In this thesis I relate the work of both Arendt and Habermas concerning the public sphere to Moscovici's theory of social representations. I propose a distinction between social representations in and of the public sphere to show that (i) social representations are forms of symbolic mediation firmly grounded in the public sphere, and (ii) public life plays a constituent role in the development of representations and symbols. Drawing on Winnicott's concept of potential space, I show that the constitution of social representations and public life rests neither upon the individual nor upon society, but upon those spaces of mediation that link and separate them at the same time. The concept of public sphere is operationalised along two dimensions: the space of the streets and the arena of politics. The research comprises three empirical studies: (i) content analyses of the Brazilian press, (ii) focus groups with street children, taxi drivers, policemen, professionals, students and manual workers, and (iii) narrative interviews with Brazilian parliamentarians about the impeachment of the former president. The roles of the media, of conversation and of narratives in the shaping of both social representations and public life guide the analyses. The findings suggest that the blurred character of the relationship between self and other in Brazil lies at the very heart of social representations of public life. Threat and fear on the streets and corruption in political life are anchored in older metaphors of corrupt blood and a contaminated, ill, social body. The results suggest that the workings of social representations are inseparable both from the historical features of the society in which they develop and from the processes whereby a community struggles to maintain an identity, a sense of belonging and a location in the world.

Aló Presidente was a weekly television programme anchored and produced by Hugo Chávez during his presidency in Venezuela. The show, a version of a phone-in, was broadcast live on national television at 11am on Sundays and lasted on average six hours. It followed the presidential agenda to a new location every week, where Hugo Chávez would inaugurate factories, read Latin American poetry, interview Fidel Castro, and sing llanero songs. This thesis investigates the role that Aló Presidente played in the making of the “Bolivarian Revolution”, Hugo Chávez’s political project. Through a critical reading of the transcripts of the show, it explores the 378 episodes, or 1656 hours, that aired between 1999 and 2012. Aló Presidente was the cornerstone of Chávez’s political communication, replacing press conferences and interviews. Chávez was known for his continuous presence on radio and television and his daily presidential addresses. However, only on the Sunday show could the audience phone the president and share their ideas, emotions and everyday life concerns. This thesis reviews the narratives that underlined the relationship between the audience/electorate and the host/president on Aló Presidente. It is argued that Aló Presidente played a fundamental role in articulating the identity of a public that shared the values and ideas of Chávez’s hegemonic project. Moreover, it is argued that the show Aló Presidente and the ideological process called the “Bolivarian Revolution” can be read as two co-related arms of a same project, and that they informed and defined each other throughout Chávez’s presidency. In this context, this thesis assesses the evolution of the programme in light of the political events taking place in Venezuela during that time. Aló Presidente is thus seen as a repository, or “black box”, of the discourses that articulated the Bolivarian identity and constructed the legitimacy of Hugo Chávez as the leader of a populist movement in Venezuela. Finally, the core of this thesis is that the co-relation between the show and the hegemonic project evolved over time to strengthen the authoritarian tendencies of Hugo Chávez’s regime. Following the activities of Aló Presidente over 13 years, the investigation charts that evolution in three different stages: 1) participation, 2) education, and 3) obedience, arguing that what started as a seemingly participatory space, progressively became a platform that presented Hugo Chávez’s figure as the ideologue of a populist movement, and ultimately secured his position as the indisputable leader and sole authority of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution”.

The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the forms that environmental cooperation takes in regions of the South and the processes determining these different forms. Environmental cooperation has been researched extensively in other contexts, notably in relation to global environmental regimes, but the regional dimension and regions in the South in particular, have received very little attention. This thesis provides an in-depth exploratory study comparing three cases of regional environmental cooperation in one region of the South, the Southern Cone of South America. Based on the findings from two extensive fieldwork periods which served to conduct over 50 interviews with policy-makers, civil society representatives and researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and to collect relevant documentation, the thesis argues that regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone takes place in three main forms; regional organisations; regional resource regimes; and the regional implementation of global environmental conventions. These vary in terms of the type of institutional framework and its political purpose; the scope of issues addressed; and the way the membership is determined. Regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is promoted by different types of drivers from within the region, notably civil society organisations and networks of government officials, as well as drivers from outside the region, most importantly donors and international organisations. The variation in the forms of cooperation is thus determined not only by the position of national governments, but also by the objectives and strategies used by the different drivers. In addition, regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is marked by low political will and takes a marginal position in particular in relation to economic interests. While different drivers have been crucial in shaping the different forms that regional environmental cooperation takes, the marginality of this is an outcome of the political and economic context and the development strategy adopted by governments. Consequently, during the research process it became clear that it is important to distinguish between differing levels of strength of regional environmental cooperation and the thesis has developed the concepts of robustness and marginality to this end. These theoretical tools provide an important basis for further research and comparisons on environmental cooperation in regions of the South.

The U.S. War on Drugs has been underway for several decades. Since it was declared by the Nixon Administration narcotics have been understood as a growing security threat to the American public, their health, economy and society. Illicit drugs have gradually become a securitised issue. From the Nixon Administration onward, the law enforcement and eventually military assets of the United States government were increasingly deployed in an effort to counter this drug threat. While initially regarded as a minor issue, as the potency and addictive qualities of illicit drugs increased during the 20th Century, so too did the concerns of influential actors from the political and public spheres. Nixon's actions did not represent the high-water mark of U.S. counter-narcotics. There was growing violence on American streets linked to the drug trafficking cartels out of Colombia, especially in Southern Florida where traffickers battled each other for lucrative drug markets. In response to this national security threat, the Reagan Administration – followed by the successor Bush and Clinton Administrations – gradually increased the involvement of the U.S. military in counter-narcotics policy. This occurred both at home in the form of greater militarisation of police forces, and abroad in support of several Latin American countries’ security forces. In 2000, drug-related instability in Colombia resulted in the launch of the Plan Colombia initiative, a dedicated package of American financial and security assistance, with counter-narcotics the primary purpose. In 2008, as drug-related violence in Mexico reached epidemic proportions and threatened to spillover across the American border, the U.S. launched the Merida Initiative in an attempt to aid Mexican counter-narcotics efforts. This thesis uses qualitative research methods to examine the militarisation of U.S. foreign counter-narcotics policy by analysing the case studies of Colombia and Mexico and their American-backed efforts. It also examines domestic policy, by considering the historical development of U.S. counter-narcotics, the progressive militarisation of law enforcement as a consequence of the drug war, and the security situation on the southern border with Mexico. This empirical research is facilitated by the development of a militarisation analytical framework, which builds upon the securitisation framework. Based on the findings of the case studies, the processes that drive militarisation are explored, and the framework itself is further developed and refined. The research possibilities for counter-narcotics policy and future direction for militarisation research are also explored in the Conclusion. Ultimately, this thesis offers a detailed analysis of militarisation in U.S. foreign and domestic counter-narcotics policy, the processes behind this, and develops a militarisation framework applicable to any security situation, contributing to the overall securitisation debate.

This dissertation examines the political prospects of rural subaltern groups in the era of neoliberal globalisation by engaging with the ‘death of the peasantry’ debates. To achieve this, it concentrates on rural resistance in the northern highlands of Peru, Cajamarca, against ‘new mineral extraction’ by multinational capital in the form of Minera Yanacocha S.A. (MYSA), with a theoretical framework of critical geography on transnational activism. In particular, the dissertation devotes attention to the massive mobilisations against MYSA’s Conga mining project between 2011 and 2013. The dispossession and disempowerment of the peasantry have been highlighted as the accumulation of global capital has intensified alongside the implementation of market-led development models around the globe. In the 1990s, the extraction and export of abundant natural resources was promoted as a ‘new development alternative’. In tandem with the unprecedented width and depth of resource extraction, the continent has become witness to increasing incidences of struggles led by local communities, particularly in the countryside. Recent Peruvian economic growth has been boosted by a ‘new mining boom’. Simultaneously, many Peruvians are protesting against mining activities, particularly due to their negative social and environmental impact. Cajamarca is one obvious example where neoliberal mineral extraction has generated a series of local struggles since the arrival of MYSA in 1993. The asymmetrical power of multinational capital vis-à-vis campesinos stands out in the context of the emphasis of the central government on ‘national development’ based on natural resource extraction. Against this backdrop, this dissertation examines the re-articulation of rural subjectivities and the political possibilities in their ‘networked form of resistance’, instead of focusing on the fragmentation, powerlessness and passivity of subaltern groups in the face of global capital power. Economic reductionism restricts our understanding of neoliberal globalisation to the exploitation of global capital vs. dispossession of local communities. Following Doreen Massey’s relational geographical approach, the dissertation maintains that it is relevant to understand the ‘relational content’ of global capital mobility and complex dynamics of resistance. In addition, the dualistic framework of geography and power which is based on an essentialist geographical understanding of the spatial (i.e. space/place; powerful global and powerless local) tends to regard local resistance as ‘reactionary’ place-based struggle. Instead, the dissertation focuses on the ‘interconnectedness’ of subaltern groups. It argues that diverse social groups shape what Featherstone terms ‘prefigurative solidarity’ around ‘maps of grievance’, via political resistance. In this process, a political identity is constructed in order to bring neoliberal globalisation into contestation.

Community policing is one of the more significant recent developments in policing and the notion has been widely discussed and applied around the world. This thesis examines its various conceptions as discussed in the literature and in practice, with particular emphasis being given to the role of trust between police and citizens in this context. The investigation adopts a constructivist and qualitative comparative analysis based in two countries: Mexico and the UK (with two case studies in each country) and with data primarily collected through interviews with samples of police and citizens. Key findings are that: The variety of conceptions about community policing highlight the complex nature of the notion and the many factors shaping its varied practices. Police assumptions as to what constitutes good practice in community policing and what success might look like, deserve to be re-examined. The social constructions that police and citizens hold about community policing provide valuable sources of insight which challenge some of the conventional understandings regarding policing priorities. Trust is a vital ingredient for successful community policing and needs to be based as much on the police trusting citizens and communities as the other way round.

Dominican mass-migration to the United States only started in the 1960s but Dominican Americans are now a sizable minority and in 2014 they became the largest Latino group in New York City. This thesis examines fictional works by Dominican American writers who migrated to the United States from the early 1960s to the 1990s which explore the predicament of Dominican Americans before and after the consolidation of Dominican-American communities. The novels under scrutiny here were published in English between 1991 and 2012 by Julia Alvarez (b. 1950), Loida Maritza Pérez (b. 1963), Junot Díaz (b. 1969), and Angie Cruz (b. 1972) and present us with characters whose search for a ‘home’ and for ways in which to articulate their individual and collective identity are shaped by continuous negotiations between the traditional values of their country of origin and the potentially transformative opportunities afforded by their new country. I will show how these texts powerfully challenge homogeneity, marginalisation, mainstream ideologies, nationalism, and discrimination while questioning the economic, social, religious, patriarchal, educational, and political structures of both the Dominican Republic and the United States in order to formulate diverse modalities of belonging to what Julia Alvarez has called a new “country that’s not on the map” and establish their own distinct position as Dominican American writers.