Interdisciplinary Humanities- Master's Theses

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://laurentian.scholaris.ca/handle/10219/2232

Browse

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Concerning the politicization of climate science: epistemic dependency, trust in expert testimony, and determining What We Ought to Believe
(2018-11-09) Heppner, Caitlin
Belief in climate change does not divide into a simple dichotomy of (good) believers and (evil) nonbelievers. An unclear view of skepticism arises when the differences between empirical and normative claims are revealed. Developing responsible beliefs on matters of which we possess no expertise requires reliable expert testimony. However, trust and objectivity are integral factors for belief in expert consensus. A reduction in public opinion regarding the reliability of climate science, due to politicization, enables the dismissal anthropogenic climate change. Understanding politicization from both Pielke and Douglas clarifies a negative role that politics can play in the doing of science. The risks that politicization pose, mistrust for one, do not undermine the necessary role of values in science. The role of values within scientific enquiry must be restricted and acknowledged for trustworthy science to be produced, and for scientific findings regarding climate change to be accepted by nonexperts, including policymakers.
Surveilling ‘stigma’: reading mental health literacy as a colonial text
(2017-08-16) Kurchina-Tyson, Adria
The recent circulation of ‘mental health literacy’ texts in mainstream North American media conceptualizes ‘mental illness’ in medicalized terms as a response to what is referred to as ‘stigma’. This paper examines the roots of psychiatry in white supremacy to investigate the visualized juxtaposition of a racialized ‘madness’ against a normalized ‘mental illness’. First I explore theoretically the concepts of madness and mental illness, the identity politics of both concepts, and how these are framed and distinguished in dominant discourses. Second, using critical discourse analysis I suggest how Marc Lepine and Vince Li’s acts of violence are attributed to the production of racialized madness in Canadian news media. I then examine how mental illness is normalized in campaign and documentary films. Reading mental health literacy media as a colonial text, this research finds that stigma is framed as a primitive social behaviour in order to reproduce colonial pathologies rooted in psychiatry.
Life stories: an examination of some narratives of four men serving a life sentence
(2016-01-20) Langer, Jeffrey Neil
In 1976, the death sentence was abolished and replaced with mandatory life sentences with specified minimum periods for parole eligibility for those charged with murder. Although many lifers (those serving a life sentence) are released upon reaching their parole eligibility date they spend the rest of their lives under supervision and they face the prospect of being returned to prison for a violation of parole conditions. The notion of ‘serving time’ takes on a different dimension for lifers than it does for other offenders. In this study I interviewed four lifers and applied a grounded-theory research approach to the analysis of their transcripts. The systemic violence they endured contributed to a sense of hyper-vigilance which became inscribed in their persons and persisted in their post-prison demeanour. Their prison experience was tantamount to a limit-experience (a type of action or experience with approaches the edge of living in terms of its intensity and its seeming impossibility) and it is the difference derived from this experience that is one thing that sets lifers apart from others in the community. Inside, the prisoner learns to self-regulate his conduct in order to avoid punishment or have his behaviour read as normal but he also engages in overt and covert forms of resistance. Outside, the panoptic gaze has a powerful effect and self-regulation has become ingrained into the lifer’s being. Nonetheless all four of the iv participants talked with pride about their acts of resistance, even if the act was relatively insignificant. All the participants talked insightfully about the meaning of time. Penal time becomes ‘time served’ and an instrument of disempowerment. The mind numbing, repetitious routines of institutional life eventually become ingrained into their being to the extent that they can hardly conceive of any other manner of existence. Consequently reintegration for lifers is fraught with effects of time served and even the most successful of the participants reported he could never shake the ravages of ‘time in’. Ricoeurian theory and the use of narratives firmly anchors this thesis in the disciplines of the humanities. Narrative is a way of understanding life as it is lived. The use of narratives provides a means of gaining an in depth understanding of the lives of these participants and how the various dimensions of the life sentence have shaped their identities over time, while serving time.
America's war on drugs (and drug addicts) : a Foucauldian history
(Laurentian University of Sudbury, 2014-10-15) Heft, Ian Andrew
This thesis applies some teachings and methods of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) to critically analyze the history and current practices related to the United States’ “War on Drugs.” By tracing the history of the Drug War and placing drugs and drug addicts in a less hyperbolized context than traditionally presented in the media and in drug war propaganda, it is possible to critique what can be seen as a war on drug addicts and to gain insight as to its hidden motives, relevant patterns, social implications and ultimately its effect on American culture and society and notably its deleterious effects among America’s people of colour and urban communities. With respect to Foucault’s concept of a race war and the notion that “politics is the continuation of war by other means,” the War on Drugs can be contextualized in terms of a discourse of perpetual war that rages even in times of putative peace.
Differenciations of “enfant” / “child” in the achievement of Gilles Deleuze
(Laurentian University of Sudbury, 2014-08-13) Ord, Douglas
The thesis investigates the paradox of a word, “enfant,” or “child,” in its relation to ten works in the oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze, as produced by him and with others. The paradox is that this word circulates less as this word, “enfant,” than as, in the vocabulary of Différence et répétition (1968), an Idea, whose differential virtuality is multiple, and that differenciates, or actualizes, across the surfaces of these ten texts, repeating in different forms. This differencial circulation can also be read through the vocabularies of Logique du sens (1969) and Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (1991). Differenciations include: “Dionysos-enfant” (1962); “Alice” of Through the Looking Glass (1969); “devenir-enfant” (with Félix Guattari, 1980); and “enfance du monde” (with Claire Parnet, 1988). The suggestion is developed that actualization of “enfant” for Deleuze also became an act, in that his suicide of 4 November 1995 resonates with both his “Dionysos” and “Alice.”

Browse

Recent Submissions