The purpose of this research is to understand definitions of what it means to be a “good” parent as described by parents and child development specialists at a family service organization in the Southeastern United States. Previous research on social reproduction and concerted cultivation have opened up pathways to understanding how social and economic inequality manifest in family life and the social structures of which they are a part. This ethnographic study is an effort to contribute to an anthropology of parenting by unveiling the ways that definitions of “good” parenting in middle-class and wealthy communities reflect time-intensive, attachment-based ideologies that are also encouraged by child development professionals. Through a mixed-methods approach, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and electronic questionnaire, the author describes how parental beliefs about spending time with children and focusing on developmental milestones become central to ideas about “good” parenting. This widespread ideology is situated within a broader social and economic context to suggest that a system of inequality emerges when parents with less time, knowledge, and other resources are not able to access time-intensive parenting practices in the same way as parents more social and economic capital.

This doctoral research is a contribution to the understanding of social activism and its socio-cultural formation in postcolonial Okinawa. It is based on eighteen months of fieldwork including participant observation and interviews at a public women’s organisation, Women’s Organisation Okinawa (WOO). This project centres on the lived practices of staff who attempted to produce and encourage gender equality in the public sector under neoliberal governance. I demonstrate through ethnographic analysis how the practice of law and social movements is distinct from the ideals of such movements as well as the particular individuals involved in them. WOO was established in the public sector by local government in alliance with various grassroots groups in Okinawa in the late 1990s. WOO embraced the dreams, hopes and anticipations of various actors - users and workers - who had been involved in the establishment, but in reality, it also contained various contradictions. First, WOO was a new workplace for those who wanted to work in activism and be paid for their work, but also reproduced precarious, low-waged, gendered labour. Second, WOO was a site which put law into practice, but it revealed that law internalised the inconsistency between what people had originally expected of the law and what law enacted as a result of institutionalisation. Third, WOO unexpectedly became a focal point of contact between neoliberal and feminist governance through public services and the requirements of performing accountability for citizens and for feminist activism. Thus frontline practitioners attempted to bridge the gap between ideal, reality, law and practice and to negotiate with neoliberal and feminist governance in the labour process. This thesis demonstrates how the inconsistencies between ideal and reality arose in the daily working practices of staff positioned between citizens, laws and social movements. More precisely, it explores how staff attempted to negotiate, accommodate and struggle with the gap between ideal and reality through their lived experience, rather than fiercely resisting or merely being subject to a form of governance or reality. In doing so, the thesis reveals how unstable and problematic the notion of ‘gender equality’ was as it was deployed at WOO.

Capital investment in natural resource extraction has fuelled an unprecedented rush to secure hydrocarbon and mining concessions and contracts throughout the Andes-Amazon-Chaco region leading to increased tensions and conflict with lowland indigenous groups residing in the areas that contain subsoil resources. This thesis explores resource extraction and conflict through an ethnography of state-society interactions over proposed hydrocarbon extraction in Bolivia. It asks, how does a “post-neoliberal state” combine commitments to indigenous people, the environment and the redistributive development of natural resource wealth, and how do social movements and other actors respond? In answering this question, the thesis examines how hydrocarbon expansion has affected the country’s most important gas producing region (the Department of Tarija), indigenous Guaraní society and indigenous Weenhayek society, both in their internal relationships and in their historically uneasy negotiations with the central state. By paying particular attention to the Guaraní and Weenhayek it also asks how far a national “government of social movements” has favoured or not the concerns and political projects of indigenous groups that are generally not well represented in the social movements that undergird this new state. In this vein, this research seeks to shed light on a series of contradictions and incongruities that characterise extractive-led economies with an end to contributing to debates about the possibility of combining more socially and environmentally sound modes of production, new forms of democracy, self governance and popular participation.

Curating practices appear in various fields as a common practice of immaterial labour today. To ‘curate’ is an active verb that suggests ‘doing’ something. Seldom if ever are the implications of curating critically discussed outside the arts, and this provides a reason for this thesis to investigate. What does ‘to curate’ mean, imply or suggest in the urban context? How are urban curatorial practices legitimized and where can they contribute to urban planning? Embedded in contemporary urban challenges and the “state of crisis” often referred to, this paper introduces curating as an emerging cultural practice into this field. A vital part of the discussion this thesis opens up, is where art can become part of urban planning. Noting that the relationship between arts and urban environments is ambivalent, since the arts’ symbolic power is recognized within international competition of cities, it is about the margin between the field of arts and urban development. By laying a groundwork of contemporary curatorial understandings in the arts, the paper gives an overview on the existing notions and practices of ‘urban curation’ and highlights that there are strong positions but no existing definition as such. A look into urban planning theory pinpoints the crucial role of economic growth and its implications for the organization of urban developments under the term neoliberalism, a condition in which festivals replace urban development policies and culture becomes a structuring element. The occurrence of projects as organizational structure dominates and challenges long term developments. This constitutes the framework in which the paper discusses three very different project examples from Hamburg, Liverpool and Vienna for closer analysis. Between preservation and management, arranging and staging curating can alternatively be understood as an epistemology producing new knowledge. By cross-referencing between the arts, where the critical discussion on curating is held, and urban planning and architecture, where curatorial practice is applied, the paper suggests strengthening the critical discourse on the relevance and use of cultural practices in urban studies.

i Abstract Liberalism encompasses many disciplines. Individual freedom, free-market capitalism, republican form of government, and rule of law are considered to be among its main pillars. The Thesis illustrates an original analysis of three partial "liberal" theories of International Relations (IR) - referred to as "approaches" because of their interdisciplinarity - and their main scholars' considerations vis-à-vis important selected elements of global politics, with peace as the general background. The three analyzed approaches are Economic Liberalism, Democratic Peace Theory, and Democratic Realism. Keeping into account their differences, traditions, and purposes, the approaches are operationalized through five subchapters - institutions, free-market, international law, conflict intervention, and nationalism - to prove their compatibility, non-contradiction, and possible juxtaposition vis-à-vis these features. Despite some "empirical differences", while looking at the selected-IR issues, the approaches have "common threads", and this is visible when the three frameworks and their top-selected scholars are confronted with the elements. After a general introduction on liberalism, a definition of peace in IR, and a quick overview of Peace Studies, the three approaches are presented in their theoretical...

Biodiversity loss caused by human activities is considered to be one of the greatest challenges to the stability of our planet. Protected areas emerged as a solution to this challenge, but they are not always successful due to the exclusion and displacement of local communities that live in proximity to the protected area, especially in low income countries. The Maasai Mara conservancy model presents an opportunity to mitigate these problems by increasing wildlife habitat and simultaneously improving the livelihoods of surrounding Maasai communities. However, the model is threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic which has suspended the international tourism on which the conservancies rely. In order to understand how the model can potentially increase its resilience to future global shocks, I interviewed stakeholders about their experiences within the model, during the pandemic and relating to past global shocks. Using the concept of environmentality, I sought to evaluate the structure of the model, its historical roots and the governance tools which enable its function. Some already existing issues were emphasised by the impact of the pandemic, while new opportunities for evolution were also unearthed. The most prominent theme arising from these conversations was that of equity - between tourism partners and landowners, relating to the rights of women and to the place of Maasai youth in the future of the model. The colonial history of wildlife conservation also created discussions around the exclusion of local tourists and the underlying biases that may exist. Finally, I attempt to understand how the governance enacted within the conservancy model creates different kinds of environmental subjects. Although previous discussions on environmental governance have assumed that regulation is successful, I illustrate here that power is not unidirectional because resistance and negotiation by the governed population is common. By interrogating the different layers of environmentality and how they interplay, I trace the creation new environmental subjectivities in those who are involved in the conservation of wildlife in the Maasai Mara.

There has been a rise non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as part of a global health system that seeks to treat children with cleft lip and palate (CLP) in resource-poor countries. As a craniofacial abnormality, CLP affects a child’s ability to communicate and consume food, and the stigma associated with the condition leads to both social and physiological suffering. International NGOs use an apolitical humanitarian rhetoric to justify the need to provide this life-saving surgery. This thesis assesses CLP interventions by applying a critique of neoliberalism to explore the ways economic rationalities are extended to the domain of humanitarianism. By employing an ethnographic approach of “studying up,” this thesis critiques a North American NGO, referred to as Mission Smile. To reveal how neoliberal rationalities are embedded within the organization, this research draws on data from media analysis, participant observation, and interviews with medical volunteers and employees at Mission Smile. This thesis argues that neoliberal rationalities permeate throughout the organization. Economic calculus are not only embedded in the organization’s goal to provide surgery to “as many children as possible,” but also undergirds the distribution of humanitarian aid. Moreover, the surgery Mission Smile provides is described as an “investment in a child’s future” that enable children with CLP to become a contributing member of society. While this study reveals how neoliberal rationalities can converge with values of humanitarianism, it also shows that the extension of neoliberal rationalities into new domains is not a cohesive process. Volunteers describe an emergence of communitas, a feeling of bubbling joy and a shared humanity, and a development of a moral relationship with their recipients that lies partially outside the domain of market rationalities. / Graduate

This thesis explores a recent innovation in First Nations health, the formation of Canada's First provincial-wide First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). Analyzing this service model against Indigenous assertions of a Treaty Right to Health expressed in the Numbered Treaties, I argue that the realizations of the Treaty Right to Health cannot solely be met under neoliberal models of increased Indigenous capacity in health care service administration. I assert that these models of devolution do not enable Treaty First Nations to achieve Indigenous self-determination in accordance with Treaty rights, relationships and responsibilities. The current discourse on First Nations health care only minimally accounts for the Treaty Right to Health, and where it does, it is devoid of Indigenous understandings of a Treaty Right to Health that encompasses access to healthy lands, waters, and livelihood for an achievement of holistic wellness. Mobilizing an Indigenous auto ethnographic approach which accounts for my own embodied positionally, this thesis problematizes the exclusion of holistic visions of health and well-being against settler governments' orientations toward a neoliberalized health care system. This thesis extends a comparative analytical lens to the political mobilizations of Indigenous advocacy bodies in the province of British Columbia, whose efforts under the New Relationship paradigm in Indigenous-state relations has resulted in an unprecedented practice of health care devolution. / Graduate

Since 2019, therapy content from both mental health professionals and social media users has proliferated on both TikTok and Instagram, a phenomenon some have called Tiktok and Instagram therapy. This study explores two different facets of social media therapy. It explores how individuals with a history of depression engage with these accounts in order to cope with their condition. It also explores the content about depression this study's participants consume in the process, which knowledges about depression are privileged and which remain obscured. Based on qualitative content analyses of in-depth semi-structured interviews and collected social media posts from Instagram and Tiktok, this thesis adopts Foucault's theoretical approaches to Technologies of the Self and Power/Knowledge to reveal the complexities of social media therapy in the context of neoliberal mental healthcare and the dominance of psychiatric and psychological knowledge about depression. The findings show that social media therapy is a valuable tool for this study's participants through the careful curation of their social media therapy content and, thus, allowing them to gain better (self-)knowledge, tools for self-care and a sense of community to better cope with depression. However, participants' practices reveal a tension between the notions of agency and neoliberal imperatives of self-management operating simultaneously within the current mental healthcare context. The findings further show that social media therapy reinforces the stronghold of the medical and psychological sciences on conceptions of depression and reproduces neoliberal imperatives of self-responsibility and individualization, disregarding the social and structural determinants of depression. This study thus concludes that while social media therapy is a site of contradictions, its appeal and helpfulness in the current neoliberal mental healthcare context cannot be denied. Nevertheless, there is a need to bring more awareness to social and structural conditions leading to depression.

This dissertation examines how Black influencers navigate the highly competitive commercial terrain of influencing. Situated within literature about the commodification of the Black feminine body, neoliberal discourses about individualized digital labor, and the racialization of discourses about Black labor and success, I argue that celebrity status flattens and makes palatable political projects easily consumed by digital audiences. In particular, brands and digital media companies appropriate woke culture at the expense of Black communities, influencers, and people by propping up economic solutions to racial strife and diversifying their public facing images. By offering individualized, market-based solutions, brands and media outlets obscure the systemic forces that plague Black influencers who are precariously positioned within a mode of digital labor that lacks a supportive infrastructure and exacerbates their vulnerabilities. Contextualized by the George Floyd protests of 2020, I further argue that Black influencers do not internalize neoliberal logics or pursue aspirational labor in the same way as their white counterparts due to the material vulnerabilities and systemic pressures explicitly shaping Black women’s experiences on visually oriented platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Rather, Black influencers challenge traditional definitions of influencing, traversing the line between ‘conventional’ and political work by actively addressing the way systemic issues permeate the sphere of digital labor. Although Black influencers adopt a hustle and grind mentality indicative of neoliberal governmentality, they also work to reclaim their bodies, voices, and individuality against a space fraught with the politics of representation. / Media & Communication