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A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Social Studies, University of Regina. viii, 161 p. The North Central Community Gardens (NCCG) – the urban agriculture program of the North Central Community Association (NCCA) in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada – introduced the Branch Out Project (BOP) in the summer of 2020. After several years of conversations with community members and discussions among NCCA staff, BOP was designed as a participatory action research project that would promote the expansion of the NCCG into residents’ yards and schoolgrounds as well as facilitate research on the practical and theoretical implications of this initiative. Amidst the many regulations, upheavals to local and global economies, and disruptions of social and cultural lives brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, BOP resulted in the construction of eight new gardens: six in residents’ yards and two on schoolgrounds. Findings from an initial interest survey of NCCG participants (N=21) are presented here, in addition to conclusions from post-season interviews with BOP participants (N=8). By analyzing the survey and interview findings, I aimed to address the question: what are the opportunities for, possibilities of, and challenges to the expansion of community gardening in urban spaces under neoliberal capitalism? Four key themes emerge from this investigation: consumption, community, capacity, and control. Applying the extended case method to BOP, I situate these themes within the food justice and food sovereignty literature to understand community garden expansion as a counter-neoliberal, anti-capitalist response to crisis. I argue that BOP, and similar initiatives, have the potential to provide a radical grassroots alternative food system, but that challenges of land access, funding, and power remain. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Sociology, University of Regina. xi, 232 p. Despite the existential threat to life on this planet posed by climate change, many North Americans continue with ‘business as usual’. While the substance of the debate is different, in each country awareness of the gravity of the situation seems lacking. Given that the perception and meaning of reality determines how it is acted towards, this thesis examines how climate change in Canada has come to be discursively constructed so that its reality is recognized, but its seriousness is overshadowed by other issues. Western society is transitioning from modernity into reflexive modernization whereby pre-existing institutions and underlying principles are challenged (Beck, 1994). This is amplified by impact science that exposes inherent contradictions of the dominant social paradigm. In response, anti-reflexive forces promote discourse defending the current system to undermine attempts to change the status quo (i.e., reflexive forces). The struggle to construct meaning is contested and opposing forces vie for symbolic and cultural capital in the field of climate change. This thesis analyses the social construction of climate change in Canadian news-media. The research is guided by the ontological and epistemological assumptions of critical realism and seeks to elucidate a causal mechanism, its underlying structure, and the conditions that interact to manifest climate change discourse specific to Canada. A content analysis of two Canadian newspapers and two Canadian conservative think tanks was administered to reveal frequent thematic frames and claims, contextualize text, capture narratives, and determine prominent actors and institutions. These results were subjected to the processes of abduction and retroduction to explain underlying mechanisms. Abduction primarily relied on Beck’s (1994) theory of reflexive modernization, McCright and Dunlap’s (2010) anti-reflexivity thesis, Bourdieu’s (1998) practice theory, and Freudenburg’s (2005) double diversion theory. Reflexive and anti-reflexive discourse were found but their usage varied substantially by data source, quantitively and qualitatively. The socio-historical conditions of the Canadian context were found to influence the causal powers of the anti-reflexive mechanism, producing discourse specific to Canada. These findings contribute to the literature of climate change discourse. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Sociology, University of Regina. X, 115 p. This thesis is an autoethnography and institutional ethnography of my experience as a disabled young adult within a publicly funded long-term health care facility. By way of explication and analysis of a number of factors, including my personal experience, health region and long-term health care facility formal policies, practices, reviews, reports and nurse charting, I investigate and illuminate a relatively obscure unjust societal phenomenon: disabled young adults living in an old folks’ home. My research examines how the ruling power relations in a government funded health region and a long-term health care facility, organized through a bureaucracy, form a total institution for young adult residents. Bringing together autoethnography and institutional ethnography creates a unique social scientific methodological tandem that suits my set of circumstances and goal of changing the research context for the better. Both methods were developed to investigate societal problems as socially just acts. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Social & Political Thought, University of Regina. iv, 150 p. This work intends to show that Jacobs’ moral philosophy makes a strong case for objective moral knowledge. She posits that there are two moral syndromes that are intended to guide working life morality. Roughly speaking, the commercial syndrome guides commerce and the guardian syndrome governs politics and other occupations associated with territorial management. These syndromes are composed of several interconnected precepts and Jacobs argues that these precepts from one syndrome should not be employed with precepts from the other. Should we fail to observe this rule, we will trigger what she calls the Law of Intractable Systemic Corruption (LISC). This law states that every time a working environment mixes precepts together the result is a monstrous moral hybrid syndrome that produces intractable systemic corruption. While this work is too small to prove such a grandiose claim, by diving into Jacobs’ example of the Latin American debt crisis we can see how her system of analysis makes it clear what moral knowledge the actors involved mistakenly ignored and how their doing so caused the crisis. Even though one successful example does not prove the LISC correct it does show that, in at least some instances, it is objectively better to behave morally than to behave immorally. Jacobs hopes to employ this objective knowledge, through increased moral education, to support the use of fear and enforcement that are intended to keep societies from collapsing from corruption within. However, Thomas Hobbes, whose political philosophy also relies on fear, has a different perspective on human nature than Jacobs. Jacobs assumes that people generally want to behave morally and that many moral mistakes can ultimately be attributed to a lack of understanding instead of intentional ii selfishness. Hobbes uses the idea that human beings prioritize their self-interest as the basis of his conception of human nature. He argues that if this is the case then people can only be motivated by fear to adhere to the prosocial behaviour necessary for societies to succeed. A set of experiments conducted by C. Daniel Batson et al. on moral hypocrisy seem to create a sort of Ring of Gyges scenario in the lab meaning that participants can pursue their self-interest without with the fear of consequences. At first glance, the results of these experiments provide a justification for Hobbes’ view of human nature. However, through reference to the work of George W. Watson et al. and Maureen Sie, we can show that Batson’s experiments failed to take into account reporting bias and context. Through further experiments Watson et al. show that we still have good reason to believe that people value morality and can be motivated by it. If Hobbes’ pessimistic view is not justified by the empirical evidence then it seems fair to say that Jacobs’ contributions toward objective moral knowledge are a helpful step toward supporting her proposed addition to fear in moral education. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of Regina. xvii, 210 p. The idea of Knowledge Management (KM) is continually evolving. A traditional and popular idea of KM is one that emphasizes the activity of transforming data to in- formation, and information to knowledge. Another popular idea of KM emphasizes the building of capabilities through learning; how KM can help people learn individ- ually and collaboratively toward an individual or shared outcome. This dissertation presents an integrative framework for KM that builds on these ideas. The framework that is introduced is called SpiCE, an acronym for spime wrangling, culture of par- ticipation, and ethical decision making. SpiCE uses the idea of spime wrangling to describe a type of interaction for data and information exploration. The idea of a culture of participation is used within SpiCE to describe an interactive space where individual and social learning and knowledge creation occurs through data and in- formation explorations. To help guide development of sustainable outcomes, SpiCE integrates theories and ideas from the eld of ethical decision making. As will be illustrated, the bene t of SpiCE over existing models and frameworks in KM is in its precise description of how to balance the interactions between people, process, and technology toward the goal of aiding development of decision making outcomes that are sustainable. This dissertation will describe SpiCE in detail and illustrate an example of its use. Future work is also discussed. A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy *, University of Regina. *, * p. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Social Studies, University of Regina. ix, 147 p. This study examines how race and gender mediate access to social networks. Following the work of Louise Holt, the theoretical framework is informed by Judith Butler’s work on performativity with Pierre Bourdieu’s work on embodiment as well as W.E. Dubois’ notion of double consciousness and Gloria Anzadua’s concept of the New Mestiza (2008; Anzaldua, 1999; and Falcon, 2008). Research methods were framed by Black feminist theory and included eight semi-structured interviews with racialized African Canadian women who ranged in age, length of time lived in Canada and had a range of social networks, incomes, and children. The findings in this research identified the racial and gender markings experienced by participants, the methods participants used to negotiate these markings and the diversity of social networks participants accessed as a result, in part, of this negotiation. Participants identified being racially marked as degenerate and not belonging to Canada. The racial marking of their bodies was governed by white hegemony that informs both the Canadian nationhood and colonial narratives. In terms of gender, participants identified being regulated by masculine hegemony through the cult of True Womanhood and neo-liberal principles. They further identified images that reflected the compounding nature of race and gender as they were also regulated by the images of the Jezebel and Matriarch that are specific to women recognized as African. Participants consciously embodied alternative racial and gender markings of their bodies to produce identities that spoke back to unfavorable discursive marking. They also accessed different social networks as a way to negotiate or embody particular markings of their bodies. This negotiation of gender and race led to the production of a diverse range of social networks. Student yes

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Sociology, University of Regina. x, 203 l. After twenty-five years of contested change following the collapse of the mercantile-industrial food regime, a corporate-environmental food regime appears to be consolidating. The new food regime consists of two distinct yet complimentary paradigms: the Ecologically Integrated paradigm, and the Life Sciences Integrated paradigm. Through the use of in-depth interviews with organic and conventional farmers living in southern Saskatchewan, this thesis examines how the management strategies utilized by Saskatchewan farmers fit within the larger world food regime in relation to farmers’ self-described identities. This study also explores the heterogeneity of management strategies, and the consistency of these strategies with the ideologies held by the farmers. Giddens’ theory of structuration, Gramci’s theory of hegemonic discourse, and the idea of the reflexive producer are used to explain how farmers make decisions concerning agricultural strategies and how these decisions impact the larger social structure. An analysis of the interviews suggests that producers exist within the emerging food regime on a continuum between the Ecologically Integrated paradigm (alternative producers) and the Life Sciences Integrated paradigm (conventional producers). Most producers frequently utilize production strategies based on their access to markets and specific groups of consumers, and on their personal eco-strategies. These farmers often identify as “conventional” or “alternative” producers, while having beliefs or using agricultural methods that are associated with the opposing paradigm. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of community in the transfer of local knowledge, including potential alternative farming methods. This study also illustrates that Saskatchewan farmers face additional barriers in the potential for resistance against conventional agriculture due to the history of agriculture in western Canada, the lack of local processors, and the corporatization of land ownership. Student yes