Food sovereignty is a multi-faceted proposal for the politicization of the agro-food sector. Advocated by the international farmers’ movement, Vía Campesina, food sovereignty recognizes the importance of consumption while it focuses on production. By looking at the implementation of the food sovereignty proposal in Ecuador in the 2008 Constitution and on the legal level, the organizational level, and the level of individual consumers, I suggest approaches to consumers and consumption within the food sovereignty framework. In addition to discussing the ambiguity of the State’s position on food sovereignty, I show that social organizations working on food sovereignty tend to see consumers as self-centered, solely motivated by individual concerns about price and health, meaning that they are not seen as critical actors in the agro-food system. By focusing on members of the Canasta Comunitaria Ciudad Viva, a collective food purchase model in south Quito, I show that while consumers reproduce individualized logics that privilege health and savings, they also mobilize alternative, relational logics that should be the base for consumer-based articulation within the food sovereignty framework. These conclusions support the significance of seeing consumers as political actors as well as the importance of valuing the daily practices of urban inhabitants as the bases for the further politicization of consumption. La soberanía alimentaria es una propuesta multidimensional para la politización del sector agroalimentario. Desde la concepción de Vía Campesina, un movimiento internacional de agricultores, soberanía alimentaria reconoce la importancia del consumo, centrándose en la producción. A partir de analizar la aplicación de la propuesta de soberanía alimentaria en la Constitución de 2008, en el plano jurídico, en el trabajo de organizaciones sociales y al nivel de consumidores individuales en Quito, Ecuador, propongo una aproximación a los roles del consumo y los consumidores, en el marco de soberanía alimentaria. A la vez de indagar en la ambigüedad de la posición estatal frente al tema de soberanía alimentaria, muestro que la tendencia de las organizaciones sociales que trabajan el tema de soberanía alimentaria es ver a los consumidores como actores poco involucrados, centrados en sus beneficios particulares entorno a precios y salud, lo que significa que los consumidores no son percibidos como actores en si mismo. Al enfocarme en los miembros de la Canasta Comunitaria Ciudad Viva, un modelo de compra colectiva de alimentos en el sur de Quito, muestro que mientras los consumidores reproducen lógicas individuales de ahorro y de salud, también movilizan lógicas alternativas basadas en relaciones sociales y afectivas. Propongo que estas lógicas, presentes en los consumidores, deberían formar parte de las bases para una mayor inclusión y articulación de consumidores en el marco de soberanía alimentaria. A partir de este análisis se muestra la importancia de mirar a los consumidores como actores políticos y valorar las prácticas cotidianas de los habitantes urbanos como cimientos para la mayor politización del consumo. / text

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This dissertation examines 'sovereignty' as not only a theoretical abstraction of power relations within finite territories, but also as a very alive practice, a daily defense of inherent rights based on Indigenous philosophical notions of power and space. I examine the perspectives of Indigenous practitioners who either through their conversations and/or life ways cultivate an original conception of sovereignty, specifically the governance of the Gwich'in people, a nation of 15 villages in the Arctic Circle. As an Indigenous nation living within legal structures of a settler state, they offer an alternative understanding of collective political power, rooted outside the western European paradigm but simultaneously confronting those ambits. I argue that rather than an alternative narrative of resistance towards secession or segregation, the Gwich'in Nation provide a viable, pro-active and realized form of co-existent sovereignty. This sovereignty is a form of political collective identity and a relationship with the environment and non-human actors, as well as other governments, that is productive, creative and focused as much on future generations as drawing from tradition.

With regard to making war, the European Union (EU) is either characterized as being “from Venus” or as having made the transition from “garrison state” to “civilian state.” Drawing on the work from Charles Tilly, this thesis will show that neither characterization provides an accurate depiction of European behavior where the use of coercive force is concerned. To best understand the behavior of the EU it is necessary to conceive of it as a certain kind of state, and to highlight the ways in which peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions serve the same purposes as classical war-making. This thesis will use the examples of interventions in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq as case studies.

Are Aboriginal rights defensible within the framework of liberalism? Liberalism's commitment to individual equality seems to preclude Aboriginal rights insofar as these rights are exercisable by only a sub-set of the Canadian population and not by all Canadians equally. Instead of asking how Aboriginal rights can be justified within the liberal state, we need to question the legitimacy of the state's assertion of sovereignty over Aboriginal peoples and territories. Of the four potentially applicable modes of acquiring sovereignty - discovery, conquest, cession and prescription - only treaties have the potential to provide a liberally-compelling basis for the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty. But historical treaties did not purport to transfer sovereignty. As such, Canadian sovereignty suffers from a normative lacuna. Aboriginal rights, as set out in mutually consensual treaties addressing the sharing of sovereignty, have the potential to fill this lacuna and thereby to ground the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty.

Are Aboriginal rights defensible within the framework of liberalism? Liberalism's commitment to individual equality seems to preclude Aboriginal rights insofar as these rights are exercisable by only a sub-set of the Canadian population and not by all Canadians equally. Instead of asking how Aboriginal rights can be justified within the liberal state, we need to question the legitimacy of the state's assertion of sovereignty over Aboriginal peoples and territories. Of the four potentially applicable modes of acquiring sovereignty - discovery, conquest, cession and prescription - only treaties have the potential to provide a liberally-compelling basis for the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty. But historical treaties did not purport to transfer sovereignty. As such, Canadian sovereignty suffers from a normative lacuna. Aboriginal rights, as set out in mutually consensual treaties addressing the sharing of sovereignty, have the potential to fill this lacuna and thereby to ground the legitimacy of Crown sovereignty.

This thesis focuses on Hannah Arendt’s theory of natality, which is identified with the event of birth into a pre-existing human world. Arendt names natality the “ontological root” of political action and of human freedom, and yet, as critics of Arendt’s political writings have pointed out, this notion of identifying freedom with birth is somewhat perplexing. I return to Arendt’s phenomenological analysis of active human life in The Human Condition, focusing on the significance of natality as the disclosure of a unique “who” within a specific relational web. From there, I trace the distinct threats to natality, speech-action, and worldly relations posed by the political philosophical tradition, on the one hand, and by the modern biopolitical “rise of the social” on the other. Drawing connections between Arendt’s theory of the social and Michel Foucault’s work on the biopolitical management of populations, my thesis defends Arendt’s contentious distinction between social and political life; the Arendtian social, I argue, can fruitfully be read as biopolitical. / Graduate

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In 1998 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the "OECD") commenced a campaign to eliminate harmful tax competition focusing on geographically mobile activities. The OECD targeted 35 jurisdictions and demanded that those nations amend their tax laws to remove the harmful features that provided more favorable tax treatment to geographically mobile capital than was available in some of its Member States. This thesis examines the international responsibility of the OECD and its Member States to determine whether their conduct in waging this campaign is in accordance with the international legal principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention. As an international actor with legal personality, the conduct of the OECD is found to engage its international responsibility for the breach of state sovereignty and non-intervention. The Member States in support of the OECD's actions are found to have primary and secondary responsibility under international law for the OEOD's actions.