Nowadays, the G77 is a key factor in North-South negotiations at the UN to achieve global commitments. On the understanding that neoliberalism is an economic rationale that strongly influences the relationship between North and South, this research explores the influence of a primordial neoliberalism in Latin American interest in taking part in the G77 at the First United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Utilising the ideas of Michel Foucault to analyse discourses of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) since its incorporation into the G77 establishment, this work claims that the neoliberal rationale in part lies behind the mechanism that leads Latin American countries to take part in the G77 at the UNCTAD I. This mechanism is the need for development and the consequent concept of “developing country” reinforced by the G77 at the UN negotiations. In particular, the lack of natural resources in international markets due to the world wars produced the need for surveillance of non-industrialised countries. This surveillance, called here “Police of Development”, was supported by knowledge of natural resources provided by the ECLA, and reinforced the differentiation of countries. This differentiation promoted the need for industrialisation and the need for development. Thus, in a context of lack of financing and deterioration of the international terms of trade of natural resources, Latin Americans seeking development present themselves as “developing” countries in their international negotiations through the G77. The idea of development encourages the production and export of natural resources, which is necessary for a continuous availability of raw materials in international trade to maintain the expansion of markets, a basic precept of neoliberalism.

Esta Tese tem como tema de pesquisa as relações entre crianças e adultos na Contemporaneidade. Caracteriza-se como uma pesquisa do presente que empreende um olhar genealógico para compreender práticas atuais entre os sujeitos infantis e os sujeitos adultos. Este estudo inscreve-se numa perspectiva pós-estruturalista de pensar a Educação e seus contornos, a partir do aporte teórico dos Estudos Foucaultianos, especialmente com as noções de genealogia e governamentalidade. A considerar que, na Contemporaneidade, há deslocamentos nas formas de viver o exercício do governamento infantil, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo compreender as condições de possibilidade que estabeleceram o exercício das práticas, entre crianças e adultos, nos mais distintos espaços, bem como problematizar o sentido que essas práticas assumem no contemporâneo. Para tanto, foram analisados os seguintes documentos, Programas e Leis: Declaração dos Direitos da Criança (1959), Constituição Federal (1988), Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (1990), Programa Primeira Infância Melhor (2006) e Lei Menino Bernardo (2014). Tal análise possibilita compreender que, na Contemporaneidade, está sendo produzida uma infância de direito e uma infância protagonista. Essas formas de compreender a infância foram consideradas como algumas das condições de possibilidade para as práticas atuais entre sujeitos infantis e adultos. Com o olhar de pesquisador cartógrafo, foram selecionadas e analisadas situações do cotidiano que evidenciaram deslocamentos do exercício de governamento entre crianças e adultos, movimento que foi nomeado nesta Tese como infantocracia. / This thesis has - as a research theme - the relationships between children and adults in the Contemporaneity. It is characterized as a current research, which adopts a genealogical point of view to understand current practices between infant and adult subjects. This study follows a post - structuralist perspective of thinking about Education and its outlines, based on the theoretical contribution of Foucault Studies, especially through the notions of genealogy and governmentality. Considering there is a movement in the ways of practicing children's governance, in contemporaneity, this research aims at understanding the conditions of possibility that established these practices, between children and adults, in the most distinct spaces, as well as questioning the meaning that these practices assume in the contemporary. Therefore, the following documents, Programs and Laws were analyzed: Declaração dos Direitos da Criança (1959), Constituição Federal (1988), Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (1990), Programa Primeira Infância Melhor (2006) e Lei Menino Bernardo (2014). This analysis made it possible to understand that, in the Contemporaneity, a rights childhood and a leading childhood were produced. These forms of understanding childhood were considered as being some of the conditions of possibility for the current practices among children and adults. Through the view of researcher cartographer, we selected and analyzed everyday situations that evidenced this movement of the exercise of governance between children and adults, a movement that was named in this thesis as infantocracy. Based on the analyzes, it was possible to affirm that the principle of full protection - noticed in the different studied documents - can be considered a strategy to gather the child population, and that the constitution of these subjects (as protagonists and subjects of rights) is presented as a condition of possibility for the emergence of infantocratic practices. Such practices, taken as central in this study, trigger the formation of flexible, healthy, self-entrepreneurs, and proactive subjects: necessary characteristics for the subjects of neoliberal governmentality. It is also possible to affirm that infantocratic practices constitute a change in the ways of understanding and of living the relationships among children and adults in Contemporaneity, and that they are only achievable thought the grid of intelligibility of the neoliberal governmentality. Therefore, this thesis supported the following statement: from the conditions that established the child as a protagonist and subject of rights - established in the neoliberal political rationality of our time - there are changes in the ways of understanding and of living the practice of governance practices among adults and children, named here as infantocratic practices.

The majority of Sweden’s municipalities have for the last decade reported a housing shortage. This housing shortage, created by a combination of low construction rates and a rapidly growing population, has resulted in the biggest building boom Sweden has seen since the Million Dwellings Program. Although building rates are high, there is a continuous trend of housing becoming increasingly expensive, and the housing shortage today is mainly that of affordable rental housing. During the great housing shortage of the 20th century, the allmännytta, Sweden’s public rental companies was created and their role has traditionally been to provide affordable rental housing for all. Since the 1990s this role has changed and in 2011 the allbolagen 2010:879 was implemented, requiring these previous non-profit companies to act according to business principles, in addition to being socially responsible. This thesis investigates the role of Swedish public rental companies in regards to the current housing shortage and in the light of this law change. This is done through the use of qualitative interviews with representatives of the municipality, the tenant’s association and the allmännytta in the cities of Uppsala, Västerås and Örebro. The study finds that the business principles of the allbolagen 2010:879 is interpreted in different ways by the different allmännytta companies. It further finds that the role of the allmännytta in regards to the housing shortage still is to build rental housing, but the limitations created by the requirement of business principles makes this increasingly difficult as the allmännytta cannot act in ways different from the private sector. Instead they try to take their role of being socially responsible through other, related projects and by housing a disproportionally large amount of those incapable of acquiring housing on their own. Affordability is also increasingly made difficult as the municipality set related goals for the allmännytta’s housing construction, such as sustainability, which pushes prices up. Originally created to deal with the housing shortage of the 20th century, the gradual changes of housing politics since the 1990s renders the allmännytta as neither responsible nor capable to deal with the housing shortage of today by providing and constructing affordable housing. The study finds that the role of the allmännytta in regards to the housing shortage is conflicting, as older ideals of the Folkhem and newer principles of neoliberalism are entangled.

No description available.

An unnoticed shift is underway in the revanchist model of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005) that is rebranding the neoliberal reorganization of space and economic growth. I call this shift “Urban Revanchism as Sustainability,” following Mike Davis and Daniel Monk (2007). In this study, I describe how Tampa elites, led by Democratic Mayor Bob Buckhorn, use politically popular discourses of ‘sustainability’, ‘walkability’, ‘bike-ability’, among others, to coopt the rhetoric and symbols of social and environmental justice as cover for urban capital accumulation. I describe how in the wake of 2008 which devastated Tampa, and in the context of the subsequent gentrification of downtown Tampa, this sustainable urban revitalization strategy is being used to legitimize accumulation by dispossession of the most sought-after land on the downtown waterfront. This ‘green’ mode of enforcing urban revanchism is a politically charged, class-based process that is based on the prior militarization of the city police and securitization of urban space, contradicting the principles of social and environmental sustainability (Agyeman, 2003). Based on ethnographic observations, interviews, newspaper reviews, and document analysis, I show how an environmental facade is being layered over exclusionary forms of racial displacement and class exploitation. As such, the rebranding of a system of militarized exclusion and displacement which amounts to a selective neo-liberal “right to the city” is being normalized across the downtown riverfront. The resulting new waterfront city valorizes individualized entertainment and consumption for elites and privileged business professionals, at the same that it discourages collective solidarity and care among the dwindling middle- and working classes, and enforces private competition among the poor and unemployed.

A partir de estudos que constatam uma forte presença de disciplinas de caráter psicológico e sociológico nos currículos atuais dos cursos de Pedagogia, utiliza-se a ferramenta genealógica de Michel Foucault para mostrar, ao longo da história recente brasileira, que condições históricas deram possibilidades para que o curso de Pedagogia atual apresentasse essa configuração. Ao analisar as relações da Pedagogia com os acontecimentos sociopolíticos e econômicos, e com os discursos que fundaram a ciência moderna, pode-se ver que a criação dos cursos de Pedagogia no Brasil, na década de 1930, aspirava uma educação que modernizasse o país, tal como demandava o modelo de capitalismo recém- instaurado. Uma das estratégias adotadas foi a transposição de teorias tidas como inovadoras na Europa e nos Estados Unidos, as quais atravessaram a formação de professores com vistas à constituição de sujeitos modernos. Nesse sentido, o uso das ciências sociais e da psicologia foi fundamental como estratégia de governo, ou seja, de normatização e de adequação da educação aos princípios liberais. Com todas as transformações da sociedade brasileira e com as diversas reformas curriculares por que passou o curso de Pedagogia, o cunho psicológico e sociológico continuou a ser a base da Pedagogia, sendo que a Psicologia tem assumido, nas últimas décadas, uma posição cada vez mais relevante, tornando-se hegemônica nos currículos do Curso. Essa hegemonia corresponde e atende, efetivamente, aos princípios neoliberais do Estado brasileiro, cujas políticas educacionais favoreceram, desde o final da década de 1990, a produção dos “sujeitos autônomos, auto-disciplinados e flexíveis” de que o sistema político-econômico necessita. Apesar de toda a retórica pedagógica salvacionista, que se reduz a proclamar e denunciar a má qualidade da educação, mostra-se o curso de Pedagogia como também fazendo parte de uma lógica que contribui para o fracasso escolar e, portanto, para a manutenção das desigualdades sociais, mesmo tendo sido garantida a universalização do acesso à escola. Sendo assim, o curso de Pedagogia que forma nossos professores é visto muito mais, mesmo que não somente, como um efeito do poder exercido pelas políticas educacionais neoliberais, a fim de adequar à educação aos seus princípios ultra liberal, ainda que, paradoxalmente, possa ser visto também, e simultaneamente, ao mesmo tempo, como promotor de melhorias sociais. / Based on studies that indicate a strong presence of subjects with psychological and sociological content in current curriculums of Pedagogy courses, this work uses Michel Foucault’s genealogical method to demonstrate, along Brazilian recent history, that historical conditions made it possible for the Pedagogy course to present such configuration. By analyzing relationships between Pedagogy and sociopolitical, socioeconomic events, and also its connections to discourses that founded modern science, it is possible to verify that the implementation of Pedagogy courses in Brazil in the 1930s aimed an education that would modernize the country, just as it was demanded by the model of capitalism recently established at the time. One of the strategies adopted was the transposition of theories which were regarded as innovative in Europe and in the United States; such theories were part of teachers’ education having as goal the constitution of modern subjects. Thus, the use of Social Sciences and Psychology was fundamental as regulation tools, that is, tools which would provide norms and suitability of schools to liberal principles. Having in view all the transformations in Brazilian society and the several curriculum changes that the Pedagogy course has been through since then, both the psychological and the sociological contents remained being the foundation of Pedagogy; Psychology, for that matter, in recent decades, has gained an increasingly relevant position in the curriculums of the course, having a hegemonic presence. Such hegemony effectively corresponds to and serves to neoliberal principles of the Brazilian State, whose educational policies have favored, since the late 1990s, the formation of “autonomous, self-disciplined and flexible subjects” who are needed by the politicaleconomic system. Despite the entirely savior-like pedagogical rhetoric, which reduces itself in proclaiming and denouncing the poor quality of education, this work highlights the fact that the Pedagogy course is also part of a logic that contributes to the failure of school and, therefore, also contributes to the maintenance of social disparities, even when guaranteed the universal access to school. Thus, the Pedagogy course that constitutes our teachers is much more – and not only – seen as an effect of the power of neoliberal educational policies, an attempt to adequate education to ultraliberal principles. Paradoxically, the course may also be seen, simultaneously, at the same time, as an agent intended to promote social development.

This study uses Foucauldian governmentality as a framework to examine the interplay of neoliberal and place-based discourses, as well as the political rationalities aimed at governing citizens. It identifies neoliberalism as an ideological project and different parties play a role in the facilitation and circulation of neoliberalism as a form of governmentality. The possibility for accommodation of the two mismatched theoretical position, poststructuralism and Marxism, is also discussed. This study not only focuses on the apparatus of technologies of domination, but also responds to a recent call to recognize the creative possibilities and freedom of an individual. A geneology of poverty and welfare discourse is examined in this study through a complementary combination of qualitative coding analysis and quantitative content analysis of 20 years of Hong Kong newspaper articles. Seventy in-deep interviews with poor people, social workers, and volunteers, and participant observation were conducted in three NGOs for one year. Five central governing practices among poverty news articles supporting neoliberal rationality and mentalities and four oppositional claims are also found. Three major shifts in discursive strategies were identified as coinciding with the major socio-political changes in Hong Kong. The result shows that the mobilization of moral panic prompted a shift in the discourse regarding poverty from a story-like form of social citizenship to rational language of economic citizenship. In this, news media use their institutional power to determine the legitimate way to discuss poverty. Faced with journalism preference of scientism, rationality, and extraordinary stories, social actors and government officials use survey, official statistics, rational language and demonstrations to attract media attention. Journalists condition the audience to act as good citizens by repeating the self-reliance project. The individuals are either conditioned to behave themselves or to monitor the behavior of others in economic terms. This study further examines how the society in terms of power and knowledge constitutes subjectivity. It first illustrates how gazes might transform social relations in our everyday lives. Individuals might submit to power as technology of domination under constant surveillance. At the same time, poor people accomplish goals and actualize themselves as technology of self

Through a renewed emphasis on individual entrepreneurial freedoms, neoliberalism promises an economy liberated from government regulation in which restraints on capital accumulation are lifted and the subsequent financial benefits trickle down to all segments of society. However benign this rhetoric sounds, neoliberalization has primarily succeeded in securing wealth for capitalist elites through a collusion of state, corporate, and military players and through the manufacturing of dissent through the rhetoric of freedom. Hong Kong is a unique site in which to study the effects of neoliberalism because of its geopolitical position between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the West. As a British colony, Hong Kong was a site of capital extraction by the British Empire as well as a hub for Chinese capitalists and overseas merchants looking to avoid the turmoil on the Chinese mainland. Now, as China's Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong is more susceptible to China's authoritarian brand of neoliberalism, which instead demands consent through manipulation and coercion. The intensification of neoliberalization in Hong Kong following the 1997 transition to the PRC and the East Asian Financial Crisis that same year has been accompanied by an increased burden placed on the city's most vulnerable individuals. Cinema has responded to this intensification with recognition of and response to local and global economic uncertainty as witnessed in the city itself. This study focuses on film narratives and character action within hyper-capitalist urban space to answer the question of how urban cinema contributes to cultural dialogue on the human cost of neoliberalization. Specific areas of film research central to this study include the relationship between the city and cinema and the cinematic qualities of experiencing modern life, contemporary Hong Kong urban cinema, and questions of transnationalism and identity formation in postcolonial Hong Kong. The methodology is a combination of textual analysis and genre theory. The textual analysis is informed not only by historical and cultural details, but also by firsthand observations of Hong Kong, while genre theory is utilized because the selected films are hybridized texts that borrow from different film genres in addressing the impact of neoliberalization from multiple points of view simultaneously. For the purpose of this study, six films, made between 1998 and 2011, were selected that respond to diverse issues currently affecting Hong Kong and its people in the era of global capitalism. The Longest Summer (1998, dir. Fruit Chan) addresses the devaluation of labor and proletarianization. The Way We Are (2008, dir. Ann Hui) problematizes social polarization and the center/periphery disparity that dehumanizes individuals by defining them solely as surplus labor. Election and Election 2 (2005, 2006, dir. Johnnie To) examine the relationship between the PRC's authoritarian neoliberalism and Hong Kong Triad societies. The two additional films respond to the impact of the 2008 Global Economic Recession on an already volatile Hong Kong economy. Dream Home (2010, dir. Pang Ho-Cheung) reveals the absurdities of Hong Kong's cutthroat housing market through graphic violence and a revenge narrative set immediately prior to the 2008 crisis. Finally, Life Without Principle (2011, dir. Johnnie To) reveals the dangers to ordinary citizens of reckless and unchecked financial speculation as it applies to mortgages, loans, and investments. Neoliberalism is the logic of global capital, so although these films are set in and relate to Hong Kong, they have implications for the implementation of neoliberalism everywhere and are thus valuable as cross-cultural dialogue on human livelihood. Specifically, the films reveal a Hong Kong that is oppressive whether it is present in or absent from the frame. Yet, this oppression does not preclude meaningful human action that counters the dehumanization inherent in neoliberalization with narratives of survival and individual reconciliation with the forces of global capital.

This project focuses on films that reveal concerns about care and subjectivity in a world transformed by neoliberalism, flexible capital, and globalization. As these films show, care is still necessary, but under the logic of neoliberalism and globalization, it becomes a fungible commodity that can be outsourced and delegated--often according to the cost-benefit analyses necessary for life under the entrepreneurial subjectivity espoused by neoliberalism. These films utilize melodramatic modes of expression to articulate the ethical imperative for care; the necessity for this articulation suggests that something is wrong with contemporary institutions and stances toward care, that the means to care falls short of the ideal of caring for loved ones. The Savages focuses on middle-aged siblings forced to take care of their estranged father after he develops dementia. The film serves as a critique of the neoliberal idea that subjects are only responsible for themselves by supporting a more communal vision of subjectivity through reassembling the family. Dirty Pretty Things shows how immigrants face a hostile reception in the wealthy nations to which they migrate. The film illustrates how draconian immigration policies force many into the black market not only for services that are denied them but also to barter their own bodies in hope of becoming full members of the global citizenry. Nobody Knows extends this discussion of the abdication of the state's role in caring for its own citizens. Through the neglect of the children first by the family and then society as a whole, the film illustrates how even the most vulnerable members of society are isolated and forced to fend for themselves. Finally, Take Care of My Cat explores how the care between friends becomes increasingly instrumental as part of the construction of the self. The solidarity of their days as students erodes as each enters the work force, and class differences lead to a breakdown in friendships as self care becomes the dominant ethic. In this context, care, friendship, and family become fungible commodities that can be discarded if they no longer serve in the project of the self. / 2016-06-17

Digital games have been used in the international development industry for over a decade, yet they have received little scholarly attention. This dissertation uses the Half the Sky Movement’s (HTSM) digital games as a case study to understand the production and use of games for development purposes. In doing so, it analyzes the games both as texts that extend the discourse of development, and as material objects with important political economic implications. Specifically, it looks at how the narratives embedded in these games disrupt or reinforce dominant narratives already at play in the development industry, and it considers how the private/public relationships created through the production of the games shape game content and impact both the gaming and development industries. The study uses critical qualitative methods, including textual analysis and in-depth interviews, and a political economic approach to complete this work.