This thesis seeks to understand how and if the popular claims that hockey is an integral part of the culture in Toronto and Montreal are referenced, oriented to, and/or negotiated in everyday life. Taking the cases of the moves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens from Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum, respectively, the thesis asks: What can these similar cases tell us about the culture of the cities in which they occurred and, if it is possible, in what ways can the culture of the cities (as a shaping force) be made recognizable in the discourse generated in, around, and by the moves? The perspective taken is a 'radical interpretive' approach, involving a critical blend of interpretive theories and methodologies - including semiology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical analysis - that aim to reflexively question the themes that the cases themselves bring to light. The thesis thus concerns itself with issues of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity as well as the concomitant questions of identify, commitment to place, and practical social action in the modern city.

This thesis seeks to understand how and if the popular claims that hockey is an integral part of the culture in Toronto and Montreal are referenced, oriented to, and/or negotiated in everyday life. Taking the cases of the moves of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens from Maple Leaf Gardens and the Montreal Forum, respectively, the thesis asks: What can these similar cases tell us about the culture of the cities in which they occurred and, if it is possible, in what ways can the culture of the cities (as a shaping force) be made recognizable in the discourse generated in, around, and by the moves? The perspective taken is a 'radical interpretive' approach, involving a critical blend of interpretive theories and methodologies - including semiology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectical analysis - that aim to reflexively question the themes that the cases themselves bring to light. The thesis thus concerns itself with issues of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and modernity as well as the concomitant questions of identify, commitment to place, and practical social action in the modern city.

This thesis sheds new light on the study of law in Japan by exploring legislative interventions and dispute resolution processes in the Japanese field of employment. The academic literature about the legal system of Japan has produced valuable research about various areas of Japanese law, from attempts at explaining patterns of rights assertion in the country to more recent studies about the legal reforms launched by the government of Japan starting from the 2000s. However, it has rarely considered the employment field as a fruitful subject for research. Nonetheless, in the past thirty years, employment has been one of the areas of Japanese law to experience considerable reform. Against the backdrop of the changes in the composition of the Japanese workforce and the bursting of the economic bubble of the beginning of the 1990s, the government of Japan assumed a more prominent role in the regulation of employment relations. In light of these developments, this thesis contributes to the debate on the role of law in Japan by examining this rarely investigated area of the Japanese legal system. Specifically, it focuses on the legislative interventions of the Japanese government to regulate the peripheral workforce of the labour market, namely women and part-time workers, and procedures for the resolution of employment disputes. In doing so, it demonstrates that the efforts of the legislators to enhance the creation of a more inclusive labour market have been fundamentally constrained by ideological and institutional factors, and resulted in an uneven distribution of legal resources among workers which exacerbated existing employment status divisions. This, in turn, has translated into unequal access to justice, affecting the extent to which different categories of workers can obtain redress through the legal apparatus.

This thesis explores the possibilities of embodied writing for social inquiry. Using an examination of the social production of bodily pain to exemplify my approach, and drawing upon autobiographical writing, I develop an embodied writing practice and theorize its implications for decolonizing knowledge production. Following a phenomenologically informed interpretive sociology, I attend closely to language and the construction of meaning through reflexive engagement with pain as a social phenomenon. I also utilize mindfulness meditative practice methodologically to centre the body within social research and intervene in the mind/body split which underwrites much Western knowledge production and reproduces normative, medicalized relations to bodily knowledge. I suggest that by undoing those traditional boundaries demarcating the possibilities of knowledge production, and attending to our epistemological locations which are themselves deeply political, we might generate differently imagined relations to embodiment.

This thesis explores the possibilities of embodied writing for social inquiry. Using an examination of the social production of bodily pain to exemplify my approach, and drawing upon autobiographical writing, I develop an embodied writing practice and theorize its implications for decolonizing knowledge production. Following a phenomenologically informed interpretive sociology, I attend closely to language and the construction of meaning through reflexive engagement with pain as a social phenomenon. I also utilize mindfulness meditative practice methodologically to centre the body within social research and intervene in the mind/body split which underwrites much Western knowledge production and reproduces normative, medicalized relations to bodily knowledge. I suggest that by undoing those traditional boundaries demarcating the possibilities of knowledge production, and attending to our epistemological locations which are themselves deeply political, we might generate differently imagined relations to embodiment.

This thesis explores the cultural production of addiction and the psychologization of everyday life. Through analyses of ubiquitous addiction literature, as well as ordinary, everyday encounters, I examine how we make meaning of addiction, thus culturally constituting the addict. I explore my situated-ness in relation to addiction, which in turn helps me to think through how I am oriented toward addiction. Through an analysis of a specific account of an intersubjective experience of addiction, I examine how experiences of addiction are made between us. This thesis also explores the relationship between substance use and harm and the role the perceived “warnings signs” of addiction play in how we recognize addiction. Using a phenomenologically informed method of social inquiry, I question what the psychologization of everyday life, or our (over) use of psychology, means for our engagement with others.

This thesis explores the cultural production of addiction and the psychologization of everyday life. Through analyses of ubiquitous addiction literature, as well as ordinary, everyday encounters, I examine how we make meaning of addiction, thus culturally constituting the addict. I explore my situated-ness in relation to addiction, which in turn helps me to think through how I am oriented toward addiction. Through an analysis of a specific account of an intersubjective experience of addiction, I examine how experiences of addiction are made between us. This thesis also explores the relationship between substance use and harm and the role the perceived “warnings signs” of addiction play in how we recognize addiction. Using a phenomenologically informed method of social inquiry, I question what the psychologization of everyday life, or our (over) use of psychology, means for our engagement with others.

Cette thèse a pour but d’étudier les racinements et les représentations de la sociologie compréhensive. L’étude sur le fondement permet de représenter tous les éléments philosophiques, psychiques, sociologiques et historiques présents dans le monde réel et mental, et qui peuvent nous aider à mener à bien notre étude sociologique. La représentation nous pousse à établir un système de pensée sans chercher positivement la causalité et les lois générales. Le sens de la vie, la morale, l’éthique, etc. liées à l’être humain non seulement peuvent mais doivent être interprétées par la compréhension sociologique, car elles ne sont pas séparées de l’activité humaine dans les phénomènes. Sans confondre avec un aprioriste moral, l’idée vitale détermine que dans la recherche sociologique, la vie des hommes est considérée comme la finalité de toutes les activités. / This dissertation aims to study the basis and representations of interpretive sociology. The study on the basis allows representing all philosophical, psychological, sociological and historical elements present in the real world and mind, who can help us achieve our sociological study. Representation leads us to establish a system of thought without positively seeking causality and general laws. The meaning of life, morality, ethics, etc. related to humans not only can but also must be interpreted by the sociology, because they are not separated from human activity in the phenomena. Not to be confused with a moral apriorist, the vital idea determines that in sociological research, human life is regarded as the goal of all activities.

L’ambition de ce travail est de définir les conditions de possibilité d’une sociologie des œuvres littéraires. Cette démarche est illustrée par l’analyse des articles politiques, critiques littéraires et œuvres romanesques de l’écrivain Maurice Blanchot, de la période de l’entre-deux-guerres à la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale. La sociologie des œuvres littéraires doit être en mesure de produire une analyse de la forme et du contenu des œuvres. C’est en inscrivant notre travail dans la tradition compréhensive que nous tentons de dépasser les obstacles épistémologiques et méthodologiques d’une telle perspective. La compréhension des œuvres et du sens de la pratique littéraire de Blanchot passe par la reconstruction de ses expériences socialisatrices : son histoire de famille, son rapport au corps, à la maladie et à l’amour. Nous posons aussi que son passage à l’extrême droite et sa conception radicale de la pratique littéraire procèdent du même malaise existentiel. / The aim of this work is to define the conditions of possibility of a sociological approach applied to literary works. That approach is illustrated by the analysis of political and literary articles, and novels of the writer Maurice Blanchot, from the inter-war period to the end of the Second World War. We define sociology of literary works as an approach that must be able to produce knowledge about both content and style. We postulate that the theoretical framework of interpretive sociology is the most likely to answer the epistemological and methodological obstacles of such a perspective. We try to evidence that the understanding of the literary works and the literary practice of Blanchot can be achieved by the reconstruction of his socialization experiences: his family history, his relation to his body, to illness and to love. We also postulate that his political commitment at the far right and his radical view of literary practice are based on the same existential unease.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop and test the Advanced Integrated Model, a typological model in the tradition of Weber’s interpretive sociology, as an asset in explaining recent transformations in American Episcopal-Anglican organizations. The study includes an assessment of the church-sect tradition in the sociology of religion and a summary overview of Weber’s interpretive sociology with special emphasis on the nature and construction of idealtypes and their use in analysis. To illustrate the effectiveness of the model a number of institutional rivalries confronting contemporary Episcopal-Anglican organizations are identified and shown to be explainable only from a sociological perspective and not simply as “in house” institutional problems. The present work sheds light on parent-child conflicts in religious organizations and reopens discussion about the theoretical value of ideal-types in general, and church-sect typologies in particular, when utilized from a comparative-historical perspective