In order to understand the effects of neoliberal globalization on trade unions in India, this paper investigates what have been the changes in trade union participation in modern Indian industrial...Show moreIn order to understand the effects of neoliberal globalization on trade unions in India, this paper investigates what have been the changes in trade union participation in modern Indian industrial relations. This paper uses data from the time period between 1993 and 2013 and utilizes three main variables; trade union membership, trade union density, and union wage changes in order to measure trade unions’ ability to engage and conduct their prime directive in industrial relations. This thesis finds that trade union participation has increased due to higher trade union membership, union density, and union wages while having mobilized in response to neoliberalism. Although the increase in union wages relative to non-union ones is subject to debate, a potential reason for explaining both sides is the abandonment or persistence of political incorporation and patronage of unions.Show less
Lebanon’s 17 October Uprising marked a watershed moment in the country’s history as it challenged the very foundation of the political system: sectarian power-sharing. It was the largest and most...Show moreLebanon’s 17 October Uprising marked a watershed moment in the country’s history as it challenged the very foundation of the political system: sectarian power-sharing. It was the largest and most diverse protest movement in decades and its anti-sectarian stature was entirely unprecedented. For the first time, many Lebanese called on their confessional leaders to resign. This thesis examines firstly why the uprising directed its focus toward political sectarianism as a primary cause of Lebanon’s political and economic plight. The inability or unwillingness of sectarian leaders to deliver basic services to their constituents created a situation in which Lebanese across all sects were more united than ever before in their collective plight. Second, it explores the timing of the uprising in the fall of 2019. It argues that the uprising was the culmination of simmering resentments that finally erupted as a result of deteriorating economic conditions, political corruption, and a series of disasters that the government failed to prevent or address. Lastly, the thesis investigates how the uprising helped propel anti-sectarian ideas that were previously taboo into mainstream political discourse. While the 17 October Uprising ultimately failed to achieve its objective of establishing a secular rather than sectarian political order, it stands as the most significant challenge to political sectarianism in the country’s history and could pave the way for future mobilizations in the same vein. This thesis will contribute to the nascent body of literature on the 17 October Uprising and the broader scholarship on sectarian power-sharing as a system of governance.Show less
This thesis explores the lobbying strategies used by multinational agribusinesses to shape the global food security regime as part of global capitalism management. My case study focuses on how the...Show moreThis thesis explores the lobbying strategies used by multinational agribusinesses to shape the global food security regime as part of global capitalism management. My case study focuses on how the four largest grain traders in the world lobby the Food and Agriculture Organization to promote market-based policies for global food security. I find substantial evidence for four strategies: multi-stakeholder fora, corporate-FAO partnerships, lobbying national governments, and revolving door practices. The four strategies help agribusinesses be involved in decision-making, increase their market and structural power, and promote the private sector as a legitimate and essential actor in the regime’s governance. The findings fit within a neo-Gramscian framework and can be interpreted as strategies used by the transnational capitalist class to support the transnationalization of social relations of production and the promotion of the neoliberal world order.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (BSc)
closed access
China is growing as an international competitor with its gaze directed toward Africa. Chinese state-owned Multinational Corporations (MNCs) gradually gaining a foothold in African countries raise...Show moreChina is growing as an international competitor with its gaze directed toward Africa. Chinese state-owned Multinational Corporations (MNCs) gradually gaining a foothold in African countries raise worries for other investors like the West. The impacts of Chinese MNCs on the international capitalist market are researched in debt but I will connect this to the study of power relations. Not only will this give insights into the local employees as active subjects that are engaged in various relationships of power, but it will also highlight how macro and micro-level actors mutually influence each other. Eventually, I will argue that these power relations are unequal and used by actors to preserve relations of power. Central to this thesis is a discussion of power as a dynamic and socially constructed relationship that can be used to preserve structures of power. This approach toward power follows Foucault in his understanding and goes against the idea of power as a possession. Power relations become visible in Chinese Multinational Corporations (MNCs) expanding overseas to Africa which has implications for actors at both the micro and the macro-level. Power relations visualize that all actors are involved in processes of legitimizing themselves and through this process produce and reproduce power relations.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
Neoliberalism has altered the way in which the subject consumes and subsequently reflects upon media. A popular media genre on the internet nowadays is instruction videos, which can be consumed for...Show moreNeoliberalism has altered the way in which the subject consumes and subsequently reflects upon media. A popular media genre on the internet nowadays is instruction videos, which can be consumed for various reasons, but usually rely on the notion of conveying to the viewer a certain set of skills. Since these media are therefore consumed for a specific purpose intended, the viewer already pre-establishes a certain attitude and understanding, and furthermore gains a reflective understanding of this phenomenon itself. This thesis aims to reconsider the notion of spectatorship through a lens of phenomenology, in order to reevaluate the idea of a spectator's own understanding of their experience of a medium, which this thesis names "cognitive spectatorship," and shows how the genre of instruction videos and this new viewing attitude play into the Neoliberal ideology.Show less
Russia and Argentina have been, for different reasons, two important international actors over the course of the 20th century. During the 1990s, both countries have undergone a process of economic...Show moreRussia and Argentina have been, for different reasons, two important international actors over the course of the 20th century. During the 1990s, both countries have undergone a process of economic restructuring guided by the International Monetary Fund, at the end of which both experienced a financial crisis (Russia in 1998, Argentina in 2001). This thesis tries to place these events in historical perspective and share a snapshot on the similarities and differences of these experiments, according to the principles of world-system theory. The aim of the research is to determine whether there was a causal relationship between the neoliberal policies implemented at the beginning of the decade and the crises. A central finding of the research is that there is a specific trajectory of economic development and institutional response in semi-peripheral areas, which builds on the presence of weak democratic institutions and debt spirals.Show less
This thesis investigates how the German Federal Government lives up to its normative and international commitments and initiatives to harmonize arms export controls. By analyzing existing data from...Show moreThis thesis investigates how the German Federal Government lives up to its normative and international commitments and initiatives to harmonize arms export controls. By analyzing existing data from the Federal Government’s yearly reports on its policy on exports of conventional military equipment and applying the International Relations Theories of Neorealism and Neoliberalism, it highlights the inseparability of arms export policy frameworks and foreign and security policy interests in the case of Germany. Furthermore, this thesis calls attention to the hierarchical structure that exists within this inseparability where the country’s arms export policy framework is given a secondary role to its foreign and security interests.Show less
Ten years have passed since Japan’s triple disaster on March 11, 2011. The earthquake that occurred off the coast of eastern Japan triggered a powerful tsunami that in turn caused a nuclear...Show moreTen years have passed since Japan’s triple disaster on March 11, 2011. The earthquake that occurred off the coast of eastern Japan triggered a powerful tsunami that in turn caused a nuclear meltdown. As with the Great Hanshin earthquake in Kobe in 1995, most of the victims were elderly people. This paper articulates the causes of Japan’s elderly population’s vulnerability to (natural) hazards by examining to what extent neoliberalism aggravates the Japanese elderly’s disaster vulnerability by using the Disaster as a Social Vulnerability framework. The prevailing consensus in studies that utilize this approach is that neoliberalism and the most common developments associated with the neoliberal ideology, privatization, and decentralization4, harm people’s vulnerability. This paper shows that while processes associated with neoliberalism can exacerbate the Japanese elderly’s disaster vulnerability, as will be demonstrated by discussing the pension system, there is no evidence for the accuracy of this consensus regarding the healthcare system. Based on these insights, this paper concludes that the “neoliberalism aggravates disaster vulnerability”-consensus is too simplistic to consider the elderly population in Japan.Show less
Neuroscience has since its institutionalization in the 19th century directed its scientific promise of the discovery of the relationship between the brain and mind and with it the explanation of...Show moreNeuroscience has since its institutionalization in the 19th century directed its scientific promise of the discovery of the relationship between the brain and mind and with it the explanation of mental illnesses and disorders to range of political actors. Where neuroscientists in the first decades after the Second World War failed to claim a position of scientific expertise, by the late 1980s the social and political context had changed in their favor with the rise of Neoliberal governance. During the 1990s Decade of the Brain, neuroscience’s promise of the ‘cure for mental illness’ was turned into a national project, first by the Bush administration in the United States and then followed up by nations around the globe. Neuroscientific reductionist explanations of mental illness were so successful because they aimed at and resembled neoliberal discourses on individual responsibility and the inability of governmental interference in the social environment. Where neuroscientists and governmental officials in the first years of the Decade mentioned social factors as causes for mental illness and disorders, by the beginning of the 21th century mental illness had become a ‘no-fault brain illness’, a neurobiological phenomenon without external causes and therefore also solutions. The consequences of this alliance between neuroscience and neoliberalism have been topic of many critical studies in the past decade, yet the Decade of the Brain until now have almost completely been ignored. This master thesis is the first step towards an understanding of the interplay between the local and global dimensions of this Decade and thereby also a step towards understanding the way mental health issues are seen and treated in the present. This understanding at the same time is meant to open up the possibility to imagine much needed change in the future.Show less
Throughout the 2000s, the World Bank seems to have undergone a paradigm shift from a neoliberal, market-oriented agenda to a more state-centric approach with increased attention to national...Show moreThroughout the 2000s, the World Bank seems to have undergone a paradigm shift from a neoliberal, market-oriented agenda to a more state-centric approach with increased attention to national particularities in policy design. However, in contrast to the recent enthusiasm by a variety of authors does this thesis argue that the increased attention to the role of institutions and politics in socio-economic development has merely been discursive. The here presented historical analysis of Malawi’s political economy since 1979 shows that there have been little actual changes to the Bank’s policies over the years, to the detriment of equitable socio-economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. A continued focus on neoclassical economic theory and a lack of attention to national political economy are largely to blame. This thesis holds that to improve socio-economic development, development in practice needs to be transformed by moving beyond overtly theoretical and technocratic approaches and recognizing the inherent political nature of economies, instead of viewing the socio-political order underlying market relationships as an isolated given.Show less
At the time of writing (June 2019), the European Union officially hosts another “sick man”. The European Commission has in fact recently encouraged Italy to reconsider its economic policy in the...Show moreAt the time of writing (June 2019), the European Union officially hosts another “sick man”. The European Commission has in fact recently encouraged Italy to reconsider its economic policy in the light of a forecasted unsustainable (according to the European Commission) rise in the country’s budgetary deficit. Italy has so far been relatively used to politically challenging the European Commission when it comes to its choices in the field of macroeconomic policy. Nevertheless, the ease and the degree with which Neoliberalism (here meant as a Washington Consensus-based disciplinary ideology aiming at limiting the degree of politicization of the economic realm and the choices of states when it comes to their macroeconomic policies ) remains dominant at the EU level poses a question: Is the European Union inherently neoliberal or demand-led growth models are still possible? The reasons why finding an answer to this question is in our interest is grounded in the proliferation of radical political responses in several European countries (including Italy, Greece and - to a lesser degree - France) partly coming as a consequence of their stagnating (whilst not declining) economies. On one hand the European Union’s economy in the last few years has been keeping up to its self-set standards, on the other hand some countries appear to be far from catching up with the top-performers despite having structurally adjusted their economies to the taste of the neoliberal narrative. More importantly, the implementation of neoliberal policies has mostly been done at the expense of the existing welfare states, organized labor and national economic independence. Although the aforementioned growth of populist parties has yet to translate into those states actually taking real steps towards exiting the EU, the macroeconomic powerlessness of these countries seems doomed to persist, and so does the growth of radical parties and/or ideas. In this thesis I am going to argue that the EU is not an inherently neoliberal project of economic integration but it will be argued that the European political economy under the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) entails a clear neoliberal bias which prevents the EU and its member states from pursuing alternative paths. Furthermore, it will be argued that as it is currently structured, the EMU constitutes an hinderance to growth and employment in the continent as it systematically prevents the formation of adequate levels of aggregate demand.Show less
The growth of the technological start-up sector in Israel was vital in the economic growth of the country. While Israel had previously been a statist political economy through an intense state...Show moreThe growth of the technological start-up sector in Israel was vital in the economic growth of the country. While Israel had previously been a statist political economy through an intense state involvement in its business sectors, an adoption of neoliberalism by the state and its institutions enabled the growth of venture capital investments for start-ups. In taking an analytical perspective on the growth of Israel’s start-ups and how such growth was achieved through the utilisation of neoliberalism as a tool, this paper will argue that neoliberalism and it’s utilisations enabled the growth of start-ups in Israel, shifting the country to have possession of the most start-ups per capita.Show less
This thesis seeks to rectify the paradox of liberal state inclusion by assessing the impact of neoliberalism on the criteria for state inclusion, and thus the values that underpin Europeanness....Show moreThis thesis seeks to rectify the paradox of liberal state inclusion by assessing the impact of neoliberalism on the criteria for state inclusion, and thus the values that underpin Europeanness. This shall be done through a comparative study of the policies and praxis in Greece governing migrants on the two polar ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: asylum seekers migrating without state authorisation v. investor migrants passing through so-called ‘Golden Visa’ programmes. The former group is comprised of individuals forced to flee to survive, yet unable to migrate lawfully to a region where they may apply for asylum due to an absence of safe, legal channels. The latter, though they certainly may have non-economic incentives to migrate, ultimately purchase state inclusion as an asset which suits their needs. This comparison juxtaposes the readiness of the state to grant inclusion on humanitarian grounds against its willingness to grant inclusion as a function of the market.Show less
The aim of this study is to find out how the occupation in the West Bank is maintained by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, its capitalist class and the aid agencies with its donors. Hereby, the...Show moreThe aim of this study is to find out how the occupation in the West Bank is maintained by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, its capitalist class and the aid agencies with its donors. Hereby, the focus set upon the question what the neoliberal economic policies in the West Bank are and how they play a role in the occupation of it. To answer this question, the thesis will explore the policies of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority next to the policies that are promoted in the West Bank by aid agencies and international donors. Israel’s neoliberal economic policies will be explained through its economic interests in the West Bank, such as land, labour, water and market. Furthermore, the study will look into the neoliberal economic policies of the Palestinian Authority and how the Palestinian capitalist class has been created through these policies. Lastly, the study will highlight the role of international donors and aid agencies in the West Bank and the means in which they apply their influence to promote neoliberal economic policies that sustain the occupation of the West Bank. The study will show that the neoliberal economic policies in the West Bank contribute to its occupation and its dependency on the Israeli economy and international aid. However, not only Israel profits from the occupation, but also the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian elite through their cooperation with Israel.Show less
The exclusion of women from the economy results in a country loses labour force and hampers its (potential) economic development and prosperity. Nevertheless, the participation rates of women in...Show moreThe exclusion of women from the economy results in a country loses labour force and hampers its (potential) economic development and prosperity. Nevertheless, the participation rates of women in the market are often much lower than those of men, especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Women face socio-cultural barriers that restrict their individual freedoms in several areas, for instance their access to education and the (global) market. Their subordinated role towards men is established in various aspects of life: society, economy and politics. At the same time, MENA countries are facing challenges imposed by high youth unemployment and the need to catch up with the global economic progress to stay competitive. Diversification of the economy is one of the main goals in order to keep up with the global economic developments. Diversification means also including more women into the labour market since they often approach challenges of the market different than men.Neoliberal reforms intend to increase the competitiveness of a market by making it accessible for everyone. The claim that I want to investigate is that neoliberalism impacts on the (economic) opportunities of women within the socio-cultural context of their countries. In other words, how do neoliberal reforms impact on female entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa?Show less
In 2009, it is estimated that the Muslim population in Egypt reached 78,51 million, or 94.6% of Egyptians is Muslim (Scott & Jafari 2010, 6). Islam influence created a unique case for Egypt as...Show moreIn 2009, it is estimated that the Muslim population in Egypt reached 78,51 million, or 94.6% of Egyptians is Muslim (Scott & Jafari 2010, 6). Islam influence created a unique case for Egypt as a developing country. From the period of the 1950s until 2000s, there have been multiple attempts to apply different economic reforms in Egypt. However, the reforms also affected the concept of Islamic revival in the context of setting the guidelines to practice business. This thesis focuses on the implication of neoliberalism concept, especially in terms of wealth accumulation from the year 1970s. Arguably, neoliberalism also shaped the Islamic practice into the notion of ‘pious neoliberalism’ in Egypt. The phenomenon of ‘pious neoliberalism’ will be analyzed through the emergence of the Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) and the halal food industry in Egypt and the practicality of it. The research concludes that there is a new phenomenon of Islamization that is distinct from the predecessors by embracing the idea of neoliberalism and capitalism. The research, thus, explores how this new phenomenon of Islamization, shaped by pious neoliberalism, is distinct from the predecessors by embracing the idea of neoliberalism and capitalism.Show less
