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Social science

  • Auteur:
    Williamson, Milly
    Sommaire:

    It is a truism to suggest that celebrity pervades all areas of life today. The growth and expansion of celebrity culture in recent years has been accompanied by an explosion of studies of the social function of celebrity and investigations into the fascination of specific celebrities. And yet fundamental questions about what the system of celebrity means for our society have yet to be resolved: Is celebrity a democratization of fame or a powerful hierarchy built on exclusion' Is celebrity created through public demand or is it manufactured' Is the growth of celebrity a harmful dumbing down of culture or an expansion of the public sphere' Why has celebrity come to have such prominence in today's expanding media' Milly Williamson unpacks these questions for students and researchers alike, re-examining some of the accepted explanations for celebrity culture. The book questions assumptions about the inevitability of the growth of celebrity culture, instead explaining how environments were created in which celebrity output flourished. It provides a compelling new history of the development of celebrity (both long-term and recent) which highlights the relationship between the economic function of celebrity in various media and entertainment industries and its changing social meanings and patterns of consumption.

  • Auteur:
    Lepper, Georgia
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    Through analysis of data samples and exercises, this volume introduces the concepts of the Harvey Sacks' membership categorization analysis technique and discusses its application in a variety of contexts.

  • Auteur:
    Scanlon, T. Joseph
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    On December 6, 1917, the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was shattered when a volatile cargo exploded in the bustling wartime harbour. Over 1,600 people were killed and 9,000 injured. At the time, it was the worst man-made disaster in history. This book weaves together the compelling stories and potent lessons learned from this catastrophe.

  • Auteur:
    Turner, Hannah
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    How does material culture become data? Why does this matter, and for whom? As the cultures of Indigenous peoples in North America were mined for scientific knowledge, years of organizing, classifying, and cataloguing hardened into accepted categories, naming conventions, and tribal affiliations – much of it wrong. Cataloguing Cultureexamines how colonialism has operated through the technologies of museum bureaucracy: the ledger book, the card catalogue, and eventually the database. As Indigenous communities reclaim what is theirs, this timely work shines a light on the importance of documentation for access to and return of cultural heritage.

  • Auteur:
    Lesser, Elizabeth
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    Lesser argues that if women's voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have valued stories of caretaking and compassion over vengeance and violence.

  • Auteur:
    Sinclair, Raven, Carniol, Ben, Baines, Donna, Kennedy-Kish (Bell), Banakonda
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    Social services are in crisis: after numerous service cuts, many of its jobs are now short-term, part-time and non-unionized, prompting us to ask why is there not a greater public outcry for helping people in need? This book applies decolonized, critical analysis to highlight what is often hidden from view for most Canadians: the personal trauma and communal devastation inflicted on Indigenous people by past and present colonialism, and how neoliberal tax cuts, austerity and privatization are creating more inequality, homelessness, and despair among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The authors advocate for social service providers to become social activists to de-legitimatize colonial and neoliberal policies by working in solidarity with progressive, grass roots social movements committed to Indigenous Treaty rights, and to economic, environmental, and social justice for everyone.

  • Auteur:
    Holmes, Jasmine L.
    Sommaire:

    A look at the inspirational lives of ten Black women of faith Do the names Elizabeth Freeman, Nannie Helen Burroughs, or Charlotte Forten Grimke ring any bells? Have you ever heard of Sarah Mapps Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, or Maria Fearing? What about Sara Griffith Stanley, Amanda Berry Smith, Lucy Craft Laney, and Maria Stewart? While these names may not be familiar to you, these women lived faithful and influential lives in a world that was filled with injustice. They worked to change laws, built schools, spoke to thousands, and shared the Gospel all around the world. And while history books may have forgotten them, their stories can teach us so much about how we can live today.

  • Auteur:
    Langford, Rachel, Albanese, Patrizia, Prentice, Susan
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    Social inequality. Selective political attention. Insufficient funding and access. Caring for Children provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of the crisis in care for Canadian children and their caregivers. The contributors explore the complex issues surrounding caring for children, analyzing the connections between services and programs to reveal how childcare, parental leave, informal care, live-in caregiver programs, and child tax benefits affect the well-being of Canadian children and their families. They affirm the necessity of questioning political attitudes and arrangements, and ask what social movements can do to promote positive change in approaches to the care of children.

  • Auteur:
    Wells, Zachariah
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    By turns celebratory and sceptical, Career Limiting Moves is a selection of essays and reviews drawn from a decade of immersion in Canadian poetry. Inhabiting a milieu in which unfriendly remarks are typically spoken sotto voce'if at all'Wells has consistently said what he thinks aloud. The pieces in this collection comprise revisionist assessments of some big names in Canadian Poetry (Margaret Atwood, Lorna Crozier, Don McKay and Patrick Lane, among others); satirical ripostes parrying others' critical views (Andre Alexis, Erin Moure, Jan Zwicky); substantial appraisals of underrated or near-forgotten poets (Charles Bruce, Kenneth Leslie, Peter Sanger, John Smith, Peter Trower, Peter Van Toorn); assessments of promising debuts (Suzanne Buffam, Pino Coluccio, Thomas Heise, Peter Norman) and much else besides'including a few surprises for anyone who thinks they have Wells's taste figured out.

  • Auteur:
    Abele, Frances
    Sommaire:

    People across Canada’s North have created vibrant community institutions to serve a wide range of social and economic needs. Neither state-driven nor profit-oriented, these organizations form a relatively under-studied third sector of the economy. Researchers from the Social Economy Research Network of Northern Canada explore this sector through fifteen case studies, encompassing artistic, recreational, cultural, political, business, and economic development organizations that are crucial to the health and vitality of their communities. Care, Cooperation and Activism in Canada’s Northern Social Economy shows the innovative diversity and utter necessity of home-grown institutions in communities across Labrador, Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon. Readers, researchers, and students interested in social economy, Aboriginal studies, and northern communities will find much to enjoy and value in this book.

    Contributors: Frances Abele, Jennifer Alsop, Matthew A. Beaudoin, Jean-Sébastien Boutet, Julia Christensen, Cédric Drouin, Moses Hernandez, Noor Johnson, Sheena Kennedy Dalseg, Frédéric Moisan, Joseph Moise, Rajiv Rawat, Jerald Sabin, Chris Southcott, Kiri Staples, Lucille Villaseñor-Caron, Valoree Walker

  • Auteur:
    Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi
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    Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha is a poet and essayist whose most recent book, the memoir Dirty River, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle's Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. She is also a long-time member of the disability justice movement, which advocates for the rights of the disabled. In her latest book of essays, Leah writes passionately and personally about disability justice, on subject such as the creation of care webs, collective access, and radically accessible spaces. She also imparts her own survivor skills and wisdom based on her years of activist work, empowering the disabled--in particular, those in queer and/or BIPOC communities--and granting them the necessary tools by which they can imagine a future where no one is left behind. Presently, disability justice and emotional/care work are buzzwords on many people's lips, and the disabled and sick are discovering new ways to build power within themselves and each other; at the same time, those powers remain at risk in this fragile political climate in which we find ourselves. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

  • Auteur:
    Grey, Julius H.
    Sommaire:

    Thirty years after its global triumph, neo-liberalism is an abject failure. While its advocates have succeeded in convincing citizens that no other way is possible, that no left turn can be made without an economic collapse, they have not fulfilled their promises of a better world and the result has been more inequality, insecurity, and speculation. Many have sought solace in collective goals - nationalism, narrow religion, and gender politics - while notions of universal solidarity, idealism, and humanism have all but disappeared. In Capitalism and the Alternatives Julius H. Grey seeks to rehabilitate economic equality as a fundamental social goal built on universal values such as individualism, liberty, and even romanticism. To achieve this, he argues, it is necessary to move away from national, ethnic, religious, and even gender loyalties. The importance in each society of common culture and widely accepted moral values, Grey suggests, cannot be overstated. With its rampant political correctness, the modern left seems to have lost sight of morality and individual freedom. While most commentators stake out a partisan position in their criticism, Grey's notion of individual romanticism as the basis of a socially progressive society and his stress on free will, culture, classical education, and the right to dissent demand an overhaul of both the right and the left. A fundamental rethinking of the social, political, and economic foundations of modern industrial society, Capitalism and the Alternatives proposes freedom from identity, instead of communitarianism and tradition, as a condition for liberty and justice.

  • Auteur:
    Ames, Michael M.
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    Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes poses a number of probing questions about the role and responsibility of museums and anthropology in the contemporary world. In it, Michael Ames, an internationally renowned museum director, challenges popular concepts and criticisms of museums and presents an alternate perspective which reflects his experiences from many years of museum work. Based on the author's previous book, Museums, the Public and Anthropology, the new edition includes seven new essays which argue, as in the previous volume, that museums and anthropologists must contextualize and critique themselves -- they must analyse and critique the social, political and economic systems within which they work. In the new essays, Ames looks at the role of consumerism and the market economy in the production of such phenomena as worlds' fairs and McDonald's hamburger chains, referring to them as "museums of everyday life" and indicating the way in which they, like museums, transform ideology into commonsense, thus reinforcing and perpetuating hegemonic control over how people think about and represent themselves. He also discusses the moral/political ramifications of conflicting attitudes towards Aboriginal art (is it art or artifact?); censorship (is it liberating or repressive?); and museum exhibits (are they informative or disinformative?). The earlier essays outline the development of museums in the Western world, the problems faced by anthropologists in attempting to deal with the often conflicting demands of professional as opposed to public interests, the tendency to both fabricate and stereotype, and the need to establish a reciprocal rather than exploitative relationship between museums/anthropologists and Aboriginal people. Written during the course of the last decade, these essays offer an accessible, often anecdotal, journey through one professional anthropologist's concerns about, and hopes for, his discipline and its future.

  • Auteur:
    Morrison, Katherine
    Sommaire:

    On a 300-year journey through the historical, political and sociological milieux of Canada and the United States, Morrison examines national views of the past, nature, place and home, religion, violence and the law, humor and satire, women, race and class.

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    Social scientists' autobiographies can yield insight into personal commitments to research agendas and the very project of social science itself. But despite the long history of life writing, sociologists have tended to view the practice with skepticism. Canadian Sociologists in the First Personis the first book to survey the Canadian sociological imagination through personal recollections. Exploring the lives and experiences of twenty contributors from across the country, this book connects the unique and shared features of their careers to broad social dynamics while providing a guide to their own research and administrative contributions to their universities, their profession, and their broader society and communities. The contributors teach in different types of institutions, are prominent in the discipline and in their specializations, and represent significant and diverse intellectual currents, political perspectives, and life and career experiences. Aiming to start a broad conversation about what social science and the academic profession look like in Canada from an insider's perspective, Canadian Sociologists in the First Personoffers invaluable lessons for younger scholars as they envision a diverse sociological imagination for the twenty-first century.

  • Auteur:
    Coates, Colin M., University of Calgary Press
    Sommaire:

    Studies of the radical environmental politics of the 1960s have tended to downplay the extent to which much of that countercultural intellectual and social ferment continued into the 1970s and 1980s. Canadian Countercultures and the Environment adds to our knowledge of this understudied period. This collection contributes a sustained analysis of the beginning of major environmental debates in this era and examines a range of issues related to broad environmental concerns, topics which emerged as key concerns in the context of Cold War military investments and experiments, the oil crisis of the 1970s, debates over gendered roles, and the increasing attention to urban pollution and pesticide use. No other publication dealing with this period covers the wide range of environmental topics (among others, activism, midwifery, organic farming, recycling, urban cycling, and communal living) or geographic locales, from Yukon to Atlantic Canada. Together, they demonstrate how this period influenced and informed environmental action and issues in ways that have had a long-term impact on Canadian society. With contributions by: Matt Cavers Megan Davies Nancy Janovicek Alan MacEachern David Neufeld Ryan O'Connor Daniel Ross Henry Trim Sharon Weaver

  • Auteur:
    Clément, Dominique
    Sommaire:

    In the first major study of postwar social movement organizations in Canada, Dominique Clément provides a history of the human rights movement as seen through the eyes of two generations of activists. Drawing on newly acquired archival sources, extensive interviews, and materials released through access to information applications, Clément explores the history of four organizations that emerged in the sixties and evolved into powerful lobbies for human rights despite bitter internal disputes and intense rivalries. This book offers a unique perspective on infamous human rights controversies and argues that the idea of human rights has historically been highly statist while grassroots activism has been at the heart of the most profound human rights advances.

  • Auteur:
    Rutherford, Scott
    Sommaire:

    Canada's Other Red Scare makes the case that Indigenous political protest during the '60s should be thought of as both local and transnational, an urgent exercise in confronting the experience of settler-colonialism in places and moments of protest, when its logic and acts of dispossession are held up like a mirror.

  • Auteur:
    Holman, Andrew C.
    Sommaire:

    Almost every Canadian can hum the original Hockey Night in Canada theme - even those who don't think of themselves as hockey fans. For more than a century, Canadians have seen something of themselves in the sport of hockey. Canada's Game explores the critical aspects of this relationship. Contributors address a broad range of themes in hockey, past and present, including spectacle and spectatorship, the multiple meanings of hockey in Canadian fiction, and the shaping influences of violence, anti-Americanism, and regional rivalry. From the Gardens to the Forum, from the 1936 Olympics to the 1972 Summit Series, from the imagined depictions in Canadian fiction to the fan's-eye view, Canada's Game looks at hockey's ability to reflect Canadian identity.

    Contributors include Julian Ammirante (Laurentian University at Georgian), Jason Blake (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Robert Dennis (Queen's University), Jamie Dopp (University of Victoria), Russell Field (University of Manitoba), Greg Gillespie (Brock University), Richard Harrison (Mount Royal College), Craig Hyatt (Brock University), Brian Kennedy (Pasadena City College), Karen E.H. Skinazi (University of Alberta), and Julie Stevens (Brock University).

  • Auteur:
    Paisley, Erinne
    Sommaire:

    What you choose to wear becomes part of your identity, but it doesn't affect just you. Your clothing sends a message to the world, whether you want it to or not! And often we don't know what that message really is. Can Your Outfit Change the World? looks at how and where clothes are made, how the people who make the clothes are treated and how the companies who sell the clothes affect the health of our planet. Armed with information, you can follow the book's guide to spending your fashion dollars in a responsible and eco-friendly way. Your outfits have more power than you might realize!

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