1,720,981 research outputs found
Solidarity Wishes: A Cultural Analysis of Political Solidarity, Sovereignty, and Stalled States of Desire
No full textSolidarity Wishes argues that political solidarity is prone to getting stuck inside of stalled states of desire, what I conceptualize as “wishes,” for contemporary Canadian and American settler neoliberal subjects. This project illustrates how solidarity wishes commonly act as rhetorical, strategic, and performative psychological devices. I theorize that an ethics – or mentality – of sovereignty that ideologically structures many of these subjects’ social, political, and institutional lives is largely to blame for solidarity’s trapping within wishes. By centering an analysis of political solidarity through the framework of desire I illuminate how solidarity wishes and their expressions can be harvested by both individuals and groups to achieve something other than solidarity itself, a practice I liken to the psychoanalytic concept of “substitutive satisfaction.” Furthermore, as a meditation on solidarity as an object of desire, this dissertation queries what happens in the affective spaces between thinking and doing, feeling and experiencing, wanting and getting. I analyze examples from politics, popular culture, personal experience, academia, and activism to make my arguments, and I rely on queer theory, feminist theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis as my theoretical frameworks. This dissertation gestures toward the political possibilities of rescuing political solidarity from these ambivalent subjective orectic states of wishes. It defends the theory that solidarity, in its most basic sense, is nonsovereignty manifested in a feeling toward another subject, a feeling that can, and hopefully will, ignite into productive solidarity practices. Solidarity Wishes argues that subjects must embrace their interdependency and adopt an ethics of nonsovereignty in order to transition their stagnant solidarity wishes into genuine desires for sociopolitical change and feasible practices toward transformative justice
In the Circle of Fire: Gendered Barriers in Fire Services in Ontario
No full textThe firefighting profession is described as inherently dangerous, rich in pride, honour and tradition. Firefighters are held in high regard, as they are known for their involvement in, and commitment to the community. Firefighting is a ‘public safety’ service, with a labour force that is predominantly white males. The public expect firefighters to fight fires and rescue those in distress, displaying heroism, strength and embodying masculinity (Yarnal et al., 2016). Although described as a masculine profession, the role of the firefighter is changing, and the composition of the service is beginning to evolve to reflect the community that it serves. This phenomenological study, guided by the principles of standpoint theory, investigates gender-based workplace dynamics within firefighting, uncovering ways in which nuanced stereotypes, bias and discriminatory practices contribute to a less inclusive and sometimes unsupportive environment for women in the Fire Services in Ontario. Thirty-two firefighters participated in semi-structured interviews. The themes presented are generalized to both genders, as well as themes unique to either male or female firefighters. This study’s findings reveal that while some themes are found to apply to both genders, others are distinct to women firefighters. This dissertation highlights the negative impacts the workplace has on women firefighters
Hamilton Working Women and 'Protective' Legislation: A Review of Theories on the Gendered Division of Labour
No full textThis work represents an attempt to test the utility of existing theories on the gendered division of labour by applying them to an empirical example of Hamilton, Ontario. Recent theoretical debates locate the period of the early consolidation of industrial capitalism as central to the emergence of a particular family form - the dependent female - breadwinner-male which embodies, enforces and reflects the gendered division of labour. The family wage is central to the notion of this specific family form and has become the focus of ensuing debates. The test of the theories generally indicate a similar pattern occurring in Hamilton as noted by these authors. However, a significant variation of fewer Hamilton married women employed in paid labour points to the emergence of the dependent family form as a slow process contingent upon specific historical elaborations and developments of the separation of the domestic from the industrial unit. A refinement of existing theories is presented by including the role of state labour policies in shaping the form of the family household. The implementation of these policies can be understood as a component of the state fulfilling its function of reproduction. The factory Acts of 1884 distinguished women as a separate occupational group, institutionalized their double day of work, and exacerbated the gendered division of labour. The minimum wage policy for females in 1920, premised on the 'family wage', consolidated the gendered division of labour under capitalism. From these theoretical treatments of historically specific elements in the family wage comes a new question of the relationship between class and gender components in this ideology. It is argued that a theory on the gendered division of labour must include an analysis of the state's contribution to the reproduction of labour power.Master of Arts (MA
The Intimacy of Commodities: Social Control, Subjectivity and Feminine Hygiene
Get PDFThis thesis examines one instance of the sexual oppression of women, that which is found in the emergence of the feminine hygiene market. It is demonstrated that certain forms of commodities, with specific application for feminine hygiene, were developed and introduced at times when women entered the paid labour force in large numbers. It is argued, however, that the correspondence between these two parallel phenomena is more than temporal. Social control in the culture of the office is disciplinary ln mode, sexist in orientation. The manipulation of the "cosmetic self" implies a regulation of socially constructed femininity; this discipline is internalized, and thus successful, as women purchase products which regulate sexuality and femaleness. A semiological analysis of advertisements for feminine hygiene products demonstrates that the "problem that women bleed" has remained constant but has assumed varying forms. The content analysis of ads lends access to speculation about why women consume redundant products and how, ideologically, they come to understand and organize their work force experiences. The mythicizing effects of advertising involves the construction of the subject in terms of a reconciliation of what she knows and how she acts in a social totality. The gender relations of dominance require that women appropriate what it means to be a woman, to be feminine.Master of Arts (MA
Stabilizing the technoscientific witness: a history of controversy, medicolegal practice, and the Ontario sexual assault evidence kit
Get PDFOver its thirty-four years in Ontario, the Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK) has gained credibility as the objective technoscientific witness of sexual assault. This dissertation traces the Ontario Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK) and how it gained stability through ongoing anti-rape activism, technoscientific and legal controversy, and shifting medicolegal practice. It draws on 62 interviews with medicolegal professionals and rape crisis centre workers in Ontario, archival data, media articles, and medicolegal texts to examine how the SAEK was (re )assembled in meaning and in material form alongside new technologies, medicolegal practices, spaces, actors, and expertise.
The dissertation's theoretical/methodological approach is guided by Donna Haraway's diffraction metaphor and tools from Actor-Network Theory. The study diffracts the SAEK to examine it as a historicized actor involved in medicolegal practice within shifting heterogeneous networks of medical and legal professionals, anti-rape activists, survivors/victims, and texts, tools, and technologies. This dissertation argues that the design, credibility, and continued use of the contemporary SAEK as a technoscientific witness has been fuelled by legal histories and practices based on distrusting women who report sexual assault.
Several key questions are examined in detail: how did the contemporary SAEK gain stability as the technoscientific witness of sexual assault, how were the SAEK and its medicolegal network assembled and reassembled, for what purposes, and for whose benefit? By untangling the histories of the SAEK, this study charts the historical and contemporary controversies amongst scientists, nurses, doctors, lawyers, and feminist rape crisis centre workers about who should use the SAEK, where and how they should use it, with what tools and technologies, and for what and whose purpose. Through this history, the dissertation finds that the contemporary SAEK's stability benefits many medicolegal actors but few survivors/victims. By offering a historicized account of the SAEK, this study contributes to existing literature on the SAEK, anti-rape activism in Ontario, and forensic and medical technologies. The dissertation diffracts the SAEK to contribute to future feminist efforts to imagine more ethical and responsible ways of assembling medicolegal technologies and practices around sexual assault
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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