Social studies of technology and particularly the sociology of technology have long explored the reticulations between technology and social life. More specifically, the sociology of technology has contributed numerous studies addressing the relationship between technological artefacts and the social order. Following this tradition, feminist studies of technology have developed robust analyses of technology and subjectivity, with particular attention given to questions of gender identity. Additionally, recent work in technology studies has engaged with the problem of embodiment, both in terms of technological practice and with regard to the body as a consequential phenomenon in sociological enquiry. This thesis aims to further develop the sociological study of technological artefacts, subjects, and bodies through sociophilosophical analysis. By bringing to bear sociological methodology and theory upon fundamental questions in the philosophy of technology, this research elucidates and resolves problems relevant to both the philosophy and sociology of technology. Specifically, this thesis interrogates the manners and modalities in which technological artefacts, subjects, and bodies are rendered intelligible in social life. In doing so, it develops a symmetrical sociological analysis of these three phenomena and posits a robust solution to the question concerning ontology within the philosophy of technology. Here, I posit a conceptualization of technological artefacts, subjects, and bodies as artificial kinds entities underdetermined by materiality and ontologically dependent upon self referential social practice. I argue that in using Kusch’s concept of artificial kinds, we gain a useful perspective with which to discern the relationships between the ontological constitution of artefacts, the development of subject positions, and the social ‘situatedness’ of bodies and embodied practice. I also develop the concept of entangled ontologies, an analytic lens that highlights the dependence and interrelation that characterize the ontological constitution of artefacts, subjects, and bodies in social life. My analysis re-frames critical questions of technological ontology and illustrates the importance of fundamental philosophical problems to the sociological study of technology. In doing so, I am extending and amending the Performative Theory of Social Institutions - the social theory of the Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. My theoretical project is supported by robust empirical work, which focuses on technological experience and motorcycling in Latin America. I carried out 36 in-depth qualitative interviews with a varied sample of motorcyclists in Costa Rica, and supplemented these with ethnographic observation. This empirical work contributed substantially to the development of my theoretical argument, and constitutes a considerable portion of the argument contained within this thesis. The three primary chapters - concerned with artefacts, subjects, and bodies, respectively - make substantial use of my empirical work throughout their analytic arguments, and each chapter contains an empirical component consisting of consolidated case material. The first - on artefacts - addresses heteronormativity in the constitution of artefact ontologies. The second - on subjects - discusses the role of age and ageing in the articulation of motorcycling subject positions. Last, the empirical material on bodies addresses the role of machinic and corporeal practices in the classification and ontological constitution of bodies. All three of these components represent original contributions to technology studies. Notably, sexuality and ageing arguably remain invisible phenomena to sociologists of technology. The empirical and analytic work contained within this thesis contributes substantially to a variety of fields. As I discuss in detail in my concluding chapter, my use of symmetrical sociophilosophical analysis presents feminist technology studies with new avenues for research, as well as new analytic tools with which to address questions of paramount importance. My use of Kusch’s artificial kinds allows for a reconsideration of constructivism in technology studies, and provides a resolution to the Woolgar, Grint, & Kling debate of the early 1990s. Finally, this research presents the philosophy of technology with a new approach to the question of technological ontology, and contributes meaningfully to contemporary efforts to develop a synergetic sociological-philosophical analysis of technology.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2008. / Adviser: Janan Smither. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-165).

Thesis (M.P.H.M. (Primary Health Care Management))--Mahidol University, 2004.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xvi, 137 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-89).

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock iconand filled out the appropriate web form. / A collection of short stories / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

The project is an investigation of the development of architectural space through drawing. The aim is to arrive at a design through the use of a graphic novel. The building has three programmes that augment the current conditions of the context. A motorcycle workshop and showroom; a boxing academy, and short term accommodation [apartments]. If fiction is really an invented reality, then protagonists are interpretations of projected contexts. The use of a comic offers a subjective perspective of design, as well as the ability to explore spaces where architecture is a backdrop. This is similar to the use of architecture in film. Parallel to the progression of the storyline, the process of illustrating the scenes forms the platform for the development of the architectural design. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The Best PhD Thesis in the Faculties of Architecture, Arts, Business &Economics, Education, Law and Social Sciences (University of HongKong), Li Ka Shing Prize, 2009-2010 / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This is a socio-cultural ethnography in five chapters about motorcycles and lifecycles in post-civil war northern Uganda. People of the Acholi sub-region endured civil war between 1986 and 2006. Many of them anticipate another violent, politically motivated upheaval in Uganda. Drawing on 23 months of field research between 2014 and early 2017, the author focused on ethnic Acholi motorcycle-taxi drivers known as bodabodas to explore how men raised during wartime make a life as internal migrants on their own, contested territory. The bodabodas’ experience as men attempting to fulfill moral responsibilities that preceded them and will also outlast them allowed the author to interrogate movement philosophically and ethnographically and with deeply historical dimensions. Results show the bodabodas’ and their passengers’ multiple uses and ideas of movement and memory as they navigate opportunities and constraints linking rural and urban aspirations and livelihoods in this setting. Specifically, results reveal how, for both men and women, cultural understanding of and claiming a rightful place in a region recovering from war is paradoxically forged not through settlement or rootedness but through continuous transportation as provided by the motorcycle taxis. Moving around is what keeps aspirations of place and destination (literally and figuratively: a home, an education, an office job) in play as both vital and meaningful. It keeps afloat stories of both responsibility fulfillment and personal freedom. The study thus contributes to the anthropology of youth, of internal migration, and of rural and urban transformation in East-Central Africa. The author’s method involved more than 1,000 trips as a passenger. The author interviewed 126 individuals (105 males, 21 females), gathered oral life histories, conducted mapping exercises, and drew on archival materials in the Uganda National Archives and Gulu District Archives. With native speakers of the Acholi language, the author translated poems, songs, proverbs, and folktales of relevance to migration, livelihoods, and cultural understandings of “home and away” in this tumultuous region. A key source for historical change comparisons were the 1950s-era ethnographic fieldnotes of anthropologist Paula Hirsch Foster at Boston University’s African Studies Library. / 2021-02-05T00:00:00Z

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1988. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-181).

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