Showing papers in "Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2011"

Across the Threshold: A Comparative Analysis of Communitas and Rites of Passage in Sport Hazing and Initiations

Abstract: Hazing rituals and ceremonies have been described in traditional, historical world cultures, junior and high school, the military, private schools, paramilitary organizations, fraternities and sororities as well as sport (Allan and Madden, 2008; Bryshun and Young, 1999; Campos, Poulos and Sipple, 2005; Fields, Collins, and Comstock, 2010; Linhares de Albuquerque and Paes-Machado 2004; Nuwer 1999; Winslow 1999; Zacharda 2009). Despite the often humiliating and abusive nature of hazing practices the hazing ritual is often perceived to be a necessary stepping stone in the movement from outsider to insider. Student-athletes often endure hazing practices with 80% of NCAA athletes having reported being initiated in some way (Hoover 1999) in exchange for membership affiliation. This paper uses Van Gennep’s three stage model (1960) of transition as basis of comparison and deviation between contemporary initiations and historical traditions defining both the importance of cultures to establish “Rites of Passage” membership gateways and metamorphous from non-member to group member (irrespective of potential harm frequently inherent in sport initiations).

“Keep it Wild, Keep it Local”: Comparing News Media and the Internet as Sites for Environmental Movement Activism for Jumbo Pass, British Columbia

Abstract: Environmental movements depend on mass media to reach the public and shape political decision-making. Without media access, social movements experience political marginality. In this paper, we examine whether the internet is a more open space than traditional media for activists to speak on behalf of non-human nature. Our analysis is based upon newspaper coverage and environmental organization websites that focus on the conflict over the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort ski resort development in British Columbia. Environmental websites and mass media texts both define Jumbo Pass as wilderness and grizzly bear habitat, while focusing on ecological issues and questions of local democracy. However, environmental group websites discuss a greater range of environmental risks and provide more detailed discussion of these issues. Environmentalist websites also integrate scientific experts and celebrity supporters to a greater degree than mass media texts, which are dominated by environmentalist, ski industry, and provincial government news sources.

Parental Traffic Safeguarding at School Sites: Unequal Risks and Responsibilities

Abstract: Based on a comparison of two public elementary schools located on the east and west sides of Vancouver, British Columbia, the paper explores the effects of spatial and social contexts on parents’ school traffic safety practices. By taking into account the dynamics of gender and social class in different geographies of mobility at the two schools, we illustrate how parents’ (especially mothers’) daily concerns, practices and volunteerism reflect unequal risks and responsibilities in safeguarding children from motorized traffic. We also suggest that despite geographical differences and social inequalities, auto-centred environments and traffic safety governance create remarkably similar parental mobility concerns at the two schools, reflecting the stratifying effects of automobility. Our analysis of the troubling effects of the automobility system underscores the importance of acknowledging how parental traffic safety practices contribute to the illusion of traffic safety and to the necessity of challenging auto hegemony.

Violence and Narcissism: A Frommian Perspective on Destructiveness under Authoritarianism

Abstract: This article offers a sympathetic appraisal of Erich Fromm’s conceptualisation of narcissism as it relates to the emergence, sustenance, and resolution of authoritarian violence. The discussion is first placed within the methodological debate over the analytic operations that are required for an adequate understanding of authoritarian violence, explaining why a psychoanalytic perspective is necessary. The focus then shifts to Fromm’s take on the Freudian concept of narcissism, before proceeding to explore in some depth his account of the symbolic mechanisms and contextual climate that must combine in practice in order for narcissistic energies to be channeled into authoritarianism and violence. Attention in this regard is paid both to the populace and governing elites. The article concludes with a short exposition of Fromm’s notion of benign narcissism, from its specific content to the conditions of its possibility.

Workplace accommodation and audit-based evaluation process for compliance with the Employment Equity Act: inclusionary practices that exclude—an institutional ethnography

Abstract: Matt kept the operable window in his office open all the time because he needed unlimited access to fresh air. This was terminated after a Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning system was installed in his Government of Canada office building. After Matt’s access to fresh air became mechanically controlled through extra-locally developed air quality standards, the workplace became a barrier for him. Matt was deemed to suffer from a disability known as environmental sensitivity because he became ill every time he spent more than 45 minutes inside his office building. Yet, according to a textually-mediated assessment of Matt’s workplace performed by a Compliance Review Officer from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, his workplace was barrier-free. Using Dorothy E. Smith’s institutional ethnography, this paper explicates how the social organization of workplace accommodation and compliance—processes that were developed to promote inclusion—are exclusionary.

GoverninG throuGh Precaution to Protect equality and Freedom: obscenity and indecency law in canada aFter r. v. labaye (2005)

Abstract: This paper traces the history of the Supreme Court of Canada’s construction of harm(s) tests in the context of its obscenity and indecency jurisprudence from Hicklin (1868) through Labaye (2005). At the core of these tests is a functionality linked to presumptive societal norms. The contemporary harm assemblages are risk-based, and concern the maintenance of cohesion, organized in relation to the impact of obscenity or indecency on abstract political values rather than concretized sexual subjects. What is more, the Labaye Court has constituted an expanded harms-based test which reifies risk of harm as tantamount to proven harm while propagating the nimble lie that Courts are required to rely on expert opinion evidence of harm, when the Courts, in fact, rely on their own judgment. Ultimately, the Court is still concerned in the main with the proper functioning of society, targeting those whose conduct is deemed harmful to a particular view of society.