This research draws upon interdisciplinary studies of childhood and young people's agency to present an ethnographic account of one group of young people in Nepal's lived experience of 'the global schooling project', a term used to describe the series of policy initiatives and the complex landscape of actors and institutions furthering the aim of getting every child, everywhere into school. Based on five months of fieldwork in which I intimately embedded myself in the everyday lives and social, emotional worlds of a group of young people living on Mansawar Street in Pokhara, I show how the global schooling project and its values impact upon their childhoods and everyday choices, shaping their aspirations, daily routines and self-conceptions, and those of their families and communities. I bring attention to how these flattening policy initiatives can have the effect of marginalising many of these young people's unique talents, interest and competencies, not accounting for the diversity of their learning and their agencies in moving through and making sense of their everyday material and immaterial worlds. I emphasise how schooling can act as an ambiguous resource for these young people, not only providing opportunity, knowledge and pathways towards employment, but also drawing them into systems of inequality and exploitation, both inside and outside of school. This research, then, provides an account of the lived experience of schooling on Mansawar Street and the profound ways in which schooling shapes local economies and ecologies, transforming family and community relationships and young people's childhoods.

The study explores the implications of new forms of zoning in India. In particular, emerging development projects in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region serve as cases and instances of broader rezoning processes throughout the region. One is the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, a slum redevelopment project in central Mumbai on Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia; the other is the Mumbai Special Economic Zone, a private economic enclave spanning an area of 10,000 hectares (100 sq km) on agricultural land in the northern Raigad district of Maharashtra. Despite being unique and spatially-circumscribed projects, I argue that together they constitute a critical departure from historic urban regulatory norms and planning imperatives in Mumbai. The projects involve large-scale urban rezoning processes that are led by the privatization and deregulation of the land supply, the production of ?spatial surplus," and the transformation of social classes. This argument is derived from exploratory research in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region that involved open-ended interviews and analyses of urban and regional policies. Although these projects and processes are only emerging, the evidence suggests that these new forms of zoning will exacerbate spatial inequality and uneven development across the region.

This thesis argues that consumer financial literacy is not a solution but a tool that mystifies and supports the very problems it could help solve: exploitation, economic crises, the spread of neoliberalism, alienation and the further disempowerment of the citizen. The characterization and implementation of financial literacy programs influence the resources and subjectivities that we use to act, see, reflect, create the world and create ourselves, resources and subjectivities that should support our free actions and enable us to do more than conform to the dictates of capital and be more than neoliberal entrepreneurial consumers. In the place of consumer financial literacy, we need a critical financial literacy that supports active citizens. The citizen is not the alienated investor or consumer who can only choose what the market provides; instead, he or she can assist in altering or abolishing the market to create a new economic system that offers better choices. A critical financial literacy would encourage citizens to reflect on and transform the social relations of production in order to create a world, free from capital’s dictates, in which individuals are as free from necessity as possible and better able to develop their human capacities to the fullest.

This thesis argues that consumer financial literacy is not a solution but a tool that mystifies and supports the very problems it could help solve: exploitation, economic crises, the spread of neoliberalism, alienation and the further disempowerment of the citizen. The characterization and implementation of financial literacy programs influence the resources and subjectivities that we use to act, see, reflect, create the world and create ourselves, resources and subjectivities that should support our free actions and enable us to do more than conform to the dictates of capital and be more than neoliberal entrepreneurial consumers. In the place of consumer financial literacy, we need a critical financial literacy that supports active citizens. The citizen is not the alienated investor or consumer who can only choose what the market provides; instead, he or she can assist in altering or abolishing the market to create a new economic system that offers better choices. A critical financial literacy would encourage citizens to reflect on and transform the social relations of production in order to create a world, free from capital’s dictates, in which individuals are as free from necessity as possible and better able to develop their human capacities to the fullest.

The space on which the urban farm is produced has a history of its own that can be explored for evidence of neoliberal shaping and retooling. This thesis explores how the city and the farm are understood through the complex articulations of farmers and through the account of the specific historical and geographical context of the farm. The urban farm is a uniquely situated land use that can provide the spaces for contestation to the neoliberalization of the city and the United States food system. Through qualitative analysis, including a case study, interviews with farmers, participant observation, and archival data collection, this research examines the city and the farm from the perspective of the farmer to understand the degree to which these contestations are resisting neoliberalism. Furthermore, it suggests that scholars of neoliberalism and urban farming should more fully consider the hybridized nature in which urban farmers understand their work.

Abstract Employing the theories of new liberalism as the analytic structure, this research paper takes the trend and changes of foreign aid during the post-cold-war period as a reference for the foreign aid policy of Taiwan. Since the government initiated Southward Policy in 1994, and signed many related investment and trade protection agreements with Indonesia, there are positive effects to the economic and trading exchange and investments between Taiwan and Indonesia. Although Indonesia has been taking the standpoint of ¡§Politically Inclining to China, Economically Inclining to Taipei,¡¨ ever since Taiwan provided aid to Indonesia, the respects to the institutions of Taiwan functioning in Indonesia have been obviously promoted. In order to meet the investments needs of Taiwanese businessmen and attract more Taiwanese businessmen to invest in the nation, Indonesia opens the import of the Chinese books and allows the building of schools exclusively for the children of Taiwanese businessmen. In future the practical diplomacy policy of Taiwan towards Indonesia should implement mutual-beneficial and mutual-trust aiding measures. The industries being beneficial to both parties should be selected. There should be policies to give guidelines to the abundant economic resources in the private sectors of Taiwan. The government should assist Indonesia to establish excellent production environment for small business so as to build up multiple cooperation channels between Taiwan and Indonesia. Besides, Taiwan government should also combine with the power of private sectors and organizations, giving aid and cooperation in a way of ¡§downward development from the top,¡¨ and strengthening the expansion of relationship with the Indonesian people and community. Once the foundation is established, spots must be gradually expanded to planes, and the political diplomatic relationship between Taiwan and Indonesia must be enhanced.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-251).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 334-354).

Uppsatsen undersöker byggnationen av Sågenområdet i Knivsta med syftet att kritiskt analysera den fysiska planeringen utifrån ett demokrati- och maktperspektiv. Utifrån intervjuer samt genom textanalys av media och offentliga dokument undersöker uppsatsen den kritiska diskursen som riktats mot planeringen, de diskurser kring hållbar utveckling som präglat planeringen samt i vilken utsträckning planeringen har påverkats av neoliberalism. Neoliberalism används som uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk och som analytiskt verktyg för att förklara prioriteringar och beslut som fattats i planeringsprocessen. Undersökningen finner att den typ av hållbar utveckling som förespråkas av kommunen präglas av neoliberalism samt att de kritiska diskurserna inte getts inflytande i planeringen i stor utsträckning. Att kritiken inte getts inflytande i planeringen kan till viss del förklaras utifrån neoliberala tendenser, till exempel att beslut fattats genom stängda förhandlingar mellan kommun och privata aktörer och att politiskt laddade begrepp som hållbar utveckling och exploatering avpolitiserats. En lösning som föreslås är en utveckling av planeringens demokratiska aspekter där medborgardialog används som ett verktyg för att fånga upp och beakta synpunkter och kunskap från olika grupper i samhället.

This dissertation refutes the notion that contemporary girls are uninterested in feminism by exploring how teenage girls are engaging in feminist activism as bloggers. Using a feminist cultural studies approach I analyze how girl bloggers produce feminist identities and practices that challenge hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal cultural politics. I employ feminist ethnographic methods, including a series of in-depth interviews with U.S. -based girl feminist bloggers and an online collaborative focus group, as well as a discursive and ideological textual analysis of girl-produced feminist blogs. Using these methods, I privilege girls' voices while proposing a model for conducting feminist ethnography online. In doing so, I demonstrate how girls' feminist blogging functions as an activist practice through networked counterpublics, intervening in mainstream and sometimes even commercial public space. I position this activism within a lengthy tradition of American feminism, analyzing how my participants remain in conversation with feminist history while simultaneously responding to their unique cultural climate. Finally, I argue that we must recognize the political importance of girls' feminist blogging by theorizing it as an emergent citizenship practice that makes feminism an accessible discourse to contemporary teenage girls. / text