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.

Neoliberalism, as the influence of economic considerations within the political process, has impacted environmentalism on a variety of levels. Without regulation, the neoliberal capitalist drive to maximize production, consumption, and profits is antagonistic to environmental sustainability. The influences that corporations and economic elites have within modern democracies holds substantial implications for the rigor and enforcement of environmental policies. Particular to the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency offers numerous illustrations of neoliberal influence within its history and policy practices. These influences inevitably impact the Agency's ability to accomplish the goals of their mission and purpose statements. As seen through regulations such as the Clean Water Act, neoliberal pressure has altered the priorities of government on a federal level to prioritize economic well-being over that of other social goods, such as environmental protection. The Clean Water Act prioritizes economic profitability over environmental protection through cap and trade policies, such as NPDES permits, and legitimizes pollution-causing behavior through TMDLs. Further, the act was weakened by neoliberal forces with the non-point source exemption created for the sake of avoiding economic harm to large industries and its shortcomings are visible within many of the nation's waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay. Through a case study, this project demonstrates how the neoliberal influences impacting the Environmental Protection Agency has resonated in its policies, like in the abilities of the Clean Water Act to sufficiently clean-up the Chesapeake Bay within its proposed timeline. / Master of Arts

This thesis will address the impacts of Chilean neoliberal education reforms on students access to primary and secondary education. Across three body chapters, I will conduct a historical, policy, and comparative analysis, as well as case study on the Mapuche population within Chile, to exemplify neoliberal reforms' impact on students across differing socioeconomic statuses. Ranging from the 18th century to 2017, this thesis will provide a comprehensive image of how Chile's national education system has transformed from Catholic, missionary schools with majority state influence during heightened colonial practices to increasingly decentralized and marketized institutions during the 1980s. Through a series of analyses, I hypothesize neoliberal education reform has negatively impacted vulnerable students' access to education through exacerbating discriminatory, financial elements at the hands of the rise of privatized education. To support this, I will initially analyze neoliberal dictator Augusto Pinochet's education policies and reforms starting in 1980. To fully understand these lingering impacts, I also analyze 2005 socialist president Michelle Bachelet's education reforms as a method to further understand which 1980 neoliberal education policies were preserved during the restoration of democracy in Chile during the 1990s and early 2000s. The thesis closes with a final case study of the Mapuche population, the largest indigenous population in Chile. With the use of the methodological frameworks deployed in chapter two and chapter three, I attempt to expose the disproportionate impacts of neoliberal education policies on the Mapuche even as modern education and government administrations attempt to transform the education system away from oppressive and discriminatory policies implemented during the 1980s. Riddled throughout the entire thesis are discussions of social movements advocating for greater education equity, amplifying the call for increased attention on justice for students, teachers, and families. / Master of Arts / This thesis will address the impacts of Chilean neoliberal education reforms on students' access to primary and secondary education. Chile is widely known as the "neoliberal experiment" state, making it a prime region to study how neoliberal reforms have impacted the development of the country. I will argue the creation and maintenance of neoliberal education policies have negatively impacted students' access to education, especially focusing on disproportion impacts on students of differing socioeconomic statuses and demographics. The thesis is split into three main chapters, which cover from the 18th century to around 2017. Across these chapters, I will analyze the beginnings of the education system in Chile, studying the main factors that ultimately shaped it into its current system. The second chapter will take on a narrower focus and will examine the main similarities and differences between Augusto Pinochet's 1980s neoliberal dictatorship and early 2000s socialist president Michelle Bachelet's education policies and restructurings. To demonstrate how impactful neoliberal education reforms, the thesis will close with a case study of the Mapuche in Chile. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous population in Chile, and the case study of them aims to show the uneven effects of neoliberal policy creation and preservation within Mapuche education structures. Overall, I work to shed light on the negative elements in education and academic environments, which are drawn out or amplified through neoliberal restructurings.

Neoliberalism once started as an economic theory but overtime has developed into an arm of state social control. This thesis asks if neoliberal economic policies have affected civil liberties in the United States and sets out to understand this relationship in several ways. Firstly, by investigating the shift from Keynesianism to market fundamentalism. Secondly, by evaluating the growth in the prison industrial complex. Third, by asking questions of growing social insecurity from an increasingly privatized social safety net. This thesis explored four hypotheses, each one finding support. The overall argument is that the economic sphere and the free market has obstructed the social sphere. Finally, the thesis concludes with a brief discussion of toxic individualism as it relates to socialization after a long period of extreme market privatization. / Master of Arts / Ever since the 1980s, the United States has experienced an increase in incarceration rates, and simultaneously a more substantial shift in economic practices, from Keynesianism to what became colloquially known as "trickle down economics." This thesis argues that the economic change, defined in this work as neoliberalism, subsequently affected how welfare and social services manage social insecurity in the United States, including the criminal justice system. This paper will discuss the tenets of neoliberalism and how these core tenets, i.e. privatization, affected the welfare state and the prison industrial complex.

This study explores the problems facing the African continent in general and Gambia in particular. Specifically, it examines The Gambia\'s dependence on foreign aid, as a result of the Bretton Woods Institutions and the neoliberalization of Africa, and it juxtaposes the aforementioned with microfinance, as an alternative method for fighting poverty. Empirically, this work examines the potential effectiveness of Reliance Financial Services in Gambia\'s microfinance institution who are engaged in this burgeoning enterprise and that of the VISACAS, a grassroots microfinance organization in The Gambia. / Master of Public and International Affairs

In 1991, India adopted neoliberalism, a system of political economic practices that promotes private property and free trade, as its political and economic system to promote development in their country. India's neoliberal reform has created issues surrounding human development, resource accumulation, and power struggles. Eleven years later, in 2002, Bt cotton was introduced to the Indian agricultural sector. This research examines how the genetically modified organism Bt cotton is being used to commodify nature in the context of agriculture under neoliberalism. The research focuses on the dispossession of the rural farmers through the commodification of agriculture using Bt cotton. Dispossession of the rural farmers happen through the implications that arise from the commodification of nature. Through Marxist theory of primitive accumulation, this research analyzes accumulation by dispossession and how it neglects the working class and its struggle in rural India. Through this examination, the research will argue alternatives to the dispossession of the working class and the commodification of nature through Bt cotton. Dispossession, in this research, is examined both through working class, but also through the dispossession of biodiversity. Through the loss of biodiversity, the rural farmers are becoming dispossessed from a more sustainable environment. Along with these goals, the research will also incorporate themes of food security through changing landscape of agriculture due to the incorporation of Bt cotton. This research argues the contradictions that are presented through the commodification of agriculture under neoliberalism and provide a contribution to social justice literature, and our understanding of the relationship between technology and the commodification of nature.

EU is today one of the largest aid donors in the world and the debate regarding their intentions is well nuanced. This study’s main focus lies in examining the motives within the action plan between the EU and Morocco, and was conducted with the intention to contribute to the debate of EU’s external actions. By using key-terms from neoliberalism and neoliberalism and applying it on the actions by using a motive-analysis, they can be defined and tied to one of the theories state, as well as represent the generalized idea of the theories external action. The results of the study shows that EU, in cooperation with Morocco, though the ENP acts with the means of absolute gain.

The present thesis is an exploration of normalization processes and the problem of appropriation in labor conflict. More specifically, it analyses the way contemporary labor conflicts in nursing relate to, and thereby help to illuminate, changes in modes of gender normalization under neoliberalism, and how nurse labor conflict thereby sheds light on wider patterns of labor strife. Analysis shows how a “virtue script” bound up with long-lasting patterns of gender normalization in nursing becomes tangled with forms of abstract labor related to “new public management” reform. Although the restructuring of work threatens public professionals’ autonomy, at the same time, it provides opportunities for resistance through collective action. What is more, this restructuring process facilitates the appropriation by nurses and, by implication, other public workers, of the discourses and ideals that belonged to the ethos of the Keynesian welfare state. However, this is a contradictory process, since the discourses and ideals thus appropriated inhere in modes of labor exploitation and normalization. Analysis indicates that although appropriation risks to reinforce gendered and exploitative ideas about work, the strategy can be a lever of collective mobilization, and one of its possible outcomes is the radical transformation of the entities it takes possession of. This interview study is mainly based on four journal articles, attending to different aspects of an act of collective resignation taken by registered nurses at a Swedish hospital ward. This is an emerging form of collective action and the thesis provides one of the first analyses of this new grassroots and workplace-based phenomenon, which may be considered its particular empirical contribution. On the other hand, the chapters of the cover essay unfold a sustained argument on normalization and appropriation, thereby elaborating theoretical themes broached in the articles. The focal point of this discussion is a certain concept of form, deployed in Marxist and feminist theory, a concept pointing to the identity of thought-forms and practically enacted forms. Further, these forms migrate: they are evoked in practices wherein “the mind is not active as sentient” (Hegel), later to be projected by the mind onto different entities. The results of the discussion thus question common approaches to normalization. In particular, it is untenable to oppose a tacit and internal mode of control where individuals are induced to comply by attaching to identifications (by becoming/being made into subjects) to an overt and external mode reliant on sheer coercion. This matter–form dichotomy should be dissolved, and modes of coercion should be understood to leave subjective imprints—not at the level of identity but at the level of thought’s infrastructure, that is, form. / Föreliggande avhandling utforskar normaliseringsprocesser och problem rörande appropriering i samband med arbetskonflikter. Avhandlingen analyserar hur sam-tida arbetskonflikter i sjuksköterskeprofessionen relaterar till och sålunda belyser förändrad genusnormalisering i en nyliberal tid, samt hur dessa konflikter belyser övergripande konfliktmönster i arbetslivet. Analysen påvisar hur en ”dygdighets-norm” kopplad till långlivade modaliteter av genusnormalisering sammanvävs med en form av abstrakt arbete relaterad till sentida NPM-reformer. Men medan denna omstruktureringsprocess urholkar den autonomi som professioner i offentlig sektor länge innehaft medför den också möjligheter till kollektiva motståndshandlingar. Vidare möjliggör denna nyliberala omstrukturering sjuksköterskors—liksom andra offentliga professioners—appropriering av diskurser och ideal som var centrala i den tidigare, keynesianska, välfärdsstaten; men detta är en motsägelsefull process då dessa diskurser och ideal är sprungna ur, och präglade av, historier av utsugning och normalisering. Analysen visar att medan appropriering visserligen riskerar att reproducera former av normalisering underlättar denna strategi mobilisering och kan i förlängningen omvandla övertagna diskurser och ideal. Denna intervjustudie är huvudsakligen baserad på fyra artiklar: de analyserar olika aspekter av en kollektiv uppsägningsaktion bland sjuksköterskor vid en sjukhus-avdelning. Detta är en framväxande typ av aktion i Sverige och avhandlingen är en av de första studierna av denna gräsrots- och arbetsplatsbaserade kampform, vilket kan ses som dess empiriska forskningsbidrag. I kappan förs, å andra sidan, en kon-tinuerlig teoretisk diskussion kring normalisering och appropriering som utvecklar teman som lyfts i de enskilda artiklarna. Diskussionen kretsar kring ett visst form-begrepp, som härrör ur marxistisk och feministisk teori och som påvisar en identitet mellan tankeform och praktiskt artikulerad form. Dessa former migrerar; de uttrycks omedvetet i praktiker där individens fokus är annorstädes och projiceras sedan på andra praktiker. I diskussionen ifrågasätts sålunda vedertagna förståelser av norma-lisering: det är teoretiskt ofruktbart att ställa omedvetna, interna, former av kontroll där lydnad eller konformitet uppnås via internaliseringen av påbjudna identiteter mot medvetna, externa, eller tvingande, former av kontroll. En häri latent dikotomi om materia respektive form bör upplösas i syfte att synliggöra hur ett slags kontroll över arbete lämnar subjektiverande avtryck, inte genom att påbjuda identifikationer utan genom att forma vad som kan beskrivas som tänkandets minsta beståndsdelar. / <p>Vid tidpunkten för disputationen var följande delarbeten opublicerade: delarbete 2 och 4 inskickat.</p><p>At the time of the doctoral defence the following papers were unpublished: paper 2 and 4 submitted.</p>

This dissertation examines the socio-cultural underpinnings of neoliberal educational reforms vis-à-vis the national educational settings in Russia. By drawing upon NVivo-aided Discourse and Frame analysis as a methodological path, this study critically examines a corpus of state laws on education and official government statements from 1991 to 2012 in contrast to contemporary societal discourse on education, where novel and indigenous educational meanings have been contested and re-negotiated. This thesis shows how the conceptual mélange of global neoliberal ideas has been interpreted, institutionalised and resisted in Russia by exploring the semantics of key neoliberal reform ideas - ‘quality assurance,’ ‘educational standards,’ and ‘commercial educational service’ - at the micro-level of policy texts, political debates and public discussions. This thesis shows that having heralded an educational revolution, the official reform narrative rhetorically endorsed neoliberal orthodoxy, while continuing in practice to discursively draw on pedagogical and administrative frameworks which it previously renounced as outdated. In communicating the spirit of radical neoliberal modernisation, the Russian government rhetoric has collectively embraced a number of contradictory concepts, slogans and directives that have never been harmonised in a unified reformatory framework. The study also argues that the public interpretation of neoliberal concepts has been radically different from the intended conceptualisations offered by the global international stakeholders and conveyed by the Russian educational elite. It shows how, when interpreted through the lens of local pedagogical values, the semantics of global modernisation templates, such as ‘educational quality’ and ‘educational standardisation,’ took on unexpected, culturally-specific, meanings. It also finds that the newly introduced principles of entrepreneurship, self-interest, consumer choice, self-responsibility and competition, which underlie the neoliberal economic reform, remained in opposition to fundamental principles of Russian culture, such as communalism, egalitarianism, state paternalism and anti-monetarism. By unpacking opposing ideological and pedagogical frames, this thesis explains the cultural aspects of the widespread public resistance to post-1991 education reform in Russia. This dissertation seeks to enhance the understanding of the policy formulation process and interpretation of global neoliberal ideas from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. By advancing a culturalist approach to policy analysis, the present study addresses an overlooked piece of the long-standing puzzle of perceived post-Soviet educational crisis, supplementing the broader scholarly discussion on the successes and failures of neoliberal reforms in the post-Soviet space.