This thesis asks how neoliberal enclavisation produces precarity. It focuses on eight months of fieldwork on large-scale dispossession of rural and peri-urban populations caused by the coal mining enclave in Tete, Mozambique, and my interpretation of Judith Butler's work on precarity, Henri Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the production of capitalist social space and Jacque Ranciere's understanding of politics. Bringing theory and empirical research together, I construct an original theoretical approach to explore how precarity as a condition of life, as well as the (im)possibility of politics, is constituted by contemporary capitalist expansion in Mozambique. I explore how precarity is produced through the interplay of structural, symbolic and direct violence of contemporary capitalist expansion, such as the coal mining enclave and resettlement sites inhabited by the dispossessed populations, in Tete. These processes of precarisation, I argue, result in the non-politics of abandonment that, whilst enabling life to be lived on precarious terms at the margins of the neoliberal mining enclave, does not openly challenge and only unwillingly reinforces the socio-material order of the neoliberal enclave. I demonstrate how this dynamic reconstitutes the precarity created by the violence of the neoliberal enclave and overshadows possibly different and progressively anti-neoliberal imaginaries of life and space in Tete. I conclude that these dynamics of precarity disactivate the possibility of transformative politics, and thus sustain and stabilise global capitalist expansion in Tete, and Mozambique more broadly. This reading of precarity makes several contributions to the literatures on the politics of precarity. It explores the condition of precarity outside the usual empirical and analytical focus of labour relations in the Global North, as well as developing a spatial reading of precarity. The thesis also challenges these, as well as broader literatures on agency in the context of structural inequalities and opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa, for overestimating possibilities of resistance in situations characterised by extreme precarity. Finally, the thesis contributes to the literature on contemporary neoliberal capitalist expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa by demonstrating how neoliberal enclaves result in human suffering outside of their own exclusionary spaces of accumulation.

This PhD research explored how neoliberal governmentality influenced the UK charity SportHelp and its youth sport programmes. Despite charities being significant providers of non-formal education for young people in the UK, there has been limited work exploring how the neoliberal landscape shapes these organisations and their programmes in practice. Therefore, this thesis addresses this gap in knowledge by a) furthering the limited literature on charities and their operation, b) providing an empirical illustration of how neoliberal governmentality functions, and c) contributing to the ongoing debate about the purpose of non-formal education in the neoliberal marketplace. This case study research focused on a single charity – SportHelp – whose remit is to improve socio-economically disadvantaged young people’s lives through the provision of sport. Over a 9-month period, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a selection of SportHelp’s managers, coaches, and young people. Furthermore, participant observations of three coaching sessions (featuring previously interviewed coaches and young people) were undertaken to complement the interviews. The data were subsequently analysed using thematic analysis. Findings suggest the neoliberal landscape shaped SportHelp and its youth sport programmes profoundly. To maximise its chances of economic survival, SportHelp re-configured itself into a ‘quasi-market’. In doing so, it adopted a deficit-reduction approach towards improving young people’s lives: the charity assumed socio-economically disadvantaged young people were inherently ‘deficient’ (because of their lower socio-economic status) and required ‘fixing’. Using sport, SportHelp coaches ‘fixed’ young people’s personhood by instilling the neoliberal values of individual responsibility, discipline, and life skills. These values were readily internalised by young people because SportHelp operates in the realm of non-formal education; a space where coaches could foster passion, relationships, and a sense of belonging.

The Asian Crash of 1997 gave final closure to the era of Cold War geoeconomics. For decades American liberal capitalism had maintained an oddly symbiotic relationship with East Asia¡¦s far more centrist economies. The end of the Cold War, however, opened the door for full-thrust globalization on Washington¡¦s terms. At first, foreign investment and money market speculation stoked what looked like a new super-miracle on the Pacific Rim. Few took serious notice of how the lending binge of the mid-1990s recklessly expanded foreign debt relative to reserves. When the bubble broke in 1997, massive capital exodus sent the region into a ruinous plunge. The IMF took its time in responding, and finally applied a dubious rescue formula that helped to turn the Crash into a protracted Crisis. Taking the Crisis as a window on the politics of globalization, this study builds on the development theory of Amartya Sen. It follows from Sen¡¦s axiom of ¡§development as freedom¡¨ that just and sustainable development is best achieved where economic and political priorities are balanced in what I term the ¡§concurrence¡¨ approach to development. From this vantage the post-Crisis condition of the Rim was hardly more conducive to political development than was the pre-Crisis situation, for poverty can be as much a developmental roadblock as authoritarianism is. Neoliberal globalism could no longer hide behind the democratic veneer of ¡§third wave¡¨ or ¡§end of history¡¨ determinism. By the mid-1990s the specter of cultural anarchy already haunted much of the developing world outside the Rim, and the Crash threatened to expunge that crucial exception. Nor was this just a Third World dilemma. The socioeconomic efficacy of the whole capitalist system was on trial. In Sen¡¦s view, the Asian Crisis spotlighted the high cost of undemocratic governance. Asian exceptionalists held that Western liberal democracy was not needed in this high-growth sphere, and indeed would be a hindrance. Sen argues, however, that the cultivation of freedom, as both an end and means, is not just a Western imperative. Indeed, his expansive view of social well-being is rooted in Asian values. In lieu of the statist economism that was falsely identified as Asian values during the ¡§miracle¡¨ years, Sen proposes an ¡§Eastern strategy¡¨ that draws on the more humane dimensions of Asian development. He credits state interventions such as public education and land reform as major contributions not only to the ¡§Asian miracle¡¨ but to all sustainable development. Much more is involved in the Senian model than the slightly modified economism that has appropriated the ¡§Third Way¡¨ label. This study draws positive and negative cases in point from the development records of the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea. While all three countries were hard hit by the Crash and the subsequent Crisis, each reacted in its own way. What they had in common, however, was the undertow effect of neoliberal globalization, whereby foreign capital and policy constraints eroded their effective autonomy. Unfortunately, Sen¡¦s attention to the glaring inequalities of global capitalism is not matched by much attention to the transnational corporations (TNCs) that dominate the global economy. Likewise he has tended to neglect crucial postmaterial issues such as cultural and environmental sustainability. Useful as his informational strategies are for averting social catastrophies such as famine, he fails to adequately contest the political, cultural, and environmental inroads of globalization. For that it is necessary to move beyond the pallid globalism of Sen¡¦s own politics. The paradoxical task of this study, therefore, is to free the Senian model from Sen himself.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the content and work processes regarding the values written in the curriculum for Swedish high schools and compare it with theories regarding the individualized society and political moralism. After the clarification of the content in the values of Swedish high schools and the work processes that are supposed to give students fundamental understanding about them, I analyze and compere it to the theories that are presented in the study. The main questions of the study are the following: What kinds of values are found in the curriculum for Swedish high schools? In general, how do Swedish high schools work with the written values when focus have gone from education and learning to instrumental knowledge, results, abilities and flexibility? The result showed that the content and work processes regarding the values in Swedish high schools are purely instrumental and moralistic. Due to the fact, that the individualized society and the neoliberal ideology do not require reflection and real understanding regarding the values. Therefore are the schools now more focused instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding. This is not a surprising result, due to the fact that the public and the political discourse are colonized by moralism. This is the reaction individuals have to the fragmented society, where an alternative to the neoliberal ideology is nonexistent. The only kind of criticism in today’s society is based on moralism, which is affecting the work processes regarding the values in Swedish high schools.

Following decades of protectionism, in 1982 Mexico reacted to its foreign debt crisis by implementing extreme structural adjustment policies and it has continued a pattern of neoliberalism, increasingly opening its economy to international markets. The cumulative impacts of these policies have negatively affected the majority of the Mexican population, and researchers have documented the detrimental effects of neoliberal polices on working and middle classes in other contexts. Based on ethnographic research in Nogales, Sonora, this paper will describe a particular group of Mexicans who have nevertheless risen to middle class status throughout this time period. It will situate them within an industrializing border economy and will investigate some of the factors, both internal and external, that have contributed to their success in this endeavor. Finally, it will raise questions for future research, such as: Is this middle-class sustainable?

This thesis seeks to uncover some of the cultural practices central to youth activist subcultures across three urban centres in Canada: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. I undertake this work within the context of rising moral and state claims about the apparent need for ‘good citizenship’ to be exercised by young people, alongside a late modern relationship between liberalism, neoliberalism, and Canada’s history of class- and race-based exclusions. The theoretical framework bridges cultural and political sociology with youth cultural theory. It also draws heavily upon the work of feminist philosophers of agency and the state. The main methodology is ethnographic, and was carried out within a phenomenological and hermeneutic framework. In total, 41 young people, ages 13-29, were involved in this research. Participants self-identified as being involved in activist work addressing issues such as globalization, war, poverty and/or colonialism. The findings of this study suggest that the effects of the historical and contemporary symbol of the ‘good citizen’ are experienced within youth activist subcultures through a variety of cultural means, including: expectations from self and schooling to be ‘responsible,’ with its associated burdens of guilt; policing practices that appear to rely on cultural ideas about the ‘good citizen’ and the ‘bad activist’; and representations of youth activism (e.g. within media) as replete with out-of-control young people being punished for their wrong-doings. Wider effects include the entrenched impacts of class- and race-based exclusions, which manifest within youth activist subcultures through stylistic regimes of ‘symbolic authorization’ that incorporate attire, beliefs, and practices. Although findings suggest that many young people come to activism via a predisposition created within an activist or Left-leaning family, this research also highlights the relational means by which people from outside of this familial habitus can come to activist practices. Taken together, findings suggest that youth activism must be understood as a cultural and social phenomenon, with requisite preconditions, influences, and effects; that such practices cannot be disassociated from wider social inequalities; and that such effects and influences demand scrutiny if we are to reconsider the role of activism and its part in expanding the political boundaries of the nation-state.

ABSTRACT ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WORTH SAVING? IF SO, BY WHOM? by Philip Kovacs While there is a loose coalition of individuals and organizations attacking the institution of public schools, there does not appear to be a coordinated defense of public schools. Without a coordinated defense of the institution, public schools will arguably 1) grow increasingly regulated and/or 2) be shut down altogether. Given that progressive scholars believe schools should exist to maintain a pluralistic and participatory democracy, should 1) or 2) continue, the progressive goal of democracy through education becomes increasingly removed from possibility. The failure of progressive educational reformers to enter the same spheres as think tank and foundation-housed neointellectuals is partially to blame for the increasingly corporatist ideology governing public school reform. While scholars such as Henry Giroux call for “new articulations,” new languages, and new theories, I believe the problem lies not in the message but in the failure of progressives to promote their ideas in various public, private, and legislative spheres. In order to defend public schools as sites for the generation and maintenance of a participatory democratic social order, this research investigates the possibility that progressive educational reformers, acting as prophetic pragmatists, can save public education by acting publicly and politically to check, counter, and silence the anti-democratic educational initiatives forwarded by neoconservative and neoliberal educational reformers.

This research examines a contemporary planning case in Toronto where tensions between policy visions and planning practices contribute to our understanding of neoliberal urbanism. Media, policy and interview discourses contribute to developing the nexus between neoliberal urbanism, creative class theory and gentrification in the case of 629 Eastern Avenue. The amalgamation of Toronto’s municipalities in 1998 resulting from the “Common Sense Revolution”, and the ‘creative turn’ in the 2000s are identified as two key evolutionary stages in Toronto’s neoliberal urbanism. The City’s contradictory positions as “grassroots” organizers, market actors and market regulators reveals their interventionist role in this case. The analytical imperative presented by this case study to expose the contradictory and contingent nature of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002) leads to challenging our very understanding of neoliberalism in the context of contemporary urban planning practices.

This research examines a contemporary planning case in Toronto where tensions between policy visions and planning practices contribute to our understanding of neoliberal urbanism. Media, policy and interview discourses contribute to developing the nexus between neoliberal urbanism, creative class theory and gentrification in the case of 629 Eastern Avenue. The amalgamation of Toronto’s municipalities in 1998 resulting from the “Common Sense Revolution”, and the ‘creative turn’ in the 2000s are identified as two key evolutionary stages in Toronto’s neoliberal urbanism. The City’s contradictory positions as “grassroots” organizers, market actors and market regulators reveals their interventionist role in this case. The analytical imperative presented by this case study to expose the contradictory and contingent nature of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner & Theodore, 2002) leads to challenging our very understanding of neoliberalism in the context of contemporary urban planning practices.

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