http://hdl.handle.net/10464/2244 2013-05-25T07:44:57Z 2013-05-25T07:44:57Z McKinley, Renée http://hdl.handle.net/10464/3072 2012-11-12T15:59:45Z 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z

Child care by choice or by default? : examining the experiences of unregulated home-based child care for women in paid work and training McKinley, Renée This thesis aims to uncover the dynamics, causes and outcomes of women's reliance on unregulated home-based child care in Ontario, Canada, and the implications ofthis form of care for women's equality. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study, I examine the diverse experience of 14 women using home-based child care and engaged in both paid work/training and care work for children under the age of six, and draw comparisons with users of other forms of child care. I argue that home-based child care involves high levels of instability for continuity of care and is chosen largely as a default position based on economic considerations. It represents a compromise between the demands of social reproduction and paid work/training that entangles mothers in relations of exploitation with care providers. Doing so leaves both mothers and care providers socially and economically vulnerable and relying on social networks to fill in the gaps.

2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Martens, Megan http://hdl.handle.net/10464/3071 2012-11-12T16:00:19Z 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z

Perennial negotiations/elemental encounters autoethnographic perspectives on approaching food sovereignty Martens, Megan This thesis uses a multifaceted process to engage with the topic of food sovereignty in California. It employs diverse methods, including critical and creative prose, photography, autoethnographic mixed media, storytelling and poetry. I am particularly concerned with the " " challenges of approaching food sovereignty, a radical praxis that combines subsistence practices with anti-capitalist resistance, while in my own "skin," which is thoroughly embedded in white, urban, middle classed culture and in corltextualizing ecological relationshipslkinships via cultural, historical and economic trajectories. The project utilizes a processual methodlology drawing substantially from the work of Brian Massumi to explore these issues through four creative narrative pieces which coalesce around the elemental metaphors of air, fire, water and earth. Following Deleuze and Guatarri's concept ofrhizomatic plateaus, the thesis narratives are comprised of many non-hierarchical layers and can be read from many angles. Each is offered "in process" rather than as a finished piece, thus practically validating the concept of the ongoing work of research and suggesting the equally omnipresent possibility of change and mutation in the formation relationally based knowledges. Cultivating ecological ethic and healing on multisensory levels, as well as commitment to emergent and re-productivist worldviews are goals of this project's research.

2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Toetenel, Jody http://hdl.handle.net/10464/3042 2012-11-12T15:56:17Z 2010-10-26T00:00:00Z

Fitness to stand trial : how discourses of rationality, reasonableness and culpability inform the law and psychiatry to create standards of normal Toetenel, Jody The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the importance of the concepts of rationality, reasonableness, culpability and autonomy that inform and support our conception of both the person and the punishable subject. A critical discourse analysis tracing these concepts through both the law and psychological tools used to evaluate the fitness of a person reveals that these concepts and their implied values are inconsistently applied to the mentally disordered who come into conflict with the law. I argue that the result of this inconsistency compromises a person's autonomy which is a contradiction to this concept as a foundational principle of the law. Ultimately, this thesis does not provide a solution to be employed in policy making, but its analysis leaves open possibilities for further exploration into the ways legal and social justice can be reconciled.

2010-10-26T00:00:00Z Trowbridge, Terry http://hdl.handle.net/10464/2955 2012-11-12T15:58:20Z 2010-03-09T20:23:05Z

The Clemente Course in the Humanities and critical pedagogy : a comparative analysis of Earl Shorris and bell hooks on poverty, racism, imperialism and patriarchy Trowbridge, Terry The Clemente Course in the Humanities is an anti-poverty intervention for adults who self-identity as "poor" and humanities instructors. The course was created in 1995 by journalist Earl Shorris, who based the curriculum on a Socratic method of pedagogy and the "great books" canon of Robert Hutchins. It began as a community-based initiative in urban US settings, but since 1997 Mayan, Yup'ik and Cherokee iterations have been created, as well as on-campus bridge courses for non-traditional students to explore college-level education in Canada and the USA. The course potentially conflicts with critical pedagogy because the critical theories of Paulo Freire and contemporary cultural studies reject traditional notions of both the canon and teaching. However, a comparison between Shorris' and bell hooks' theories of oppression reveals significant similarities between his "surround of force" and her "capitalist imperialist white supremacist patriarchy," with implications for liberal studies and critical pedagogy.

2010-03-09T20:23:05Z