The fairy tale of Cinderella is known for its romance, but she seeks independence while being confused by her identity in a new version by Marissa Meyer called Cinder. This essay will present how Meyer’s Cinderella, Cinder, confuses the gender roles by taking on both feminine and masculine ones. This blend makes Cinder not entirely compatible with the norms, and her identity confusion makes it even harder, which results in her losing her conception of self. While she is trying to conform to the gender norms and receive recognition from others (be accepted by society), she denies her heritage and cyborg self to the point of creating a false identity. However, her cybernetics and abuse prevent her from being recognized – she even loses her only source of recognition, which indicates that a norm breaker is not worthy of having it. Nevertheless, Cinder shows signs of what a queer cyborg would do if forced into an identity; as queer, Cinder is not meant to be embodied or forced into an identity and should also have the ability to be free and change her identity as she pleases. Regardless of being queer, the abuse and society’s views prevent her from escaping her identity confusion.

This paper analyzes how vulnerability is represented in the Jack Reacher series, by drawing onwork by Bryan Turner and Judith Butler. The purpose of the research is to investigate the reasonReacher’s acts of vigilantism are needed. I look at examples of vulnerability and precarity foundin the books Killing Floor and Die Trying, and argue that state neglect is the cause of economicand social vulnerability in the towns Margrave and Yorke, leading to precarity expressed ascriminal money and community subjugation controlling the towns. I conclude that the solutionpresented, through vigilantism, is reassuring but insufficient, but that the series, in representing acomplex display of vulnerability and acknowledging the insufficiency of the solution, stressesthe difficulty of presenting a simple solution to the multifaceted nature of the issue ofvulnerability.

[pt] A presente tese tem como objetivo identificar e entender as relações entre as transformações do trabalho e o recente ciclo global de lutas. A compreensão partilhada nessa investigação é de que a partir da década de 1980, o trabalho passa por uma transformação sem perder sua centralidade. Entretanto, vale destacar, sua centralidade será renovada pela transformação. Diferentemente da dinâmica fordista que tendia a excluir a subjetividade do trabalhador nos processos produtivos, o trabalho pós-fordista exige a participação subjetiva do trabalhador não apenas na produção. Ou seja, o trabalhador participa através da sua capacidade de criar, imaginar, intervir, mas, também, nas dinâmicas de circulação. A produção contemporânea se dá, portanto, extrapolando os espaços de confinamento fabris de outrora, difundindo-se por todo tecido social numa cooperação entre redes e ruas. Nesse contexto, a cidade converte-se em espaço de produção e valorização do trabalho. Diante das condições de vida e trabalho na cidade, cada vez mais precária, a metrópole constitui-se também como terreno das lutas por melhores condições de vida e gestão democrática da cidade. Articulado aos movimentos globais, o levante brasileiro de junho de 2013 constituiu-se como desvio da tese que nos impele à investigação das associações que os movimentos reivindicativos de direitos permitem estabelecer com as questões do trabalho metropolitano. Em termos metodológicos, acolher o desvio diz respeito à construção de um pensamento que se alimenta do encontro com o mundo e, nesse sentido, questiona continuísmos artificiais. Essa opção metodológica faz da pesquisa uma prática inventiva que exige o esforço de conceber outras maneiras de pensar os caminhos e modos de fazer da pesquisa. O método mais do que mero instrumento, é ele mesmo questão de pesquisa. Assim, enquanto teoricamente a investigação se articula em torno das problemáticas do trabalho, e dos direitos, estendendo-se para as questões da vida na metrópole, metodologicamente, a tese se ocupa com a própria forma de apresentar o conhecimento produzido, buscando um método que lhe faça justiça. / [en] This thesis aims to identify and understand the relations between the changes in labor and the recent global cycle of struggles. The shared understanding in the investigation is that from the 1980s, labor goes through a transformation without losing its centrality. However, it s worth mentioning, its centrality will be renewed by the transformation. Unlike the Fordist dynamics, which tended to exclude the worker s subjectivity in the production processes, the post-Fordist work requires the worker s subjective participation not only in the production. In other words, the worker participates through their capacity to create, imagine, intervene, but also in the circulation dynamics. Therefore, contemporary production happens, extrapolating the otherwise confined factory spaces, disseminating through the entire social fabric in a cooperation between networks and streets. In that context, the city turns into a space of production and valorization of labor. In face of life and work conditions in the city, increasingly precarious, the city is also territory for struggles to improve life conditions and the city s democratic administration. Hinged to global movements, the Brazilian uprising of June, 2013 established itself as a deviation from the thesis that impels us to investigate the association that the protests claiming for rights allow us to establish with the issues regarding metropolitan labor. Methodologically speaking, receiving the deviation refers to the construction of a thought that feeds from the encounter with the world and, in that sense, it questions artificial continuities. That methodological choice makes this research an inventive practice that requires an effort to conceive other forms to think the ways and means to research. More than a simple instrument, the method is a research matter. Therefore, while in theory the investigation revolves around labor and right issues, extending to the issues of city life, methodologically speaking, the thesis deals with the very way of presenting the knowledge produced, searching for a method that does justice to it.

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This Master Thesis focuses on the theoretical reconstruction of a positive feminist conceptualization of vulnerability via the thorough systematization and critical comparison of Martha Fineman’s socio-legal philosophy and Judith Butler’s poststructuralist ethico-political theory. In the introductory remarks, the reader becomes familiar with the turbulent receptions and numerous interdisciplinary re-artications of the term vulnerability within the realms of contemporary feminist theory. The second chapter mainly illustrates the core thematic axes of Fineman’s vulnerability approach. More specifically, the second chapter explores Fineman’s vulnerability perspective both in terms of an alternative ontological paradigm revolving around the recognition of our fundamentally vulnerable, shared, fragile and dependent universal condition, as well as in relation to its juridico-political normative implications apropos of the legitimate political organization of democratic societies and the just function of their central institutions. Furthermore, the third chapter systematizes the dual texture of the Butlerian radicalization of vulnerability in terms of both an existential condition of irreducible relationality, as well as in terms of a socio-politically contextualized and differentially allocated distribution of violence, deprivation, insecurity, injury and trauma to certain -gendered, racialized, sexualized and nationalized- social categories. To that end, the third chapter further elucidates the nuanced differentiations between the Butlerian conceptions of vulnerability, precariousness, precarity and dispossession, while further investigating Butler’s revolutionary constellation of vulnerability and resistance. Conclusively, this Master Thesis critically designates the similarities and divergences between the two above analysed feminist frameworks and supports that the twofold texture of the Butlerian vulnerability theory invests Butler’s ethico-political theory with more nuanced theoretical conceptions and more empowering political devices in comparison to Fineman’s universalistic postidentitarian vulnerability approach. In order to further enhance this core argument, I develop my own critical assessment of Fineman theory’s epistemological, political and conceptual limitations in regard of its self-declared ‘post-identitarian’ structure.

[pt] A tese explora analiticamente a arena pública formada ao redor da questão da precariedade habitacional nas cidades de Londres e Rio de Janeiro a partir do acompanhamento de quatro movimentos sociais formados nessas cidades, traçando relações entre direitos, cidadania e participação. A análise desenha um panorama da questão da moradia no Brasil e no Reino Unido, formado por distintas experiências sociais relativas ao tema. Com base em uma metodologia que propõe a distinção das dimensões referentes às experiências (integradora, estratégica e cultural), a tese explora os limites entre privatividade e publicidade de questões relacionadas à moradia e sugere categorias interpretativas para compreensão dos movimentos sociais de luta por moradia contemporâneos e de suas demandas, que envolvem o acesso individualizado a residências dignas e o direito à cidade. Alguns temas sobressaem no desenrolar da análise, dentre eles a individualização de políticas públicas de moradia, a precariedade que experimentam os indivíduos que passam por ameaças de remoção, a importância de analisar os movimentos sociais de moradia que se organizam nas periferias, e as demandas por reconhecimento espacial que operam. / [en] This thesis analytically explores the public arena shaped around the issue of precarious housing in the cities of London and Rio de Janeiro. The arguments are based on the investigation of four social movements formed in these cities, tracing relationships between rights, citizenship and participation. The research presents an overview of the housing issue in Brazil and United Kingdom, grounded on different social experiences related to the theme. Based on a methodology that proposes the distinction of dimensions related to experiences (integrative, strategic and cultural), the thesis explores the limits between the private and public on issues related to housing and suggests interpretative categories for understanding contemporary social movements struggling for housing as well as their demands, which involve individualized access to decent homes and the right to the city. Some themes stand out from the analysis, among them the individualization of public housing policies, the precariousness experienced by individuals who undergo threats of removal, the importance of analysing social housing movements that are organized in the peripheries, and the demands for spatial recognition in which they operate.

This thesis studies online video game live streamers. The study aims to explore the interrelationship of play and labor within streaming. Through this exploration, the study also enquires about the emerging platform economy. Streamers share their gameplay with viewers, interact through the accompanying live chat and subside mainly on donations from their audience. Streaming turns the leisure activity of gaming into a part-time or full-time subsistence pursuit. Twitch.tv, like other social media platforms, exists within the platform economy, inhabiting novel positions both in contexts of the global economy and in relations to laborers and consumers. Achieving the studies’ aim is done via methods of ethnographic interviewing, digital participant observation, and endeavoring into streaming. In fulfilling the thesis purpose, contemporary anthropological theories of play, labor, and the platform economy are utilized by the author in analyzing the ethnographic material. The main results of the study showcase the economic realities of streamers in Sweden. The conditions streamers exist within are characterized by spatiotemporal dislocation of labor, the commodification of play, mental struggles, and the platform economy's embedded precarity. The work contributes to the sub-fields of digital anthropology, new media studies, digital play & labor, and studies of the platform economy. Studying streamers aids the production of emic knowledge within these crucial disciplines of understanding.

[pt] Partindo da lente dos direitos humanos para compreender a temática dos direitos sexuais e reprodutivos, o presente trabalho se debruça sobre os limites e o alcance das diretrizes humanísticas diante das mulheres vítimas de violência e morte no âmbito do sistema de saúde. O ensaio tem como foco principal o tema da mortalidade materna, identificada como importante indicador das condições de vida e saúde das mulheres e suscitada enquanto grave violação de direitos humanos e busca, por meio de uma abordagem interseccional, conceder luz aos diversos eixos de opressão presentes na abordagem a partir das contribuições de autoras como Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins e Jurema Werneck. Com a constatação de que mais de noventa por cento das mortes maternas são evitáveis, bem como com a convivência de altos índices de mortalidade materna anuais no país, o trabalho aborda o tema enquanto parte de um projeto político firmado a partir da imposição de sofrimento, da precarização de vidas e da estigmatização de corpos, considerando os direcionamentos políticos que parecem convergir para um cenário de intensificação de violação de direitos. Articulando conceitos de Judith Butler, o ensaio atenta à mortalidade materna a partir da perspectiva da morte digna ou não de lamento, buscando formas de reafirmação dos direitos humanos a partir de seu comprometimento concreto com as mulheres que vivenciam formas de violência no sistema de saúde nacional. / [en] Based on the lens of human rights to understand the theme of sexual and reproductive rights, the present paper focuses on the limits and the scope of the humanistic guidelines before women victims of violence and death within the health system. The main focus of the essay is the issue of maternal mortality, identified as an important indicator of women s living conditions and health, and raised as a serious violation of human rights, and seeks, through an intersectional approach, to give light to the various categories of social inequality present in the analysis from the contributions of authors such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins and Jurema Werneck. With the observation that more than ninety percent of maternal deaths are preventable, as well as with the coexistence of high annual maternal mortality rates in the country, the study addresses this issue as part of a political project based on the imposition of suffering, the precariousness of lives and the stigmatization of bodies, taking into account the political orientations that seem to converge to a scenario of intensification of violation of rights. Articulating concepts by Judith Butler, the essay focuses on maternal mortality from the perspective of death qualifying or not as grievable, seeking ways to reaffirm human rights based on its concrete commitment to women experiencing forms of violence in the national health system.

The present project provides a survey of contemporary work relations in the context of the so-called gig economy (also known as the sharing, collaborative, platform, and on-demand economy). Against the background of recent concerns over automation replacing work at a large scale, the project argues instead that the displacement of work warrants more critical attention. The project examines how the gig economy presents their services as automating technologies while downplaying the ways that workers' employment, not to mention lives, are made increasingly precarious by these alleged improvements. Specifically, the project surveys three gig-economies, the ride-hailing service Uber, the home-sharing service Airbnb, and the online labor marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Methodologically, the project employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from political economy, critical theory, discourse analysis, and ethnographic research. A qualitative assessment of the respective work environments shifts a relatively apolitical discourse on the future of work not only toward a more pronounced critique of the gig economy, but also toward a renewed discussion on the kinds of jobs that earn the labels of freelance and entrepreneurship. Professionals and scholars concerned with the future of work stand to benefit from the findings of the research, particularly as it challenges some commonplace assumptions in the discourse of what has been termed postcapitalism. / Ph. D. / The present project provides a survey of contemporary work relations in the context of the so-called gig economy (also known as the sharing, collaborative, platform, and ondemand economy). Against the background of recent concerns over automation replacing work at a large scale, the project argues instead that the displacement of work warrants more critical attention. The project examines how the gig economy presents their services as automating technologies while downplaying the ways that workers’ employment, not to mention lives, are made increasingly precarious by these alleged improvements. Specifically, the project surveys three gig economies, the ride-hailing service Uber, the home-sharing service Airbnb, and the online labor marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). Methodologically, the project employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from political economy, critical theory, discourse analysis, and ethnographic research. A qualitative assessment of the respective work environments shifts a relatively apolitical discourse on the future of work not only toward a more pronounced critique of the gig economy, but also toward a renewed discussion on the kinds of jobs that earn the labels of freelance and entrepreneurship. Professionals and scholars concerned with the future of work stand to benefit from the findings of the research, particularly as it challenges some commonplace assumptions in the discourse of what has been termed postcapitalism.

This thesis focuses on the possibilities of precarity as a perspective in the field of literary studies in order to analyse how insecurity is portrayed in literature. Sweden has a great tradition of proletarian literature, but researchers in the neoliberal era find it problematic to understand the emancipating aspects of the new proletarian literature that does not focus on collective movement and articulated emancipation. This thesis explores the possibilities of precarity as a perspective for analysing how literature narrated through an individual and passive perspective can work as a social critique. The analysis focuses on the novels Kärlekens Antarktis [The Antarctica of Love] by Sara Stridsberg and De afghanska sönerna [The Afghan Sons] by Elin Persson and tries to answer questions about how these novels portray precarity and how the perspective of precarity enables an understanding of how the novels work as social criticism. The thesis mostly uses theories by Judith Butler and Isabell Lorey, and the analysis uses a comparative method in combination with a reading that focuses on the thematics of precarity. This is disposed in connection to Lorey’s three dimensions of precarity – precariousness, precarity, and governmental precarization. The analysis results in an understanding of how these kinds of novels can capture the biopolitical perspective, where politics and life emerge. The reading’s focus on the aspect of the body, followed by the hierarchical and societal aspects, shows how the novels’ individual perspectives can have collective tendencies in connection to the reader’s ability to feel solidarity with the characters.