Notions of Widening Participation to Higher Education are characterised by perceptions of an inherent "goodness" for (Western) democracy. This is based around a premise that predicates social justice upon access to education to ensure sufficient preparation for successful participation in the Knowledge Economy. This correlation between social justice, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy can be identified as part of the neoliberal ideology that has underpinned political, economic and subsequent educational policies and practices with a rigorous promotion of the Free Market. This thesis examines Widening Participation as a mechanism through which neoliberal ideology has enabled the development of a market model of Higher Education. To understand this, a range of conceptual apparatus is utilised to reframe the common perceptions of what Widening Participation is and what purpose it has, by establishing Widening Participation as a critical part of the discourse relating to the commodification of Higher Education. The proposition of neoliberal Widening Participation is examined through the lens of Commodity Fetishisation (Marx), Educational Fundamentalism (Alvesson) and Stultification (Rancière). Together, these theories form a framework to understand the narratives surrounding the conceptualisation of Widening Participation within neoliberal ideology. These narratives are argued here to have cultivated expectations for a consumerist student population through the transformation of the perceived benefits of a traditional Higher Education into reified concepts of pedagogical practice. As such, Widening Participation is positioned here as a way in which the saturation of Higher Education was justified as social justice. This Widening Participation positions learners and teachers within a Higher Education that is part of a Debt Economy expressed as a Knowledge Economy. The result is a role for neoliberal Widening Participation in propagating pedagogical myths that Rancière describes as suppressing Intellectual Emancipation even when appearing to be facilitating it.

Representations of prostitution are often used to negotiate changing meanings of gender and economy during times of turmoil. This dissertation examines the Brazilian films, O Céu de Suely (2006), Baixio das Bestas (2007) and Deserto Feliz (2008) and two Mexican films El Callejón de los Milagros (1995) and ¿Quién diablos es Juliette? (1996) to better understand how they deal with representations of prostitution in a rapid transition to neoliberalism. In order to better understand this process, I develop a concept called "incomplete resistance." This term connotes the practice of denouncement without indictment. That is, the existence of prostitution and the conditions that compel women to sell sex are lamented, but without identifying the real underlying causes. Additionally, several of the films examined in this dissertation decry the conditions that lead women to be prostituted, but simultaneously encourage the viewer to take pleasure in the process. By contextualizing the films within the changing film industries of Brazil and Mexico, I seek to illuminate the connections between gender, prostitution films and governmentality.

The Swedish dairy industry has undergone several restructurings over the past year adapting to a new agricultural policy of neoliberal markets. This has resulted in the decline in the number of smaller farms because of major competition with countries producing milk at a cheaper price. The purpose of this study is based on Marxist-inspired theory of value to examine how neoliberalism affects dairy farmer’s spatial production patterns in Kalmar County. The methodology consists of five semi-structured interviews with dairy farmers in Kalmar County. The results show that the supply chain does not end with the production and distribution of milk, but symbols must be added to sell the milk and it is almost essential for farmers who are forced to go that way to survive. Neoliberalism has changed farmer’s spatial production patterns in different ways. The conventional farmers have had poor profitability after quotas have been removed and are trying to convert to organic milk production or sell locally to increase profitability. Some of the farmers are limited by topography and geographical location because they do not have enough pasture and arable land to convert to organic farming or expand their operations. In order to survive the conventional famers have scaled up their production because they are trapped in the milks labor, use and exchange value. The organic dairy farmers have better profitability after neoliberalism because their earnings come from the milks symbolic value. One conclusion that can be drawn from the study is that dairy farmers have felt compelled to convert to organic production or supply to local dairies because they can take a higher price for milk by adding value through symbols. Overall the study shows that the control of the production has been transferred from farmers to consumers, and this includes EU policy and even private regulations and neoliberalism that function as structures that control farmers in this direction.

Research Report submitted in the obtainment of a Masters in International Relations. UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND Johannesburg, South Africa 28 May 2015 / This research sets to understand the intricacies of modern Empire and in particular the United States of America as the central agent of neoliberal imperialism. This is done with the objective of assessing the accuracy of Empire theory as an international relations tool of analysis. Empire theory has gained rising academic attention since the early 2000s, this research sought to assess its place and use when analysing the United States as Empire. In particular, the study focused on Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s version of informal Empire and Empire by invitation. These notions were understood in the relations existing between the United States and its client states, Mexico and South Korea, via the medium of international financial institutions and trade agreements, namely the International Monetary Fund and the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Mexico and South Korea were clearly described as neoliberal states operating within Empire. Yet, this study sought to challenge the concept and the theory of Empire by investigating these client states’ political voices. Their agenda-setting abilities were analysed within the G20 context, thanks to its rotational presidency within the forum. The researcher sought to uncover whether Mexico and South Korea had the ability to shape discussions and break away from the neoliberal discourse, and therefore Empire. The findings were of mixed results as it was established that while Mexico steps further away than South Korea from neoliberal perspectives, both client states still formulate their policies within a neoliberal framework, as the United States does not oppose or contest their agendas. While a fundamental conclusion was not reached, it was settled that Empire theory is still accurate in describing inter-capitalist state relations however it does not analytically grasp the rising opportunities existing for states, internal or external to the neoliberal context, to confront Empire.

The thesis explores current debates ,around postfeminism and neoliberalism, and young women's articulations of femininity within the context of young women's excessive drinking practices. Alcohol plays a key ro le in UK culture today, and for young people, getting drunk is an accepted, expected and indeed normalised part of a night out in the current 'culture of intoxication'. It is also a space for enacting highly visible displays of gender, femininities and class, and one that represents an important 'space of attention' for exploring contemporary subjectivity. As such this space provides a productive source for carrying out in-depth analysis of how young women negotiate and manage 21st century femininities in the UK. Data is provided in the form of white working-class women's accounts of excessive drinking in various drinking venues within the county of Hampshire, England. Thirty-three women, aged between 18 and 24 years, took part in several phases of data collection, and these include individual interviews, friendship group discussions, and ethnographic methods. I employed a version of Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify key themes and discourses in the young women's talk, and note how young women use excessive alcohol for confidence within what has become a drinking culture of hyper-sexuality, where the emphasis is on the traditional male gaze, but also and possibly even more powerfully, the postfeminist female gaze. The young women draw on a number of discourses to construct drunkenness as a routine part of going out, and how the female gaze plays an important role in 'mirroring' and/or 'othering' women in terms of their feminine recognition. Furthermore, the women draw on postfeminist discourses to emphasise how painful and hard it is becoming a young female subject today.

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This dissertation examines postwar anti-poverty programs in order to understand the Latin American roots of US social policy, the origins of neoliberalism, and the rise of economists as public intellectuals. By following veterans of the New Deal and Marshall Plan through Colombian reform projects of the 1950s and 1960s and back to the United States in the era of the Great Society, it suggests that one way of studying the route from the 1930s to the 1960s in the United States is by traveling through Latin America. Conversely, one way of understanding the history of economic development is by analyzing its relation to First-World programs for economic recovery and redistribution. The dissertation further illuminates the role of midcentury policymaking in popularizing what became neoliberal practices after 1980, most importantly those of state decentralization, gentrification, and public-private partnership. Finally, midcentury social programs provide a context in which to study the emergence of economics as an independent discipline in Latin America, economists' strategies of social ascent, and the popularization of economic reasoning as a persuasive form of public argument. The project is a social history of economic thought, in which reform projects and the conflicts surrounding them provide the context for studying ideas. It is simultaneously a transnational history of social policy, exposing lines of mutual influence between the United States and Latin America.

This essay offers both a historical analysis of twentieth century avant-garde practices relating to representation in music, and a prescriptive model for contemporary methods of composition. I address the taxonomy problem in classical music, clarifying the ontological divide identified by German musicologist Michael Rebhahn Contemporary Classical music and New Music. I demonstrate how neoliberalism has developed a Global Style (Foster 2012) of "Light Modernity,” evident in both contemporary architecture and music alike. The central problem facing composition today is the fetishization of materials, ultimately derived from music's refusal to allow the question of representation to be addressed. I argue that composers have largely sought to define noise as sound-in-itself, eliminating the possibilities of representation in the process. Proposing instead that composers should strive to tackle representation head-on in the 21st century, I show how Jacques Rancière provides a model in which noise and sound—representation and abstraction—function in a conjoined, yet non-homogenized aesthetic regime. Governed by what he calls the "pensiveness of the image,” it allows for a renewed art form that rejects repetition and neoliberalism, re-connecting to the spirit of the avant-garde without slavishly echoing either its outmoded aesthetics or dogmatic philosophies.

This dissertation investigates the transformation undergone by the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1978) in Spain in the 1950s and 1960s, which occurred under conditions of neoliberal rationalities and petroleum toxicity –petrotoxicty. It addresses the transformation at three levels: the dictatorship’s criminalized bodies; the Francoist national political project; and early transnational attempts for European unification. By exploring an archive of laws, mass media, and intellectual dialogues, the dissertation contends that there was a shift in regimes of criminality that allowed the dictatorship in the south and Europe in the north to establish the initial form of their coalition. The dissertation addresses processes of recognition of criminality by establishing a critical framework that examines the transition from a dominant paradigm of disease toxicity to one of petrotoxicity. In proposing that this transition took place together with the development of neoliberalism, the dissertation argues that the neoliberal regime operated during its period of consolidation by generalizing, at national and transnational scales, forms of exclusion and inclusion that were characteristic of what the text presents as the “petrotoxic regime of criminality.” By conducting the analysis through the lens of the petrotoxic regime of criminality, the dissertation offers a fresh perspective to the debate within Spanish Peninsular Cultural Studies about the seemingly contradictory nature that the Francoist dictatorship acquired during this period; both anti-modern and modern; both Catholic fundamentalist and neoliberal capitalist. It allows us to shed light on a process of revaluation of the regime’s toxic nature that resulted in a Catholic Fundamentalist Capitalist dictatorship.

Over the past decade, a significant shift has taken place in British drug policy. The publication of the 2010 drug strategy shifted the primary focus of treatment away from attracting and retaining drug users in services, towards encouraging individuals to complete and exit treatment in 'recovery'. The introduction of the recovery agenda emerged alongside widespread reform to the public health system and during a period of sustained economic downturn that has witnessed the introduction of pervasive austerity measures by successive UK governments. With the reorientation towards recovery in this climate, important questions have been raised over the shape of drug treatment provision on the ground. However, despite much speculation, there remains a lack of empirical research in this area. This thesis presents a qualitative, exploratory study of the impact of the shift to recovery in two local authorities in the north of England. Through a total of 36 semi-structured interviews with drug treatment commissioners, staff and service users, this research provides an original contribution to the field by demonstrating the impact of the shift to recovery on local level policy and practice during a time of reform and economic austerity. It is argued that cuts to funding and changes to the commissioning of drug treatment services have created a highly competitive treatment system in which the success of providers is measured primarily through their ability to record successful completions of drug treatment. This has generated perverse incentives within the sector, giving rise to risky practices performed by treatment providers in the aim of demonstrating success. It is argued that these developments are best understood as the manifestation of neoliberal notions of competition, risk, choice and responsibility at the level of practice. This thesis concludes by offering important policy and practice recommendations.