Student: Aphelion Crampton
Graduation date: May 2018
Capstone type: Thesis
Capstone project:
Got Neoliberalism?: A Political Ecology of Power in Senegal’s Milk Market
Capstone file(s): Show file | Show file
This thesis argues that powerful institutions e.g. multinational food corporations, transnational economic organizations, and neocolonialism capitalize on Senegal’s dairy market by creating more liberalized and preferential trade agreements, steering the supply of incoming powdered milk, and advertising this product as both a representation of modernism and traditional Senegalese values. Discourse is used to resist this institutional power at the state level through government acts and administrative declarations, at the civil society level through media and scholarship, and at the private level through individual consumption and conversation. While the institutional control of milk in Senegal can be seen as a microcosm of neoliberal control that "core" countries hold over "peripheral" countries, the resistance to this control can be seen as a successful example of transnational and collective power.