Association of Middle East Anthropology is delighted to announce the results of the 2024 Suad Joseph Student Paper Award
Recipient:
Timothy Y. Loh
PhD Candidate in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Honorable Mention:
Ziya Kaya
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Arizona
Timothy Y. Loh is the winner of the 2024 Suad Joseph Student Paper Award, with his paper titled, “An Expanded Istifada: Cochlear Implants and Regulating Communication for Deaf Jordanians”. In this beautiful ethnographic piece, Loh argues for a multiplicity of ideological approaches to a language within a society and explains how different approaches in using language are deeply embedded in various therapeutic practices.He combines a sensitively conducted and richly detailed ethnographic research on the speech-centric ethos in therapeutic attitudes towards cochlear-implanted children in Jordan with multidisciplinary theoretical framework, including, but not limited to, semiotic anthropology, linguistics, and medical anthropology. Through his paper, he provides an original contribution not only to anthropology, but also to disability studies, science and technology studies, and globalization studies. The paper is beautifully written, conceptually sophisticated, thoughtfully argued, and makes an outstanding contribution to the anthropology of the Middle East and beyond.
The Honorable Mention award goes to Ziya Kaya, for his paper, “‘Terrorist’ Red Spiders: Securitization of Farms and Farmers on Turkey’s Digital Frontiers”. Kaya successfully demonstrates how the discourses and practices of security, insecurity and securitization started to infiltrate the agrarian management in contemporary rural Turkey. Kaya also shows how recent political crises, such as the coup attempt of 2016 and its aftermath, and environmental issues, such as climate change, intersect with the introduction of digital farming technologies to shape the process of securitization. In his nuanced ethnography, Kaya manages to represent the perspectives of multiple actors, from farmers to politicians, towards the agricultural governance and to the securitization of farms and the farmer. He discusses the case from multiple perspectives presented in several discourses, which include conspiracy theories and nationalist narratives. Benefiting from Foucault’s theories on governance and securitization, Kaya’s paper makes an important contribution to the analysis of digitalization, agricultural and environmental crises and rural studies in general.