Environmental Studies Commons^™

The Embodied Rhetoric Of Cognitive Labour, Shubhayan Chakrabarti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation traces the roots of neoliberal selfhood to the rationalist ontology of modernity in the 1600s. The historical tension between materialism and immaterialism is expressed in the historicisation of work into Fordism and post-Fordism where embodied factory toil is apparently replaced by immaterial work, recalling Descartes’ mind-body split. If post-Fordist work addresses the Marxist critique of alienation in its emphasis on entrepreneurial inner selves, it does not explain the post-Fordist preoccupation to efficiently “Taylorise” the body through obsessive productivity. I argue that the factory prevails in the entrepreneur’s adoption of factory efficiency as a learnt behaviour from the Fordist …

Grappling With The Aftereffects Of Modernism In American Literature And Culture: Spiritual, Political, And Ecological, Joseph Neary

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

In this portfolio, Joe Neary examines various texts within contemporary American culture, including David Foster Wallace’s short story, “Good Old Neon,” Harmony Korine’s film, Spring Breakers, Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, and Bruce Holsinger’s book of criticism, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror.

Decoupling Neoliberal Ideologies With American Governance And Civics, Henry J. Deluca

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Lasting neoliberal ideologies that emerged from the Reagan era have set a precedent for how American society is to understand itself in relation to American governance and economics. At its core, neoliberalism is rooted in the belief of free markets, laissez-faire economics, and federal deregulation. Using moral egoism as its grounding normative ethic and federal deregulation as its means of achieving its goal, this economic approach fails to account for our governments ability to protect the well being and needs of citizens. Furthermore, neoliberalism completely disregards the need for ecological health and stagnates our ability to mitigate the effects of …

Resisting Industrial Food Systems On The Web: How Non-Profit Organizations Use Digital Technology For Sustainability Education, Aleksandr Segal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the link between how community-based organizations use digital tools with the fundamentally resistance-based philosophy that these organizations have at the core of their mission. It aims to uncover how non-profit organizations (NPOs) that work in community development through food and agriculture use digital tools, and how their digital communication strategies relate to issues of resistance to neoliberalism and industrialization in the food and agriculture sectors.

Using a foundation of existing literature on food and agriculture, climate change and waste management, critical theory, and technology in pedagogy, this thesis will contextualize how non-profits resist neoliberal regimes of de-traditionalization …

Financial Media And The Politics Of Difference: Argentine Histories Of The Greek Debt Crisis, 2010-2015, Marcos Mendoza Ph.D., Emily Warner

Journal of International and Global Studies

This article examines financial media discourses and representations of the Greek debt crisis from 2010 to 2015. The analysis is based on financial media texts published by six major news outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom. This paper argues that the AngloAmerican media generated a financial discourse of the Greek debt crisis based on an analogical framework to contemporary Argentina. The discussion highlights three aspects of this media discourse: the classification of the unfolding crisis type (liquidity, solvency, or political), the use of Argentine financial histories to understand the crisis type and predict its possible futures, and …

Fracked Perceptions: Changes In Perception Regarding Hydraulic Fracturing Among Residents Of Dimock, Pennsylvania., Brian Straniti

All Master's Theses

The primary objective of this research is to critically analyze changes in perceptions associated with hydraulic fracturing within Dimock, Pennsylvania. Residents of Dimock initially welcomed fracking in 2006 due to positive corporate rhetoric promoting economic benefits such as mineral rights acquisition, land-leasing, and local business development. However, economic benefits diminished as Dimock advanced through a boom period resulting in a current economic and ecological bust. Two months of data collection occurred in the summer of 2016 using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. Political economy of nature and political ecology theoretical frameworks were used to analyze and conceptualize the …

Towards Buen Vivir: Brian Massumi’S "The Power At The End Of The Economy”, Robert Leston

Publications and Research

In this review of The Power at the End of the Economy, Lestón delineates the theoretical apparatus of Massumi's book and its possible implications.

Environmental Racism And The Movement For Black Lives: Grassroots Power In The 21st Century, Rickie Cleere

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which the environmental justice movement, which is in opposition to environmental racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement, which is in opposition to police brutality and other forms of racism, are part of the same struggle: a struggle against the neoliberal violence of the state. This struggle against neoliberal violence is at the same time a struggle for communities of color to achieve self-determination on a global scale, a monumental task which might be informed through a revolutionary intercommunalist framework of global grassroots solidarity. State oppression embodies violence in more forms that one, including …

Critique And Transformation: On The Hypothetical Nature Of Ecosystem Service Value And Its Neo-Marxist, Liberal And Pragmatist Criticisms, Andony P. Melathopoulos, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

Ecosystem service valuation (ESV) attempts to transform the opposition of human economic necessity and ecological conservation by valuing the latter in terms of the services rendered by the former. However, despite a number of ESV-inspired sustainability initiatives since the 1990s, global ecological degradation continues to accelerate. This suggests that ESV has fallen far short of its goals of sustainable social transformation—a failure which has generated considerable criticism. This paper reviews three prominent lines of ESV criticism: 1) the neo-Marxist criticism, which emphasizes the “fictitious” character of ecosystem commodities; 2) the liberal criticism through Friedrich Hayek's concept “scientistic objectivism”; and 3) …

Self-Reliance Beyond Neoliberalism: Rethinking Autonomy At The Edges Of Empire, Karen Hébert, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

Across scholarly and popular accounts, self-reliance is often interpreted as either the embodiment of individual entrepreneurialism, as celebrated by neoliberal designs, or the basis for communitarian localism, increasingly imagined as central to environmental and social sustainability. In both cases, self-reliance is framed as an antidote to the failures of larger state institutions or market economies. This paper offers a different framework for understanding self-reliance by linking insights drawn from agrarian studies to current debates on alternative economies. Through an examination of the social worlds of semisubsistence producers in peripheral zones in the Global North, we show how everyday forms of …