This thesis explores the social organization of ‘helping sex workers’ in Northeastern Ontario from the standpoint of sex workers or former sex workers. It is based on twelve (12) qualitative interviews with sex workers and former sex workers between the years 2002-2003. This thesis engages the feminist research framework as developed by Dorothy E Smith, a feminist sociologist. Smiths’ ontological and epistemological framework conceptualizes knowledge as socially produced and mediated by social/power relations. This is a theoretical framework that has the potential to explore the social standpoint of persons labeled ‘sex worker’ by examining social/power relations from their standpoint and by problematizing claims of the universality of knowledge and ‘truth’. Overwhelmingly sex workers identified ‘help’ as a series of stigmatizing processes that were triggered upon the ‘moment of identification’ of being a sex worker. These series of stigmatizing processes were embedded in social courses of action undertaken by social service agencies and the police. This is important research as claims to ‘helping’ sex workers by social service agencies and the subsequent social relations this creates for sex workers are rarely examined in Canada from the standpoint of sex workers.

This thesis uses affect theory and studies of emotion to analyse literary representations of the everyday in fictional and non-fictional writing about Muslim migrant women in the UK from 1906 to 2012. Postcolonial literary studies tend to value exceptional events over mundane life, which causes possible issues of exoticism and a danger of homogenising distinct experiences. This thesis offers a theorisation of migration that foregrounds everyday experience through an engagement with theories of objects, bodies and space, as well as emotional experiences that are specific to migrant subjectivity. It analyses two groups of texts: early twentieth century travel writing by Atiya Fyzee, Shahbano Begum Maimoona Sultan and Zeyneb Hanoum, and contemporary literary texts by Yeshim Ternar, Farhana Sheikh, Monica Ali, Leila Aboulela, Elif Shafak and Fadia Faqir. The thesis is structured thematically into three sections, each section containing two chapters, one about travel writing and another about contemporary texts. In the first section, in order to examine how the texts negotiate foreignness in daily life, I consider hospitality theory, which describes how social power relations are based on roles of host and guest. In the second section, I argue that melancholia is an emotional experience endemic to migrancy. The texts demonstrate how this emotion is manifest communally as well as individually, which also shows the political potential of emotion. In the third section, I investigate how emotional processes of migration are described spatially in the texts. The findings of this research show that emotional knowledge is a major concern for migrant writers as a way of engaging with and critiquing the social and political climates of each text. This is produced through narrations about feeling in general and specific emotions, such as irritation or anxiety. Emotional experience is illustrated in conjunction with identities that are both fluid and intersectional, where gender and class converge with ethnicity and religion. The texts also show specifically affective styles of writing that concentrate on focalising women's intimate experiences through, for example, diary entries, bildungsroman or psychological realism. While the differing contexts reflect the particularities of each experience, there are sufficient similarities of narrative content and style to suggest that affective experience is a major concern for this body of literature. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the productive uses of affect theory as a critical stance for analysing postcolonial literature.

Au Brésil, les mouvements antiautoritaires engagés notamment dans de la réforme psychiatrique participent de la création de dispositifs de participation sociale parmi les plus innovants qu’on puisse trouver sur le plan de la démocratisation. La présente recherche avait d’abord pour objectif de comprendre comment de ces dispositifs agissent sur les rapports sociaux de pouvoir traversant le réseau de santé mentale de la ville de Campinas dans l’État de São Paulo. Nous problématisons les forces sociales et économiques qui participent de la construction de ce réseau et de son « système d’analyse et de cogestion » ; une organisation participative impliquant côte à côte des destinataires, des travailleurs, des gestionnaires et parfois des élus locaux. En survolant les différents courants de la sociologie des organisations, nous découvrons le rôle central de la prise en compte du destinataire de services pour l’étude de la dimension sociopolitique de l’organisation. Il ne s’agit pas d’étudier les rapports sociaux de pouvoir sous l’angle des dispositifs participatifs, mais bien à partir des expériences vécues et de la production collective de subjectivation politique. À partir de données recueillies lors d’une ethnographie de huit mois auprès du réseau de santé mentale de Campinas, nous observons en quoi la transformation des rapports sociaux de pouvoir vécue subjectivement par les acteurs renvoie à des configurations collectives spécifiques communément nommées rodas (cercle en portugais). Cette notion fait référence aux situations au cours desquelles un petit groupe d’acteurs se réunit pour réfléchir, débattre et décider d’actions à mener en rapport à la santé mentale dans la ville. Ces configurations collectives permettent aux citoyens de donner sens et forme à un projet local de démocratisation. L’étude se consacre alors à comprendre comment les rodas agissent sur les rapports sociaux de pouvoir induits par l’organisation participative locale. En 2012, le réseau de santé mentale de Campinas traverse une des plus importantes crises de son histoire. Des coupures et la privatisation de services ont mené à une vaste mobilisation citoyenne. Dans ce contexte, nous identifions les points de tensions et d’agencements entre les rodas et les dispositifs participatifs du réseau en portant attention aux expériences quotidiennes. L’analyse des rodas ouvre de nouvelles pistes de compréhension des dynamiques de pouvoir collectif en contexte organisationnel. Par le partage de temps dans une pluralité d’espaces ouverts, par le partage d’affects ainsi que par la problématisation collective d’évènements critiques affectant le quotidien, les rodas agissent sur la hiérarchisation de manière à la réduire. Cet effort collectif de démocratisation sans cesse renouvelé ne permet toutefois pas de venir à bout des inégalités de pouvoir induites par l’organisation des services et par la société brésilienne. Comme pratique citoyenne, les rodas constituent néanmoins des leviers collectifs pour dénoncer des contradictions et des injustices sociales au sein et en dehors de l’organisation participative. Elles relèvent la possibilité d’une critique collective continue ouverte à la créativité sociale. Cette recherche ouvre un nouveau champ d’études sur les innovations citoyennes en contexte d’organisation participative; un champ d’autant plus prometteur qu’il s’inscrit dans un renouvellement critique de la sociologie des organisations. / In Brazil, anti-authoritarian movements, particularly those engaged in psychiatric reform, are creating some of the newest innovative democratic forms of social participation. The aim of this research is first to understand how these new participatory schema act on the social relations of power across the mental health network in the city of Campinas in the State of São Paulo. I first problematize the social and economic forces involved in the construction of this network and its "system of analysis and co-management". This participatory model of organization requires users, workers, managers and sometimes local elected officials work side by side. Across the different streams of organizational sociology, the user is seen to play a central role in defining the socio-political dimension of the organization. However this is not achieved through participatory schema rather the user arises from the production of political subjectivation and the actual experiments themselves. Using ethnographic data collected during an eight-month period from across the Campinas mental health network, I observe how the transformation of the subjective social relations of power experienced by the actors refers to specific collective configurations commonly known as "rodas" (Circle in Portuguese). The term “rodas” refers to small groups of actors who meet to reflect, debate and decide on actions to be taken in relation to mental health practices in the city. These collective configurations allow citizens to give meaning and form to a local democratization project. The study then focuses on how the rodas influence the social relations of power induced by the local organization. In 2012, the Campinas mental health network went through one of the biggest crises in its history. Cuts and the privatization of services led to widespread citizen mobilization. In this context, I identify tensions and strategies within the rodas and their means for participation across the network paying attention to their everyday experiences. The analysis of rodas opens up new avenues of understanding the levers of collective power in an organizational context. Through the sharing of time in a plurality of open spaces, through sharing affect as well as through collective problem-solving of critical events impacting affecting daily life, the rodas act to reduce organisational e hierarchy. This collective effort of constantly renew democratization does not however make it possible to overcome the inequalities of power induced by the organization of services and by Brazilian society. As a form of citizen participatory practice, rodas nevertheless provide collective levers that denounce contradictions and social injustices within and outside the organization. Their practices highlight the possibility of a continuous collective criticism open to social creativity. This research opens a new field of study on citizen participation and innovation in the context of the organization; a field that is all the more promising because it is part of a critical renewal of the sociology of organizations.