In April 1989, four months after a German citizens’ initiative proposed construction of a central memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Romani Rose, chair of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, published a petition demanding inclusion of the Sinti and Roma victims into the same memorial. Any other outcome, he wrote, would indicate a “hierarchy of victims” (die Zeit). The Berlin Wall fell seven months later, transforming the political and spatial dimensions of Germany’s commemorative landscape. So began a new phase of contestation – a national memorial project at its centre – over the so-called uniqueness of the (Jewish) Holocaust, and the moral and political responsibility of the newly reunified German state for genocide committed against Jewish and “other” victim groups. This dissertation draws on an entangled understanding of memory production in order to disentangle the social relations and identities that are mobilized in national memorial projects. I define entangled memory in two ways: (1) it refers to the interlinking of dominant memory and oppositional forms in the public sphere (Popular Memory Group 1998); (2) it is multidirectional in that the subjects and spaces of public memory are defined not only by a competition of victimhood but also as a product of influence and exchange (Rothberg 2009). This framework allows me to argue that the genocide of the Sinti and Roma – historically forgotten victims – is gradually gaining a foothold in the German national imaginary via the dominant status of the memorial to the Jewish victims. In turn, the positioning of the memorial dedicated to Jewish victims has been and continues to be influenced by the commemorative activities of other victim groups. German state legislation in 2009 to link up the memorials dedicated to Jewish, Sinti and Roma as well as homosexual victims – the country’s three national memorials – under one administrative roof is a recent example of an emergent memorial network in the country’s commemorative politics. It is here, I conclude, in the New Berlin’s geographic, symbolic, virtual and cartographic spaces of national memory that we are seeing increasing forms of recognition and integration of historically marginalized groups.

Introduction: In the palliative care literature there has been debate over the occurrence and the desirability of the rationalization of palliative care. The discussion is based mostly on opinion, anecdote and argument. Little discussion is based on research, or is specific to Canada. Considering this question of rationalization, this thesis asks whether Canadian palliative care ethics has changed, and if so in what regard. Methods: Discourse analysis was used to evaluate texts and interviews from early and late Canadian palliative care. Based on expression, influence and comprehensiveness, two key texts were identified from each of the early and late periods of palliative care. Ten interviews were conducted with Canadian palliative care pioneers practicing across these periods. These interviews were semi-structured, and were based on the background literature and the textual analysis. Results: Analysis of the textual data led to the descriptive themes of person, profession and well-being. These themes, when compared across the early and late periods, generated three themes of process. Analysis of the interview data generated three similar themes of process. The themes of process from the textual and interview data were similar enough to generate three overall themes of process – routinization, medicalization, and professionalization.

Introduction: In the palliative care literature there has been debate over the occurrence and the desirability of the rationalization of palliative care. The discussion is based mostly on opinion, anecdote and argument. Little discussion is based on research, or is specific to Canada. Considering this question of rationalization, this thesis asks whether Canadian palliative care ethics has changed, and if so in what regard. Methods: Discourse analysis was used to evaluate texts and interviews from early and late Canadian palliative care. Based on expression, influence and comprehensiveness, two key texts were identified from each of the early and late periods of palliative care. Ten interviews were conducted with Canadian palliative care pioneers practicing across these periods. These interviews were semi-structured, and were based on the background literature and the textual analysis. Results: Analysis of the textual data led to the descriptive themes of person, profession and well-being. These themes, when compared across the early and late periods, generated three themes of process. Analysis of the interview data generated three similar themes of process. The themes of process from the textual and interview data were similar enough to generate three overall themes of process – routinization, medicalization, and professionalization.

Written as three publishable papers, this dissertation examines the sources of several forms of social capital in Singapore, and the effects of social capital on occupational success. Using representative survey data from Singapore, these papers make several important theoretical contributions: The first paper examines how and why categorical forms of stratification such as gender and ethnicity tend to produce distinctive forms of network inequalities: for example, whereas Chinese (relative to Malays and Indians) tend to have greater access to well-educated, wealthy, Chinese and weak tie social capital (but not non-kin), men (relative to women) tend to have greater access to men, non-kin and weak ties (but not well-educated, wealthy and Chinese). The key to understanding such distinctive patterns of network inequalities (by gender and ethnicity) is to understand the distinctive ways in which gender and ethnic groups are distributed in routine organizations such as schools, paid work and voluntary associations. The second paper examines the significance of personal contacts in job searches, in the context of Singapore’s meritocratic system. I show that in certain sectors such as the state bureaucracy, social networking brings no distinct advantages as appointments are made exclusively on the basis of the credentials of the candidates. Thus, personal contacts are not always useful, especially in labour markets that rely heavily on the signalling role of academic credentials to match people to jobs. In contrast, personal contacts are more useful among less qualified job searches in the private sector. The third paper shows that while job contacts (i.e. ‘mobilized’ social capital) may not always pay off in meritocratic labour markets, ‘accessed’ social capital remains extremely important. The leveraging power of social capital in meritocratic markets is not the active mobilization of job contacts per se, but more subtly, the result of embedded social resources such as knowing many university graduates and wealthy people. Together, these papers illustrate how socio-structural factors such as meritocracy, gender and racialization form important predictors of the distribution, role and value of social capital in everyday life and labour markets.

The psychedelic field has generated a vast body of work in terms of psychology, art, spirituality and understandings of the mind and consciousness. Having engaged with the field for the last ten years, I have been curious as to why issues of race, gender and class are not included in the analysis and theories that are generated from the field. My background in feminism, queer studies, anti-racism, critical theory and social justice, as well as my interest in consciousness and psychedelics, led me to conduct a literature review and analyze it with a critical framework. The literature showed an overwhelming gap in the field in regards to inclusion and analysis of issues pertaining to race, gender and class. This gap needs to be addressed and I look forward to conducting fieldwork in the future such as interviewing people about their experiences of race, class and gender and its intersection with psychedelics. I hope to contribute to the field in terms of creatively and productively including an analysis of race, class and gender to the psychedelics field.

Written as three publishable papers, this dissertation examines the sources of several forms of social capital in Singapore, and the effects of social capital on occupational success. Using representative survey data from Singapore, these papers make several important theoretical contributions: The first paper examines how and why categorical forms of stratification such as gender and ethnicity tend to produce distinctive forms of network inequalities: for example, whereas Chinese (relative to Malays and Indians) tend to have greater access to well-educated, wealthy, Chinese and weak tie social capital (but not non-kin), men (relative to women) tend to have greater access to men, non-kin and weak ties (but not well-educated, wealthy and Chinese). The key to understanding such distinctive patterns of network inequalities (by gender and ethnicity) is to understand the distinctive ways in which gender and ethnic groups are distributed in routine organizations such as schools, paid work and voluntary associations. The second paper examines the significance of personal contacts in job searches, in the context of Singapore’s meritocratic system. I show that in certain sectors such as the state bureaucracy, social networking brings no distinct advantages as appointments are made exclusively on the basis of the credentials of the candidates. Thus, personal contacts are not always useful, especially in labour markets that rely heavily on the signalling role of academic credentials to match people to jobs. In contrast, personal contacts are more useful among less qualified job searches in the private sector. The third paper shows that while job contacts (i.e. ‘mobilized’ social capital) may not always pay off in meritocratic labour markets, ‘accessed’ social capital remains extremely important. The leveraging power of social capital in meritocratic markets is not the active mobilization of job contacts per se, but more subtly, the result of embedded social resources such as knowing many university graduates and wealthy people. Together, these papers illustrate how socio-structural factors such as meritocracy, gender and racialization form important predictors of the distribution, role and value of social capital in everyday life and labour markets.

The psychedelic field has generated a vast body of work in terms of psychology, art, spirituality and understandings of the mind and consciousness. Having engaged with the field for the last ten years, I have been curious as to why issues of race, gender and class are not included in the analysis and theories that are generated from the field. My background in feminism, queer studies, anti-racism, critical theory and social justice, as well as my interest in consciousness and psychedelics, led me to conduct a literature review and analyze it with a critical framework. The literature showed an overwhelming gap in the field in regards to inclusion and analysis of issues pertaining to race, gender and class. This gap needs to be addressed and I look forward to conducting fieldwork in the future such as interviewing people about their experiences of race, class and gender and its intersection with psychedelics. I hope to contribute to the field in terms of creatively and productively including an analysis of race, class and gender to the psychedelics field.

This case study documents the work of this researcher and others to transform oppressive ideologies and practices in an urban community college through human rights policy development and implementation. Analysis of policy processes examines how contestations of equity discourses by various organizational stakeholders influenced organizational constructions of equity as ideology, policy and practice. Policy struggles over the three administrations are examined using a typology of equity discourses defined as assimilationist (status quo: resisting human rights/equity), managing diversity (organizational benefits: liability protection, commodifying equity/human rights) and transformative (structural/curricular change). In this particular case study, a human rights crisis during the 1990’s led to substantive policy change as human rights was framed as organizational change. These changes were resisted and recuperated by the next cadre of change agents and senior and middle managers and human rights were administered as rights based complaints management. However, the large complaints bureaucracy was unable to contain underlying systemic issues and complaints increased dramatically. Management responded with neoliberal influenced managing diversity/cultural competency training, proposed as a customer service model to train faculty and staff how to deal with the Other - ‘culturally diverse’ clients/students. This discourse of equity was challenged by this researcher (who was seconded to develop institution wide cultural competencies for faculty). This curriculum project was used to recoup some of the transformative elements of the policy and refocus institutional efforts towards system wide organizational change. This attempt at tempered radicalism was recouped by senior management and the competencies developed were contained in a single course during the next administrative turnover. This research builds on the survey studies of equity practitioners by Westerman (2008) and Agocs (2004) that examine how the positionality of institutional change agents influences opportunities to advance equity in institutions (in areas of complaints management and/or employment equity). It differs from previous studies in three ways: first I expand the definition of equity as the totality of all institutional functions including curriculum. Second, in addition to examining the scope and impact of these ‘expert’ roles, this study examines the influence of larger societal discourses of equity, the motivations of managers and other important stakeholders such as unions in shaping what constitutes equity work, how this is embraced and/or resisted by change agents and others in spite of ‘official’ policy. And third, it is a historical case study examination of one institution over a sustained period of time. The conclusions drawn from this institution’s policy struggles suggest that transformative equity initiatives can shift organizational cultures by changing the conversation about was constitutes equity work, however their effectiveness in bringing about structural change remains tenuous. Neocolonial societies are premised on relations of inequality, and dominant neoliberal discourses have imposed business models of managerial efficiency, standardization and profitability on public institutions which ensures that managers will continue to translate the demands of equity-seeking groups into bureaucratic procedures.

This thesis is an exploration of the concept of evil. It attempts to define what we mean by this elusive concept and its relevance to human behaviour. The thesis then develops an operational definition of evil that is distilled from the writings of various social scientists. The thesis argues, however, that in addition to merely defining evil, there are three emotive elements that also go towards our preparedness to label an act as evil. The thesis then examines the causes of evil acts. The thesis argues that the interactive causation, of situation and disposition, is the most robust explanation of evil acts. The thesis rejects the notion of the evil person, instead arguing that it is ordinary people who commit evil acts. The thesis then examines the causes of genocide, the most evil of acts, and links this back to the previous discussion of causal factors of evil acts. Germany’s war against the Soviet Union in World War II, in particular the role of the Waffen-SS is then discussed. The death and destruction during this conflict would result not just from military operations, but also from the systematic killing and abuse that the Waffen-SS directed against Jews, Communists and ordinary citizens. The thesis then utilises the case study of the Waffen-SS to highlight the application of the interactive causation explanation in regards to evil acts. The conventional wisdom that the Waffen-SS in WWII fought a relatively clean fight, unsullied by the atrocities committed by the Nazis, is challenged—and largely demolished. Focusing on the Eastern Front, the thesis contends that the Nazi vision of a racial-ideological death struggle against Slavic hordes and their Jewish-Bolshevik commissars resonated with soldiers of the Waffen-SS, steeped in traditional anti-Semitic and racist dogmas. In doing so the thesis clearly shows that the Waffen-SS was an organisation that committed widespread atrocities. The thesis then applies the operational definition of evil to the case study and determines that the acts committed by the Waffen-SS were in fact evil. It also contends that the concept of evil is useful in explaining human atrocity. In conducting this examination the thesis provides some insight into the challenges facing society from preventing future broad-scale acts of evil.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Dana M. Britton / During the past twenty-five years, the number of prison programs in which inmates train dogs has increased rapidly. A lack of systematic studies to address the effects of these programs on staff and inmates has led to limited, anecdotal accounts of the impact of these programs on correctional institutions and their occupants. In addition, an analysis of differences in these effects for men and women is missing. This paper proposes to bridge this gap through qualitative research conducted in two Kansas prisons (a men’s and a women’s institution) in which inmates train assistance dogs and dogs made available for adoption by the general public. Drawing primarily on the works of Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, and Jill McCorkel, I focus on the mechanisms of social control and resistance within these programs and their effect on the inmates participating in the program, utilizing a gendered analysis throughout. Using the experiences of the men and women in these programs, as well as those of correctional staff and community members, I propose that these programs provide an important outlet for resistance for the participants.