Homelessness represents a most serious challenge for current cities and their administrations across the globe. Despite this fact, it is surprising that the topic of homelessness from the perspective of institutions has been so understudied so far [e. g. Temelová, Jana et al. 2015]. This paper will focus on the conceptualization of homelessness by institutions. It will try to describe how the institutions, which are dealing with homelessness, conceptualize it and see if the conceptualization occurs in the practice of social service providers. There are three main research questions: (1) how do institutions conceptualize homelessness?, (2) do the conceptualizations change over time and if they do how ? (e. g. under the influence of the "ETHOS" European definition (FEANTSA 2005)), (3) how is the individualizing neoliberal project manifested in this? For answering the questions I will use a qualitative research methodology - semi-structured interviews with representatives of institutions, which will be supplemented by networks mapping and structured literature search of conceptual, methodological and strategic documents, which will first be deductively and then inductively analyzed with using MAXQDA program.

American social policy, which has been under the influence of neoliberal paternalism, has become highly selective and inefficient. That needs to be changed. A model solution has been found right in the United States, in one of its federal institutions: the U.S. Military. In the past several decades, it has developed from a simple tool of defense into a complex institution, where an almost perfect social system exists, which could serve as an example for the national system. The military social system wasn't established purely on altruism, but rather based on a strategic decision to build and sustain the most stable and efficient fighting force. As a consequence, universal health-care emerged, as well as free access to higher education, social-welfare programs for veterans etc. Thus, people within the military community tend to have higher educational attainment, employment rates and quality of family life than the general population in the US. As a result, the military has been increasingly used as a social program. Even though the military service is often thought to be reserved for lower socio-economic classes, American middle class has increasingly sought it out as well. Given the structural problems not only in the national social system, it has been looking for alternative ways to improve, or...

During the past two decades, neoliberal economic policies have been enacted in many peripheral regions of the world. Neoliberalism promotes free trade, deregulation, privatization, and welfare reduction; however, it does not call for state rescission of social control and legal coercion. Global capitalism has asserted itself as the dominant force in modernity. It transcends the nation-state system. For example, the United States was the primary hegemon throughout much of the 20th century. Yet since the appearance of global capitalism, transnational corporations now dominate the world-economy. Wealth is heavily concentrated in the hands of an elite capitalist class. The resultant income inequality, coupled with increased state surveillance and formal control, increases structural violence throughout the periphery. The purpose of this article is to examine the structural inequalities in the Americas, while presenting possible solutions to the neoliberal crisis from a social justice perspective.

Although MOOCs have not lived up to previously breathless predictions of disruption, they have had an outsized influence on university administrators who see online learning as a “savior solution” for ever-shrinking budgets. Despite lower student persistent rates, faculty skepticism, and burdensome faculty workloads, the general public and administrative embrace of online learning has been enthusiastic, which may be explained in part using Foucault’s concept of the episteme to view the convergence of the parallel tracks of educational and technological development--the idea of a kind of mechanism for learning. While MOOCs once promised “best professors,” other institutions now promise the “best designed” mechanisms for learning, certified through corporatized quality assurance programs and learning management systems. While this may be appropriate for shopping educational products in a neoliberal marketplace, it seldom addresses human needs. Moreover, the temporal and human constraints that online promises to banish, in fact, continue to exist. Therefore, a more realistic examination of psychological and social factors, pedagogical tools, and the nature of online communication, is needed in order to create a more humane way of teaching, and learning.

This thesis is the result of a set of personal concerns about, on the one hand, how the debates about the modes of expression of the neoliberal regime - particularly in the so-called "urban world" (assuming that there is something outside the "urban”, which is a discussion I did not have place for)- develop and, on the other, of a feeling of inadequacy in relation to how the so-called “urban commons” are conceptualized by many of its promoters. My way of dealing with these concerns assumes that a conceptual review of both phenomena is necessary. In that sense, I propose, based on, principally, theorists Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, that the point of departure for their understanding should be that of considering them as “social principles”. This conceptualisation brings about distinctive consequences both in how we might fight one principle back and how we may foster the spring of the other one. This point of view will present both principles as mutually exclusive, meaning that while one operates, the other cannot. This will lead me to suggest that the "principle of the common" should be taken as the alternative to the "neoliberal principle." Subsequently, and for being able to frame what the transit from one social principle to another consists of, I will draw upon basic conceptions of classical sociology and the Italian operaismo tradition and will try to demonstrate how the possibility of this transit highly depends on collective representational processes which involve the enacting of a praxis. Once the previous has been settled, I will develop upon philosopher Franco Berardi s notion of Poetry -basically, meaning creationfor afterwards hinging upon semiologist Umberto Eco’s theorizations on semiology of architecture. This way, I will try to expand on how certain expressions of makeshift urbanism, as practico-aesthetical experiences, might help bring about the mentioned social processes. Using that experimental theoretical framework -which relies on the concepts of Poetry, Insolvency and Solvency-, I will analyse the ways in which Allm nna Badet, a public sauna built in the former harbour of Gothenburg following makeshift procedures, might have elicited the societal processes needed for the mentioned paradigm shift. Basing myself in -mainly- architectural semiological analysis applied to my observations of the built environment and through semi-structured interviews to the users of the installation, I will try to discuss on how the involvement in that built environment’s spatial practices might have influenced the users’ conceptions and commitment regarding both social principles. I will conclude that makeshift urbanism presents itself as an adequate tool for bringing about transfigurations in the material urban hierarchies as well as for influencing subjects’ valuative schemes in the direction of the common and in detriment of the neoliberal. However, I will conclude as well, that the tool might not be capable for fostering wider and lasting social change by itself, prospect which, I suggest, might change if the tool is used at a denser and spread-out fashion alongside the urban tissue.

Tidigare feministiska studier om kommersiellt surrogatmödraskap har huvudsakligen fokuserat på hur surrogatindustrin fungerar inom ett land. Med en utgångspunkt i en feminist-marxistisk begreppsapparat, syftar följande kandidatuppsats att synliggöra hur dagens sydostasiatiska surrogatmarknad verkar gränsöverskridande och informellt. Utifrån en kvalitativ fallstudie på Kambodja kan vi inneha en förståelse till hur globalisering möjliggjort surrogatföretagens gränsöverskridande expansion, men även vilka ytterligare osäkerhetsfaktorer som drabbar surrogaterna när de flyttas över gränser. Studiens resultat argumenterar för att det är både materiella och idémässiga skiften som legitimerar att kvinnors biologiska material blivit en del av ett bioekonomiskt, profitskapande projekt. Genom att undersökningen erhåller ny empiri bidrar studien till att etablera en riktning för framtida forskning inom det IPE-feministiska paradigmet. Samtidigt övertygar studiens resultatet om att det feminist-marxistiskt perspektivet är relevant inom fältet Internationella Relationer. / Previous feminist studies on commercial surrogacy have mainly focused on how the surrogate industry operates within a country. With a starting point from a feminist-marxist conceptual framework, the following bachelor thesis aims to highlight how the current southeast asian surrogacy market operates cross-border and informal. Based on a qualitative case study in Cambodia, we can understand how globalization enabled the cross-border expansion of the surrogate companies, but also which additional factors of insecurity that will affect the surrogates when they are moved across borders. The results of the study argue that it’s both material and ideational shifts that legitimize that women’s biological material became part of a bioeconomic profitable project. By gaining new empirical knowledge, the study contributes to establishing a direction for future research within the IPE-feminist paradigm. At the same time, the result of the study convinces that a feminist-marxist perspective is relevant within the field of International Relations.

By using critical discourse as a method three discourses have been exposed as active in the advicing articles published on the website of Amelia, a Swedish magazine for women. The three discourses are the neoliberalist, postfeminist and the heteronormative. The research shows, by using the theories of governmentality and the heterosexual matrix, that these discourses collaborate to form the advices that is being given around women’s sexuality and their sexual health on the website of Amelia. The discourses that is being exposed in the research can be described as they are imposing guilt upon women. It also poses women as the solely responsible for the relationship to work and the women are as well expected to conform to their partner, which often is described as a man. This implies that in the advicing articles of Amelia, women and men are not allocated the same position in a relationship. Indicating that it exists an inequal relation in the context, where women are subordinated to men. Finally, the research can contribute to an understanding of the ambiguous expectations existing regarding women´s sexuality.

This dissertation delineates the ways in which the political vicissitudes, economic restructuring and cultural fissures of the 1960s and 1970s shaped the commemoration of the Bicentennial of American Independence and elucidates how, in turn, the Bicentennial helped catalyze the eventual emergence of the cultural formations and political economy of neoliberalism. Using cultural studies frameworks to analyze archival policy memoranda, planning, curatorial and design records, journalistic accounts, photographs and audio-visual recordings, I demonstrate that the Bicentennial became a crucible in which Americans across the political spectrum reframed historical narratives, reconceived national identity and debated the proper role of the federal government. This study argues that political, economic and cultural elites mounted events that answered social movement demands for inclusiveness but contained their potential to effect radical change. The corporate sponsorships devised for Bicentennial projects profoundly expanded the role of corporations within the cultural sphere, enabling museums to adapt to the dismantling of the "welfare state" and laying the groundwork for the public-private partnerships that became the cornerstones of neoliberalism in the1980s. Chapter 1 examines a traveling Smithsonian exhibition, "Workers and Allies: Female Participation in the American Trade Union Movement 1824-1876," to illuminate the challenges of conducting public history in a moment when national narratives are highly contested. Chapter 2 argues that the Nixon administration imposed its overriding policy agenda of New Federalism upon the Bicentennial planning process to help engender a conservative realignment of American values and the electorate. Chapter 3 chronicles the transformation of the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife from a small celebration of deep-rooted folkways with counterhegemonic aims into a grand multicultural Bicentennial spectacle that advanced the ideological and economic prerogatives of the Smithsonian's liberal leadership, of conservative politicians, and its major corporate sponsors. Chapter 4 explores the launch and exhibition design of the American Freedom Train, which marshaled substantial economic and political resources of the federal government and four American corporations - Pepsico, Prudential, Kraftco, and General Motors. This single most widely-circulated project reasserted a teleological narrative of steady economic, technological, and social progress and affirmed the cultural authority of its corporate stewards and the success of privatization. / 2019-04-30T00:00:00Z

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Communities are currently being shaped and influenced by larger neoliberal social policies, which has resulted in decreased funding from public sources, which therefore creates greater competition among neighborhood organizations for limited resources. In this thesis, I analyze how larger neoliberal currents have created conflict within the local policy subsystem of rezoning in the Crooked Creek neighborhood in Indianapolis. My analysis spotlights the consequences of devolution one of which is the shift from government to neighborhood governance; I examine these issues by mapping out the causes and consequences of three separate rezoning cases. I compare the conflicting perspectives among local influential organizations, including the Community Development Corporation (CDC) and a number of state registered neighborhood groups. I frame this conflict through the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier 2007) in order to map out the connections between neoliberal social policies and local level conflict.

In 1991, India entered the global market as a liberalized economy when, coerced by the International Monetary Fund, it adopted “structural adjustment” policies. The early period of economic liberalization in India engendered a sense of optimism and forward-looking aspiration in the national imaginary and culture. This faith in novelty and change, for the urban middle-classes, was a result of the increase in incomes in white-collar jobs and the availability of greater choices in the commodity market for consumers. Thirty years later, the fantasy of wealth and abundance that was supposed to transform the country into a thriving superpower is visibly cracking. Social reality has not kept up with the promises afforded by economic liberalization. The increasing wealth gap and the dangerous marriage between neoliberalism and right-wing politics has created public culture of everyday violence, divisiveness, and despair. In this dissertation, I examine how recent mainstream Hindi cinema has responded to India's neoliberal turn. My work is based on the premise that the cinema of the past two decades is a record of social history. The major themes I focus on are the pervasiveness of neoliberal values into everyday life and work and the consequent formation of a neoliberal subjectivity. I also focus on how forms of neoliberal selfhood contend with existing social structures of caste, class, sexuality and religious identity in India. Finally, I lay out the interconnections between the recent rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India, popular cinema and neoliberal culture.