Produced through relations of power, West Nile Virus (WNV) as it exists on the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) website, is an effect of the kinds of knowledge, techniques of power. and disciplinary apparatuses that operate on the website and in society. Cumulatively, these forces have produced WNV as a bio-socio-administrative construct. With reference to Michel Foucault's relations of power and to Jennifer Gore's operationalization of Foucault's techniques of power, this thesis both describes the PHAC's overall production of WNV and analyzes the production process. This thesis illustrates one way that Foucault's theories of power can be used to conduct a social construction analysis. The study also shows conclusively that power relations are an important factor in the production of newly emergent infectious diseases in Canada. It will be of value to other researchers who are interested in the sociological study of disease, public health, and risk.

In this thesis I explore the relevance of role exit theory in relation to heterosexual persons who formerly identified as gay, lesbian, or queer. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a self identified sample of seven women and four men from south-western British Columbia. Participants discussed the social processes involved in establishing a heterosexual identity. including social stigma, reactions of significant others, presenting authentically, and establishing heterosexual relationships. Research results indicate that role exit as theorized by Ebaugh (1988) cannot be used as an extension of Troiden's (1988) model of sexual identity formation to account for shifts in sexual identity subsequent to the establishment of gay, lesbian, or queer identities. Further, the experiences described by participants did not conform to the stages of role exit, which suggested the need for a flexible model of heterosexual identity (re)formation that takes into account behaviour, affect, cognition, and the acceptance of heterosexual or straight as a personal label.

The participatory economics project (parecon) is Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel's vision for radically democratic workplaces and communities. This thesis examines the daily practices and ideology of the Vancouver Parecon Collective (VPC), one organization working to promote parecon as a viable socialist alternative. Arising from criticism of both the contradictions of the capitalist marketplace and the disparate power relationships within "communist" command economies, parecon is a powerful alternative to capitalist triumphalism. This thesis examines the efficacy of parecon as a prefigurative socialist vision and argues that parecon groups typified by the VPC need to combine Gramscian counter-hegemony and Richard Day's non-hegemonic approach to move from idealism and small-scale alternatives to large-scale and deeply transformative political economic change.

In the spring of 2005, a Vancouver Island Health Authority Inspector tried to stop the sale of ungraded eggs at the Saltspring Island Farmers' Market. This event, and the actions that followed, came to be known as the "Saltspring Island egg wars." Using the egg wars as a starting point, I explore the inner workings and contradictions of the egg sector in British Columbia by asking the question "how is it that food grown locally in sustainable ways is seen to be less safe by regulatory food regimes than food produced in the industrial food system?" To do this I take up the standpoint of egg farmers who "farm otherwise." From this grounding I rely on the insights of these farmers, civil servants, and social theorists Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Dorothy Smith to understand the ordering of power, knowledge and the social in relationships between sustainable egg producers and the British Columbia egg scheme.

I seek to reflect on the question of freedom in modern social thought, drawing primarily from the works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Martin Buber. These three theorists situate the question of freedom in a post-Nietzschean vector of inquiry, within certain claims with regard to power, the modern self, and the ethical imperatives incumbent upon the human actor. I work through various inflections of freedom present in modern social thought, including conceptualizations of 'limit-experience', 'care of the self', and those suggested by a relational ontology of the subject. I bring Foucault, Butler and Buber into dialogue with one another, to both make a case for the continued importance of the question of freedom today, as well as contribute to its ongoing problematic.

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.