Google Translate’s mission is “to enable everyone, everywhere, to understand the world and express themselves across languages” (Pitman, 2021). But are algorithms capable of leading us beyond the translation of the word toward an understanding of the world? Computational linguistics research has been interested in assessing this kind of real-world effects of technology and invited other disciplines to join their effort. With this purpose, this study examines the ways the algorithmic agency (Maly, 2022) elicits a ‘movement of meanings’ (Silverstone, 1999) when mediating news reports from English to Portuguese – the official language of Brazil, the country with the greatest use of Google Translate (Turovsky, 2016). For that, it investigates how algorithms convert appraisal and semiotic elements that carry ideological stances. The bilingual sample consists of six news articles on the U.S. Capitol attack published in U.S. outlets, two each of right, center, and left political leaning, along with their translations obtained through Google Translate. The analytical framework encompasses Fairclough’s (2003) CDA methods that allow an exploration of how discourses embedded in these texts represent the social phenomena that are being depicted. This lens is complemented by the Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005) to investigate how value positions are constructed within texts through evaluation. A third analytical tool is necessary to engage with the ways in which meanings are moved from source to target texts. For this, van Leeuwen’s (2008) notion of recontextualization affords an assessment of the processes inherent to translations. The analysis showed that algorithms neutralized appraisal through lexical choices, changed semiotic elements through recontextualization, and blurred stances by standardizing the target language. The paper, thus, concludes that Google Translate constructed power by renaming reality and enacted it by reshaping evaluations, advancing research that seeks to examine algorithms’ impacts on digital discourse. Speaking from the epistemic locus of the Global South, this thesis proposes a critical reflection on the ideologies concealed by the self-proclaimed discourse of the universality of digital technologies.

Climate change is the worst long-term security issue humans has ever faced. The discourse around the problems and solutions connected to it are predominantly coming from the Global North. On the other hand, it is the Global South who are experiencing the impacts of a changing climate, in the form of floods, droughts, heatwaves, and lack of food, water, and energy. This asymmetrical relationship has rendered the Global South the vulnerable subjects in the current governmentality regime of climate change. Through a governmental lens, this paper analyses the similarities and differences in how climate change as a security and IR issue is problematized, and especially what solutions are seen as viable, across and between the North-South divide. This understudied relationship and its implications, is in this paper exposed and tackled. It shows that the Global North are slowly shifting the responsibility of coping with climate change away from the large GHG emitters, and on to the individuals in the Global South that are worst affected by the consequences of a changing climate. The recently updated NDCs within the Paris agreement supports this view and make up a key part of this paper.

This study examines political engagement among Syrian students at the University of Jordan who are either refugees, asylum seekers or children of Jordanian mothers. By adopting Ekman and Amnå’s conceptualization of political participation and analysing 15 semi-structured interviews, I find that the Syrian students are both engaged in manifest and latent forms of political participation. The engagement is mostly canalised through individual activities rather than collective activities. Most importantly, the engagement is less common in domestic issues than non-domestic issues. When the students are engaged in domestic issues, it is mostly in latent forms of political participation and in private activities not risking revealing their opinions to the general public. Interestingly, I find that the students are interested in Jordan public affairs but that this interest is not transformed into political action aiming to affect Jordanian political decisions. The pattern of political participation in several ways corresponds with the students’ perceptions of risks. The Syrian students associate political engagement in Jordan with perceived risks such as being deported back to Syria or facing racism. Respondents expressed that they were not politically engaged because of the risks that it could entail and engagement in activities connected to Jordan public affairs seems to be perceived as more of a risk compared to being engaged in non-domestic issues. This seems to be particularly true for activities carried out in public. My findings are important as they shed light on political engagement in authoritarian contexts in the Global South and among marginalised non-citizens.

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) are established actors in the global militaryindustry. The adaptation to utilize PMSCs as a complement to national militaries has increased their importance significantly. PMSCs have gained attention due to similarities with outlawed mercenary activity, causing legal implications and difficulties regulating them. However, the risks that PMSC recruits experience are not addressed sufficiently. Thus, this study aims to scrutinize and analyze how PMSCs recruitment relates to risk, which risks exist for the recruits, and how the recruits’ origin affects risks. By developing the idea of Risk-Transfer War with the Global South and Global North concept, the study gains insight into how Risk-Transfer can beextended to the private military industry. The study shows that economic, physical, and political risks are present for PMSC recruits, and the recruits from the Global South are the most affectedby them. The globalized private military industry enables countries that utilize PMSCs which recruit from the Global South, to get a cheaper, more flexible workforce with fewer politicalimplications. However, the Global South recruits are paid less than their Northern colleagues, they are getting little to no recognition for their sacrifices while risking their lives for the secompanies in hopes of a better livelihood. By understanding PMSCs and their recruitmentprocesses better, we can adjust issues in current regulations.

The climate crisis is an urgent threat towards people and planet, and rapid changes are needed to decarbonize the planet. The energy sector is in a current transition to renewable-based energy, which also includes a shift to electric cars. Electric cars are motivated to be the future, which will be beneficial for the economy and the environment. The industry has also received criticism, several human rights violations occur in the supply chains of the electric cars and that it is an industry that risk increasing global inequalities. This study explores the complexity of the car industry’s transition to renewable energy, based on case studies of Volvo, Mercedes, and Volkswagen, and their sustainability work related to the supply chains of electric vehicles batteries. The purpose is to show the relation between companies and power structures, as an exemplification of the possibilities for a just energy transition from fossil fuel-based energy to renewable-based energy. The findings shows that the transition is shaped by economical values, which risks broaden the gap between Global South and Global North. It emphasized that it is an issue that needs a collective effort to change the Status Quo, to create sustainable solutions based on the three pillars of sustainable development beneficial for all, not only the Global North.

No description available.

<p>The global HIV/AIDS pandemic has emerged alongside a changing world order marked by the growing power and authority of business, new constraints on public authority and policy autonomy, and new global hierarchies, inequalities, and contradictory tendencies. These conditions have helped midwife new configurations of public and private power, authority, and relations and shaped normative and operating environments for global health governance. In these contexts, public-private partnerships emerged as an institutional experiment, ostensibly to address health governance gaps and failures, including access to HIV and AIDS medicines in the global South. This study investigates the growth and roles of private authority in health governance through the lens of four case studies of public-private partnerships intended to enhance access to HIV and AIDS medicines in the global South. The study reveals that public-private partnerships in health emerged from this history as institutional experiments, yet not convincingly as functionalist responses to governance gaps and failures. The history demonstrates that private business actors opted to engage in partnerships in the contexts of a convergence of social, political, and commercial pressures, and normative and structural transformations in the world order. The case study partnerships emerged as accommodation or <em>trasformismo </em>strategies which offered concessions in an attempt to neutralise and co-opt social contestation around treatment access, without succumbing to demands for deeper structural and legislative reforms. These strategies offer bilateral, narrow, and tactical contributions in a framework of poor design, governance, accountability, and equity considerations and obligations, and are ultimately unconvincing in their commitment or capacity to expand access to HIV and AIDS medicines. Ultimately, public-private partnerships in health present practical, strategic, and normative consequences that necessitate new approaches to reform and/or serious reconsideration of their role and prospects in global health governance.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Wie gehen die städtischen Armen mit Wohnraumverdrängung um? Welche Strategien entwickeln sie? Und welche Elemente bestimmen, welche Strategien die städtischen Armen einsetzen? Um diese Fragen zu beantworten, entpacke ich die Idee von ‚Strategien zur Bewältigung von Bedrohung durch Verdrängung‘, um zu soziologischen Konzeptualisierungen eben dieser Strategien zu gelangen. Dazu nutze ich einige der Konzepte in Bourdieus [1986] Kapitalbegriff sowie die Anwendung von Tillys [1999] Theorie der dauerhaften Ungleichheit als Rahmenkonzept. Empirisch identifiziere und analysiere ich die Anti-Verdrängungs-Strategien der städtischen Armen in den komplexen Wohnsituationen von São Paulo und Istanbul. Der Analyse zufolge wirken sich die ermittelten Strategien zur Vermeidung von Verdrängung oder zur Verbesserung der Wohnsituation langfristig auf die Betroffenen oder den Wohnungsmarkt nicht positiv aus. Im zweiten Schritt der Analyse argumentiere ich, dass die Mehrheit der Strategien mit den Ursachen und Verstärkungsmechanismen der dauerhaften Ungleichheiten übereinstimmt, welche Tilly identifiziert hat. Dadurch entsteht, wie ich in der Arbeit darlege, zwangsläufig der Prozess der andauernden Wohnungsungleichheit, der trotz der Bemühungen der städtischen Armen wenig Aussicht auf Veränderung zeigt. Das heißt nicht, dass die städtischen Armen keine Kämpfe gewonnen haben oder dass sich nicht individuell ihre Situationen verbessert haben, sondern, dass das größere Bild der Ungleichheiten in der Wohnungswirtschaft wenig erfolgsversprechend ist. Selbst wenn einige Menschen beispielsweise Vermögenswerte in Form von ökonomischem Kapital schaffen, scheinen die städtischen Armen dem zukünftigen Verdrängungsdruck nicht zu entkommen. Obwohl die Anti-Verdrängungs-Strategien somit den Verdrängungsdruck teilweise vorübergehend mildern können, untergraben die dauerhaften Ungleichheiten auf dem Wohnungsmarkt eine substanzielle und nachhaltige Veränderung im Interesse der städtischen Armen. / How do the urban poor cope with housing displacement? What kinds of strategies do the urban poor develop? And what elements shape which strategies they deploy? To answer these questions, I unpack the idea of strategies for “coping” with the threat or uncertainty of displacement to arrive at sociological conceptualizations of these strategies – ones anchored in Bourdieu’s [1986] concept of capital as well as the application of Tilly’s [1999] theory of durable inequalities to housing. Empirically, I identify and analyze the anti-displacement strategies of the urban poor within the complex housing contexts of São Paulo and Istanbul by breaking down the housing market into sub-housing markets (housing forms) as they are used by the urban poor in each local context. Combining existing analytic frameworks with my original data, I also speculate about the effects of the identified strategies for the urban poor in terms of durable housing inequalities. According to the analysis, the identified strategies to avoid displacement or improve housing are not positively impacting the urban poor or the housing environment in the long run. To account for this, in the second step of the analysis I argue that the majority of strategies align with the causes and reinforcement mechanisms of durable inequalities that Tilly identified. This is not to say no battles have been won or that no individual situations have improved, but to say that the larger picture of housing inequalities warrants little optimism. Even when some new housing forms create assets in form of economic capital (e.g., land titles), the urban poor don’t seem to escape future displacement pressures. Therefore, although the anti-displacement strategies may temporarily ease displacement pressure, the durable inequalities of the housing market undermine substantial and sustainable change in the interest of the urban poor.

Cette thèse explore l'adaptation urbaine au changement climatique dans les quartiers informels du Sud Global. Ce sont des lieux de grands défis et de réponses innovantes. Le contexte mondial d’exclusion postcoloniale et capitaliste entraîne la vulnérabilité et le risque supplémentaire du changement climatique augmente ces aléas contextuels. Des chercheurs ont critiqué les réponses traditionnelles en matière de planification de l’adaptation, les jugeant trop prescriptives, technologiquement dépendantes et manquant les besoins locaux. L’adaptation communautaire peut être trop isolée et axée sur les besoins des individus et des élites face à la diversité des défis locaux. Ni l’un ni l’autre ne prennent en compte les dimensions politiques de la planification de l’adaptation. En réponse, les spécialistes critiques de l’adaptation urbaine ont appelé à une meilleure compréhension des expériences locales afin de comprendre comment les gens priorisent, négocient et réagissent à une multiplicité de risques. En réponse à ces appels, ce projet cherche à mieux comprendre comment les gens perçoivent et répondent à ces défis à travers une étude de cas unique et exploratoire. Grâce à l’étude de cas qualitative dans le quartier de Panorama, situé dans la municipalité de Yumbo, en banlieue de Cali en Colombie, le projet cherche à comprendre comment l'identité et le pouvoir influencent l'accès aux ressources et aux institutions nécessaires pour s'adapter. Le projet se concentre sur deux sites de Panorama : un comité local d'aménagement soucieux de la sécurité foncière et une fondation écologique travaillant sur la conservation des espaces verts. Les résultats mettent en évidence des règles du jeu inégales où les habitants les plus vulnérables empruntent des voies parfois illégales pour accéder à la terre et au logement. Plus les résidents sont établis, plus ils bénéficient d'avantages et d'expérience pour jouer le système. Les dirigeants et les experts travaillent dur pour négocier entre les formalités. Cependant, l’absence d’un processus de planification transparent laisse divers intérêts se disputer les ressources, ce qui conduit parfois à des conflits et met fin à la créativité. Les résultats de la recherche suggèrent que la planification de l’adaptation urbaine dans les contextes informels des pays du Sud doit continuer à s’appuyer sur des recherches et des pratiques qui tiennent compte de la diversité et des conflits afin de mieux faciliter une réponse juste et équitable à la crise climatique. / This thesis explores urban adaptation to climate change in informal settlements of the Global South. These are the sites of great challenges and innovative responses. The global context of post-colonial and capitalist exclusion drives vulnerability and the added risk of climate change augments these contextual hazards. Researchers have criticized mainstream adaptation planning responses for being too prescriptive, technologically dependent, and missing local needs. Community-based adaptation can be too isolated and focused on individual and elite needs over the diversity of local challenges. Both fail to account for the political dimensions of adaptation planning. In response, critical urban adaptation scholars have called for a better understanding of local experiences to comprehend how people prioritize, negotiate, and respond to a multiplicity of risks. In answer to these calls, this project seeks to better understand how people perceive and respond to these challenges through a single exploratory case study. Through qualitative field research in Panorama, Yumbo, Colombia, the research looks to apprehend how identity and power influences access to resources and institutions needed to adapt. The project was hosted by a local research laboratory at the Universidad del Valle and focuses on two sites in Panorama: a local-planning committee concerned with land tenure security and an Ecological Foundation working on greenspace conservation. The results point to an uneven playing field where the most vulnerable inhabitants navigate sometimes illegal avenues to gain access to land and housing. The more established residents enjoy more advantages and experience in playing the system. The leaders and experts work hard to broker between formalities. However, the absence of a transparent planning process leaves diverse local interests to compete for resources, sometimes leading to conflict that closes down on creativity. The research findings suggest that urban adaptation planning in informal contexts of the Global South must continue to build on research and practice that accounts for diversity and conflict to better facilitate a just and equitable response to the climate crisis.

Die universalistische Fixierung auf Wahrheit hat lange Zeit das Verständnis des In-Der-Welt-Seins dominiert und vorstrukturiert. Der Aufstieg des globalen Südens jedoch hat die Vorherrschaft allgemeingültiger Deutungsweisen herausgefordert. Diese Veränderung hat die Bedeutung verschiedener Interpretationsweisen des In-der-Welt-Seins deutlich gemacht. Ein einschneidender Wandel zeichnet sich ab. Die Chance für gegenhegemoniale Ansätze steigt. Diese Untersuchung betrachtet die Grenzen des Verstehens und deren Verschiebungen. Sie diskutiert die Schwierigkeiten, die mit einem Wandel des Denkens verbunden sind, das Ausmaß, in dem Denken vorstrukturiert ist, und die Unabweisbarkeit von Momenten des Wandels. In Übereinstimmung damit sieht die Studie einen Zusammenhang zwischen Verstehen und Emanzipation. Zum Schluss wird die Rolle der Universitäten als Hüter und Verbreiter des Denkens hinterfragt, insbesondere für die gegenwärtige Bewegung, sich für ein Verständnis des In-der-Welt-Seins von den Beschränkungen des hegemonialen Denkens zu befreien. / Universalist fixation on truth has long dominated and pre-structured the analyst’s understanding of being in the world. The emergence of the Global South has given rise to a challenge to the hegemony of one-size-fits-all approaches. The ontological shift has revealed the relevance of different ways of understanding being in the world. A threshold of change has become visible. The potentiality for counter-hegemonic approaches is increasing. This study looks at the limits of understanding, and how those limits can be, and are being, overcome. It discusses the difficulties associated with transformation in thinking, the degree to which thought is pre-structured, and the irrefutability of moments of change. It establishes a link between understanding and emancipation. Finally, it questions the role of the universities as guardians and purveyors of thinking in the present emancipatory movement of understanding being in the world beyond the boundaries set by hegemonic thinking.