Open Theses and Dissertations
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Browsing Open Theses and Dissertations by Department "Culture and Society"
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- ItemOpen AccessDecolonizing the Story of Art in Canada: A Storied Approach to Art for an Intercultural, More-Than-Human World(2014-08-15) Patenaude, Troy Robert Charles; Pannekoek, Frits; Mitchell, DavidThe master narrative dominating the field of Canadian art history has continually privileged Eurocentric, colonialist ways of knowing. Many art historians and critics have called for a new story, but nothing to date has been proposed. This dissertation marks the first attempt at re-envisioning the story of art in Canada. It enacts a broader and deeper context of cross-cultural and social-ecological relationships for our art encounters. I discuss conventional cross-cultural approaches to art in Canada and then develop a new approach that I call the storied approach. This approach acknowledges that our art and how we talk about it is, and occurs first within the context of, a story. The storied approach takes seriously that stories animate our lives. It recognizes the performative power of art, and not just its representational quality. It recognizes the phenomenological root of art and story not as the social world alone, but as our more-than-human world within which we circulate. And it draws on the most salient features of postcolonial criticism, while also acknowledging contributions from our colonial past (and present). In this vein, I interweave story and other voices complementing that of the conventional art historian’s/critic’s while, first, bringing the storied approach to bear on the art and criticism of Lucius O’Brien, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and Paul-Émile Borduas. This is not because I consider these three to be the most important artists in Canada, but because these artists have already been privileged as central figures in the current story of Canadian art. Second, I open up the discussion further by attending to the art experiences of various members of an art audience. This allows the stories unfurling through our artworks to breathe in everyday life—the ultimate “story” of art in Canada—from the ground up, here. This larger, living story, we find, is and always has been an indigenously oriented one. European art practices and ideologies have been and are animated by, and nested within, this indigenously oriented story of here, not the other way around.
- ItemOpen AccessRural Community Exceptionality: Analyzing Discursive Cultural Identity Formation in the Qualitative Interview(2013-01-24) Arntsen, Burke; Atkins, Dr. ChloeUsing interview data collected from the case study community of Dinsmore, Saskatchewan, I examine how rural community members, in the context of significant socio-economic change, construct cultural identity within the qualitative interview. Sociological concepts of community and rurality are ultimately culturally evocative and embedded interpretive repertoires, which are discursively employed to achieve multiple personal and cultural identity projects. Therefore, I employ a critical discourse analysis, which analyzes how participants are concurrently being made into particular subjects by discursive practices, while also creating and re-constructing their own meanings of reality via everyday talk. I find participants privilege a very specific construction of ‘smallness’, as in small numbers of people, and ‘small town’, to make selves exceptional when compared to an increasingly urban social context. I argue by solely privileging a demographic construction of community, of vulnerable populations, gives participants the opportunity to construct sympathetic identities positioned as survivors of loss.
- ItemOpen AccessThe "99%" versus Neoliberal Elites?: A Fraserian Analysis of Occupy(2016-02-02) Brosh, Caleb; Cochrane, Regina; Ray, Don; Einsiedel, EdnaThis is a theoretical research project that focuses on social justice within the American Occupy movement. This thesis reconceives Occupy using Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional theory of social and global justice. Fraser’s dimensions of justice – economic redistribution, cultural recognition, and political representation – will be used to evaluate whether or not Occupy can achieve meaningful social justice. This project delves deeper into the individualist and populist underpinnings of Occupy, proposes more appropriate alternatives, and applies the findings from the Occupy movement to the larger global justice movement.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Proposed Chentikheda Dam: Policy Control, Social Justice, and the Adivasi Experience of Pre-Displacement(2013-05-01) Walker, Melanie; Tam, Chui-LingIn the 20th century, development encapsulated power through industrialization projects, such as dams; this was especially true in India. India is still the largest country proponent of dam building, displacing millions of Adivasis, India’s indigenous, causing an increase in poverty and a decrease in livelihood; this is well documented within a post-displacement context. However, more pre-displacement research is required in India. This ethnographic study took place in India at the location of a proposed dam. Policy control, social justice, and the Adivasi experience of pre-displacement were examined. Locals are learning about displacement through a confusing and emotive experience due to a lack of policy control, yet show a low level of activism due to government power, Adivasi biases, and complacency. Additionally, locals are willing to accept the dam through a local understanding of social justice. It is suggested that pre-displacement research can inform civil society, providing evidence for advocating intermediaries.