This study investigates the real representation of women in two villages in Orissa, India. Through my own feminist lens I have brought in theory of spaces of participation and power and hence linked this to the concept of real participation. Women from three different ranges within the local social hierarchies have participated in this study by sharing their knowledge, and I have tried to connect their stories and knowledge to political geography by captivating how they are represented in local governance. Representation is an important concept throughout this study, and it concerns how people feel that their interests are being represented and listened to. The study reveals women’s constrains and enabling factors to participate in formal or public spaces of governance. The studied women show that they lack real access to the invited spaces of participation in their local villages and thus they lack access to real representation through public spaces. This study also investigates the links between different spaces of representation, and shows that real representation is vital in women’s lives. When in practice excluded from the local public spaces of governance, these women claim spaces of participation and power by creating their own spaces of representation in the counter-publics.

The overall goal of this project is to examine the community within the Texas Renaissance Festival of Plantersville, Texas and how the social arrangements and identities created in and manipulated by this community go beyond standard existing social conditions in modern society. I intend to investigate the use of performance as a tool for the negotiation of festival space and community building. Performance is not simply a product of the culture born here in the festival space. Instead, it is an agent of that culture in that it marks the boundary between the real and unreal, the festival and the everyday. Why are individuals drawn to the festival lifestyle? How does the structure of this community go beyond the surface sense of solidarity found in many other performance groups? What role does performance play in the cohesion of the festival community? I will explore these questions by looking at aspects of gender roles, language play, and the multivocality of performance through ethnographic study and applying concepts such as space negotiation, counter-publics, and ideas of performance, ritual and play to the nature of the renaissance festival community.

O argumento principal que defendo nesta tese é que a formação de uma nova direita no Brasil é um amálgama ultraliberal-conservador cuja origem remonta à organização de contra-públicos digitais durante o auge do lulismo, entre 2006 e 2010. Para sustentar meu argumento realizo uma reconstrução histórica da atuação política da direita brasileira na esfera pública desde a década de 1940, passando pela formação destes contra-públicos na metade dos anos 2000 até as eleições de 2018, quando a nova direita chega ao poder. Meu foco principal, porém, recai na trajetória do contrapúblico ultraliberal, uma vez que este foi o único cujos membros foram capazes de se organizar institucionalmente na sociedade civil de forma precoce, isto é, ainda durante o auge do lulismo, o que foi decisivo para desencadear a Campanha Pró-Impeachment de Dilma de Rousseff (2014-2016) e para fortalecer outras iniciativas políticas que foram importantes para a constituição da nova direita. Empiricamente, me apoio em 30 entrevistas em profundidade realizadas com lideranças e militantes que participaram deste processo e dados coletados em uma pesquisa de campo levada à cabo entre o segundo semestre de 2015 e o primeiro semestre de 2018. / The mais argument of this thesis is that the Brazilian New Right in an ideological combination of libertarianism with conservatism and its origins are connected to the formation of digital counter-publics during the height of Lulas terms, between 2006 and 2010. In order to explain how this happened, I make a historical reconstruction of the Brazilian Political Right performance on the public sphere activities from the 1940s on, passing by the formation of these counter-publics in the middle of the 2000s, until the 2018 elections, when the new right comes to power. My main focus, however, lays on the trajectory of the libertarian counter-public, since this was the one whose members were able to organize themselves institutionally at an early stage, that is, during the height of Lulas terms, which was decisive to trigger Dilma Rousseffs Pro-Impeachment Campaign (2014-2016) and to strengthen other political initiatives that were important for the constitution of the Brazilian New Right. My empirical data is based on 30 in-depth interviews with political leaders and activists who took part in this political process and on informations gathered in a field research carried out between the second half of 2015 and the first half of 2018.