O presente trabalho se propõe a comparar duas experiências de instauração dos princípios neoliberais na América Latina, Argentina e Venezuela, seus principais reflexos socioeconômicos e a construção de alternativas que recuperam o protagonismo do Estado como propulsor do desenvolvimento. A combinação de diversos elementos recorrentes na história política da América Latina, tais como os constantes e agudos distúrbios socioeconômicos e a fragilidade das instituições, constituíram um terreno fértil para que se implementasse de maneira acrítica um conjunto de políticas de caráter ortodoxo que levariam a um dos mais profundos processos de concentração de renda já existentes na história do sistema capitalista. O esgotamento deste modelo, no entanto, evidenciado pelos massivos protestos populares que tomaram as ruas das principais cidades argentinas e venezuelanas, assim como pelo risco que representou de que novas rupturas democráticas ocorressem nestes países, criou o cenário necessário para que projetos políticos progressistas encabeçados por outsiders da política nacional chegassem ao poder. As vitórias eleitorais de Hugo Chávez na Venezuela e de Néstor Kirchner na Argentina foram, então, a expressão não apenas do fracasso do neoliberalismo como modelo econômico na América Latina, como também da certeza de que os problemas sociais não podiam ser resolvidos por outro ator que não o Estado. A profundidade das reformas que foram promovidas por estes governos não nos impede, no entanto, de reconhecer as contradições que engendram e o bastante limitado êxito que tiveram suas iniciativas de transformar as estruturas econômicas dos seus respectivos países. É, por tanto, fundamental que busquemos compreender a estes fenômenos de maneira profunda e esta investigação representa um esforço neste sentido. O presente trabalho busca, portanto, comparar os projetos nacionais desenvolvidos na Argentina e na Venezuela entre 2003 e 2013 com o fim de observar se, de fato, tais processos apresentam importante grau de flexibilização do neoliberalismo, ademais de analisar se a construção dos novos arranjos econômicos, sociais e partidários nestes países nos permitem afirmar que a Argentina e a Venezuela caminham em direção à implementação de um modelo econômico que possa ser caracterizado como neodesenvolvimentista. / This present work intends to compare two experiences of establishment of neoliberal principles on Latin America, Argentina and Venezuela, its main socioeconomic reflections and the construction of alternatives that retrieve the role of the State as the propeller of the development. The combination of several recurring elements in the political history of Latin America, such as the constant and acute socioeconomic disturbances and the fragility of the institutions, composed a fertile ground for the implementation in an acritic manner a set of orthodoxy character policies that led to one of the most deep processes of income concentration ever existent in the history of the capitalist system. The depletion of this model, however, evidenced by the massive popular protests which took the streets of the main cities of Argentina and Venezuela, as well as by the risk it represented if new democratic ruptures occurred in those countries, created the necessary scenery for progressionist political projects headed by outsiders of the national politic to arrive into the power. The electoral victories of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina were, then, the expression not only of the failure of neoliberalism as an economic model in Latin America, as well as the certitude that social problems could not be solved by other actors besides the State. The depth of the reforms promoted by these governments does not inhibit us, however, from acknowledging the contradictions that engender and the very limited outcome their initiatives to transform the economic structures of its respective countries had. It is, therefore, imperative seeking to comprehend these phenomena in a deeper manner and this investigation represents an effort in that direction. Hence, the present work seeks to compare the national projects developed in Argentina and Venezuela between 2003 and 2013 as a way to observe if, de facto, such projects present an important degree of flexibility of the neoliberalism, besides analyzing if the construction of new economic, social and party arrangements in these countries allow us to state that Argentina and Venezuela move towards the implementation of an economic model that can be characterized as neodevelopmentist.

Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka vilka diskurser som är dominerande i EU:s utbildningsvisioner om skolan i två policydokument om framtidens utbildning. Dessa jämförs sedan med den LGY 11 för att se om den svenska läroplanen är influerad av EU:s policydokument. Det vidare syftet är också att undersöka samhällskunskapsämnets plats i de undersökta dokumenten. För att undersöka studiens syfte används en diskursanalys influerad av kvalitativ innehållsanalys där läroplansteoretiska begrepp om bildningsideal bildar ett diskursivt ramverk som sedan appliceras på analysen. Studiens resultat visar att en neoliberal läroplansdiskurs är starkt dominerande i EU:s utbildningsrelaterade policydokument men att en demokratisk diskurs är dominerande i LGY 11. Vidare visade resultatet att samhällskunskapsämnet är starkt närvarande LGY 11 men har tillbakadragen roll i EU:s utbildningsrelaterade policydokument.

This dissertation examines the co-evolution of consumption and production as competing models of agency in Argentine culture in the era of global consumer capitalism. Tracing the influence of several key political and intellectual developments in Latin America, the US, and Europe on the symbolic language of regional politics, I map out how participation in the global consumer market came to be understood as an expression of power and authority in the context of Argentina's disastrous experiment with neoliberalism in the last three decades of the 20th century. Then, using films and literary texts including works by Lisandro Alonso, Adrián Caetano, and Aníbal Jarkowski together with critical projects by George Yúdice and Josefina Ludmer, I examine how a model of subjectivity that exaggerates the economic, social, and cultural agency of consumers has managed to persist in Argentina's cultural imagination despite growing disillusionment with the neoliberal model and the disenfranchisement of the nation's consumers. Through close readings that reveal work as the site of a restored order that is ultimately incomplete, fantastical, and contradictory, I show how the myth of the consumer dictator perpetuates itself through a system of intellectual values, including abstract, absolutist visions freedom and tolerance, that isolate the subject and divert communication, inscribing an extreme version of consumer agency even upon production itself. Together, these instances of interrupted reform suggest that a model of agency suited to the era of global consumer capitalism must understand production and consumption not as alternative options, but as distinct, integral modes of creativity.

This dissertation explores the rise of social economy in South Korea, in order to understand the transformations of sociality, ethicality, and subjectivity in the contemporary capitalism. In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, we have witnessed “the return of the social” through introduction of various socio-economic projects—such as social economy, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship—that aim to graft morality and sociality onto the market. In the last decade, South Korea’s social economy sector has also grown quickly with the active support and promotion by the government, representing a new model of development as well as a feasible solution to reproduction crisis. This rapid growth has generated public and academic debates over whether the returned “socials” are the seeds of post-neoliberalism or just an ideological cloak for the expansion of market rationality. Based on ethnographic research on the social economy sector in Seoul, this dissertation focuses on an often-neglected question in these debates: what forms of the social imaginary, knowledge, subjectivity, and ethicality have emerged in the new “socials” as a result of the imbrication of moral aspirations with the neoliberal human condition? To address the question, I first demonstrate how contemporary neoliberalism presupposes a new form of homo œconomicus, human capital, who is expected to manage all the aspects of life within a single value frame, acting as a “portfolio manager.” As the new subjectivity incorporates non-economic elements—including social logics and moral orientations—as assets that can be translated into economic value, the responsibilities for society and the construction of social bonds are directly devolved on the new economic subjects. This dissertation goes on to show how the financial logic of human capital has conditioned and created a new sociality and ethicality. In examining the various fields from community development through the social care market to fair trade activism, I trace how community, care, affective labor, and ethical practices have been intermingled and articulated with the new form of economic rationality and have contributed to the economization of sociality and ethicality. Notions such as “enterprization of community,” “projective ethicality,” “affective labor (hwaldong),” and “marketized gift-exchange” are discussed to flesh out the transformation and articulation more clearly. Finally, this thesis conceptualizes the dynamics of the new subjectivity, ethicality, and social imaginary in terms of “neosocial government,” in which the crisis of the neoliberal human capital regime is managed and addressed through social ties based on care, affective labor, and gift. In unveiling how the new governing rationality prioritizes and reifies intimate social bonds over political engagement and structural transformation, this dissertation not only illuminates the depoliticized aspects of the newly returned socials but also highlights the necessity of reinventing a universal vision of politics upon which the broken link between social solidarity and politics can be restored.

Over the past two decades, an interest in how tobacco capitalism works in everyday life has reintroduced a fertile discussion about one of the capitalism's core features: the production of surplus value. Through a case-study of Kentucky and Nayarit, this thesis will discuss how the industry of tobacco, instead of depending on historic-geographical unevenness in the spread of capitalist relations across the world, works with unevenness as part of its own structure. In other words, for the securing of surplus value the tobacco industry relies not on non-capitalist relations of production, but rather on an increasing horizontal and vertical integration of tobacco capitalism. This is evidence of the industry's power to effect a new configuration of relations of production different from the configuration of the industry in previous years: tobacco was a product of state intervention. Nayarit in Mexico and Kentucky in the USA appear to be similar in many aspects, despite their different locations in global capitalism and on the ladder of development. In both places, capitalist relations of production frame life, and a dependence on cheap labour for the working of the tobacco industry is manifested. In both places, neoliberal reforms led to the privatisation of the tobacco industry, whereas before tobacco production was subsidised by the state. Nayarit and Kentuckian tobacco growers and workers have to deal with increasing economic pressures and find themselves looking to diversify income streams. In both contexts, similar racial hierarchies structure similarly gendered divisions of labour in the tobacco industry, both within the workforce and in terms of productive versus reproductive labour. The differences between Kentucky and Nayarit have created a situation in which the same group of Nayarit migrant labourers live with unevenness as part of their life projects, though they are working within the same tobacco industry. The thesis presents rich ethnographic detail about heterogeneous contexts that exist within and are shaped by the same tobacco capitalism, and the way through which unevenness generates migrant labour that creates a durable geographical connection between distinct instantiations of the same tobacco industry.

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Contemporary scholarship of neoliberalism tends to emphasize its ubiquity, underscoring capitalism's permeation into life's most intimate spheres. However, I show through careful ethnographic description that even within the paradigmatically capitalist conditions of New Brunswick, Canada - popularly christened a 'company province' - marginalized communities continue to maintain anti-capitalist moralities. Based on eighteen months of participant observation, this ethnography examines how an Acadian forest community in northwestern New Brunswick cultivates an alternative regime of values and also how those values are contained, eroded, and politically disarmed. I explain how a moral system based in the division between insiders and outsiders emerged to ensure the survival of rural Acadian communities throughout longstanding historical conditions of material precarity. This moral dualism serves to maintain fierce egalitarianism between insiders while justifying underhanded and illegal techniques for appropriating resources from the outsider sphere. While the persistence of this communitarian, egalitarian, anti-materialist insider moral order and the sharing economy it sustains is notable, especially given prevalent scholarly assessments about neoliberalism's colonization of our very imaginations, I show that maintaining the insider moral order in the face of community members' increasing material engagements with capitalism produces compromises, contradictions, and violences. The Acadians' dualist moral system absorbs hierarchies such as race and gender in ways that ultimately violate insider aspirations to egalitarianism and obstruct the development of insider moral persistence into more politically transformative resistance. Preservation of the insider sphere also demands periodic renegotiation of its boundaries under the pressures of new forms of precarity, such that the cost of maintaining the insider community is the expulsion of some of its members. This dissertation is thus a study of how capitalism comes to accommodate dissident moralities in its midst in ways that defuse their political threat, and the mechanisms by which compliance with capitalism is coaxed and coerced even in contexts of ideological opposition.

This paper analyses an ongoing economization trend in the sphere of higher education (HE) and discusses its implications on higher education for sustainable development (HESD). The sources of this trend are connected with neoliberalism understood as a political project that seeks to extend competitive market forces, consolidate a market-friendly constitution, and promote individual freedom. In global HE neoliberalism, decision-makers, be it educational, scientific, or other, are pressured to assess how their activities impact financially on the individual, organizational, and institutional levels and/or the imperatives of an internationally competitive economy. The paper provides a contemporary analysis of the rise of neoliberalism in HE, understood as the specific trend of an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime explained by Jessop's six analytic distinct and potentially overlapping stages of economization. This analysis is based on a review of European policies from 2006 until 2017 and explains characteristics of current economization strategies. Their core principles relating to higher education are about improving economic performance based on knowledge and innovation. Smart growth is defined politically as the main purpose of HE and positioning students as future workers, with the right higher skills, as the means. The relevance of students' skills higher education institutions (HEI) are urged to develop highly depend on business demands. European policies are driven by a comprehensive entrepreneurial agenda restructuring the organizational mechanisms in HE. Accountability towards the labour market and skills performance of students set this agenda. Funding strategies rest on strong industry ties and diversification of revenue streams depend on HEI capability to establish tech-driven knowledge alliances between research, education and business. These new intermediary and powerful alliances drive economization strategies, influence curriculum development and decide on relevant higher level skills. Respective learning practices are oriented strongly towards developing entrepreneurial and digital skills based on personalized learning environments. Currently HESD adapts towards a neoliberal education agenda rather than preventing further shifts from a capitalist towards a competitive financialized economy. A profound critique would have to question the dominant economization trends in higher education i.e. the very purpose of education and the current raison d¿etre of HEI. The core of the critique might build on new institutionalized learning environments allowing deep, social learning and, hence, the potential of HEI to act as social catalysts empowering collective and disruptive agency. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

Since 2002 Taiwan has transformed its cultural policy, following the lead of the UK's creative industry discourse in particular and neoliberal policy regimes in general. This thesis investigates the processes through which neoliberal thinking shaped changing cultural policy and the impact this has had on cultural workers and practices in Taiwan s cultural landscape. I examined policy making documents and interviewed a range of involved actors, including government officials and cultural workers to learn more about the policy process and its impact. The research argues that the creative economy has heavily influenced the development of cultural policy discourse and generally failed to promote the public interest in Taiwan. The results of neoliberalisation have been embodied in several salient characteristics such as the privatisation of public space, marketisation of public subsidy and investment, commercialisation of higher education, and flexibilisation of cultural labour market. I argue that cultural policy needs to be reshaped to represent the public interests and diversity of our cultural landscape.

The infusion of market-logic has undermined American universities as democratic institutions. This issue was examined through an analysis of what role universities play in democratic governance. As a philosophical inquiry, the data were seminal texts from political science, education, and philosophy, such as those by Alexis de Tocqueville, John Dewey, and Henry Giroux. The most salient theme unveiled by this study was how central universities are to functional democracy, both as key fixtures and critics. However, universities have adopted market-logic ideologies, which inhibit universities’ abilities to function as democratic institutions. The study concludes by calling for a reinvigoration of the public, requiring universities to maintain a public nature. Such transparency lives in tension with neoliberal efforts to privatize public institutions, so universities must provide spaces for debates on that tension. In this way, universities will be able to embody the democratic dispositions necessary for supporting and defending democratic values.