Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Abstract: Recent work in material participation looks, from an STS (Science and Technology Studies) perspective, at how material infrastructures are active in the creation of mass subjectivity, publics. This talk looks at the process of accessing the power of mass subjectivity through the public material infrastructure of the cash-in-transit business in Nairobi, Kenya, and the work of private security guards tasked with moving cash around the city. Data on how infrastructural arrangements around cash present opportunities for new political subjectivities broadens our understanding of political entanglements with material things. The process of slowly arguing for one’s place in a network, gossiping, and commenting on the morally correct circulation of things, present a different picture of the ways that the power of accessing mass subjectivity operates than, for example, the quick act of consuming a recycled plastic bottle or donning a uniform, bright colors, and using impersonal address.

Bio: Dr. Nathan Dobson holds degrees from the LSE and the University of Sussex. He recently received my Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Dobson has published on non-state groups and urban sociality in Nairobi, Kenya, and work on material infrastructure and political subjectivity – specifically the cash-in-transit business and private security.