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The design thesis is sited along the Shanghai Bund in China. It pursues an alternative modernity that is quintessentially Chinese by developing a design approach specific to the local imperatives and the contextual condition. The argument is set upon the premise of an accommodative nature of Chinese modernity towards foreign influences since the 1850’s. The Bund, being the original site of Chinese modernity, is characterized by hybrid structures that combine the local and the foreign. Imported building materials, techniques, and proportional ideals have predominately influenced the architecture. Against this backdrop, the thesis problematizes Shanghai’s building practice that pertains to the adoption of foreign forms. Is it possible to create an alternative modernity that is quintessentially Chinese? The thesis first examines the development of the city’s modernity, traditional construction principles, and narratives inherent to the site. Program components are then reorganized for tactical design applications. It concludes with a time-based and event-driven collective space that seeds participation towards a local modernity.

The design thesis is sited along the Shanghai Bund in China. It pursues an alternative modernity that is quintessentially Chinese by developing a design approach specific to the local imperatives and the contextual condition. The argument is set upon the premise of an accommodative nature of Chinese modernity towards foreign influences since the 1850’s. The Bund, being the original site of Chinese modernity, is characterized by hybrid structures that combine the local and the foreign. Imported building materials, techniques, and proportional ideals have predominately influenced the architecture. Against this backdrop, the thesis problematizes Shanghai’s building practice that pertains to the adoption of foreign forms. Is it possible to create an alternative modernity that is quintessentially Chinese? The thesis first examines the development of the city’s modernity, traditional construction principles, and narratives inherent to the site. Program components are then reorganized for tactical design applications. It concludes with a time-based and event-driven collective space that seeds participation towards a local modernity.

This dissertation investigates various issues at play in the development and perpetuation of jazz in Bulgaria from the early-20th century until the present. In particular, I explore jazz’s emergence within the conceptualization of subjective experience unique to modern Bulgaria. In this way I move away from the relatively static notion of a “transcendent” subjectivity centered on the “improviser” that constitutes a great deal of jazz historiography and discourse. Through an examination of jazz musicians, listeners, and government critics in different periods of Bulgarian history, I seek two broad but not mutually exclusive goals. The first is trace how “jazz” was conceptualized in different quarters of Bulgarian society and how those conceptualizations factored into the composition, recording, and patronage of music. This second is to posit alternatives to a subjectivity of “transcendence” in jazz performance, using the Bulgarian case as an example. Throughout the dissertation, I use “fascination” and “boredom” as the two concepts through which to ground a historically and materially-bound subjectivity that better takes into account social, cultural, and economic factors unique to Bulgaria. Ultimately, these concepts feature prominently in understanding jazz’s role in framing the fractured subjectivities of Bulgarians within modernity, as well as the constant historical struggle by Bulgarians to center senses of self and place within a changing Bulgaria, a changing Europe, and a changing world. / text

This thesis aims to explore and understand the changes to the social institution of caste that arise from the ongoing modernisation of Indian society. The research setting is the IT industry in Bangalore and Hyderabad. As the Indian IT industry is the economic sector most exposed to globalised modernisation, it has come to represent a social milieu deemed particularly modern in India. The thesis discusses the social role of the IT industry in India; the rise of the new middle classes, and the specifics of the locality of Bangalore. It is argued that caste as a social institution systematically connects three different dimensions of human existence; the economic (caste-wise division of labour); the biological (rules concerning exogamy and endogamy); and the ideational (various rationalisations for caste). While the economic dimension of caste is increasingly losing its meaning, caste endogamy remains largely intact and is rationalised in forms much more compatible with modernity. This composite model of caste is then contrasted with a model of modernity based arguments presented by the most relevant sociologists, from Max Weber to Peter Wagner. In the analysis here, the contemporary, ‘quasiethnic’ reinterpretation of caste appears still to conflict with the implications of modernity. Even though caste provides actual benefits for those who employ the concept and practise it – ranging from political to economic to private – its rationale nevertheless contrasts with the motives that are generally attributed to modernity. The empirical research, employing qualitative, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and hermeneutic interpretation of first-hand sources, produces a complex picture. The interviews with more than 70 IT employees of various caste backgrounds (including over 40 from SC/ST categories – underrepresented in the industry) indicate that caste is seemingly irrelevant in professional settings. In support of this conclusion, additional research hints at the prevalence of widespread anonymity in the IT industry and limited understanding of caste amongst IT employees. By contrast, participant observation during seven months living amongst IT engineers suggests that caste still matters: In private, the consequences of the practise of caste are still apparent, even though ritual restrictions are waning in importance. Thus, a pronounced caste-wise compartmentalisation of Indian society remains visible even amongst young IT engineers. The thesis concludes that caste is not disappearing from Indian society; rather, it is dramatically adapting to modern circumstances.

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This dissertation examines the role of modern design, architecture, and concepts in sites that linked Paris with France’s colonial empire in the interwar period. I argue that the colonies were a significant part of modern life in Paris, with efforts made to promote the use of colonial materials and motifs and regular attention to the colonies shown by the popular and architectural press. I look at the Grande Mosquée de Paris, colonial pavilions and themes in the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, sections of the 1931 Exposition Coloniale featuring modern design and technology, the Musée Permanent des Colonies at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, and ways in which Parisian design and planning shaped the experiences of tourists in the colonies. I trace a cultural history of these spaces, examining their documentation and reception in the contemporary press, the role of modern architecture as a site for anti-colonial protest, and the relationship between sites representing the colonies and modern literature. This dissertation shows, through examination of colonial spaces and their representation in the media, that design and architecture served as a means of locating and fixing French identity both temporally and spatially.

Despite the evident distance between Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical projects, there is a shared terrain from which both authors respond to the excesses of Enlightened modernity, which reacted against history and tradition in the name of a subjective consciousness perceived as the unconditioned nucleus of reality. This paper wants to show how close these alleged antagonists are when it comes to sharing an intuition about the fundamental temporality which underlies existence and human experience. From this common vantage, which is, in both cases, hinged on the notions of remem-brance” and forgetfulness”, we strive to generate a vivid –if strained– exchange between Hegel and Nietzsche as critics of modernity.