This study examines the dynamics and implications of trans-spatial subordination in/across the lived experiences of six incarcerated participant youths in a secure custody facility for juveniles in Louisiana. Five male teenagers (four African American, one White) and one female teenager (African American) discuss the limitations, harassment, and confinement in various aspects of their lives and speak about the impact on their expectations for the future. The author employs several methodologies in order to develop a multimedia, multifaceted representation of their lives. The narratives elicited through interviews provide the bulk of the data as the participants describe this perpetual subordination. The photographs, resulting from the implementation of a visual ethnographic methodology, provide images that serve as catalysts for introspection and analysis of significance in the mundane and routine, particularly as they apply to the carceral facilities, structures, and policies themselves. Film viewing and discussion offer an array of depictions of youth and criminality to which the youths responded, granting a simultaneous peek at how these marginalized youths viewed themselves and how mainstream media productions depict them. After a particularly provoking viewing session of an animated film, the author expands the preliminary boundaries of the work beyond cells and the walls of the prison. The expanding focus examines subordinating elements in their lives with their families and in their neighbourhoods. The challenges, harassment, and obstacles experienced in their communities continued in their schools and during their encounters with law enforcement, the latter of which often led directly to imprisonment. Finally, the youths reflected on the confining subordination that existed in the facilities, the product of the combination of: their discomfort with the surveillant structure, their perceived arbitrariness of privilege, and the lack of any relevant education. They also identified opportunities for voicing their opinions and recognized the relative safety of this facility compared to others. As the participants conceptualized their futures and articulated their relatively narrow and often ambiguous hopes, the sobering influence of such perpetual subordination is evident. The author closes with a discussion of the study’s importance to future research with marginalized youth in a society of increasing surveillance and security as well as implications for teacher education.

This dissertation examines how teachers understand and use their own bodies in their everyday practice of teaching. Using a poststructural theoretical framework and an ethnographic and arts-based research methodology, I demonstrate how discourses of the body shape experiences of teaching and teachers’ lives. This work is significant not only because it has direct implications for teachers but also because teachers’ bodies are rich and complex sites for theorizing and thinking critically about contemporary practices and discursive understandings that shape our lives. I call the research methodology that I used in this study “embedded performed ethnography”. This methodology involved in-depth ethnographic interviews, creative writing, and dramatic performance with twelve teachers in Ontario. By drawing on three distinct but interrelated fields: critical physical education, feminist and queer curriculum theory and Fat Studies, my research demonstrates the richness and complexity of teachers’ professional lives and the impact that dominant discourses of the body have on educational spaces. I use three key concepts to analyze the experiences and writing of the research participants. First, I use the concept of ‘biopedagogy’ to examine the ways in which teachers’ bodies are subject to regulation and policing in schools. Next, I use the concept of ‘performance’ to examine how participants use their bodies to construct and reproduce dominant notions of health in the classroom. Lastly, I use ‘affect’ as a concept to address the complex and complicated moments that occur on and through a teacher’s body in the classroom. I work with the everyday experiences of teachers in the classroom to explore how particular teaching moments illustrate and connect to the broader discourses and practices of the body that shape our lives.

In the globalized garment industry (GGI) most clothing is involved in complex networks that exploit both people and the environment. This system is unsustainable yet supported by Canadian consumers, who have become disconnected from their clothing’s production and disposal processes as a result of the development of increasingly complex social and technological systems since the Industrial Revolution. Canadians currently learn about the industry from public portrayals in which the dominant messages are designed by corporations promoting consumption. Nevertheless, growing numbers of consumers are realizing that this system is unsustainable and attempting to take action. This study uses methods based on institutional ethnography to explore the challenges faced by Canadians trying to engage in ethical consumption. Promoting sustainability is seen as requiring broad structural change, which can be supported by individual Canadians seeking to learn about the industry and working with its global stakeholders to build the civil commons.

Many Library and Information Science (LIS) scholars have long articulated the importance of physical and social settings—the environment—when examining how individuals acquire, store, organize, maintain, dispose of, and use information in one of their home or work lives. Yet, few have raised the question of how these information practices are altered and affected in home office spaces, fused living and working environments that lie at the intersection of the personal and the professional. This thesis resulted from an exploratory, ethnographic research study centred upon describing and analyzing the habits of information management and information use that characterize home office settings—specifically, professional home offices that each serve as their user’s only workplace. It argues that the professional home office differs from both traditional professional offices in corporate or institutional settings and from personal home offices used for non-professional tasks and pursuits. The professional home offices of four printing company account managers provided the field from which data was gathered, collected by way of guided tours, diagramming, photography, interviews, and observation. Findings suggest that information practices in professional home offices are a continual negotiation between the two spheres of household and organization, but that this will not necessarily imply a compromise of one for the other.

Officially founded in 1997, the Pride Library is a pioneering Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) Canadian information-based organization. Although located within D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario, the library maintains a primarily grassroots framework. The Pride Library case study reflects a tradition within LGBTQ communities towards preserving and disseminating information otherwise marginalized by larger society. Operating outside of conventional professional informed and institutionally-dominated models, LGBTQ communities create unique grassroots information organizational contexts. In order to develop a deeper understanding of LGBTQ information organizations, an ethnographic study of the Pride Library was developed. The thesis addresses the library’s use patterns, and approaches to space, materials and labour relations. Findings demonstrate that the Pride Library is not only valued for providing LGBTQ-specific information resources, but also for creating a symbolically significant, socially-oriented and community-based LGBTQ environment.

Recreational running is an activity increasing in popularity (Running USA, 2012). The current study sought to gain an ‘insiders’ perspective into the ‘lived experiences’ and social world of distance running so to explore the meaning, value and significance of the activity to the lives of ‘highly committed’ runners in Toronto (Canada). Ethnography of running club participants was used to inform the research. Findings suggest that commitment to distance running was effective for fulfilling a number of human ‘needs’, including for health, fitness, acceptance, belonging, self-esteem, autonomy, competence, relatedness and perhaps self-actualization as proposed by Maslow (1954) and Deci and Ryan (2000). Running was further conceptualized as a “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 1982) which helps explain the process of adaptively incorporating physical activity into one’s life and committing long-term. This research highlights some oft ignored psychological and social benefits of physical activity adherence which may contribute to improved overall health and well-being.

In the globalized garment industry (GGI) most clothing is involved in complex networks that exploit both people and the environment. This system is unsustainable yet supported by Canadian consumers, who have become disconnected from their clothing’s production and disposal processes as a result of the development of increasingly complex social and technological systems since the Industrial Revolution. Canadians currently learn about the industry from public portrayals in which the dominant messages are designed by corporations promoting consumption. Nevertheless, growing numbers of consumers are realizing that this system is unsustainable and attempting to take action. This study uses methods based on institutional ethnography to explore the challenges faced by Canadians trying to engage in ethical consumption. Promoting sustainability is seen as requiring broad structural change, which can be supported by individual Canadians seeking to learn about the industry and working with its global stakeholders to build the civil commons.

Many Library and Information Science (LIS) scholars have long articulated the importance of physical and social settings—the environment—when examining how individuals acquire, store, organize, maintain, dispose of, and use information in one of their home or work lives. Yet, few have raised the question of how these information practices are altered and affected in home office spaces, fused living and working environments that lie at the intersection of the personal and the professional. This thesis resulted from an exploratory, ethnographic research study centred upon describing and analyzing the habits of information management and information use that characterize home office settings—specifically, professional home offices that each serve as their user’s only workplace. It argues that the professional home office differs from both traditional professional offices in corporate or institutional settings and from personal home offices used for non-professional tasks and pursuits. The professional home offices of four printing company account managers provided the field from which data was gathered, collected by way of guided tours, diagramming, photography, interviews, and observation. Findings suggest that information practices in professional home offices are a continual negotiation between the two spheres of household and organization, but that this will not necessarily imply a compromise of one for the other.

Officially founded in 1997, the Pride Library is a pioneering Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) Canadian information-based organization. Although located within D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario, the library maintains a primarily grassroots framework. The Pride Library case study reflects a tradition within LGBTQ communities towards preserving and disseminating information otherwise marginalized by larger society. Operating outside of conventional professional informed and institutionally-dominated models, LGBTQ communities create unique grassroots information organizational contexts. In order to develop a deeper understanding of LGBTQ information organizations, an ethnographic study of the Pride Library was developed. The thesis addresses the library’s use patterns, and approaches to space, materials and labour relations. Findings demonstrate that the Pride Library is not only valued for providing LGBTQ-specific information resources, but also for creating a symbolically significant, socially-oriented and community-based LGBTQ environment.

Recreational running is an activity increasing in popularity (Running USA, 2012). The current study sought to gain an ‘insiders’ perspective into the ‘lived experiences’ and social world of distance running so to explore the meaning, value and significance of the activity to the lives of ‘highly committed’ runners in Toronto (Canada). Ethnography of running club participants was used to inform the research. Findings suggest that commitment to distance running was effective for fulfilling a number of human ‘needs’, including for health, fitness, acceptance, belonging, self-esteem, autonomy, competence, relatedness and perhaps self-actualization as proposed by Maslow (1954) and Deci and Ryan (2000). Running was further conceptualized as a “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 1982) which helps explain the process of adaptively incorporating physical activity into one’s life and committing long-term. This research highlights some oft ignored psychological and social benefits of physical activity adherence which may contribute to improved overall health and well-being.