This research analyzes how a continuum of socio-economic and political structures since colonization, what I defined as colonial legacies, has affected the development of greening policies and other broader urban realities in contemporary Santiago, Chile’s capital city. I connect these colonial legacies with the current outcomes of urban green areas in several ways: 1. How Santiago’s spatial organization and planning have excluded working-poor, indigenous, and non-white people from fair access to services and spaces of privilege. 2. How Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973-1990) increased geographical and economic disparities across wealthy and non-wealthy municipalities. 3. How neoliberal economic policies not only decreased public services while increasing social exclusion and economic segregation for everyday people but also prioritized economic outcomes for municipalities in detriment over social and environmental. In dialogue with the literature on green space in Santiago, this research brings together a de-colonial theoretical framework, intended to make visible hidden and often oppressive realities affecting everyday and marginalized people, and a Global South epistemology urban scholarship, intended to validate the production of knowledge that comes from spaces in the margins, to also understand: 1) to what extent are urban greening policies at the municipal level excluding/including residents from participating in urban green area development, and 2) how are residents (everyday, low-income, and marginalized) rethinking urban green spaces (and the urban in general) in the wake of massive social unrest across the Latin American region. I offer answers to these inquiries by using qualitative methods (open-ended interviews with municipal authorities and residents of six municipalities, participatory observation, content analysis, and visceral data collection) to show how the access and development of these public spaces have been shaped by structural systems that have continued the ideas in which Santiago was organized since 1541. An expert-residents’ disconnection, were ideas and the understanding of urban green areas (as well as the urban in general) from authorities does not replicate what everyday and marginalized people need and asked for, emerged as a major theme to explain the realities of green areas across wealthy and non-wealthy comunas. This research concludes that this disconnection has become fundamental to clarify why other oppressive urban realities, beyond green areas development, have remained invisible and unaddressed by the state and elite group in Santiago, a situation that generated massive social unrest in the country. / Geography

This thesis seeks to challenge deficit approaches to 'different' childhoods. It does this through documenting the everyday life experiences of Sylheti-heritage Muslim children in urban Scotland, and reading these childhoods through the lives of children and their kin in rural Sylhet, Bangladesh. The research is based on 3 years' ethnographic fieldwork (January 2008-February 2011), in Scotland and in Bangladesh, and incorporates various child-friendly creative research methods used to elicit data on children's realities and perspectives on their lives. These data are supplemented by data from the children's mothers (and occasionally wider family) in both locations. Transnational migration between the Indian subcontinent and the UK is not new, but little research has focused on childhoods, in particular the lived experiences of young Muslim children of marriage-migrant mothers in Scotland, where this minority ethnic 'community' is quite small, later-formed and largely invisible. Little early childhood research has been conducted on children's everyday lives either in rural Sylhet or in Scotland. The history and context of migration and the realities of children's lives in Scotland, as migrant-heritage Muslim children, are largely unexplored and their particular needs are little understood. Some media and public imaginaries and discourses portray Muslim families and their communities as 'problematic', increasingly so since September 11th, 2001, with recent events in the UK, mainland Europe and the Middle East adding fuel to such sentiments. Many Sylheti-heritage families experience harassment and abuse, or live in fear of such eventualities, and the women and young children in my Scottish cohort have largely withdrawn for safety from the visible public domain. This research aims to contribute to a body of knowledge on early childhood(s). Early childhood interventions are high on Scotland's, and the UK's, policy agendas. These policies aim to create better futures and greater inclusiveness for all residents, but they are problematic for families that do not match the very Euro-American middle-class conceptions of childhood and family norms that inform policy. Despite the introduction of strengths-based models in family and childhood policy and practice, such 'different' children and families may still be viewed from a deficits perspective. Such deficit discourses may be rooted in a language of cultural deprivation and special needs, focusing on perceived deficiencies, resulting in the pathologising of certain groups, which become normalised over time. The global Early Years' agenda is also reflected in interventions in rural Bangladesh, with imported global ideals and norms of which most village families have no knowledge and which bear little relevance to their everyday lives. For example, many interventions exist for early childhood in the form of pre-school and nursery provision, but many are based on very Eurocentric models of childhood, which although pertinent in the Global North may not 'fit' with the realities of life for most rural children and their families. There is an over-emphasis on children's futures and children as 'becomings', the future citizens they will become, rather than on their quality of life here and now as 'beings'. This thesis frames children's everyday lives in terms of 'domains': places of childhood (locations of children's day-to-day activities), 'networks': spaces of childhood (social networks and relationships with kin and friends); and 'preoccupations': pursuits of childhood (how they spend their lives and what meaning, if any, they attach to these different aspects of life). The gendered character of these experiences is highlighted throughout. Children's lives, particularly when young, are influenced and shaped by their kin, yet opportunities for agency also exist. When women migrate after marriage from Sylhet to Scotland, some aspects of childhood and family lives remain fairly constant while others change quite radically. For instance, whilst children's lives continue to be centred on close family, family may be much smaller and less accessible than in Sylhet. Concepts of house and neighbourhood continue to be important, but Sylheti village childhoods are largely spent outdoors, whilst children are largely restricted to the family home in Scotland; children's physical domains of activity diminish and women and children have few opportunities to connect socially beyond their existing family networks, particularly in the early years. Social life, very rich and foregrounded in Sylheti villages, becomes potentially more restricted in Scotland although women work hard to create and maintain social opportunities and networks in Scotland, with wider Diasporic kin, and the Sylheti villages to which they have connections. Through their representations and narratives, both drawn and spoken, children convey rich examples of their childhood experiences, in both locales, which challenge deficit discourses on 'different childhoods'.

A presente dissertação de mestrado busca contribuir para o debate em desenvolvimento sobre a emergência de países do Sul Global, a partir do estudo das relações de poder hierarquizadas em que estes esses países estão inseridos. Nesse sentido, questiona-se como estruturas de assimetria material atuam sobre o comportamento de distintos atores do sistema internacional. As oportunidades e constrangimentos de tais estruturas materiais se manifestam especificamente para distintos atores? Como essa variação se articula com as possibilidades de emergência de países do Sul Global? A partir da resposta a essas perguntas, busca-se propor um caminho para identificar episódios históricos de constituição, por parte de países do Sul Global, de capacidade transformativa de sua posição nas relações internacionais em que se inserem. Para tanto, mobiliza-se um diálogo entre a literatura sobre diferenciação estrutural e sobre a hierarquia nas relações internacionais, como modo de articular analiticamente o processo de socialização entre estruturas políticas e econômicas. Desse diálogo estrutural, pretende-se compreender os mecanismos de exclusão que perpetuam assimetrias materiais no sistema internacional e os meios instrumentalizáveis para sua ruptura. / This master's thesis aims to contribute to the debate on the rise of countries from the Global South, proposing the study of hierarchical power relations that they entail. In this sense, it questions how structures of material asymmetries act conditioning the behavior of actors throughout the international system. Are the opportunities and constraints deriving such structures specifically varying for different actors? How is this variation related to the possibilities of rise in the Global South? From the answers to these questions, it is hoped to propose an alternative to identify historical episodes of constitution, by countries the Global South, of transformative capacity of their position in the international relations that they operate. Therefore, the work mobilizes a dialogue between the literature on structural differentiation and hierarchy in international relations, as a way of analytically articulate the process of socialization of political and economic structures. This structural dialogue focuses on identifying mechanisms of exclusion that perpetuate materials asymmetries in the international system and the means to their rupture.

This paper argues for the importance of scale, management and sovereign-led development in considering a more human-centric model for Third World development. It begins by reviewing the history of the mainstream Western development model through the evolution of modernization theory and foreign aid. It explores general critiques of this model offered by scholars, focusing on unequal power relations, the high cost of aid, and problems with ‘cookie cutter’ style development projects that don’t take into account disparate environments. As the paper progresses, focus shifts more specifically to hydropower development and ‘Big Dams’. Nepal is the main case study for exemplifying the problems with foreign-aid-funded dam projects and for proposing the alternative model of smaller scale, management-focused, nation-led development projects. While the scope of this study is limited, the growing success of these projects in Nepal suggests that more focus should be paid to applying these methods in other developing countries.

As food scares have hastened the growth of safety and quality standards around the world, certification schemes to assure various attributes of foods have proliferated in the global marketplace. High-value food commodities produced in the global south for export have been the subject of such schemes through third-party environmental certifications, providing regulatory and verification mechanisms welcomed by global buyers. As certification becomes more common, re-localization in the current global context can also mean the projection of place onto a food commodity to highlight its origin or attributes secured by transparent verification mechanisms. However, environmental food certification is often criticized for its inapplicability in the context of the global south, due to the extensive documentation requirements and high costs. The key question here is the process for small-scale producers in the global south to navigate increasing international regulation of food safety and quality. This dissertation examines (1) how the environmental standards (as defined by the global north) were translated in the rural global south through international certification schemes, and (2) what the implications are at the local level, especially where producers had not yet integrated into conventional global markets before the introduction of certification. The dissertation also analyzes the influence of such certification in determining the development trajectories of rural society in the global south. A case study is used to examine newly-introduced certified organic shrimp production in Ca Mau Province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The selected shrimp production site is the first pilot organic shrimp project in Vietnam working with an international third-party certification scheme. It is located in rural Vietnam where, as in other parts of Southeast Asia, an accelerated process of agrarian transition is underway. Whereas elsewhere the trend with intensified regulation has been the consolidation of large-scale farms and the exclusion of small-scale farms from international agrofood markets, this case study demonstrates comparative advantages of small-scale farms over large-scale farms in producing sensitive high-value crops. This dissertation employs two main analytical approaches. The first approach is to examine the network of actors and the flow of information, payment and shrimp at the production level using environmental regulatory network (ERN). In contrast to chain analyses, which can be useful in identifying linear structure of supply chains for global commodities, ERN can capture the interrelatedeness of actors in the network built around environmental certification for agrofood products. The second analytical lens is that of agrarian transition. Countries experiencing agrarian transition at present are doing so in a very different international context from countries that accomplished their transitions in the past. Results of this research indicate that technical and financial constraints at the time of initial certification are not the primary obstacles to farmers getting certified, since the extensive farming method employed at the study site is organic by default. In spite of this, many farmers unofficially withdrew from the organic shrimp project by simply shifting their marketing channel back to a conventional one. Inefficient flows of information and payments, and a restrictive marketing channel within the environmental regulatory network that does not take into account local geographical conditions and farming practices, all contributed to limiting the farmers’ capacity and lowering their incentives to get involved in the network. The analysis also indicates that, by influencing those agrarian transition processes, food standards and certification based on values developed in the global north may modify, reshape and/or hold back agrarian transition processes in agricultural sectors of developing countries. The potential benefits of environmental certification are enhanced rural development, by generating opportunities for small-scale farmers to connect to global niche markets. The findings of this dissertation highlighted that such certification schemes or their environmental regulatory networks need to ensure information sharing and compensation for farmers. As an empirical finding, this dissertation also captures where ecological credibility and market logic meet: the success of this kind of certification depends on finding a balanced point where standards are ecologically (or ethically) credible to the level that does not attract too much criticism for being green washing, but not too unrealistic to become a disincentive for farmers to participate.

The aim of this thesis is to explore a case of street and market vendors in urban Africa, who are members of a local network with transnational connections. The local network collaborates with a global network and a local policy institute with the purpose to strengthen capacity of street and market vendors. The thesis asks questions of membership experiences, processes behind agendas and implementation of capacity building for the vendors and perspectives on these capacity building efforts. Theories depart from contemporary globalization and focus on issues of transnational civil society networks and injustice. Specific theoretical contributions are drawn from Routledge and Cumbers (2009) global justice network-theory and Amartya Sen’s (2009) idea of justice. A qualitative case study was conducted in Accra, Ghana based on participatory observations and semi-structured interviews with street and market vendors and officials of both the collaborating network and policy institute. Membership experiences were understood to include capacity building effects and further concerned issues of knowledge, community and identity. Global and local factors combined and influenced the agenda and implementation of capacity building. Theoretical contributions were combined and useful in analysing the empirical case, and ethical considerations were fundamental to the research process.

As food scares have hastened the growth of safety and quality standards around the world, certification schemes to assure various attributes of foods have proliferated in the global marketplace. High-value food commodities produced in the global south for export have been the subject of such schemes through third-party environmental certifications, providing regulatory and verification mechanisms welcomed by global buyers. As certification becomes more common, re-localization in the current global context can also mean the projection of place onto a food commodity to highlight its origin or attributes secured by transparent verification mechanisms. However, environmental food certification is often criticized for its inapplicability in the context of the global south, due to the extensive documentation requirements and high costs. The key question here is the process for small-scale producers in the global south to navigate increasing international regulation of food safety and quality. This dissertation examines (1) how the environmental standards (as defined by the global north) were translated in the rural global south through international certification schemes, and (2) what the implications are at the local level, especially where producers had not yet integrated into conventional global markets before the introduction of certification. The dissertation also analyzes the influence of such certification in determining the development trajectories of rural society in the global south. A case study is used to examine newly-introduced certified organic shrimp production in Ca Mau Province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The selected shrimp production site is the first pilot organic shrimp project in Vietnam working with an international third-party certification scheme. It is located in rural Vietnam where, as in other parts of Southeast Asia, an accelerated process of agrarian transition is underway. Whereas elsewhere the trend with intensified regulation has been the consolidation of large-scale farms and the exclusion of small-scale farms from international agrofood markets, this case study demonstrates comparative advantages of small-scale farms over large-scale farms in producing sensitive high-value crops. This dissertation employs two main analytical approaches. The first approach is to examine the network of actors and the flow of information, payment and shrimp at the production level using environmental regulatory network (ERN). In contrast to chain analyses, which can be useful in identifying linear structure of supply chains for global commodities, ERN can capture the interrelatedeness of actors in the network built around environmental certification for agrofood products. The second analytical lens is that of agrarian transition. Countries experiencing agrarian transition at present are doing so in a very different international context from countries that accomplished their transitions in the past. Results of this research indicate that technical and financial constraints at the time of initial certification are not the primary obstacles to farmers getting certified, since the extensive farming method employed at the study site is organic by default. In spite of this, many farmers unofficially withdrew from the organic shrimp project by simply shifting their marketing channel back to a conventional one. Inefficient flows of information and payments, and a restrictive marketing channel within the environmental regulatory network that does not take into account local geographical conditions and farming practices, all contributed to limiting the farmers’ capacity and lowering their incentives to get involved in the network. The analysis also indicates that, by influencing those agrarian transition processes, food standards and certification based on values developed in the global north may modify, reshape and/or hold back agrarian transition processes in agricultural sectors of developing countries. The potential benefits of environmental certification are enhanced rural development, by generating opportunities for small-scale farmers to connect to global niche markets. The findings of this dissertation highlighted that such certification schemes or their environmental regulatory networks need to ensure information sharing and compensation for farmers. As an empirical finding, this dissertation also captures where ecological credibility and market logic meet: the success of this kind of certification depends on finding a balanced point where standards are ecologically (or ethically) credible to the level that does not attract too much criticism for being green washing, but not too unrealistic to become a disincentive for farmers to participate.

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A presente dissertação de mestrado busca contribuir para o debate em desenvolvimento sobre a emergência de países do Sul Global, a partir do estudo das relações de poder hierarquizadas em que estes esses países estão inseridos. Nesse sentido, questiona-se como estruturas de assimetria material atuam sobre o comportamento de distintos atores do sistema internacional. As oportunidades e constrangimentos de tais estruturas materiais se manifestam especificamente para distintos atores? Como essa variação se articula com as possibilidades de emergência de países do Sul Global? A partir da resposta a essas perguntas, busca-se propor um caminho para identificar episódios históricos de constituição, por parte de países do Sul Global, de capacidade transformativa de sua posição nas relações internacionais em que se inserem. Para tanto, mobiliza-se um diálogo entre a literatura sobre diferenciação estrutural e sobre a hierarquia nas relações internacionais, como modo de articular analiticamente o processo de socialização entre estruturas políticas e econômicas. Desse diálogo estrutural, pretende-se compreender os mecanismos de exclusão que perpetuam assimetrias materiais no sistema internacional e os meios instrumentalizáveis para sua ruptura. / This master's thesis aims to contribute to the debate on the rise of countries from the Global South, proposing the study of hierarchical power relations that they entail. In this sense, it questions how structures of material asymmetries act conditioning the behavior of actors throughout the international system. Are the opportunities and constraints deriving such structures specifically varying for different actors? How is this variation related to the possibilities of rise in the Global South? From the answers to these questions, it is hoped to propose an alternative to identify historical episodes of constitution, by countries the Global South, of transformative capacity of their position in the international relations that they operate. Therefore, the work mobilizes a dialogue between the literature on structural differentiation and hierarchy in international relations, as a way of analytically articulate the process of socialization of political and economic structures. This structural dialogue focuses on identifying mechanisms of exclusion that perpetuate materials asymmetries in the international system and the means to their rupture.

O Mapa Invertido da América do Sul (1943) é um mapa diferente. Primeiro, porque não foi feito pelos cânones da ciência cartográfica, mas pelas mãos de um artista uruguaio, chamado Torres-García. Segundo, porque não utilizou a orientação convencional ao Norte, mas inverte o posicionamento do Sul para o topo da imagem. A presente pesquisa foi motivada pela visão de mundo diferenciada que esse mapa artístico apresenta, onde o objetivo é compreender os diversos contextos que reproduzem esse mapa, contribuindo para sua notoriedade até os dias atuais. Para tanto, é necessário entender os significados, os questionamentos e as ideologias expressas nessa inversão, pois contribuem na identificação com a obra em tempos além de sua elaboração. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa foi embasada em um exame bibliográfico de correntes de pensamento que propõem uma visão crítica sobre os processos de formação histórica do Sul global, destacavelmente o póscolonialismo e o pósdesenvolvimento. Tais subsídios teóricos auxiliam em um entendimento de mapa que seja tão plural quanto às visões de mundo podem ser, trilhando uma relação entre geopolítica, cartografia e arte / The "Inverted Map of South America" (1943) is a different map. Firstly, because it was not created by the canons of cartographic science, but by the hands of a Uruguayan artist, called Torres-García. Secondly, because it did not use the conventional orientation to the North, but reversed the Souths position to the top of the image. This paper was motivated by the different worldview this artistic map displays, where the purpose is to understand the different contexts that reproduce this map, contributing to its prominence until latterly. In order to do so it is necessary to understand the meanings, questions and ideologies expressed in this inversion, since they contribute to the recognition with this art construction to times beyond its formulation. In this sense, the research was based on a literature survey of schools of thought that propose a critical view to the historical formation process of the global South, notably postcolonialism and the postdevelopment. Such theoretical subsidies help to understand a map that is as plural as worldviews may be, treading a relationship between geopolitics, cartography and art