Browsing by Author "Curran, Dean"
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- ItemOpen AccessCommunity Organizations and the Construction of At-Risk Youth(2017) Leavitt, Kendra; Adorjan, Michael; Curran, Dean; Ngo, HieuThere is limited research on how community organizations conceptualize and respond to youth risk. This thesis addresses how organizations conceive the problem of youth risk, how they work with youth, and what bureaucratic challenges are encountered in doing so. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with employees of several youth serving organizations in a Canadian city. Initial findings indicate that organizations are cautious of ‘at-risk’ labels, only applying them in specific circumstances. The findings also suggest that community organizations often experience pressure by way of neoliberal arrangements; however, they develop unique expressions of resistance. The implications that organizational resistance of ‘at-risk’ labels and neoliberal policies have on youth and youth programming are considered.
- ItemOpen AccessData-Driven Governance, Smart Urbanism and Risk-Class Inequalities: Security and Social Credit in China(2020-04) Curran, Dean; Smart, AlanThis paper contributes to the politicization of the smart urbanism and data-driven governance by making visible some of the potential inequalities emerging from these transitions through a provisional risk-class analysis. To pursue this analysis, it focuses on the case of smart urbanism and its associated process of data-driven governance in China, focusing specifically on the manner in which Chinese smart urbanism, in terms of its security measures, including widespread use of facial recognition, and the roll-out of social credit scoring, is affecting inequalities. This paper proposes risk-class analysis as a toolbox that can pose new questions in the search for what types of potential risks and inequalities emerging from smart urbanism and data-driven governance as is being rolled out in the Chinese context.
- ItemOpen AccessEnvironment, Risk, and Ideology: The critical theory of the Frankfurt School and Ulrich Beck(2019-08-20) Trottier, Brody; Curran, Dean; Patterson, Matt; Miller, ByronThis thesis examines the social theories of Ulrich Beck and the first generation of the Frankfurt School to spur a debate on social transformation and environmental risk. In particular, this confrontation explores a key difference between these approaches—whereas the early Frankfurt School theorizes how society is capable of containing qualitative change, Beck emphasizes the forces which break apart this containment and transform society. This thesis raises the following critiques: (1) that the theory of risk society provides an insufficient account of power and (2) that the one-dimensionality thesis and the paradigm of the critique of instrumental reason problematizes the normative standpoint of critical theory. The analysis overcomes these key critiques by: (1) advocating for a framework of power and risk which accounts for the role of ideology as a means of social control and (2) attempting to limit the claims of the one-dimensionality thesis by demonstrating that risks have the potential to open up the totalizing system of domination theorized by the early Frankfurt School. In addition to these contributions, this thesis explores the importance of immanent critique as a basis for praxis and compares Marcuse’s vision for a ‘new science’ with Beck’s concept of ‘reflexive scientization’.
- ItemOpen Access“Flooded Timelines: The Communicative Roles & Functions of Twitter in the 2013 Calgary Flood”(2020-03-06) Williams, Kimberlyn; Smith, Tania Sona; Curran, Dean; Taylor, GregoryThis study employs directed content analysis to examine the value and communicative uses of Twitter during the 2013 Calgary Flood from multiple perspectives. Using the Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and Houston et al.’s (2014) UGT-based, framework for social media as a theoretical lens, this study finds that Twitter was a very useful tool with several affordances. It was actively used by individual citizens and several types of organizational users, whose psychological dispositions influenced how they interacted with the platform. Given that most previous disaster social media studies are written from the perspective of disaster management organizations utilizing crisis communication, this research contributes a greater understanding of both organizations’ and individuals’ communicative use of disaster social media.
- ItemOpen AccessMacIntyre and Habermas: A Proposed "Traditions of Enquiry"-Theoretic Turn Within Sociological Theory(2018-07-09) Kruger, Reiss John; Curran, Dean; Patterson, Matt; Fantl, JeremyThis thesis brings together the works of Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre in an attempt to overcome what I have identified as problems in the normative sociological project of the former. Critiques levied against the is-ought problem implicit in the normative aspects of Habermas' theory of communicative action, and the role that the concepts of lifeworld plays in Habermas' overall theory, are overcome through a dialogue with the works of MacIntyre. In proposing MacIntyre's idea of 'traditions of inquiry' as a sociologically valuable tool of investigation and understanding, the author also seeks to access some of the normatively driving ideas about human goods, communities, and flourishing from MacIntyre and bring them into dialogue with Habermas' normative project. To do this however, certain disagreements, especially about modernity, must be either overcome or shown to be not significant enough to questions at hand. In facilitating this dialogue between Habermas and MacIntyre, the MacIntyrean concept of 'translatability' is employed to judge the similarities and differences between the two theorists' ideas, and judge how debilitating the differences that exist are. All this is aimed reconceptualizing sociology as a normative exercise, not merely restricted to the description of the social world, but fruitfully engaging with questions of 'what ought we to do.'
- ItemOpen AccessPublic and health professional opposition to community water fluoridation: An investigation of trust and perceived risk in the context of new, local research findings(2018-08-23) Fundytus, Katrina Ann; McLaren, Lindsay; Lucas, Jack; Musto, Richard J.; Curran, DeanBackground: Community water fluoridation (CWF) has remained a highly-debated topic among the public since it was introduced in 1945. Since then, several studies have provided support for the safety and effectiveness of CWF, although there are limitations to both the quantity and quality of the current evidence base. Despite the available scientific data, there exists a divide on public views toward CWF. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand how health professionals and members of the public in Calgary, who self-identify as opposed to CWF, make sense of locally-relevant and recent research evidence on fluoridation cessation and tooth decay in the city of Calgary. I sought to gain insights into fluoridation specifically and public health initiatives more generally. Methods: I undertook a critical qualitative study, informed by theories of risk perception and trust in authority figures and the scientific community. Four health professionals were purposively recruited to participate in one-on-one interviews based on their self-identified opposition to CWF. Participants were asked to discuss their views on CWF and public health research in general, with a focus on publications from a study of the short-term implications for children’s dental caries of terminating CWF in Calgary in 2011. To supplement interview responses, I analyzed online comments pertaining to the Calgary fluoridation cessation study. Results: Overall, I observed three prominent and overlapping themes: (1) Fluoridation research criticisms, which describes criticisms and negative comments from interviewees and online commenters about the Calgary fluoridation study specifically, and fluoridation research in general. (2) Selective Mistrust expressed by interviewees and online commenters toward the Calgary fluoridation cessation study, health research, and researchers, and (3) the Individualization of health, wherein interviewees and online commenters were skeptical toward health and government authority figures and their ability to make appropriate health decisions for the public, which led to the perception that the responsibility for oral health lies with the individual. Conclusions: With the publication of local research on fluoridation cessation, this study provided a ‘real time’ opportunity to gain a contemporary, nuanced understanding of what characterizes fluoridation opposition among some health professionals and members of the public.
- ItemOpen AccessRisk society and Marxism: Beyond simple antagonism(Sage, 2015-09-10) Curran, DeanMoving beyond Beck’s explicit opposition to Marx’s understanding of society, this article proposes to explore some of the deeper commonalities between Marxism and Beck’s theory of risk society. Rather than remaining at the level of propositional claims about society, at which Marx and Beck are opposed in several important ways, this article proposes to analyze these theories in terms of their key commonalities in the problem situations they address. In particular, this article identifies how both of these theories explore the implications of the development of productive forces and the resulting humanisation of nature in the context of widespread social estrangement. This article then identifies key commonalities in the structure of the theoretical solutions that each theory employs to address their commonly held problem situation. In this way, this article rethinks the relationship between Beck and Marx, as well as suggesting alternative ways of re-appropriating classical social theory.
- ItemOpen AccessRisk, Innovation, and Democracy in the Digital Economy(Sage, 2017-06-01) Curran, DeanThe study of digital economies and the sociology of risk have, with few exceptions, a relationship of benign mutual neglect despite possible important connections between the two. This article aims to bridge the gap between these two fields using Beck’s theory of risk society to explore how the digital economy’s momentum of innovation is generating risks and limiting the scope of existing democratic decision-making via the power of the digital economy to create social faits accomplis outside of democratic control. Three specific risks emerging from the dynamics of innovation of digital economies are discussed as vignettes to illustrate these developments: (1) the remaking of interpersonal co-presence and solitary life; (2) the growing threats of AI to intensify unemployment and inequality; and (3) the impact on the environment of an ‘always on’ and ‘always upgrading’ digital communication ecosystem. With the gap between the potential and the actual use value of the digitalization of the infrastructure of life continuing to grow, this article argues that a different relationship between digital innovation and private and public spheres needs to be established to protect the effectiveness of contemporary democracy.
- ItemOpen AccessSmartness and the City: A Comparative Study of Smart-City Ambitions and the Infrastructures of Smartness in Canadian Cities(2023-04-28) Root, Matthew Cameron Earle; Miller, Byron; Fast, Victoria; Tretter, Eliot; Curran, DeanThis thesis is a comparative analysis of three Canadian cities pursuing smart city initiatives in the years following Infrastructure Canada’s 2018 Smart Cities Challenge. Analyzing elite interviews and public texts relating to smart city initiatives in each case study, I first consider entrepreneurial inter-urban competition and economic development as a central objective and justification for municipal actors pursuing smartness. In all three cases, this results in a focus on procuring broadband infrastructure sufficient to support smart city applications while also supporting local businesses. Second, I consider how the smart city sociotechnical imaginary is used by private equity and smart city intermediaries to mobilize state intervention to facilitate public and private capital investment in information and communications technology infrastructure as part of a complex spatial fix. Both findings are most apparent in smaller and mid-sized communities on the periphery of urban centres, where legacy telecommunications service is most limited.
- ItemOpen AccessSocial Phenomenal Conservatism: Justification of Beliefs Through Self and Community(2020-06-09) Khodabandeh, Nima; Fantl, Jeremy; Baker, John; Liebesman, David; Curran, Dean; Tucker, ChrisMichael Huemer’s phenomenal conservative theory of justification (PC) says the following: If it seems to some subject S that p, then, in the absence of any defeaters, S has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. This dissertation argues for an extension of PC into the social realm to create social phenomenal conservatism (SPC): In high-stake contexts, it must also seem to S, in the absence of any defeaters, that it seems to the supermajority of the relevant community, after a genuine attempt at a process of ideal inquiry, that p in order for S to have enough justification to believe that p. In addition, it is argued that SPC satisfies two strongly access internalist intuitions and three externalist intuitions about justification. SPC is thus both an internalist and externalist theory of justification.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Shadowbanning Ecosystem of Opacity: Understanding the Experiences of SMP Users(2023-08) Leskovac, Milana; Curran, Dean; Bakardjieva, Maria; Adorjan, MichaelWith seemingly clear rules of play, social media platforms (SMPs) offer a vast platform for many to freely share their ideas and opinions. However, some users report experiences in which their ability to engage online has been restricted or revoked. Increasingly, SMP users claim that SMPs remove or reduce certain content and/or accounts without notification and/or explanation, an action colloquially known as shadowbanning. While the reasons behind banning or reducing certain content are apparent, such as hate speech comments, other covert decisions are more ambiguous. This mixed methods study analyzes first-hand and second-hand user experiences with shadowbanning, how their perceptions of this phenomenon, and its’ associated risks, impact their experiences on SMPs and how they impact their behaviour online. Through a web-based survey, individuals were asked to provide a brief description of their experience with shadowbanning which were then explored in further detail with a subset of survey respondents in follow-up interviews. Analyzing this issue through a social constructionist perspective and sociocultural theory of risk, this study reveals how complex the issue of shadowbanning is from its’ basic, subjective definitions to how users perceive its’ impacts, and the associated risks. As such the first goal of this study was to bring clarity to the definitional challenge of the phenomenon, the second was to analyze user risk perception and response. The complexity of this phenomenon has elicited considerable confusion and has led to the proliferation of a shadowbanning ecosystem of opacity. However, while users have been vocal about their concerns, they are not being heard. Up until recent admissions that major platforms like Twitter do engage in this type of content moderation, SMPs have largely committed to responding to claims of unjust, opaque banning using tactics of denial and gaslighting. By employing a user-centered approach, this research speaks to wider lifestyle, social, economic, and activism barriers and risks that users regularly encounter; it highlights how users respond to perceived risks and ultimately, what impact this has on public discourse. This work also emphasizes the need for better transparency and communication on the part of those SMPs.