Department of Sociology Graduate Theses
Recent Submissions
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LAW ENFORCEMENT PERCEPTIONS OF YOUTH DIVERSION: A CASE STUDY OF THE DURHAM REGIONAL POLICE SERVICE
Enacted in 2003, the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) began the transition into a new era of youth justice in Canada (Bala 2015). As a result, the CJS saw a drastic increase in the use of extrajudicial measures and decrease ... -
Volunteering the Valley: Designing Technology for the Common Good in the San Francisco Bay Area
How can digital technologies be designed for good rather than harm? Dozens of civic organizations under the “tech for good” banner have emerged in recent years to address exactly this question. Although these organizations ... -
Chinese Canadian Perceptions of the Social Credit System
In 2014, China announced that they would be implementing a Social Credit System (SCS) in hopes of encouraging trustworthy behavior between Chinese citizens, corporations, and government agencies (State Council, 2014). ... -
Intelligence-Captivated Policing: Real-Time Operations Centres and Real-Time Situational Awareness in Canadian Police Services
Over the last decade a new organisational entity has appeared in Canadian police forces. Based on post-9/11 US homeland security and developments in digital surveillance technology, real-time operations centres (RTOCs) ... -
(In)visible Systemic Injustice: A Qualitative Inquiry into Women’s Experiences of Gender Discrimination in the Canadian Military
Government bodies housed in Canada are not void of their own systemic issues. The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is not any different possessing a traditionally gendered patriarchal white dominant culture that is resistant ... -
Re-imagining Canada’s Child Welfare Paradigm: A Collective Ethnographic Case Study of Canadian and Finnish Child Welfare Systems
This dissertation analyzes state-family relations in Canada, and collectively alongside Finland, as they relate to mothering and child welfare. In response to calls from the Canadian Federal Ministry of Child and Youth ... -
Outsourced Authoritarianism: The Commercialization of State Control in Chinese Mayor’s Hotlines and the Internet-Opinion Industry
How is the market engaged in the grassroots governance of authoritarian China? My work addresses this question by exploring state-market collaborations in the industry of Internet control and the system of Mayor’s Hotline. ... -
The Knowledge Instruments in Smart City Legitimation and Critique: A Pragmatic-Sociology Assessment of the Case of Sidewalk Toronto
In recent decades, the smart city concept has gained momentum in policy and popular discourses. Largely a long-term marketing effort grounded in private technology firms such as IBM and Cisco (Söderström 2014, Hollands ... -
Should the Rainbow have Black and Brown Stripes?: (Anti)-Racism and Coalitions in Toronto’s Rainbow Community
My dissertation research undertakes an in-depth analysis of queer (anti)-racism in Toronto’s rainbow community. My study is informed by ethnographic research methods, including semi-structured interviews with those who ... -
The Debate Surrounding the Use of Biometric Registration by the UNHCR on Refugees
Over the past two decades, there has been a disturbing rise in the refugee population with over 65 million people displaced from their homes as of 2019. This alarming increase has been due to terrorist activities, civil ... -
More than Getting Wasted: A Description of Youth Emergency Department Visits Attributable to Alcohol Use at Kingston Health Sciences Centre from 2013-2017
The objective of this study is to describe youth presentation to the Emergency Department (ED) for alcohol-related issues. Current alcohol-related research relies on self-reported data of individual-level alcohol consumption. ... -
The Sociology of Emotions in Medical Practice: An Ethnographic Case Study of Health Care Interactions
Typically, medical training does not prepare healthcare workers to deal with emotions in medical practice, which can cause them to shut down emotionally and withdraw from patients as a way of protecting themselves. Recent ... -
Beyond the Selfie: self, time, and visibility in young people’s engagement with social media
Over the last ten years, the use of smartphones and social media has become a highly significant aspect of communication. The convergence of interconnected communication systems, handheld screens, social media platforms, ... -
Social Media and Law Enforcement: A Study on the Adoption and Use of Social Media Monitoring in Canada
Police agencies globally now have access to several technologies that monitor social media, exploiting its data and content for investigative purposes. Such practices fit into larger discussions of policing shifting towards ... -
An Exploration of the Victim-Offender Relationship in Sexual Offending: Predicting Severity and the Presence of Violence
Research indicates that 19% of women and 2% of men will have been raped in their lifetime (The National Center for Victims of Crime 2018). The most recent literature on sexual offenders examines the effectiveness of current ... -
Conflictual Justice: The Probationary Supervision of Indigenous Offenders in Northeastern Ontario
This thesis explores the probationary supervision of Indigenous offenders in Northeastern Ontario through semi-structured interviews with four recently retired probation officers, and one Institutional Elder. Thematic ... -
What is a wearable? A query
Designers go through much trial and error and troubleshooting with stubborn materials and conceptual structures just to get to a working prototype. Eventually, these efforts converge around uncovering successful use-cases ... -
Whose Government and What Law? A Political Sociological Investigation of Corruption in Lebanon and its Effect on Government, Legality, and the People
Levels of corruption in Lebanon are at an all-time high. According to the Transparency International Index, Lebanon ranks 143rd out of 180 in level of corruption (with 180 being the worst). The citizens are also disenchanted ... -
Mundane Surveillance: Tracking mobile applications and urban accounting in Canadian Business Improvement Areas
In response to splintering streetscapes and in order to remain relevant amidst “smart cities” and “urban big data”, Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) have moved away from clipboards and ledgers, to become early adopters ... -
Does Gender Play a Role?: Judges and Trial Outcomes in Sexual Assault Cases in Canada
Canada undertook a major reform of the laws surrounding rape beginning in 1983. As a result of this reform, rape was re-conceptualized as ‘sexual assault’, and laws surrounding consent and earlier sexual history were ...
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