9441 research outputs found
Sort by
Three Days in April
Get PDFThree Days in April was written in April 2022. It is a kind of personal meditation on the impact of climate change and the death of Dr. David Barber, environmental scientist and global expert on the Arctic
Philip\u27s Mountain
Get PDFPhilip’s Mountain is a collection of poems about the interface between a young woman and a trash laden mountain forest in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It explores the desire to trace ecological and cultural memory by rummaging through an increasingly impermeable layer of waste
Grief on the margins: The death of a family member to substance use
Get PDFDespite Canada\u27s high death rates from substance use, there is limited research on the sociopsychological impact on families, who often face stigma and disenfranchised grief. This study explores how family members make meaning of a substance-related death. Through qualitative inquiry, eleven family members were interviewed on their experience of grief from substance death. The imprint of losing a family member to mental illness and substance use is fraught with intergenerational grief, ambiguity, prolonged mental-emotional distress, and relationship challenges. Substance death was also associated with stigma, social withdrawal, and shame for many participants. However, grievers reconstructed the socially prescribed negative perceptions and treatment of families impacted by substance death through education, supportive community, art, and resistance. Spirituality and relationships with non-human kin also emerged as healing in grief. Through these common avenues, participants restory their narratives and embody the wise helpers they would have benefited from in vulnerable moments of grief. This study supports the need for substance death grief literacy and highlights the implications for social work practice
Student Engagement and Resistance: Exploring the stories of African Canadian girls in high schools in southwestern Ontario
Get PDFAbstract
Student resistance is complex and has been described in existing literature as self defeatist, reactionary, conformist, transformational or strategic. Some Black students respond to interactions considered oppressive at school by engaging in a variety of resistive actions. Existing scholarship about Black student resistance in the US and Canada are largely framed within deficit frameworks with limited focus on Transformational Student Resistance. Research that focuses on transformational student resistance by Black girls, how schools respond, and how some resistive behaviours can be considered opportunities for change, is limited. While a diverse community, studies about Black girls often portray them as a monolithic group. Nevertheless, discussing some of their school related intragroup differences and similarities bring existing nuances to the fore. For example, studies about the experiences of African Canadian girls in high schools in Canada are relatively limited. Their experiences are largely invisible in the literature on Black girls, education and student resistance. By centering the experiences of African Canadian girls, this study emphasizes the benefits of providing support to all Black girls in high schools to enhance their engagement and academic outcomes. Teachers can support their students to adopt positive strategies when they engage, rather than censor students when they participate in student resistance activities or related actions. The nexus between meaningful Black student engagement and academic outcomes cannot be overstated.
This qualitative narrative inquiry expands existing research on Transformational Student Resistance and Black students by exploring the organizing and advocacy related activities of 19 African Canadian girls aged 16-24 through purposive sampling, in some high schools in southwestern Ontario. Their stories are gathered through qualitative interviews and focus groups. This study explores issues of race with a specific focus on Critical Race Theory and anti-Black racism. The dissertation disrupts negative narratives about African Canadian girls as passive objects by positioning them as valid knowledge holders in a bid to draw attention to their agentic powers and subjectivities. Specifically, participant narratives counter existing perceptions about their ‘deviant oppositional behaviour’ and instead documents their efforts at enacting agency through organizing and advocacy with the goal of transforming their schools.
The findings of the study provide additional insights into how educators, staff, administrators and policy makers can work towards equity in schools
Review of Scandalous Conduct: Canadian Officer Courts Martial, 1914-45 by Matthew Barrett
Get PDFReview of Scandalous Conduct: Canadian Officer Courts Martial, 1914-45 by Matthew Barret
Review of Modelling the Logistics of Mantzikert by Philip Murgatroyd, Vincent Gaffney, John Haldon and Georgios Theodoropoulos
Get PDFReview of Modelling the Logistics of Mantzikert by Philip Murgatroyd, Vincent Gaffney, John Haldon and Georgios Theodoropoulo
“People [Are] Not Dying Because Officers Aren\u27t Following Their Training. ‘It\u27s Because They Are.”: The Construction of Police De-Escalation of Individuals in Mental Health Crises in Canadian Media
Get PDFPolice are often assumed to be the de facto response to people in mental health crises. Contact between police and Canadians with mental illness and in crisis is routine and on the rise (Livingston, 2016). Police responses to these incidences have been criticized after several, highly publicized and tragic encounters between police and people in mental health crisis and the overrepresentation of people of colour in these instances. Media outlets determine which stories are prioritized, how they are framed, and which information to include or omit (Fawzi, 2018). Notably, public knowledge of police activities greatly impacts community perceptions of police legitimacy and social movements with this knowledge largely obtained through media consumption. Little research has focused on how media construct police interactions with people in crisis. Using a social constructionist lens, I conduct a media analysis, including qualitative content (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), discourse (Berger, 2019), and framing analyses (Wimmer & Dominick, 2014), of Canadian news articles involving interactions between police and individuals in crisis to investigate how the term “de-escalation” is used and framed, which claims are made, who is making these claims, and how mental illness and people of colour are situated in these stories. Police were the most frequent claimsmakers, making 24% of all claims. The dominant narrative of the police is that there is a lack of mental health resources. Alternatively, community claimsmakers suggest the issue is aggressive police responses to people in crisis. Nonetheless, both groups of claimsmakers provide similar solutions, suggesting more mental health resources, greater involvement of mental health professionals in crisis intervention, less involvement of police in crisis intervention, and more mental health and de-escalation training for police officers
CONSTRUCTIONS OF SERIAL KILLERS AND VICTIMS: ANALYSIS OF TRUE CRIME DOCUSERIES
Get PDFStories of crime have consistently captured the attention of the public, with stories of heists, kidnappings and murder. The true crime genre receives enormous attention and serves for many as the primary source of crime knowledge, including who commits crime, how they commit crime and how law enforcement responds. Books and podcasts have been interrogated by researchers to understand the nature of the content but missing are the true crime documentaries and docuseries that have dominated streaming platforms in North America. The present study examined three true crime series about serial killers using social constructionism and social problems theory, and examining narratives, dialogue, pictures, and claimsmakers in the docuseries. Four guiding questions were posed (1) how are serial killers constructed as social problem? (2) how are serial killers constructed? (3) how are victims constructed? (4) Who are the main claimsmakers featured? Three recent docuseries were selected, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Night Stalker and I’ll be Gone in the Dark. Employing qualitative media analysis, the docuseries were examined in their entirety using the program NVivo. Analysis revealed several key findings. The first finding relates to the construction of serial homicide in an episodic fashion, with mythology building around the killer taking place. The perpetrators are given variable amounts of time in each docuseries, with some positioning the killer at the center while others prioritized victim’s stories. Construction of the victims also varied widely, from another statistic and evidence to an empathetic person, through the use of dialogue and images. The last component examined was claimsmakers, who overwhelmingly belongs to branches of law enforcement. The implications of these findings are discussed, in addition to the future directions for literature
Co-Creation, Interpretations and Engagement with a Movement-Based Symbol for Climate Justice: A Qualitative Inquiry
Get PDFThe climate crisis demonstrates with complete clarity the need for massive systems-level changes towards far more sustainable societies. Global and local emissions need to decline rapidly to mitigate intensifying climate breakdown, accompanied by climate and sustainability solutions, to secure a far more stable, safe, and just future for all people and all life. Within these changes, engaging in our communities is essential to support and co-create broader solutions to help advance more sustainable societies, reduce negative impacts of a changing climate, and to move towards cultures and systems that recognize natural limits and centre care for people and planet.
‘Climate justice’ (CJ) can be seen as one powerful concept, call-to-action, and critical framing that has increased in use by many people and movements worldwide in response to the climate crisis. CJ shows promise for engaging communities in co-developing more ethical, justice-based responses to climate change that centre commitments to more environmentally conscious, climate safe societies that are also more caring and equitable. Now a globally-resonant discourse and symbol championed by many people, CJ has become a symbolic ‘signpost’ for how we “should” collectively respond as societies to the climate crisis. CJ has been linked to diverse concepts including ‘just transitions’ to more sustainable social and economic systems; culture change; the collective right to a safe climate future; historical and present responsibilities for climate change; visioning of alternative futures; acting in solidarity with and in defense of those most vulnerable to climate change impacts, including people and nature; and other related concepts.
As is clear from culture theory and semiotics, symbols are a core part of shaping culture and can play a powerful role in shaping local and global cultural responses to crisis. Given the increasing use of CJ symbols in the public sphere, multiple scholars have expressed a need to better understand the potential effects of these symbols as ‘directional signposts’, including their influences on shaping culture, perceptions of CJ, and potentially motivating related CJ actions. This study addresses this gap, by investigating the impacts of a unique local phenomenon of twenty-one identical CJ signposts that have been raised by faith communities in and beyond Waterloo Region, Canada, supported by a local volunteer group Faith Climate Justice Waterloo Region (FCJWR). Through a process of engaging key informants in semi-structured interviews, this study explores the novel phenomenon of local organizers co-creating a CJ signpost, then raised by local faith communities on different places of faith – and the resulting interpretations, meanings, reflections, and responses to this signpost that were shared.
Novel insights include exploring how specific value communities engage with CJ symbols; the importance of process to effective CJ symbol co-creation; interpretations and perceived impacts of the CJ symbol; and anticipated ‘next steps’ for engagement, among others. Lastly, this study takes a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to connect diverse bodies of knowledge, with significant implications for theory, research, and practice of climate justice communication across different contexts and scales