The last two decades witness that water is a politicized issue. The process of globalization has brought into existence a hierarchal structure in which the World Bank and the International Monterey Fund work in accordance to neoliberal theory. Development is, as a component in this process, placed high on the agendas of these multilateral institutions, and has become a global concern. The case of Bolivia’s water sector privatization has problematized the global consensus on neoliberal theory and its attempts to ensure development. The international system is a set of structures that shape the process of globalization, thus these have to be explored in order to understand the relation between neoliberalism, development, and equity. By placing Bolivia’s water sector privatization in the center of the research, concepts become researchable, while the neoliberal theory on development is tested. The policies of privatization did not succeed in targeting the poorest groups and equity was overseen. The study finds that the opposing views on whether privatization is a mean to achieve development are based in a clash on what development is. Dependency and power relations cannot be overseen. The clash is, in turn, translated into the relation between the global and the local, which is also shaped by contradiction in the context of globalization. Globalization is a process with a severe problem: there is no room for equity.

This dissertation explores the importance of tourism and tourability to contemporary global politics. I argue that the global movement of tourists (declared by the UN World Tourism Organization as a ‘right to tour’) is made possible in part through what I call the production of tourability – the capacity of particular places, bodies, or experiences to be toured and to be seen as worthy of touring. Rather than a natural result of difference, tourability is a political process that involves contestations over what and who counts, how space should be organized, and how and what histories are told. I show that touristic movement is based on a specifically neoliberal mobility – a form of free movement that lays claim to ‘borderlessness’ and infinite access along lines eerily familiar to those claimed by contemporary capital – and use this to argue that the work of making places tourable is also designed in specific ways to facilitate this kind of movement. Thus, being tourable is part of the transnational politics of contemporary governance and is useful to constructing the boundaries of (in)appropriate movement. At the same time, the continual expansion of tourism across the Global South has given ‘being tourable’ important economic and political stakes for life, subjectivity, and land. To understand the interweaving of these stakes and the transnational mobility being produced, I examine two sites where tourability has been thrown into question by those whose work produces it. The first is situated at the tri-border region of the Colombian Amazon on the shores between Brazil and Peru that has, in recent years, seen a boom of tourism development and visitors. This boom has largely operated on the neoliberal designs of movement and contemporary development that promote access to tourable places as an enactment of freedom. Against this backdrop, a story circulating in early 2011 highlighted the decision by members of Nazaret, an indigenous community along the river, to refuse tourists and tour companies entry. Taking up this small and messy act, I interrogate around this refusal to examine how touristic mobility is being made (im)possible in this small corner of the Amazon. The second site is a tour designed by the indigenous Hñähñu community of El Alberto, Mexico, that takes participants on a simulated border-crossing to experience, as so many of these community members have, what it is like to cross the U.S.-Mexico border as an undocumented migrant. Impressive, provocative, complex, and controversial, this tour throws into question both how mobilities are addressed within touristic sites and the creative potential of those who are toured to make use of its practices in ways that further other aims. Using concepts of work, landscapes, circulation, and friction, I explore both production and refusal to elaborate on the transnational politics of tourism as neither a panacea nor as an afterthought, but as a sticky, messy, and significant part of global political life. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation interrogates the representation of Africa as rising by examining the conditions that have led to the shift from an Afro pessimistic discourse to a more propulsive one. To do so, it examines how “Africa Rising” functions as a discourse articulated through transnational news networks, global financial, development, business organizations and Afrocentric digital platforms. It analyzes the recurring tropes, symbols and language used to signify the notion of “rising”, how various social actors are involved in the articulation of this discourse, the countries on the continent labelled as “rising”, which ones are not and why? It examines the conditions that have enabled the emergence of this discourse, and how they relate to other discourses. It examines the role of Afropolitans on the continent and the diaspora in the production and dissemination of this discourse through emerging Afrocentric digital platforms. Finally, it analyzes the tensions, contradictions and absences within this discourse and its implications for African countries. To address these questions, the rising discourse is theoretically contextualized within neoliberal globalization and development discourses, South-South relations, Postcolonial, journalism, digital media, and identity frameworks, to reveal the nuanced way that it articulates various ideological assumptions and the intersectional dimensions of race, gender and class in the production of the continent. Methodologically, this project applies a multi-sited critical discourse analysis, to a variety of news media texts from Anglo-American media, Afrocentric digital platforms and institutional reports. It also examines how various institutions deploy the notion of “Africa Rising.” Finally, this study includes interviews with content producers of Afrocentric digital platforms, to understand if and how they engage and situate their work within the “Africa Rising” discourse. This dissertation reveals that the Africa Rising discourse contradicts itself as it homogenizes the continent whilst pushing a neoliberal agenda that excludes countries within the continent that fail to adopt this agenda. It also reveals the tensions of neoliberalism on the continent, as countries with various profiles and histories struggle to adopt these policies. It reveals how various global social actors continue to influence affairs within the continent. Finally, it reveals the role that Afrocentric digital platforms are influencing perceptions about the African continent and how these platforms are intertwined with the neoliberal agenda. / Media & Communication

This dissertation explores understandings of food and hunger in the United States within the sociocultural context of neoliberalism. Using fieldwork conducting in Norristown, Pennsylvania, I critically explore understandings of the diet and link these understandings to the large-scale economic restructuring that has played out since 1980. To provide a backdrop for this analysis, I first detail the history of Norristown and situate the space in present times and a deindustrialized urban center where low-income residents face limited access to affordable healthy foods. Previous to the election of Ronald Reagan, a relatively robust social safety net was in place to assist people living in these situations, but this safety net has shrunk during the era of neoliberalism. Neoliberal policy shifts in food assistance programs serve as a launching point for my analysis of understandings of food. I first consider the remnants of the food assistance bureaucracy and how food programs play out from federal to local levels. I then shift my attention to the increased emphasis on nutrition education programs as a strategy to alleviate the poor dietary status of many who live on fixed incomes. Here, I am concerned with how these programs shift the responsibility for the diet onto the individuals themselves while doing little to ensure proper access to healthy foods. Ideas of individual responsibility also play out among the many volunteers involved in private food charities, and in the food advertisements that can be seen all over the urban space of Norristown. Taken together a complex picture of the diet emerges that is very much reflective of neoliberal ideology. / Anthropology

This dissertation traces the cultural and intellectual history of Nicaragua from the heyday of modernization as ideology and practice in the 1960s, when U.S. planners and politicians identified Nicaragua as a test case for the Alliance for Progress, to the triumph of neoliberalism in the 1990s. The modernization paradigm, implemented through collusion between authoritarian dictatorship and the U.S. development apparatus, began to fragment following the earthquake that destroyed Managua in 1972. The ideas that constituted this paradigm were repurposed by actors in Nicaragua and used to challenge the dominant power of the U.S. government, and also to structure political competition within Nicaragua. Using interviews, new archival material, memoirs, novels, plays, and newspapers in the United States and Nicaragua, I trace the way political actors used ideas about development to make and unmake alliances within Nicaragua, bringing about first the Sandinista Revolution, then the Contra War, and finally the neoliberal government that took power in 1990. I argue that because of both a changing international intellectual climate and resistance on the part of the people of Nicaragua, new ideas about development emphasizing human rights, pluralism, entrepreneurialism, indigenous rights, and sustainable development came to supplant modernization theory. The piecemeal changes in development thinking after modernization corresponded not to a single catastrophic shift, but rather obeyed a catastrophic logic of democratic empire, in which U.S. and Nicaraguan politics were characterized by a dialogue about ideas of development but U.S. power remained the final determining factor. Though the new ideas did not replace modernization's former unifying power, they nonetheless constitute the contemporary paradigm of neoliberalism. / History

Since the 1970s, Colombia’s indigenous communities have been the beneficiaries of state-sanctioned cultural and territorial rights. They have also been extensively impacted by the drug trade in their territories. This dissertation examines how drug crop cultivation in indigenous territories has impacted the struggle for indigenous rights in Colombia. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out primarily with the Nasa indigenous community in the southwestern department of Cauca, Colombia. I argue that the drug trade has contributed to the accelerated transition of indigenous agricultural communities from a primarily subsistence-based economy to a cash-based economy that is dependent on the circulation of global commodities. I also argue that drug control policies have contributed to neoliberal multiculturalism in that they have helped to undermine the political autonomy of indigenous communities. Finally, state-regulated institutions such as schools and child welfare circulate moral narratives that emphasize family structure as a cause for social problems rather than political and historical conditions. I conclude with an assessment of how identity may be used for indigenous communities who continue to struggle for cultural and territorial rights in Colombia’s post-conflict era. / Anthropology

The purpose of this thesis was to uncover the tools of manipulation used within political discourses by governments in their attempt to maintain power in society. It specifically asked, How do Canadian federal governments manipulate security, risk, and threat discourses alongside their presentation and understanding of Canadian identity in throne speeches to justify the direction they intend to take the country in with their mandate? This thesis used Critical Discourse Analysis methods to analyze fourteen federal majority government speeches from the throne during the rise and fall of social welfare in Canada. Findings highlight that governments have relatively consistently used the combination of security, risk, and threat discourses between 1935 and 2015. Canadian identity has also been shown to be malleable to government priorities, being connected to notions of collectivism during the rise of social welfare and individualization and productivity during the implementation of neoliberal principles. The introduction of the promise of job creation within the speeches was found to correlate with the introduction of neoliberal principles in Canada. These findings highlight the importance of critical understanding of dominant discourses in society in order to overcome the power they can impose over non-dominant groups. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Following the literary criticism of Zadie Smith’s NW by critics such as Lynn Wells and Wendy Knepper, this thesis seeks to engage with the social scripts and spatial dynamics of Smith’s fourth novel. I argue that NW is concerned with the neoliberalization of both real and virtual spaces, emphasizing the consequent effects of neoliberalism on agency and subjectivity and highlighting the neoliberal advancement of hyperindividualism and securitization over social responsibility and solidarity. Much detail is given to NW’s exploration of race, class and social mobility at the tail-end of the global financial crisis of 2007-08. NW’s fragmented four-part narrative channels a perspectival approach to space and place by delineating its structure through the four separate subjectivities of the main characters. I contextualize my thesis alongside Paul Gilroy’s cultural criticism of contemporary British multiculturalism, conviviality and melancholia, while also anchoring NW’s spatial concerns to Jeff Malpas’s spatial philosophy and Emily Cuming’s explication of British council estates in various forms of contemporary literature. As well, this thesis incorporates the philosophical frameworks of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a guide for recognizing some of NW’s interest in the subjective experience of people and spaces, and to reorient the act of ‘seeing’ as a radical form of agency and mediation in itself. Ultimately, this phenomenological and epistemological approach to interpreting Smith’s fiction creates the potential for meaning to be co-constructed between author and reader, forming a new social vision for the novel as artform. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The purpose of this study is to explore care in Ontario, Canada from the perspective of patients. I took on the roles of both a patient and a researcher, exploring the current state of care as a patient who has navigated the health system and as a researcher with background in disability studies and social geography. I use feminist auto/ethnographic methods, including observation and fieldnotes, journaling, memory, and notes in my patient records as data. I also conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven individuals who underwent hip or knee replacement surgery and two family members who provided informal care to individuals post-operatively. I have organized data using three storylines: being patient, negotiating care, and mending fault lines. There are two layers of my analysis: our individual encounters with carers alongside our changing embodiment and the broader care relations of the system, increasingly influenced by neoliberalism. Care is increasingly informalized and commodified as austerity measures cut public financing for care and services are de-listed. Neoliberalism produces poor and precarious working conditions for nurses and personal support workers and this translates into insufficient care for patients and support for families. With care increasingly being shifted to the home and community, individuals and families are taking on more responsibility in terms of caring for family members. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this study I explore care in Ontario, Canada both as a patient and as a researcher with background in disability studies and social geography. I observed care and recorded fieldnotes as a patient researcher over thirty-two months and interviewed a total of nine people who underwent hip or knee replacement surgery about their experiences of care pre and post-operatively. Two daughters of participants also took part in interviews. I explore our individual stories of care and how the broader health system helps to shape our encounters with health care workers. Government reductions in funding for care and the de-listing of services translates into poor working conditions for health care workers and insufficient care for patients. The responsibility for care is increasingly being shifted from the state to individuals. My research reveals how patients manage within this fragmented system made up of formal, informal, and private care arrangements.

This study is a comprehensive investigation into the potential for gentrification in Norra Sorgenfri, a former industrial district in Malmö, Sweden. It takes a multifaceted approach that includes inhabitants' perceptions, going beyond the scope of traditional studies that focus on residential areas and track displacement through statistics. Our research incorporates a broader range of factors, such as changes in community socio-economic levels, to provide a comprehensive analysis suitable for understanding the complex nature of gentrification. Malmö, rebranded in the 21st century as a Knowledge City, has faced significant housing shortages, leading to new urban developments driven by neoliberal policies emphasizing market-driven approaches and privatization. Norra Sorgenfri, located in southeastern central Malmö, transitioned from an industrial zone to temporary housing for European immigrants in the early 21st century. This history provides a unique context for studying gentrification, marked by industrial decline, immigrants temporary housing, and urban renewal. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative questionnaires with inhabitants, an interview with an MKB housing company officer, a review of relevant literature, and mapping methods to illustrate socio-economic changes over a decade. The data analysis reveals two parallel findings: slight indications of gentrification potential based on residents' socio-economic levels from questionnaires, contrasted by statistics and MKB responses showing no gentrification potential. However, the lack of updated socio-economic statistics limits the study, as available data predates the occupation of new residential buildings, potentially skewing the current socio-economic snapshot. Despite these limitations, our study underscores the complexity of gentrification and the necessity of nuanced approaches to its investigation. Results show no specific potential for gentrification in this neighborhood. It aims to upgrade the current understanding of gentrification while emphasizing the necessity for ongoing observation and further research, which is crucial to understanding the long-term impacts of urban redevelopment on the social, economic, and cultural fabric of neighborhoods like Norra Sorgenfri and to ensure our findings remain relevant and accurate.