Social and Behavioral Sciences 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 …

The Birth Of A Fempreneur: A Neoliberal Guide To Going Viral And Making Millions, Liana S. Forsyth

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Social media has created a new way of feminist activism in the world, including a rapid rise in 'fempreneurs' feminist entrepreneurs. With many fempreneurs turning to social media apps such as Tik Tok and Instagram as a platform to post their activism, and turn it into a profitable career for personal financial gains.

I analyzed a popular Tik Tok influencer who is famous for being a feminist advocate on the platform calling out men, and analyze her posts in order to observe the types of feminism that goes viral on social media. Overall, it is evident from my research that …

Neoliberalism, Race And Empowerment: A Study Of Microenterprise Programs In Toronto And Los Angeles, Julie N. Young

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses on microenterprise in Toronto and Los Angeles. Two related research objectives are pursued in this dissertation. The first and overarching question concerns empowerment. 1) To what extent do microfinance and microenterprise programs empower their clients? The second broad theme concerns neoliberalism. How is the experience of empowerment shaped by neoliberalism? To gain further insight, I consider the following questions. 2) What are the objectives, intended outcomes and structures of microenterprise programs? 3) Who are the key actors in the space and are there any patterns in relation to race, gender and class? 4) What role does structural …

Rethinking Gentrification And Eviction In Toronto: Are Homes Still Built For Living?, Keefer Wong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The significant increase in evictions has become one of the foremost manifestations of the housing crisis in gentrifying cities. However, the lack of collected data at both the provincial and federal levels has made it difficult to assess the distribution and conceptual nuances of this phenomenon in urban cities like Toronto. The current study explores the newer ways in which eviction is used in gentrifying cities and illustrates how any renter, not just the “urban poor,” can be precariously placed. For this purpose, eviction data drawn from the Social Justice Tribunals Ontario was used to explore how evictions were spaced …

An App A Day Keeps The Doctor Away: A Visual Case Analysis Of The Self-Optimization Ideologies Downloaded Onto Apple Users As They Download Applications, Ismahan Yusuf

MA Research Paper

This visually thematic qualitative case analysis seeks to advance cyber-sociology by analyzing the hyper-under-attended relationship between interfaces and discourses. Here, the interface under investigation is the Apple App Store, examined for the ways in which the platform is discursively encoded with particular ideologies, ideals, desires and narratives downloaded onto users as they download applications. Such is explored via a two-part research question inquiring: Which type of applications enjoy the most promotion on the Apple App Store and what cyber-architectural tools are herein used to optically exalt them? To investigate this, an iOS 11-operating iPhone was used to frequent the store’s …

On The Space/Time Of Information Literacy, Higher Education, And The Global Knowledge Economy, Karen Patricia Nicholson

FIMS Publications

Local sites and practices of information work become embroiled in the larger imperatives and logics of the global knowledge economy through social, technological, and spatial networks. Drawing on human geography’s central claim that space and time are dialectically produced through social practices, in this essay I use human/critical geography as a framework to situate the processes and practices—the space and time—of information literacy within the broader social, political, and economic environments of the global knowledge economy. As skills training for the knowledge economy, information literacy lies at the intersection of the spatial and temporal spheres of higher education as the …

Academic Librarians And The Space/Time Of Information Literacy, The Neoliberal University, And The Global Knowledge Economy, Karen P. Nicholson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This qualitative research study explores how academic librarians working in Canadian public research-intensive universities experience the space/time of information literacy, the neoliberal university, and the knowledge economy. Information literacy lies at the intersection of higher education and the knowledge economy: it became a priority for librarians in Anglo-American countries in the 1980s in the context of neoliberal educational reforms intended to better prepare skilled workers for the “information society” (Behrens, 1994; Birdsall, 1994).

The shift from Fordist modes of production to flexible accumulation, characterized by the expansion of capital into new markets, flexible workers, and just-in-time inventories, made possible by …

Neoliberalism And The School Choice Movement In The United States, Lianne M.A. Mulder

MA Research Paper

This paper investigates the role of neoliberalism in the advocacy for and implementation of school choice in the United States. It applies conflict theory of education to the school choice debate and uses post-Katrina New Orleans as a case study of school choice implementation. It concludes that neoliberal and like-minded think-tanks, foundations, and lobby groups are involved in the advocacy for school choice in the United States because it assists them in furthering their goals of influencing whose values and ideals will be taught and whose children will land the desired jobs; thereby maintaining the capitalist status quo and enabling …

Information Into Action? Reflections On (Critical) Practice (Keynote Address, Wilu 2018), Karen Nicholson

FIMS Presentations

In this keynote address, I consider the WILU 2018 conference theme “Information into Action" as representative of normative mainstream discourses of innovation, entrepreneurialism, vocation, and practicality in contemporary academic libraries.

"We Do This Too": Black Mothers' Engagements With Attachment Parenting In Britain And Canada, Patricia Hamilton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines black mothers’ engagements with attachment parenting (AP), an increasingly popular parenting philosophy. AP promotes the development of secure attachment between parent (mother) and child, through practices such as breastfeeding, babywearing and bed-sharing. Coined by William and Martha Sears in the 1980s, AP has garnered increasing attention in a neoliberal context, a political rationality that centers the economic and emphasizes self-responsibility, consumption and individualism as defining features of ‘good’ citizenship. In the context of neoliberal retractions in welfare state spending, AP emerges as a particularly apt parenting philosophy as it identifies childrearing as a solution to social ills. …

The Value Of Postsecondary Education: Human Capital Theory In Ontario's Postsecondary Education Discourse 1962 - 2005, Adam M. Jog

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Contemporary understandings of postsecondary education systems are informed by a globalization discourse that incorporates human capital theory to explain the economic importance of postsecondary education institutions in the global economy. In this study, the influences of human capital theory and of liberal education in Ontario’s postsecondary education discourse are examined through a content analysis of government-commissioned reviews of Ontario’s postsecondary education system from 1962 to 2005. In particular, I hypothesize that instances of human capital theory would increase over that time period while instances of liberal education would decrease. The results of the content analysis clearly demonstrate that instances of …

Guilty Subjects: The Biopolitical Function Of Guilt In Neoliberal States, David Miller

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the function of guilt as an emotion and affective state in the production of voluntary servitude. Drawing on psychological research into the effects of guilt, as well as the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler, I argue that guilt is instilled within the population by a particular political arrangement of relations of power (the State form of social relations) via a controlled process of subjectivation. As such, guilt should be read as a distinctly biopolitical mechanism of control. Additionally, I argue that the emotional experience of guilt works to attach individuals to their own …

Balancing Visions And Values: An Exploration Of Market Rhetoric In Canadian Academic Library Strategic Plans, Courtney L. Waugh

Western Libraries Publications

Strategic planning documents are key sites to institutional discourse and reflect the public face of the library. This research explores the extent to which market rhetoric permeates the strategic planning documents of three Canadian academic libraries, and examines the ways in which these institutions engage in market discourse to construct their institutional identity. What are the implications of adopting a "customer service" stance? What does it mean to be “innovative”? How do "personalized services" influence ideas of choice? Through content analysis and a critical lens, this exploratory research examines the tension between libraries as public good and libraries as a …

The Politics Of Honduran Schoolteachers: State Agents Challenge The State, Jordan D. Levy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the everyday work of schoolteachers in post-coup Honduras from the theoretical perspective that they are individuals with a vested interest in the state, who reflect upon their own experiences when carrying out the vital state service of national public education, and while acting as leaders of the anti-coup National Front of Popular Resistance. This movement emerged in response to the violent overthrow of the country’s democratically-elected president in June 2009 and has since broadened its agenda, calling for the ‘re-foundation’ of the Honduran state by rewriting the constitution.

Yet state formation occurs not only through such formal …

The Money Of Qaroon And The Patience Of Ayoub: Women And Land In Egypt's Mubarak Resettlement Scheme, Dina Najjar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation addresses the challenge of achieving increased empowerment and equality for Egyptian women. The dissertation tests the assumption that land access (through both joint and full titles) increases empowerment and equality for women in two desert resettlements of Sa’yda and Intilaq, part of the massive Mubarak Resettlement Scheme (MRS). In particular, the dissertation identifies: 1) how land access could empower Egyptian women and 2) women’s experiences with land access in the MRS. Findings reveal that land access is indeed the most promising route for women’s advancement in life, but the desert land required patience and financial assets. Land access, …

Tu Envidia Es Mi Progreso: An Ethnographic Account Of The Development Of Squatter Settlements In San Juan De Miraflores, Lima, Peru., Brandon E. Rouleau

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The following dissertation explores the past 60 years of self-help housing in Lima. Specifically, it looks at the uneven development that has occurred in parts of a municipality called San Juan de Miraflores. I argue that self-help housing is part of a larger modernization project that aims to encourage the emergence of a self-regulating individual. Pro-development literature creates a selective history of marginal neighbourhoods, effectively silencing the histories of working class Miraflorinos. The aim of this ethnographic study is to destabilize official histories and representations about development in marginal communities. The bulk of the dissertation looks at the history of …

Blood, Organs And Other Tissues For Sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto A La Carne And The Afterwards Of The Neoliberal Development In Latin America., Wanda I. Ocasio- Rivera

Hispanic Studies Publications

Abstract

Blood, organs and other tissues for sale: Diamela Eltit's Impuesto a la carne and the afterwards of the neoliberal development in Latin America.

As Marx elaborated in Capital: Volume I at the moment human labour is sold, the subject participates in an ominous plot where she/he becomes a commodity. In a capitalist mode of production, the subject’s alienation from his/her humanity occurs because the individuals can only express labor through a privately-owned system of production in which he/she is an instrument, an object. This dehumanization process submits the subject under the exchange transactions of the market, where labor value …

School Closures In Ontario: A Case Of Conflicting Values?, Richard Wm Irwin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Responding to financial pressures and declining school enrolments, the Ontario government in 2006 developed a new policy on school-closures establishing specific criteria to determine the value of a school to a community and requiring every school board to involve the local community in any school-closure decision. Despite these provisions, the implementation of this policy at the local level created anger and active resistance from community members.

Focussing on two school-closures within an Ontario school board, using ethnographic methods, this study explores how one board implemented the provincial-policy, specifically the impact this had on those directly affected. Informed by neoliberalism-communitarianism debates, …