Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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Analyzing the Effectiveness of Social Movements Opposing Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
Blocking fossil fuel infrastructure projects like pipelines is increasingly being seen as a legitimate way for civil society groups to reduce global carbon emissions. This research project is an exploratory case study of the Trans Mountain pipeline in British Columbia and its opposition. My research question asks, ‘What has each tactic/strategy of opposition in the campaign to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion accomplished, and how have they been effective? How can they be done more effectively?’ Through interviews and an autoethnography, my research explores the effectiveness of activists in this campaign. I analyze the results of my findings within social movement theory and other activist definitions of effectiveness from my literature review. The more significant findings from my research are that activists need to do a better job educating the public on the issue, need to direct more of their resources towards promoting a solution to the issue and make alliances with other movements and groups. This research project contributes to the literature on the effectiveness of oppositional strategies and tactics of pipeline resistance, as well as social movement theory. Author Keywords: British Columbia, pipeline, protest, strategy, tactic, Trans Mountain
Building Individuals, Building the Economy
This thesis explores the neoliberal governmentality approach to education for Northern economic development that was prevalent from 2006 to 2015, during Stephen Harper’s period as Prime Minister of Canada. Using a grounded theory approach, this thesis identifies three themes – Indigenous integration, education, and employment for labour force/ economic development – to direct an analysis on programs and funding supported by the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, Employment and Social Development Canada, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. This examination suggests that Federal programming and funding encouraged neoliberal governmentality approaches to Northern development and education. Specifically, the former Government interest in developing an Indigenous work force to serve labour market needs is brought to light. Author Keywords: Economic Development, Indigenous Education, Labour Force Development, Neoliberalism, Territorial North
Building social connections
This thesis evaluates a multi-stakeholder participatory planning initiative, NeighbourPLAN, in Peterborough, Ontario, and the role of the third-party broker, GreenUP, in establishing connections and networks of capacity between marginalized members of the community and contributing organizations, city, and experts. Participatory approaches to engage residents disenfranchised by traditional planning processes are believed to challenge the status quo perpetuated by top-down decision-making. I worked within two neighbourhoods involved in NeighbourPLAN to determine whether the collaborative work and brokering between stakeholders would foster increased connectedness that could exist independently and last beyond the project's timeline. The findings from this evaluation determine that, from the residents' perspectives, while the presence of the other stakeholders in these participatory planning events was valuable, there was not enough affective time to create long-lasting connections. Partners that developed relationships marked with trust and mutual benefit provide a helpful blueprint showing how serious commitment and consistency can build sustainable and meaningful connections. I conclude with a set of recommendations to enhance the connection building between diverse stakeholders and marginalized communities within NeighbourPLAN, highlighting the promising potential of arts-based and storytelling methods. Author Keywords: arts-based methods, community engagement, Participatory action research (PAR), participatory planning, photovoice, social connectedness
Canadian Refugee Policy
This dissertation is an inquiry into the politics of the frame in Canadian refugee policy. It is focused on "framing," thereby taking up the stance of critical policy studies while pressing the contribution of Donald Schön and Martin Rein in a critical and politically inflected direction. The dissertation unfolds as a political history of Canadian refugee policy that provides a "contextual mapping," relevant to both inquiry and action in regard to the framing of refugees. The main argument is that twentieth- and twenty-first- century refugee policy in Canada is a story of three shifting meta-frames: beginning with humanitarianism (in the inter-War years and the post-World War II period); shifting to neo-humanitarianism (beginning in the late 1970s, in connection with the rise of neoliberalism); then shifting again (beginning in the 1990s) to securitization. The concept of a meta-frame here is analogous to that of a "metacultural frame" in Schön and Rein, but accents political rather than cultural dimensions. This concept is developed in a manner suitable to a political history by illustrating how meta-frames both become stable and change. With humanitarianism, the refugee was typically portrayed in ambivalent terms - both deserving of and entitled to protection, while also posing a burden for the national interest. In the context of neo-humanitarianism, this ambivalence began to wane, and the refugee was more typically portrayed as a potential criminal. With securitization, especially as it has become entrenched and intensified, the refugee has been more typically portrayed as a potential terrorist. The analysis includes a focus on the particular importance of ambivalence and contingency in the politics of the frame. Securitization has become so deeply entrenched since September 11, 2001 that it appears virtually fixed in place. However, it may still become possible in moments of contingency for refugee advocates to destabilize the securitization meta-frame and help shift the framing of refugees into a more hospitable register. Author Keywords: ambivalence, contingency, humanitarianism, neo-humanitarianism, refugees, securitization
Exploring Indigenous Contributions to (Indigenization of) the City of Saskatoon's 2012-2022 Strategic Plan
The self-determining autonomy of urban Aboriginal communities in Canada's Prairie Provinces can be strengthened at the local scale through decolonized municipal governance frameworks. The City of Saskatoon's Strategic Plan 2012-2022 is highlighted to explore two interrelated questions: do Saskatoon's Aboriginal engagement strategies represent a co-produced or indigenized mainstream planning and policy-making process? Does the potential indigenization of municipal planning and policy-making represent a promising pathway to facilitate local decolonization through collaborative municipal-Aboriginal governance in Saskatoon? Results from qualitative interviews reveal that the City of Saskatoon's distinctive Aboriginal engagement strategies were not entirely meaningful for participants, though the planning process included elements that, if expanded upon, could deepen co-production. Indigenization through co-production necessitates a thorough integration of Aboriginal community input at every stage of a planning and policy-making process, shared control and decision-making mechanisms between municipal governments and Aboriginal communities, and ancillary considerations for increased Aboriginal representation and participation in the administrative and political functions of City Hall. Author Keywords: aboriginal governance, decolonization, indigenization, policy co-production, self-determination, strategic municipal planning
Lacanian Realism
The overarching argument of this manuscript concerns Lacanian Realism, that is, the Lacanian theory of the Real. Initially, my argument may seem quite modest: I claim that Lacanians have been preoccupied with a particular modality of the Real, one that insists on interrupting, limiting, or exceeding the various orders or agencies of the human mind. The implications of such a position are worth considering. For example, one must, as a consequence of holding this position, bracket questions pertaining to Things outside of the Symbolic and Imaginary psychical systems. Careful study shall expose the extent to which this position has infuenced each of the major felds inspired by Jacques Lacan: clinical psychoanalysis, radical political philosophy, and mathematics or topology. My task has been to explore the consequent occlusion which psychoanalysis has suffered in each of these three felds and to tease out the possibility of a return to the Real. Author Keywords: Alain Badiou, Anarchism, Hysteria, Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis, Slavoj Zizek
Local Immigration Partnerships
Introduced as part of the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs) mark a fundamental shift in local settlement policy. To address the gap in knowledge about the implications of this policy change, this thesis research features a case study of Durham Region's LIP. Objectives were designed to examine the impact of Durham's LIP by interviewing 52 key-informants within six sectors involved in settlement and integration. Findings indicate an effective application of the LIP policy with participants pointing to the LIP's vital role in bringing Welcome Centres to Durham, increasing the attention and profile of immigration issues and improving governance relations amongst different sectors in settlement and integration. A product of local circumstances, the LIP has engaged in a quasi-advocacy role educating mainstream service providers and institutions on how to respond to a diversifying population. Results contribute to the relatively under-studied but growing knowledge of the LIP policy while demonstrating that the localization of immigration policy under the appropriate terms can be successful. Author Keywords: Governance, Integration, Local Immigration Partnerships, Ontario, Regionalization, Settlement
Materiality and Ontology of Digital Subjectivity
New conditions of materiality are emerging from fundamental changes in our ontological order. Digital subjectivity represents an emergent mode of subjectivity that is the effect of a more profound ontological drift that has taken place, and this bears significant repercussions for the practice and understanding of the political. This thesis pivots around mathematician Grigori ‘Grisha’ Perelman, most famous for his refusal to accept numerous prestigious prizes resulting from his proof of the Poincaré conjecture. The thesis shows the Perelman affair to be a fascinating instance of the rise of digital subjectivity as it strives to actualize a new hegemonic order. By tracing first the production of aesthetic works that represent Grigori Perelman in legacy media, the thesis demonstrates that there is a cultural imperative to represent Perelman as an abject figure. Additionally, his peculiar abjection is seen to arise from a challenge to the order of materiality defended by those with a vested interest in maintaining the stability of a hegemony identified with the normative regulatory power of the heteronormative matrix sustaining social relations in late capitalism. The first chapter analyses the formal aesthetics of legacy media representations of Perelman. The second chapter focuses on new media aesthetic productions pertaining to Perelman and the political ontology of digital media. The third chapter interrogates the political ontology of the materials utilized in Perelman’s work and seeks to clarify the status of the conditions of the challenge of a digital hegemony. Author Keywords: abjection, archive, autistic reason, digital subjectivity, Grigori Perelman, ontological drift
Nature without Balance
This thesis critically analyses the connection between ideology and nature, and in particular, aims to reflect on the dominant discourses on the topic of ecological crisis. The ecological thought framework that I adhere to rests on a combination of Frankfurt School and Žižekian theories. This combination is not without serious tensions and deviations; however, central to this project are the ways in which their respective works extensively critique ideology, and propose subversive alternatives to and new meanings of how we can conceptualize nature without domination. Dominant ideas and critiques of nature and natural history emerged during the Enlightenment era, and as Adorno argues, fell victim to a “reduction ad hominem,” or the claim that in order to free oneself, one must dominate, appropriate, and master nature. I claim that the extreme choices in environmental politics today - namely organic populism on one hand and increased technological intervention on the other - fail to account for the ways ‘nature’ is a socio-historical construct, and moreover, is situated within a false reality wherein the ‘essence of existence’ is reduced to technological mastery. What we encounter in this cautionary armoury of paradoxical approaches to nature, then, is the ideological currents of established belief systems. By exposing the illusions within the concept nature, such as the argumentative persuasion that there exists an inherent balance, the elementary cell of ideology reveals itself alongside revolutionary possibilities. Author Keywords: Crises, Critical Theory, Ideology, Nature, Slavoj Zizek, Theodor Adorno
Politics of Muslim Intellectual Discourse in the West
The dissertation explores and defends the theory and practice of a Western-Islamic public sphere (which is secular but not secularist and which is Islamic but not Islamist), within which a critical Islamic intellectual universe can unfold, dealing hermeneutically with texts and politically with lived practices, and which, moreover, has to emerge from within the arc of two alternative, conflicting, yet equally dismissive suspicions defined by a view that critical Islam is the new imperial rhetoric of hegemonic orientalism and the opposite view that critical Islam is just fundamentalism camouflaged in liberal rhetoric. The Western-Islamic public sphere offers a third view, arising from ethical commitment to intellectual work, creativity, and imagination as a portal to the open horizons of history. Author Keywords: Critical Islam, critique, history, Islamic reformation, public sphere, secular
Pursuing Different Policy Paths in Long-Term Care
Because federal funding for long-term care was not included as part of Canada's publicly-funded universal health care system, provincial governments have been free to determine how much, or how little, they will rely on the for-profit sector to meet the long-term care needs of their senior populations. The proportion of beds in the for-profit sector differs in each province, demonstrating that policy approaches to this type of care have developed according to distinct provincial political contexts. In this dissertation I explain why governments in two provinces, Manitoba and Ontario, have come to rely on the proprietary sector to markedly different degrees. While in the federation Manitoba stands out for its restrained reliance on this form of care, Ontario stands out for its exceptional dependence on commercial provision. In the chapters that follow I employ an historical institutionalist framework of analysis to explain why these neighbouring provinces initially pursued different policy paths in long-term care and how these paths have been sustained over time. Following an introductory chapter in which I explain the reasons for the marginalization of long-term care within national health policy making, I provide in-depth analysis of these case studies in policy divergence. I argue that contemporary policy differences between these neighbouring provinces cannot be understood in isolation from long-term historical processes. Focusing largely on the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, I emphasize that present differences in ownership are a reflection of the different constellation of actors, events, ideas and institutions that came together at critical junctures in time, and the lasting legacies that these early windows of opportunity for reform have had on subsequent rounds of long-term care policy-making. In each province, diverging ideas about the appropriate role of the for-profit sector in meeting the long-term care needs of an aging population rose to prominence on the political agenda. Over time, rigidities developed in each system, making it difficult for actors advocating for new directions in ownership to realize their ambitions. In both provinces policies put in place at earlier times greatly influenced future political dynamics, altered the guiding principles of government departments and policy makers, provided incentives for different interest group formations, and led to contrasting public expectations about the proper balance of the for-profit and non-profit sectors in long-term care provision. I conclude this dissertation by arguing that its findings can contribute in important ways to present discussions about long-term care reform in Canada generally and about the future role of for-profit providers specifically. Author Keywords: Comparative Politics, Health Policy, Historical Institutionalism, Long-Term Care, Path Dependency, Provincial Politics
RE-IMAGINING THE LAW OF DISPUTE RESOLUTION
This project examines the development and deployment of mediation frameworks in Canada with the goal of advocating for the restoration of dispute resolution as the site of democratic politics. In doing so we enlist the work of Petyr Kropotkin's theory of Mutual Aid and a brief history of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Canada to identify procedural differences in mediation processes that separate interest mediation, rights mediation and litigation. We then turn to two separate analyses of these differences. The first utilizes the theoretical framework of Jacques Rancière. The second examines the work of Hannah Arendt. Despite the significant differences in their approaches, the work of Rancière and Arendt, in admittedly different ways, show that interest mediation holds the greatest potential for approaching dispute resolution as an exercise in democratic politics. As a result the project advocates for the expansion or further empowerment of interest mediation as a way of securing and ensuring the continued development of Canada as a democratic community. Author Keywords: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière, Mediation, Mutual Aid, Petyr Kropotkin

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Format: 2024/03/29