Latin American Studies - Theses, Dissertations, and other Required Graduate Degree Essays

The sustainability policies in the European Union are potentially creating high value niche markets for developing and emerging economies. This thesis examines the feasibility of Brazil developing a sustainable biofuels industry targeted at niche markets created by European Union renewable energy and sustainability policies. Brazil is used as a case study of a developing country producer economy due to its high technological and agricultural capacity with regard to biofuels, its domestic biofuels market, its place as an innovator in developing biofuels, and its strong government support for its biofuels programs. Thus, the Brazilian market is uniquely poised to take advantage of value-added niche markets created by policies in the European Market. This study specifically addresses the feasibility for Brazil to target European niche markets for sustainable biofuel, in terms of fiscal, political, and sustainability factors, by analysing stakeholder relationships, capacity for innovation and adaptation, and regulatory change.

Cities exist within unique sociospatial contexts, acting as magnifiers of larger socioeconomic processes and relationships. This thesis explores the history of urban inequality in Ecuador and its relationship to inequality in Latin America. It offers a comparative analysis of attempts by various actors to address urban inequalities in Metropolitan Quito: the first case is the Environmental Sanitation Program, a top-down project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank; the second is the Program of Participatory Urban Agriculture, a project administered by the City of Quito that takes a middle-ground approach to local-skills development; and the third case, the Association of Women Fighting for Life, uses a grassroots approach to create low-income housing. A critical analysis of the effects of these projects to address physical, state, and socio-cultural barriers and contribute to socio-economic empowerment is used to offer a series of lessons-learned about how to overcome urban inequalities in Quito and elsewhere.

Globalization ‘from below’ implies the convergence of contentious globalizing forces from a diverse multitude that challenges the logic of neoliberal capitalism in a variety of ways. Scholars and activists understand these phenomena using varied analytical tools. This study starts from globalization from below as rhizomatic and rooted in the resonance of resistance beyond multiple borders, emphasizing the horizontal construction of solidarity as the basis for ‘weaving’ alternative relations of people autonomous from the state and capital. How is solidarity realized as an everyday experience? Through ethnographic description of the activities and transformations of members of the La Chiva Collective (Canada) and the Tejido de Comunicación (Cauca, Colombia), this study examines solidarity as a local and transnational experience and a political possibility that prefigures alternative relations of peoples across borders. Solidarity ‘without owners’ is a living concept, an incipient everyday political practice rooted in mutual aid, accompaniment, affinity, and affection.