The Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) emerged in 1997 in reaction to the advance of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) neo-liberal agenda. As a transnational coalition integrated by trade union organisations, social movements and NGOs from all over the continent, the HSA denounced the detrimental social, economic and environmental consequences of the FTAA project on the most vulnerable sectors of the populations of the Americas. This thesis examines the role of the HSA in the construction of counter-hegemonic alternativest o the FTAA project. The analysis encompassesth e time period that starts with the formation of the HSA in 1997 until the halting of the FTAA process in 2005 and draws on the political process approach of social movement theory - particularly on its notion of political opportunity structures as factors conditioning the capacity of social movements to access and control political resources for the advancement of collectively defined political goals. It is argued that the actions pursued by the HSA to construct an alternative to the FTAA have led to moderate, albeit significant, results. Considerable progress was achieved in fostering a political climate of distrust and opposition to neoliberalism throughout the Americas, which contributed to the stalling of the FTAA process in 2005. In spite of this, the HSA continues to face the challenge of building political alternatives that reflect and expand a commitment to deeper forms of democracy and sustainable development in the region.

The Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution has provoked researchers to find new ways of engaging with the emergence of popular organizations and movements who are highly mobilized and seeking new forms of popular power and the deepening of democratic practices both within the country and for the Latin American region. This research project argues that at the core of the Bolivarian Revolution is an urban revolution in which barrio residents play a key role in the transformation of the country. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, Doreen Massey, and Edward Soja, among others, it is argued that a spatial analysis of urban social relations, while usually reserved for the study of capital’s role in producing contemporary cities, also allows research to visibilize how popular organizations act as agents in the production and transformation of urban space in their own right. At the center of this study is the Urban Land Committee movement, which by drawing on what Lefebvre has called ‘lived space’ knowledges, has evolved from an organization that primarily sought land titles for barrio inhabitants to a national movement that is currently pursuing the ‘right to the city’, that is, decision-making power over urban space. Through an investigation of the movement’s strategies, and with an understanding that these strategies are inherently spatial in nature, it is possible to ask how the movement is transforming urban space in Venezuela. Ultimately, the work of the Urban Land Committee movement has implications both for theories about the production of urban space and for the construction of popular power in the Bolivarian Revolution.

This thesis analyses representations of urban violence in Colombia within four cultural products published/released in the time period 1990 to 2005 . The cultural products belong to genres commonly regarded as distinct, and divided between ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ – a novel, film, ‘testimonio’ and documentary. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on each cultural product as a whole – the text itself and its marketing paratext. In this focus on the cultural product as a whole, it also considers the role of the audience in the consumption of the cultural products and their themes. The theme the thesis specifically engages with is the representation of violent actors, and focuses in particular on their status as fourth world inhabitants. The fourth world is a theoretical category developed by Manuel Castells to describe spaces which are excluded from global networks and flows of information, resulting in ‘black holes’, such as favelas, inner city ‘ghettos’ and slums, in which inhabitants are unable to gain access to services and regular employment. The thesis looks at the development of myths surrounding these spaces and their inhabitants, and the role played by cultural products in constructing and perpetuating divisive myths. It posits a growing globally homogenised representation of the fourth world inhabitant as violent and destructive, creating a binary between fourth and first world inhabitants to which the representations in these particular Colombian cultural products are linked. Overall, the thesis argues that the representation of violent actors in Colombia, and in particular the city of Medellín in this time period, illustrates that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction has collapsed, due to the strength of myths surrounding fourth world figures.

This thesis looks at the nature of civil-military relations in the post-Cold War and the post-9/11 era through the theoretical lens of social constructivism. The study looks at the inter-relationship between the respective civil-military relations and US-Mexican bilateral ties from a constructivist perspective, with the aim of deconstructing the ideational structures of civil-military relations within the state and the state based international system to promote stronger organic structures for civilian control over the state agents of violence. The aim of thesis is to provide a theoretical model to both unite the theoretical rationale for the humanisation, indeed demilitarisation, of security concerns within the Western Hemisphere and in particular the US and Mexico. Hence, creating a novel theoretical model for the understanding and explanation of civil-military and bilateral relations.

This dissertation presents a fresh approach to the study of Haitian art through research conducted in the emerging interdisciplinary field of exhibition history. In a deliberate attempt to move away from existing notions of Haitian art as a formal or aesthetic style of art practice associated with primitivism – based on mid-twentieth-century art historical narratives – I have opted to explore the display of works by Haitian artists outside of conventional museum and gallery settings. Taking a broader cultural studies approach centred on three case studies, I examine the exhibition of artworks within the transitory sites of national cultural display at two world’s fairs and an art biennial: the Haitian pavilion at the World’s Columbian Fair of 1893; Haiti’s “Little World’s Fair” officially titled Exposition Internationale du Bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince of 1949-50; and the Haitian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. These exhibitions overlap in the sense that they all claimed to present an official representation of the Haitian nation-state and therefore an authoritative vision of Haitian culture. However, when we peer behind this veneer of official national rhetoric it becomes clear that at each of these sites there were numerous images of Haitian nationhood, as well as notions of a national cultural essence referred to throughout as Haitian-ness, being produced by various agents. Across the course of this study these include: Haitian and foreign state representatives, curators, artists, academics and cultural professionals drawn from Haiti, Haiti’s diasporas and elsewhere, as well as NGOs and other international collaborators. In each case those curating Haiti’s national displays at these events balanced assertions of national sovereignty against international marketability: delicate negotiations that, I argue, can be discerned through analysis of the forms, aesthetics, subjects and contextualisation of the artworks displayed. Across the course of this dissertation therefore I chart a shift in the substance of these Haitian cultural displays, and the artworks presented within them, from a fin de siècle expression of Francophile neoclassicism, through an uneasy post-war coupling of folkloric exoticism and western modernity, to a fragmented picture of contemporary Haitian-ness articulated with reference to poverty and cultural otherness as well as cosmopolitanism. Through an examination of these case studies I have sought to explore how the visual arts intersected with expressions of Haiti’s postcolonial nationhood at exhibitions staged within events scattered across the Atlantic World. Further, by charting shifts in the production and projection of Haitian nationhood and art across these three sites I have attempted to grasp a fuller picture of how entangled ideas of nation and culture have had a bearing on exhibition histories, international institutional engagement with and the marketing and perception of the work of Haitian artists through the long twentieth century.

This study of the neoliberal experiment in Chile from 1973 to 2015 uses the social harm approach. It offers an alternative evaluation of the benefits and harms of the experiment, the ways in which Chileans understand its consequences and where the legitimacy of the model unravels. The study refines the conceptualisation and measurement of social harm, marrying the notion of harm with the Marxist theory of contradictions. The research design is multimethod, incorporating analysis of 59 semi-structure interviews with secondary quantitative data. The study captures and describes not only a wide array of harms and injuries in the reconfiguration of social dynamics under neoliberalism, but also investigates how these harms have been justified and challenged over time. The study finds that there are areas in which the model has brought benefits to Chileans, but these benefits are flawed. The study critiques the neoliberal conceptualisation of harms as the 'price worth paying' for social prosperity. It concludes that the 'winners' of the model are very few, while those harmed populate the Chilean social structure from top to bottom. This study argues for a normative scenario to move toward a less harmful society.

Given the importance of educational leadership Bush (2008) argues that preparation of aspiring school leaders should not be left to chance. This exploratory case study is a critique of the Mexican system for appointing school leaders. The study is a qualitative research which used semi-structured interviews to collect data pertaining the strengths, shortcomings, and possible improvements of the system. The study revealed that there are some positive aspects in the system that could enable its consolidation. The study found a need to upgrade the current system since school leaders in Mexico are appointed by a system in which its regulations were promulgated 40 years ago. The current system does not enable the appointment of prepared leaders, since preparation for the post is not mandatory. The findings revealed a need for leadership preparation as a prerequisite for participants in competitions for leadership posts and, also for those who are already holding a leadership position. The approach adopted to appoint leaders without previous preparation seems to be problematic as time is wasted in enabling their readiness to effectively enact headship. The study also explored other topics such as talent identification, preparation, and leadership learning in which it was evident that Mexico still needs to do more when compared to what is currently done at international level.

Although the number of female leaders worldwide has yet to achieve par with that of male leaders, a growing number of female heads of state and female candidacies for that position signal that transformations are underway. Among them is Chile’s current president, Michelle Bachelet. Her first election generated significant debate since she possessed none of the qualities considered essential for eligibility. Attempts to lend logic to the contradictions imposed by that event are still largely inconclusive. This study investigates a deeper root system in Chilean history for causal factors with trajectories that lead into the twenty-first century. Under consideration are ways in which women attain political power, their management of power, and the role of the body politic in both of those. The latter part of the study establishes correlations between recent developments in the Chilean political landscape of female leadership and similar developments across the globe. During Bachelet’s first election, media coined the term—the “Bachelet Phenomenon”—to reference her unprecedented and improbable attainment of the presidency. This research consults a diverse body of resources to offer one interpretation of that. The findings contribute new perspectives to the existing body of literature that can be expanded by future research.

Most research into contemporary French West Indian literature focuses on writing that stresses the significance of the plantation and urban cultures of the islands in the early to mid-twentieth century or, more recently, on the desire of some writers to explore broader trans-national influences or environments. Despite the prominence of migration in post-war French West Indian history, however, less has been said about the engagement of French West Indian literature with migration to metropolitan France. Although commentators have recently begun to discuss the work of a handful of writers in connection with migration to the métropole, this thesis offers a full-length analysis of the issue, bringing writers, texts and literary and cultural theories together with the cultural and sociological context of migration to metropolitan France. I comment on a variety of well-known authors and texts, while also presenting writers and writing that have frequently been neglected in other studies. I also consider the reasons for what I believe to be both the slow development of a literature of migration, as well as the low profile of this issue within Francophone literary studies. Part One, ‘French and West Indian: Historical and Sociological Contexts’, considers the broad context of migration, reflecting on how that context impacts on the West Indians and their descendants in the métropole. Part Two, ‘Theory and the French West Indian Diaspora’, looks at colonisation, postcolonial criticism, and the current scholarship devoted to them, as these concern the issues of migration and identity in sociological and literary terms. Part Three, ‘Patterns of Discourse: Reflections of the Métropole’, takes recurrent themes that have appeared in the works of a variety of less well-known writers, including writers of West Indian origin born in the métropole. In Part Four, ‘Siting the Métropole’, I examine three successful yet very different writers and consider their contributions to the literature of migration, in the light of the reflections made and the patterns uncovered earlier in this thesis. My conclusion unites the themes of inclusion and exclusion that this subject brings to the fore, and suggests potential literary and scholarly developments for the future.

This thesis explores the interaction of gender and the construction of the Argentine state. It pays particular attention to the emergence of women’s movements as well as women’s writing and the way in which both reflect and express the history of the Argentine state after independence. Beginning with a brief account of Argentine independence and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as founding-father of the Argentine nation, part one focuses on the historical periods of the Liberal State, Peronism, and the military dictatorships of the 1960s and early 1970s. It investigates how national discourse incorporated gender discourse without including women as citizens in their full right. It then explores how women’s movements articulated their ensuing discontent with the patriarchal system that attempted to ensure continuity of this exclusion. Part two identifies and analyzes selected texts by nineteenth and twentieth century Argentine female authors. Written from a specifically female standpoint, these novels and short stories articulate women’s grievances with the political developments addressed in part one.