This thesis explores the concept of justice and its relationship with violence against women in intimate heterosexual relationships (VAWIHR). Open-ended questions elicited information on the work conducted by five women who self identified as working on the front lines of VAWIHR. A themes analysis of the interviews located five practices of justice in the interviews: front-line workers, government policy and funding allocation, custody practices, the criminal justice system, and alternative responses. None of the five practices of justice was able to respond effectively to VAWIHR. Front-line workers, essential for supporting and guiding women through the other practices of justice, are limited in their responses by government policy and funding allocation. Custody practices and the criminal justice system are unable to deal adequately with VAWIHR because such practices cannot contextualize responses to the issues, and realities of VAWIHR. The potential alternatives for VAWIHR address some of the issues, but not the full complexity of VAWIHR

This thesis examines the lives and experiences of poor young women street sex workers in the city of Surabaya, Indonesia. This thesis focuses on sexual and reproductive health knowledge and practices; conditions of work; and experiences of discrimination, marginalization, and agency. Qualitative research methods, including participant observation techniques and multiple in-depth interviews, were used to gain a detailed understanding of these women’s lives. Results of this research indicate that these young women are severely marginalized through poverty, state ideologies, and public moralities. Their marginalized status leads them to experience poor health outcomes, physical violence, sexual violence, and police harassment. The concept of structural violence is used to describe how poverty and marginalization impact these young women’s health, everyday-lives, and life chances.

This research examines the experiences of Malaysian Neurosurgeons in managing communications with patients and their families in the aftermath of adverse medical events. These experiences were interpreted from a conflict avoidance and management perspective and the data from the research was analyzed using heuristic methodology. (Douglass and Moustakas 1985) The field of Neurosurgery in Malaysia was chosen firstly as a model of a high-risk medical specialty and secondly because of the researcher’s lived experience with the phenomenon being studied. Participants in the research were eleven Malaysian Neurosurgeons with at least ten years of independent clinical practice as specialists. Qualitative data was obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews that were subsequently transcribed and analyzed heuristically, looking for different conflict management and patient-physician communication themes. The observations indicate that adverse medical events precipitate a major shift in the focus of tacit conflict management skill sets applied by the participants. The patient-Neurosurgeon relationship is abruptly transformed from one of high trust to one imbued with patient anxiety and suspicion of malpractice or medical error, and physician defensiveness. The observations also indicate that in multicultural Malaysia physician-family relationships were prioritized more than would be expected in a Western context. This may have implications for humanistic and interactive skills training for medical students and residents.

While studies in masculinities and globalization are a rapidly growing field, few studies address the role of marriage in shaping masculinities. This project explores the emerging pattern of young, urban Fijian men who marry non-Fijian women and in doing so, challenge neo-traditional marriage formations and gender roles. In this particular project, I investigate how Fijian men experience these types of marriages with non-Fijian women and how they negotiate their masculinity within their marriages. I also explore how the confluence of colonial experiences, current globalization trends, and culture affect how these men understand their masculinity. I employ several methodologies including multiple interviews, participant observations, and visual anthropology methods. Through these methods, I explore how the relationship between Fijian men and non-Fijian women alters men’s experiences of masculinity and identity at the individual level. Results illustrate the importance of work in defining manhood, according to these men. As well, results suggest that the wives play a powerful role in influencing their husbands’ values with regards to work ethics and the general acceptance of global values. These relationships show the intersection and complexities that emerge between evolving ideas regarding masculinities and marriage, Fiji’s colonial experience and current global values.

The complex health profile of older adults entering hospital presents staff and administrators with new challenges. In a climate of fiscal restraint, competing priorities and public pressure. it is necessary for acute care hospitals to rethink their views of caring for older adults. This critical ethnographic study applies a social ecological perspective using the concept of person-environment fit to illuminate how problems arise from conflict between needs and expectations. Constant comparative analysis and coding techniques take account of hospital operations and the perspectives of hospital employees and older people together. Data included hospital observations, and interviews with older adults (N=11) and hospital employees (N=14). Procedures to ensure rigor included continuous reflexivity. participant selection, triangulating data sources, peer debriefing, multiple checks. and an audit trail. Findings yield four areas of poor fit: architectural features, bureaucratic conditions. chaotic atmosphere, and hospital employee attitude. These environmental features act in independent and cumulative ways to produce a disempowering synergy that erodes independence and confidence: produces stress, worry, and anxiety; and enhances disabilities when functional impairments exist. Incongruent relationships emerge only when non-ideal older people enter the hospital's cultural space. A lack of fit exists for those considered different either because of their personal functional attribute or because hospital employees judge them to be unsuitable or inappropriate for the unit or service. Being different is key to lack of fit in the hospital environment and the construction of problems. The study also contributes groundwork for identifying indicators of older adult-hospital environment fit. and by doing so. aids in defining quality of hospital services based on what older people need and expect compared with what the hospital provides and the demands it places on older people. This research has the potential to set the stage for assessing hospitals and ensuring policies are better suited to the needs of older people.

Neoliberal economists argue that the market provides the most efficient mechanism to address externalities. Theoretically then, the market value of a commodity should show a correlation with any changes in social and ecological performance. Alternatively, if the social and ecological costs of production are being externalized (not addressed by the market) then it is expected that the social and ecological costs of production would not be reflected in the market price. This study examined the extent to which social and environmental costs are externalized by the salmon farming industry and, by extension, to what level social and ecological impacts are reflected in the market, if at all. The salmon farming industry represents a classic example of how a relatively new industry functions within the confines of the current economic climate and was assessed to examine whether social and ecological impacts are reflected in the market. A novel tool called the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI) has been developed that addresses both the need for a quantitative measure of social and ecological performance and a tool that informs where policy is best directed to alleviate the impact of externalities. In applying the GAPI method, the market price for farmed salmon was not found to be correlated with changes in social and ecological performance and it may be assumed that these costs are externalized. GAPI provides a quantitative, performance based assessment of the salmon farming industry while the indicators of social and ecological performance provide clear starting points to improve salmon farming through a policy based context.

We look at the underlying friendships and relationships between Chinese Internet users. We identify the presence and characteristics of the different types of online friendships and online relationships by analyzing various online social networks. First, we look at the concept of guanxi as it is applied to the interaction between web sites. Guanxi is a type of dyadic social interaction based on feelings and trust which has been well studied by scholars in China. We define guanxi in the web: particular linking patterns that appear in the web as well as supporting textual evidence in the web pages which we believe are indicative of the presence and varying strengths of the underlying guanxi between Chinese web site owners. Through our empirical study of the Chinese web, the general web, and the Japanese, Iranian, and French web, we show that guanxi between web sites is a more prevalent feature in the Chinese web. Next, we study the formation of online friendships in Douban, an online social networking platform frequently used by the youth in China. We look at several factors that can affect the evolution of friendships such as having memberships in the same discussion groups and sharing common interests or common friends. We compare these factors in influencing the formation of online friendships. Our work provides the first study on the underlying relationships between web sites in the Chinese web and the first large scale empirical analysis on the evolution of friendships in a Chinese online social network.

Cette thèse veut saisir les dynamiques sociales, politiques et économiques de l'échange commercial franco-nigérian à partir de l'étude des relations entre les cadres et entrepreneurs d'entreprises françaises et nigérianes. La relation historique et politique particulière entre le Nigeria et la France, l'incertitude de l'environnement des affaires au Nigeria, la violence, l'insécurité et le pluralisme national et culturel des acteurs économiques constituent les aspects clés du contexte spécifique de ces relations, qui crée un champ de possibilités avec lesquelles interagissent les parcours et les motivations personnels des acteurs économiques. Les formes sociales et les interactions quotidiennes qui viennent s'y inscrire influencent à leur tour le cadre de l'échange, ses règles du jeu. Les acteurs tirent parti de ce contexte et de ses " difficultés " grâce aux ressources dont ils disposent au préalable ou qu'ils y puisent, pour mettre en place des configurations sociales et organisations qui permettent de faire fonctionner l'activité commerciale et l'échange dans ce cadre particulier en les rendant moins risqués, en générant des bénéfices financiers et en les inscrivant dans une certaine durée. Les mécanismes d'organisation et de hiérarchisation des formes sociales liées à l'échange commercial sont lisibles à trois niveaux. 1) Aucun groupe social ne se forme au niveau des élites économiques internationales concernées par l'étude, 2) en revanche ces élites mettent sur pied des configurations liées aux activités commerciales. Ces configurations sont flexibles, peu institutionnalisées, diverses, marquées par des situations d'intermédiation, basées à la fois sur des contrats commerciaux et des conventions. 3) D'autre part les relations professionnelles entre cadres internationaux permettent de saisir plus particulièrement les rapports de pouvoir et de domination traversant les relations commerciales. Si les intérêts financiers sont à la base de la rencontre des acteurs et de la plupart de leurs relations et des organisations mises en place, ils co-agissent avec d'autres mécanismes sociaux, notamment des dispositifs de classification et de hiérarchisation liés aux nationalités et origines qui, croisés avec les statuts socioprofessionnels, sont à l'origine de clivages et de conflits au coeur de la coopération économique.

Ce travail analyse le contenu et les transformations du modèle suédois d'Etat-providence à travers l'étude de deux secteurs : les politiques de prise en charge des personnes âgées dépendantes et les politiques de prise en charge des jeunes enfants - soit les politiques de care - de 1930 à 2005. L'objectif a été dans un premier temps d'analyser et d'expliquer la teneur institutionnelle et idéologique spécifique de l'Etat-providence suédois, notamment dans le domaine du care, qui est central au modèle suédois et participe largement de sa spécificité. Pour ce faire, nous avons considéré l'Etat-providence suédois comme un contrat social spécifique entre l'Etat et ses citoyens et regardé comment se sont définies les "frontières" de l'Etat-providence, c'est-à-dire comment se sont peu à peu définis les domaines légitimes et les modalités d'intervention de l'Etat. Le deuxième objectif a été d'analyser les transformations de l'Etat-providence suédois non pas - ou pas seulement - d'un point de vue politico-économique comme cela est généralement le cas dans la plupart des travaux concernant les réformes de l'Etat-providence, mais d'un point de vue plus sociologique, en retraçant les évolutions du rapport entre l'Etat et la société qu'induisent ces transformations. Nous avons alors analysé les réformes successives des deux domaines qui nous intéressent, les logiques qui les ont guidées, les facteurs qui les ont déterminées (notamment idéologiques, économiques et politiques). Nous nous sommes également attachée à saisir l'impact des nouvelles mesures mises en place. C'est à partir de cette analyse des réformes, de leur logique et de leur impact que nous avons pu tester l'hypothèse d'une éventuelle remise en cause de ce contrat social spécifique. Notre analyse des réformes a montré des évolutions contrastées entre les deux domaines : focalisation des ressources sur les plus gros besoins dans le domaine de la prise en charge des personnes âgées et dilution des ressources de façon à couvrir un plus grand nombre d'enfants dans le domaine de la prise en charge des enfants, chacune de ces stratégies ayant posé des problèmes de légitimité spécifiques pour ces politiques. Les résultats de notre travail montrent néanmoins une grande stabilité des principes et des institutions de l'Etat-providence suédois, qui a su susciter auprès de la population suédoise le soutien et les attentes qui participent de la solidité normative mais aussi des capacités d'adaptation du modèle.

This thesis investigates challenges to promoting socially just, locally focused agriculture faced by the organic certification program that now regulates organic farming in British Columbia. This inquiry into how organic certification works is conducted as an institutional ethnography. Institutional ethnography is the methodological foundation of Dorothy Smith’s feminist sociology for people. For the institutional ethnographer, ordinary daily activity is the site for investigation of social organization. Small scale organic farmers who are committed to sustainable, socially and ecologically just agriculture offer a critical standpoint from which to explicate extra-local text mediated ruling relations. This inquiry draws on data from open-ended interviews with farmers and an independent organic certification inspector. From these accounts I begin to address how it is that BC’s organic farming certification program actually enters into and reconstitutes the everyday work of farmers and inspectors. From my findings I argue that corporate interests and a focus on global free trade in organic produce and products increasingly guide the institutional structure of organic certification programs. This in turn moves organic farming out of local, farmer control.