(Here's Max's abstract.)

The transformation of Chicago?s Navy Pier and its ?Public? Space: Neoliberalism of Local Despots? ( additional title suggestions are very welcome!)

While scholarly and populist critics of neoliberalism have addressed many policy aspects associated with this widespread phenomenon across the globe, precious little attention has been paid to public (and quasi-public) spaces within Chicago. Several works have spoken more broadly to conditions in New York (i.e. Jerold Kayden?s Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience) and various theoreticians have spoken to this contestation over various spaces and places more generally (i.e David Harvey?s Spaces of Hope, Condition of Postmodernity, etc.) Drawing on several of these theoretical and site-specific works, I intend to perform a limited study on Chicago?s Navy Pier. Utilizing long form interviews, newspapers, (some) onsite field work, and their local histories (and recent transformations), it is hoped that studying these two places, in conjunction with some of the aforementioned theoretical constructs, will help assist in assuaging whether the ongoing contestations and transformations of these spaces is indicative of neoliberalism and its attendant policy prerogatives or merely of localized control and provincialism.

(Similarly, here's Brenda Parker's abstract)

Sex and the City

In this class, we have viewed neoliberalism primarily from a political-economy framework, focusing on its tendentious political and capitalist practices. In my presentation, I muse about neoliberalism as a hegemony of different sorts. Shifting to a feminist lens, I shed light on the gendered origins, constitution, and impact of neoliberalism. This perspective adds to our understanding in three ways:

(1) It makes apparent the hybrid hegemonies involved in neoliberalization processes;
(2) It illuminates the fissures and contradictions of neoliberalism in relation to gender; and
(3) It speaks to the resistance opportunities available through a feminist framework

(This is Mike Fleenor's abstract, which I'm posting for him due to technical difficulties)

The Pension Fund Economy, Contesting ?Equity?, and Urban Investment Networks:
Workers? Control of Capital and the Heartland Labor Capital Network

Abstract: The pension fund economy has many contradictions, the most fundamental being that whereas Workers have considerable claims on pension funds, Workers do not have control of these funds. Corporate pension obligations, both social and labor, have been sacrificed for the sake of a pension funded economic system detrimental to Worker and community needs. Neoliberal pension funds policies have enabled firms to use Workers? pension funds as corporate assets while Workers? assume all investment risks. Pensions, both as defined benefit and defined contribution, are sources of geographically diffuse Capital flows originating from workers? back pockets and which become concentrated in financial institutions. Pension fund investing reveals strong ?home-bias?; that is, some 90% plus of US pension investments stay within the US. Pension funds, on the whole, are not part of the global economy or certain interconnections characteristic of globalization. They remain as ?home assets?. Workers can use this home-bias and home-asset to their advantage via urban network strategies in order to invest in labor friendly, small to medium size firms, improved urban infrastructure, education, housing, and anti-poverty programs. The Heartland Labor Capital Network, founded by the Steel Valley Authority in Pittsburgh PA ?has been exploring and promoting practical, jobs-oriented investment strategies, building on labor?s capital, since 1996.? In 1999, the HLCN established the Heartland Fund using the Solidarity Fund of Quebec as its model. The Fund is an attempt ?fill a growing investment capital gap that is preventing small and medium-sized businesses from expanding.? Cities involved in the proposed Heartland Fund Regional Network are Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Seattle, Cleveland, Chicago, Bay Area, Boston and New York. Workers must take advantage of the ?home-bias? flow of pension funds and turn it into community-asset investments.

(Working title) Environmental justice from a distance: Advocacy networking in the Twin Cities for the northern Manitoba Cree
Ryan Holifield

Abstract:
In 1998, members of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation (PCN) in northern Manitoba demonstrated outside the offices of the Northern States Power Company (now Xcel Energy) in Minneapolis. Their protest against the company, which buys cheap energy from a hydroelectric project that has devastated the ecosystems of several Cree communities, attracted the attention of environmental and social justice activists in the Twin Cities. This case study examines the transnational advocacy network that has since emerged to support the PCN in their struggle. In addition to describing the emergence, operation, and effectiveness of the network, the study asks whether and how the network’s focus on a particular place has contributed to broader progressive resistance to colonial and neoliberal projects. It argues that it has done so – not so much by producing a more “broadly political” consciousness among individual activists, but instead by forcing them to make strategic decisions to broaden the scope and scale of network activities.