<p> This study explores the increasingly popular phenomenon of volunteer tourism in the Global South, particularly the governmental rationalities and socio-economic conditions that valorize it as a noble and necessary cultural practice. Using ethnographic material gathered during two volunteering programs in Guatemala and Ghana, I argue that, although volunteer tourism may not trigger social change, provide meaningful encounters with difference, or offer professional expertise, as the brochure discourse often promises, the formula remains a useful strategy for producing the subjects and social relations neoliberalism requires. The value of volunteer tourism should not to be assessed in terms of the goods and services it delivers to the global poor, but in terms of how well the pratice disseminates entrepreneurial styles of feeling and action. Three merits stand out in particular. First, volunteer tourism mobilizes a series of affective competencies and private sensibilities that fit the global logic of capitalism. Second, it represents a new type of moral and technical education that teaches young adults how. to operate in multicultural settings and globalized sites. Finally, by virtue of having lived and worked in places the Western imagination believes to be destitute and dangerous, volunteer tourists are better positioned to live fully in the global moment. Together, these effects demonstrate that, far from being a selfless and history-less rescue act, volunteer tourism is in fact a strategy of power that extends economic rationality, particularly its emphasis on entrepreneurship and competition, to the realm of political subjectivity. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Urban policies are currently shaped by contemporary processes of globalisation including a market-oriented approach to urban development. In Rio de Janeiro there is currently a high rate of urban population growth causing issues such as inequality, informal settlements and lack of access to basic services. Improved urban management is urgently needed which has become an obstacle to overcome by the GoRJ and the World Bank. Participatory methods has become widely integrated into development promoting programs with the incentive to include various key stakeholders in urban policy making. This case study explores issues of how strategies are produced and implemented into the context of Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, it aims to explore events caused by such strategies. Based on a taken-for-granted premise that participatory methods and market-oriented planning leads to accelerated development, this study calls for a critical examination of how such approaches are carried out in practice.  In communicative planning theory, there is a critical stance towards rational models used in planning systems. The findings of this paper present how neoliberal ideology has formed urban development in Rio de Janeiro and how it contains a rational rethoric. It furher presents ways of how participatory methods can reinforce oppressions and injustices, serving a top-down approach rather than the opposite.

Youth with disabilities are amongst the poorest and most marginalised of young people worldwide. Approximately 80 per cent of disabled young people live in countries of the Global South. Despite a growing body of research problematising youth transitions in situations of poverty and increasing interest in disability issues beyond the Global North, little is known about how youth with disabilities in the Global South make their transitions to adulthood. This thesis addresses this gap by reporting on a qualitative study on the transitions to adulthood of young people with different impairments living primarily in Accra, Ghana. Using innovative, participatory methods, it explores young people s individual narratives within the areas of education, employment, and social and community life, and the ways in which these shape their life trajectories. The study shows that the transitions to adulthood of youth with disabilities in Accra are substantially influenced by disability-related factors and processes that are socio-spatially embedded and intricately intertwined. Disabling social and physical environments restrict disabled young people s participation in education, employment, and social and community life, which increases their vulnerability to marginalisation and exclusion in society. As a consequence, their transitions to adulthood are even more complex, protracted, and uncertain than for their non-disabled peers. Youth with disabilities, however, use a variety of coping strategies to navigate the challenges they face associated with school, work, and social life in their attempts to achieve adulthood. Foregrounding the voices of young people with differing categories of social difference challenges the hitherto existing homogenisation of the lives of youth with disabilities in the Global South highlighting their agency and capabilities as well as the complex ways in which they negotiate transitions during the life-course.

This dissertation argues that urban neoliberal programs currently formulating in the Global South are unprecedented in historical México as well as in examined practices of gentrification and globalization. In this dissertation I specifically focus on the Programa de Rescate – an urban policy being amassed in México City’s Centro Histórico as a nexus of processes of gentrification, neoliberalization, and globalization. This work re-theorizes how gentrification functions when it is implemented in the Global South – as the neoliberalization of space.

My title echoes Agha Shahid Ali’s sentiment of needing to move beyond the linguistic nationalism of “English” toward a more varied understanding of Anglophone writing within multiple contexts in the world. In three theoretical case studies from four linguistic and literary traditions (English, Bengali, Spanish, and Hindi-Urdu), I explore the dimensions and definitions of comparative Anglophone and world literature, comparative poetics, and a comparative study of novels – in the global postcolonial world. I focus on moments of translatability and untranslatability to question traditional models for studies in English and comparative literature that do not account for translation. Each of my chapters shows how texts in the “original” or “translation” do not always circulate from a homogenized metropolitan center to a marginalized periphery, and unlike in the elite North American and Parisian world where untranslatability often inspires terror and loss of language, translations can act as connecting forces that create organic dialogue in the global south on modernism and postcolonial discourses that go beyond Europe and America / text

Volunteers, governments, agencies and organizations from the North have too often defined the benefits and limitations of international volunteer programs without incorporating the perspectives of the organizations they seek to help. In fact, scholars and practitioners have relied on Northern experiences to develop a critical analysis of this development practice. As the experiences of the South are often absent from the conversations about international volunteerism, the goal of this thesis is to leverage the voices and the stories of Southern hosts to further understand the impact of international volunteerism. The research draws on the experiences of host organizations in Uganda. The interviewed participants are Ugandans who have worked with international volunteers to address various development issues. A review of the existing literature on international volunteerism, combined with the field research, support the analysis of the benefits and limitations of international volunteerism from the perspectives of host organizations. It also enables an exploration of the agency of volunteerism and determines key principles to empower host organizations and their employees. Thus, the analysis establishes the following conclusions: international volunteers are valuable actors for Southern hosts; volunteer programs must consider the impact, the challenges and the recommendations identified by host organizations and their communities; international volunteers enable alternative voices to be heard; and volunteerism fosters cooperation and partnerships within the Global South.

This dissertation focuses on three different organizational approaches to introducing change in the Global South. In so doing, it explores how organizations can design and structure 'solutions' for deep-rooted social problems and support marginalized groups who lack voice to speak for themselves. Theoretically, I draw on institutional theory and social movement theory, and it is to these perspectives that my research seeks to contribute. Empirically, my work focuses on Tanzania, Indonesia and Nigeria. Studying how and why three different types of organizational forms - including a social enterprise (Paper 1), a quasi-social movement (Paper 2) and a social movement (Paper 3) - succeeded or failed in their attempts to introduce change in the Global South provides an intriguing opportunity to build new theoretical insights and to shed light on strategic and organizational processes about which relatively little is known.

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An increasing body of literature reveals that powerful businesspeople have a long history of using their wealth for the benefit of the greater common good. With philanthrocapitalism, a new generation of hands-on donors that have made incredible fortunes within business sectors like information technology or finance, are taking on the world's most pressuring social and environmental problem, willing to change the way of giving and enhancing traditional philanthropy. The rich entrepreneurs turned philanthropists are applying their skills and talents that have made them successful in business and infusing the charity sector with corporate tools and strategies and are getting personally engaged and using political and social networks to leverage their efforts. Driven to find solutions to the world's most severe problems, philanthrocapitalists tend to target problems that cut across national boundaries, such as AIDS, Malaria, illiteracy, and population growth. Next to these familiar fields such as health and education, philanthropists are also increasingly engaging in nature conservation. By establishing private nature reserves or taking over failed state-run nature reserves, elite donors are increasingly featuring neoliberal conservation and intervene in political ecology particularly in biodiversity hotspots in the global South. Notwithstanding philanthrocapitalism growing prominence and significance, broader public debates and academic literature is just emerging in recent years and the impact on nature conservation has received little scholarly attention. By examining the case of the Gorongosa Project (GP), a transnational nature conservation project that was established by U.S. multimillionaire Greg Carr in Mozambique, this thesis seeks to illustrate: a) how philanthrocapitalism influences nature conservation, b) how philanthrocapitalistic conservation projects work in practice and, c) enhance understanding about the implications of philanthrocapitalism in conservation governance, recognising its advantages and limitations. The thesis further seeks to contribute to the academic discourse as the far-reaching ventures of Western philanthrocapitalists have provoked a controversial debate. Advocates such as economists, journalists and political organisations argue that the financial power, unique business skills, resources and networks enable philanthrocapitalists to contribute to solving global issues more efficiently than other stakeholders. In contrast, critics from political or social sciences or conservation point out the increasing influence that wealthy philanthropists have on global policymaking as well as social and political agendas and have raised concerns about democratic values and power and wealth inequalities.

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