This paper examines a series of emerging utopian discourses that call for the creation of autonomous libertarian enclaves on land ceded by or claimed against existing states. These discourses have emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and can be seen as a response to the crisis on the part of freemarket advocates who critique previous waves of neoliberal reform for failing to radically transform the existing structures of the state. Enclave libertarianism seeks to overcome neoliberal capitalism's contradictory relationship to the liberal democratic state by rethinking the state as a "private government service provider" and rethinking citizens as mobile consumers of government services. Citizens are thus called to "vote with their feet" by opting-in to the jurisdiction that best fits their needs and beliefs. The paper argues that these utopian imaginaries are key to understanding specific new manifestations of post-crisis neoliberalism, and calls for more research into the diversity of discourses and imaginaries that circulate through networks of neoliberal actors beyond specific policy initiatives.

The Swedish housing sector has changed from being part of the welfare state into being market-driven. During the last century political decisions has enabled this change together with changes regarding the actors involved in the building industry. The role of the architect has weakened and users are not involved in the process of designing housing at all. I propose an alternative estate agency called Bricolage where the users are involved in the design process of their homes from start to finish. Bricolage would not find you the home of your dreams but instead build it together with you. The process started with interviews with the users where functions, materials, style, common spaces, light and atmosphere were discussed. The interview resulted in a written document and a storyboard that worked as a stepping stone to build the first model of the apartment. After that a second interview was held with each family to discuss the models and storyboards. Together with the family small changes were made in the model. When the separate models were finished I assembled them, making an apartment block of eight apartments. I presented the apartment block model at an event receiving very positive feedback from the user group with many of them eager to move in. Designing housing with the architect in a driving role and with a high user involvement the future design of housing can be of much higher architectural quality. The large scale industry of housing is difficult to change but small architect originated practices such as Bricolage can be a good way to take charge over the design process. A practice like Bricolage can have a close contact with the users, conduct personal interviews and really get to the core of what a family needs and want from their home. The transparent design process ensures the user that they pay for what they requested. For the architectural profession it can be a way to strengthen our role in the housing sector.

Current American education is comprised of and influenced by a myriad of complex legislative, technological, and cultural representations of consumption, however this historic-educational study specifically examines how the Reagan administration discursively initiated the consumerizing educational framework. While existing research studies the neoliberal implications on education, this study addresses the neoliberal reforms under President Reagan within the discursive paradigm of its consumerizing impact. By using Critical Discourse Analysis on a selection of Presidential proclamations, speeches, and national educational reports, this study examines and elucidates how the Reagan administration created the consumerizing framework for American education. The Reagan administration distinguished American education from its predecessors as prioritizing the consuming potential of students, while simultaneously situating education as a commodity. The Reagan administration discursively positioned education as a commodity by implementing the free market values of competition and choice. Through Reagan’s encouragement of corporate involvement and rewarding the tenacity of business initiatives in education, American education transitioned from a democratic ideal to a market-oriented institution. This was specifically accomplished through positioning Reagan’s predecessors as misguided and situating Reagan as a rescuer, while legitimating the reforms as adhering to the American spirit. Similarly, business was presented as embodying the essence of the American spirit and being a rejuvenating force. Choice and competition were recontextualized from their economic purpose and recommended as a new form of educational governance. By understanding the results through the lens of some Frankfurt School thinkers and expanding on Bowles and Gintis’ educational theory, this study argues that Reagan’s reforms embodied a physical consumerizing aspect and an interactional consumerizing facet as necessary for the economy of post-industrial America.

This thesis is an organisational ethnography that seeks to make an original contribution to anthropological knowledge through an iterative interrogation of neoliberalism and personhood.Endeavour (a pseudonym) is a gap year organisation based in the UK that runs trips abroad to Central America, India and Borneo for young people. A gap year is any period of between three months to two years outside formal education or employment, but often refers to a year-off preceding university. Endeavour is a registered charity committed to what it describes as “personal development”. It attempts this by organising young people into small groups to participate in adventurous challenges and work on charitable projects in community development and environmental conservation.Using multi-sited ethnography, the thesis moves from the marketing, fundraising and recruitment in Endeavour’s Head Office to the implementation and management of expeditions in Central America. The thesis explores the daily workings, processes and practices of Endeavour and how these are influenced by and connected to the current political-economic climate in the UK as it works to produce a particular type of gap year experience and through this a particular kind of person.In exploring the process by which neoliberal persons are shaped at a gap year organisation, the thesis considers different aspects of the organisation and how it interacts with and is shaped by its context. It argues that the demands of neoliberalism have shaped the organisational structure of Endeavour and its employees. The trips also prepare young people to cope with the conditions in a neoliberal labour market. The thesis investigates Endeavour’s relationship to the state and argues non-governmental bodies are increasingly taking on state-like roles. Equally, as Endeavour has had to professionalise and become “business-like” to compete in the gap year market, it must patrol its charitable ethos to ensure the organisation carries the moral weight that attracts its patrons. The thesis also considers the techniques used during the trips abroad to discipline and organise young people as well as how these encourage friendships and social harmony in line with Endeavour’s charitable goals. It explores the personal development techniques that form the basis of Endeavour’s model of personhood and how these are used to develop individuals who are good at making transitory social relations and can thrive in neoliberal circumstances.

Library instruction continues to evolve. Regardless of the myriad and conflicting opinions academic librarians have about the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy, the debates and the document itself have engendered greater discourse surrounding how and why librarians teach. The Framework provides an additional push toward designing instruction with big ideas rather than a skills-based curriculum. However, we still must contend with constraints imposed upon us by higher education taking on business models and enforcing a skills agenda. To enact the pedagogy of the Framework in contrast to changes in higher education presents a challenge. We should consider ways in which the Framework can help us push back against these neoliberal agendas in our pedagogy and reinvent our roles as librarian educators.

Inom samhällsplanering och samhällsstyrning sker det ständigt förändringar. Privata aktörers medverkan har blivit en viktig faktor för planering och det diskuteras på flertal håll om hur näringslivet kan eller ska involveras mer i planering. Näringslivet ses oftare som en medspelare som dessutom börjar bli alltmer närvarande i planeringen i olika avseenden. Detta blir aktuellt får vårt studieobjekt “Fastighetsägare BID Sofielund” som bygger på en sådan samverkan mellan privat och offentlig sektor. I exempelvis USA har BID-processer kommit långt jämfört med Sverige. Det är också i Nordamerika som samverkansformen Business Improvement District formades. Eftersom BID är en ny samverkansform inom svensk stadsplanering blir det särskilt intressant för oss att undersöka. Vår uppsats syftar till att undersöka och förstå hur denna BID-samverkan motiveras i praktiken. Detta gör vi genom en fallstudie av den BID-samverkansprocess som fortgår i Sofielund i Malmö. Intervjuer har använts som tekniker för att genomföra studien och de resultat som framkom av vår undersökning visade att BID som styrningsform motiveras på flertal sätt vilket kan bero på att BID som styrningsform är ny i svensk kontext. Vi har även fått fram ett resultat som tyder på att BIDs är ett uttryck för den neoliberala paradigm som härskar i planeringen och ett uttryck för en viss typ av governancestyrning. Slutsatser vi drar från vår undersökning är å ena sidan att BID Sofielund kan innebära en positiv utveckling för området med sänkt kriminalitet och med seriösa fastighetsvärdar som bidrar till att utveckla stadsdelen, å andra sidan kan vi urskilja en risk för att gentrifiering och liknande processer kan ske i området i och med BID Sofielunds arbete. / In community planning, there are constant changes. The involvement of private actors has become an important factor in planning processes, and it is discussed in many contexts how commercial and industrial life can or should be involved more in planning. The business world becomes more often a co-creator within urban and regional planning in various aspects. This is the case, for our study object "Fastighetsägare BID Sofielund" that is based on such cooperation between the private and public sectors. For example, in the United States, this has been ongoing for a long time in comparison with Sweden. It is also in North America that the business improvement district was formed. Since BID is a new form of cooperation within Swedish city planning, it is particularly interesting for us to study. Our paper aims to investigate and understand how this BID collaboration is motivated in practice. This is done by a case study of the BID collaboration process in Sofielund, Malmö. Interviews have been used as a technique to complete the study and the results of our survey showed that BID as a form of governance is motivated in several ways, which may be due to the fact that BID as a form of governance is new in Swedish context. We have also provided a result that suggests that BIDs are an expression of the neoliberal paradigm that rules in the planning field and an expression of a certain type of governance. The conclusions we make from our study is that BID Sofielund can lead to a positive development for the area with reduced crime and with serious property owners that helps to develop the area, on the other hand, we can interpret a risk of gentrification and similar processes that could take place in the area through BID Sofielund's work.

This thesis seeks to bridge the gap between theory and lived experiences of women and the state in terms of social relations and policies. In order to accomplish this, a qualitative approach was taken in order to apply a theoretical foundation to lived experiences of events that occurred in the Czech Republic. A critical feminist lens was applied to primary sources such as constitutional documents and World Bank reports in order to unearth the impact of state-dictated policy upon the lives and choices of women. As a hypothesis-producing thesis these primary and secondary documents were read in a way that let a narrative of parallels between the Socialist regime of the late twentieth century and the neoliberal government of the early twenty-first century arise. This main comparison reflects upon the state-centered power of both eras and its influence upon the tensions between women's roles as mothers, labourers, and citizens. With the guiding questions of how and why gender matters, a critical feminist approach was taken in the research process and has informed the results. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

A music teacher’s place of work—the school, the geographical focus of this dissertation—is always in a state of reform and thus what constitutes quality work within this space is also in constant flux. Contemporary schooling exists in and as a marketplace shaped by neoliberal policies, with goods managed by a cacophony of entities from governmental programs to private organizations. These policies are not only a structural change, but also a method of forming and reforming teachers. Necessarily—inevitably— policy changes what learning looks like, how it is accomplished, and who the music teacher is. The purpose of this study is to explore the lived experiences of music teachers who work and interact within the phenomenon of contemporary neoliberal-influenced schools. I examine how music teachers operate and think, maneuver and resist, choose and refuse, submit and comply within the forces that define the conditions of contemporary schools. This topic was examined through a phenomenological case study of a private non- profit organization that manages music teachers in public school settings. Data came from the lived experiences of 8 music teachers, which were elicited through interviews and observations, as well as participant-researcher journals and document collection. Analysis indicated that the phenomenon of contemporary schooling is unique in the ways that teachers enter into the new space, the ways in which work towards or in opposition to performance expectations, and the ways in which they find support in working through perceived contradictions. Implications reveal the ways that education policies shape teacher identity and quality teaching and learning.

My thesis provides evidence supporting a theory asserting that the high level of competition that exists between motor carriers operating within long-haul trucking is the most significant factor contributing to the continuously high driver turnover rates affecting the entire logistics industry. I explore how long-haul truck drivers internalize the conflict between their identity and the aggressively competitive environment within which they work. Social science authors, industry reports, and truck driver feedback from my own ethnographic study are analyzed for contexts in order to explore the current operating definition of success for motor carriers in both monetary and human terms.

This dissertation is on sonic surveillance in the neoliberal context and its implication for privacy, agency, sovereignty, ownership and control. This research focuses on the social, political and ethical conceptions of privacy through musical consumption and sonic practices in the United States. I investigate non-creative recording practices in neoliberal life and identify the listening practices of surveillance capitalism to better understand how power circulates through sound. Through a multi-sited ethnography, I conduct three case studies on the recording and listening capacity of technological devices of everyday life in order to theorize what I term “the neoliberal ear”– a twenty-first century mode of listening to the world embedded into surveillance capitalism. I analyze three sonic tools of surveillance capitalism: streaming service Spotify, Smart Home device Amazon Echo, and Smart City communication hub LinkNYC. These technologies, I argue, embody and promote neoliberal ideology, and the companies that produces them operate within a neoliberal mode of governance allowed by public policies. This dissertation is interdisciplinary in scope and operates at theoretical crossings of sound and power, technology and cultural practices, and disciplinary crossings of music, law and computer science. I draw from, and build connections between; sound studies, ethnomusicology, legal literature and scholarship on copyright and privacy, surveillance studies, science and technology studies, and discourses on AI and ethics, to form theories of sound and power in surveillance capitalism.