From Facebook to Pandora, the various opportunities available online for entertainment, self-exploration and socialization have caught the attention of hundreds of millions of Internet users. While users value these opportunities for entertainment as well as an increased ability to connect with friends, these websites, in turn, are able to tap into the value of audience as commodity. While interaction is generally open and free, users are persuaded to internalize notions of commodity fetishism and commodity consumption. Further, the diversification of identity-forming opportunities available to users on these sites, although beneficial to the user, ultimately serve to benefit the sites and their corporate advertisers. It is the dialogical relationship between the user and platform in particular, that effectively veils the highly structured nature of these platforms. As a result of corporate actions on these sites, ideological interpellation, the process entailing the creation of, and recognition within, subjectivities, becomes more prevalent as a function of new technologies. This thesis will serve as an introduction to the concept of recursive interpellation and demonstrate how individuals come to configure subjectivities in the digital era.

This thesis analyzes the economic performance of recent European immigrants to Canada. The data source for the analysis is the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, which followed immigrants entering Canada during 2000-2001 for four years. The purpose of this research is to examine the general category of European immigrants by region and country of birth in order to better understand the experience of immigrants in the Canadian labour market during their first years of settlement. Several important differences are observed within the European immigrant population in terms of economic performance. While Southern and Eastern European immigrants appear to have a slow start, their labour market performance improves rapidly, rivalling Western European immigrants after four post-immigration years. Immigrant category, education, and home language have a significant effect on overall labour market performance of recent European immigrants to Canada.

In recent times, young Canadians have become both subject and object of electoral promotion strategies. These strategies, effected by both state and extra-state organizations, respond to social concerns about the failure of younger cohorts to engage with the political system through the formal channels provided– particularly, voting in elections. These concerns, taken with the increasing popularity of information communications technologies, have propelled some organizations to reach out online, with the goal of increasing voter turnout rates. The main focus in this research is the range of approaches taken by different groups in response to the perceived problems related to young people and their disengagement from electoral processes. Using a multi-method research design, this study examines the relationships between young peoples‘ interests in, and understandings of, Canadian politics, and the online electoral promotion strategies attempting to address them. By triangulating Critical Discourse Analysis with focused group interviews with youth and interviews with communications representatives of several non-partisan organizations, I analyze the extended communicative encounter between state, extra-state organization, and citizen, as framed by the issue of 'youth and electoral disengagement'. My research problem is to explore the communicative cycle of electoral promotional discourses, their production, dissemination and consumption. I ask how these various understandings relate to each other, and what this might mean for the democratic public sphere. By focusing on the way the dominant outreach strategies 'speak to' and engage with youth, I unravel a paradox whereby the framework of communication in some of these materials, meant to help people who are alienated from the political process, in fact functions to reiterate the exclusionary tendencies of democratic politics that necessitate the engagement strategies in the first place.

Cette thèse examine le processus de déploiement du service Vélib', l'infrastructure de vélos publics de Paris. En se penchant sur les multiples épreuves, pratiques et enquêtes qui rendent possibles le maintien et la permanence de l'infrastructure, elle développe l'argument selon lequel Paris, la première capitale dotée d'une technologie de vélos publics de grande ampleur, est devenu un terrain d'exploration où sont testés des savoirs et instruments relatifs à l'écologie urbaine, les utilisateurs et la mobilité. Il est montré que le devenir expérimental du service n'a jamais constitué une politique explicite, mais qu'il est le résultat de manières concrètes de concevoir et d'affronter les problèmes qui sont apparus. Plutôt que de partir d'une définition préexistante et parfaitement délimitée de ce qu'est l'objet Vélib', cette thèse analyse le dispositif à partir des opérations hétérogènes d'entretien qu'il nécessite, en montrant que chacun de ces arrangements fait agir le service différemment. Cette démarche, qui consiste à étudier le programme de vélos en libre-service en actes, tel qu'il se fabrique dans le travail ordinaire de tous les jours, contribue à ouvrir la voie à un nouveau registre des études sur la mobilité, et à élargir les questions sur les agences, les agencements et les activités qui configurent et fabriquent les infrastructures urbaines.

Cette thèse analyse les journalistes professionnels français en les envisageant à partir de leur statut de salarié dans des entreprises soumises à des impératifs de gestion et de rentabilité, suivant en cela les intuitions de Max Weber sur la presse. Cette posture conduit à poser une question centrale autour de la tension entre la subordination juridique du salarié et l'autonomie professionnelle que nécessite leur travail. L'autonomie professionnelle et la condition salariale des journalistes sont conçues à partir de l'analyse conjointe des dynamiques salariales (défense du salariat) et des dynamiques professionnelles (défense de l'autonomie professionnelle). Sans nier le caractère spécifique du bien produit (l'information), réalisé par un collectif englobant d'autres catégories de travailleurs, cette perspective entend compléter une sociologie du journalisme qui les a largement envisagés à partir de leurs caractéristiques professionnelles par une sociologie des relations professionnelles et des entreprises. Sur la base d'une analyse socio-historique qui repose sur des méthodes complémentaires (entretiens, observations, archives), on analyse tout d'abord la structuration du groupe professionnel des journalistes comme catégorie salariée dans une entreprise spécifique, l'entreprise de presse. On montre comment ce groupe se constitue historiquement comme un ensemble de salariés professionnels. Les différentes organisations collectives du groupe sont ensuite appréhendées comme des instances de représentations du journalisme prises dans un système de relations professionnelles plus larges (au niveau de la branche et de l'entreprise). L'analyse de mobilisations au moment de restructurations montre enfin comment les journalistes tentent de ménager concrètement des marges de manœuvre face au pouvoir de l'employeur. Ce positionnement général conduit à s'écarter du point de vue critique " classique " reposant sur le rapport du journalisme à l'argent, pour saisir les dynamiques salariales au sein desquelles se joue l'affirmation du journalisme comme catégorie professionnelle.

Cette recherche a pour but décrire les dynamiques et les résistances du développement du sport pour les handicapés en Colombie, principalement au centre du pays : Bogotá, Cundinamarca et les Forces Armées (FFAA). Nous avons interrogé les dynamiques permettant de faire fonctionner des projets sportifs pour les handicapés en Colombie, ainsi que les résistances les plus fréquentes freinant cette pratique des handicapés. 31 acteurs du sport paralympique national ont été interrogés : 14 dirigeants du sport paralympique colombien et 17 sportifs handicapés. Nous avons mis en évidence le fait que les principales dynamiques du développement du sport pour les handicapés colombiens sont les ressources économiques, les installations sportives et l'interdisciplinarité. Pour les résistances, nous avons mis en évidence le fait que les conditions de vie des sportifs handicapés ne sont pas adéquates : sécurité sociale, niveau académique de formation, conditions d'embauche et conditions d'entraînement et de compétition. Enfin, nous avons fait émerger des besoins, qui ne sont pas assimilables à des résistances, mais qui peuvent constituer à l'avenir un frein au développement du sport pour cette population.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology of the School of Education, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2889. Adviser: Thomas L. Sexton. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 9, 2008).

The concept of global citizenship has permeated the Canadian institutional landscape in recent years. Global citizenship is presented in contested and complex ways by academics, yet non-governmental organizations present it as a well understood, inherently positive, and unproblematic concept. The purpose of this study is to explore and contextualize the concept of “engaged global citizens” within youth-focused international development programs. Through a case study analysis of the World University Service of Canada’s International Seminar program, I examine Canadian post-secondary students’ understanding of global citizenship and explore the multiplicity of factors affecting their engagement. This study relies primarily on longitudinal interview data collected with a small sample of participants over a period of five months and a point-in time interview phase conducted with a larger number of participants while they were taking part in the International Seminar in West Africa.

In the present phenomenological study, mothers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were interviewed using semi-structured, open-ended interview questions. The purpose of this study was to explore the stressors and joys, and parental coping associated with having a child with ASD, before and after out-of-home placement. A total of 9 mothers, six from British Columbia and three from Alberta, participated in the study. The findings suggest that along with stressors, parents experienced a multitude of joys throughout their caregiving experiences. Also, joys had an impact on caregiver's stress-coping process. This study, therefore, expanded upon current states of knowledge on the adaptational function of joys to caregivers of individuals with chronic conditions. In light of the findings, modified stress-coping process model based on the work of Lazarus and Folkman (1984), Folkman (1997), and Pearlin et al. (1990; 1980) is proposed. Also, findings shed light on mothers' lived-experiences leading up to and after out-of-home placement, illuminating an understudied aspect of caregiving for children with ASD.

Recent scientific investigations into ice sheet disintegration posit the possibility of rapid sea level rise and raise the social and political issue of how we, as individuals and collectives, will respond to potential non-linear Earth-system events prompted by climate change. Should non-linear events in the Earth-system be experienced as crises in social, economic and political systems, they may provide opportunities for the establishment of authoritarian political orders. In light of this consideration, this thesis explores the contribution radical phenomenology, which theorizes the relation between non-linear events and dominant modes of understanding, makes to maintaining and extending democratic traditions in the face of potential non-linear Earth-system events. In-depth qualitative interviews with campaign and communication staff in two B.C. environmental movement organizations (David Suzuki Foundation and Sierra Club of Canada – B.C. Chapter) explore dominant themes in current public-political articulations of climate change that are then put into conversation with understandings offered through radical phenomenology.