Environmental protection is an increasingly salient topic for contemporary society, especially in the context of the climate crisis. People all around the world are engaging in environmental...Show moreEnvironmental protection is an increasingly salient topic for contemporary society, especially in the context of the climate crisis. People all around the world are engaging in environmental activism, yet environmentalism research has disproportionately centered on the West. Considering how most countries on the front lines of climate change are non-Western, this gap must be rectified. Southeast Asia (SEA) is a region severely overlooked in this regard, particularly in terms of what environmentalism actually brings here. There is insufficient knowledge on how SEA states respond to environmental activism, despite the relevance for its citizens and environmental sector practitioners, who witness some of the worst repercussions of environmental degradation. Therefore, this paper aims to expand our understanding of state responses to SEA environmentalism and contentious political action by investigating Vietnam and the Philippines. A comparative study was conducted on these two cases, which employed qualitative content analysis on texts like news articles to study responses to environmentalism. Findings reveal that both countries display a variety of responses, but are most inclined to repress. However, they differ considerably in how they approach each response type in terms of methods, actors involved, and consistency. It is proposed that each country’s distinct response pattern is linked to its respective regime type, as suggested by existing literature on contentious political action. Beyond the popular notion that non-democracies are more likely to repress contentious claim-making, this study illustrates how hybrid regimes can be more covert and lethal in their repression than other regimes. From these findings, this paper stresses the importance of local socio-political contexts for those engaged in environmental protection and advocacy. Additionally, this investigation hopes to spur similar research on other SEA countries and expand the political science literature on this region.Show less
The ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement that started in 2022 in Iran brought another wave of women’s rights movement. The involvement of Iranian diaspora communities in cyberspace successfully...Show moreThe ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ Movement that started in 2022 in Iran brought another wave of women’s rights movement. The involvement of Iranian diaspora communities in cyberspace successfully transformed this movement into the online sphere. This paper seeks to answer the following research questions: How do Iranian diaspora communities construct identity through cyberfeminism in the 'Women, Life, Freedom' movement? The paper aims to explore the effectiveness of cyberfeminism and more importantly, it aims to identity the role of X and diasporic websites in constructing Iranian diaspora’s identity through an inductive approach. Frame theory is utilized as a lens to examine how Iranian diasporas frame themselves in the cyberspace and make connections between those inside and outside Iran. This paper finds three framing strategies, namely: identification of common enemies, victimization, and empowerment of women that contribute to forming a collective identity within diasporas.Show less
Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)
open access
This thesis explores the relationship between humans and non-humans within a sea turtle conservation organization in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. Through eleven weeks of in-depth visual ethnographic...Show moreThis thesis explores the relationship between humans and non-humans within a sea turtle conservation organization in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula. Through eleven weeks of in-depth visual ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate the influence these human/non-human relationships have on scientific knowledge production. The output of this research consists of an ethnographic film ‘The Turtle Team’ and this article. This research underscores the necessity of adopting transdisciplinary methodologies in which non-humans are integrated, which is crucial in the era of the Anthropocene. It provides a nuanced understanding of how human/non-human relationships shape the production of scientific knowledge in this team of conservationists and emphasizes the interwovenness of humans and non-humans. This research contributes to the existing literature on the Anthropocene and the nature-culture debate and I argue that the interwovenness of humans and non-humans should be discussed more within scientific research, especially in conservation biology.Show less
