Sociology and Social Anthropology Honours Theses

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10222/56276

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Open Access
Exploring Euphoria: Delineations of Raving Morality, Collective Effervescence, and Therapeutic Culture in the Halifax Rave Scene
(2024-05) Waite, Eleanor
Increasing commercialization of the underground rave scene has led to a decline in so-called “authentic” raves around the world, and an increase in licensed bar and festival-based EDM events, which do not share the same ethos as underground raves. Using a mixture of semi-structured interviews and observation at raves, I explore the unique resurgence of raving as an underground practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Whereas previous scholars have found delineations of insiders and outsiders to rave scenes, I instead found participants constructed ideal types of moral versus immoral ravers. I argue that the shared sentiment of moral ravers is what contributes to feelings of collective effervescence at raves and that this experience of collective effervescence is made sense of through the lens of therapeutic culture.
Open Access
Sharing meals, making meanings: Foodways among 2nd and 1.5 generation immigrants
(2024-05) Wang, Michelle
Second- and 1.5-generation immigrants must negotiate multiple cultures: the culture(s) of their parents, and the dominant culture where they are born. Foodways play a critical role in the construction of cultural identity, marking group inclusion and exclusion. This study explores how people with inherently in-between identities construct meaning in their everyday lives through domestic food production and consumption. It examines the intersections of diaspora, acculturation, and food in Halifax, NS – a smaller city with low immigrant retention rates (Ramos and Yoshida, 2011). Through sharing meals that are meaningful to eight participants, and supplementing these insights with semi-structured interviews, I find that foodways act as sensory, material, and symbolic markers of belonging and difference for second- and 1.5-generation immigrants. Participants constructed connections to – and were ascribed difference from – peers, family, and heritage through the relational and multisensory nature of food. This study encourages tolerance through meal-sharing, to help create a sense of community for those whose identities are rooted in culturally in-between spaces.
Open Access
Parenting and Working: Parents Working as Doctors Returning from Parental Leave
(2024-05) Marley, Lauren
There is an abundance of research on maternity leave in terms of economic impacts, gendered impacts, and health but there is less research on qualitative experiences of returning from leave and navigating a career while being a parent. Further, with parental leave available to both men and women in Canada, it is necessary to study how this leave impacts careers and gender division of labour. In this study, I focus on the experience of doctors returning from parental leave as it offers a comparison across one profession to analyze gendered differences and how these playout in the careers and domestic roles of people. Through eight semi-structured interviews I asked about experiences returning to work and how the domestic sphere impacts the work sphere. After analyzing the data thematically, I found that men and women have very different experiences that ultimately lead to women becoming the primary parent and having a harder experience at work and men feeling pressure to prioritize work. While it is possible for men to step more into the parenting role, they seem unwilling to and take on the traditional gender roles of men as breadwinners. In this study, it becomes clear that workplaces, specifically hospitals in Ontario have the potential to make the transition to work easier for women, especially for women pumping breast milk at work.
Open Access
Contemporary Apparitions: Ghost Stories as Personal Narratives
(2024-05) Bristol, Robyn
Storytelling, an integral part of the human experience, encompasses a diverse range of narratives, with ghost stories standing out as a near-universal phenomenon. While anthropologists and folklorists have long been interested in these type of stories, little research has looked at the multifaceted motivations behind why we might tell these types of stories. Drawing from scholarship on hauntology, the uncanny, storytelling processes, narrative sensemaking and collective memory, this study aims to answer the question – why in the 21st century, do we continue to tell ghost stories to one another? Through a qualitative analysis of story collection and nine semi-structured interviews with thirteen Nova Scotians from the Halifax region, this study finds that the ghost stories we share are often deeply personal narratives. Remarkably, all thirteen participants shared stories about their own personal paranormal encounters, even when asked for a ghost story in broad, undefined terms. For participants, these stories provided a place for sensemaking, self-discovery, grief processing, and cultural transmission. Furthermore, this study identifies the commonalities in the ghost storytelling process, from establishing truth, navigating, and negotiating belief, and drawing on shared cultural milieu. Therefore, the reason we tell ghost stories is not to merely frighten or entertain. Rather, in the Canadian context, we tell them to make sense of our social worlds, our beliefs, and our own sense of self.
Open Access
Settling on Nova Scotia: Exploring the Meaning of Home after Relocating During the Covid-19 Pandemic
(2024-05) MacDougall, Elizabeth
Since 2016, Nova Scotia has experienced an upswing in migration to the province after decades of out-migration. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this phenomenon, with an estimated population growth of over 20,000 people to Nova Scotia from provinces outside of Atlantic Canada between 2022 and 2023 (Statistics Canada, Table 17). Based on theories of place and migration, this study seeks to answer the question “how have people navigated their changing sense of home since moving to Nova Scotia during the Covid-19 pandemic?” In doing so, this study serves to gain a better understanding of why this trend in migration has occurred and what the experience of those who moved to the province has been like. Through a qualitative analysis of seven semi-structured interviews, this study finds that migrating was a response to changes already occurring to one’s sense of home rather than the other way around, and that Nova Scotia presented itself as a uniquely appealing place to find community. These findings are interpreted in the context of wider narratives of place, and with an eye to concerns about Nova Scotian identity.
Open Access
The Gag City Grammar Police: Language and Algorithmic Community on Stan Twitter
(2024-05) Lorant, Evan
Barbz are a group of fans who have formed an online community devoted to Nicki Minaj. Known broadly as a ‘stan’ group, they form speech communities on Twitter/X and present as a closed group despite remaining public. Taking advantage of the algorithm’s composition of an individual’s feed, they use linguistic strategies to conceal the group, while remaining discoverable to a defined and mutable audience. I begin by engaging with sociolinguistic theories of variance and enregisterment to describe language in the social landscape. Then I explore fandom studies, cultural capital, and structural theories of the internet. Observation of nonstandard English use on Twitter showed Barbz discouraging their posts from spreading to the general public. I analyze the spread of memes, showing that Barbz strategically open their community at specific times and in specific ways that are advantageous to them. Finally, I discuss direct mentions of the algorithm. I found that on Twitter, Barbz strategically employ language to manipulate the borders of both their community and their audience. In order to understand group maintenance, formation, and relationality online it is vital to account for the role of the algorithm as companion, rather than rigid structure.
Open Access
Trend or Treatment? Stigma, Social Challenges, and the Burdens of Managing Celiac Disease
(2024-05) MacLeod, Rachel
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease estimated to affect about 1% of the global population (Biesiekierski et al., 2014). It is managed only through strict lifelong adherence to a gluten free diet. However, this diet also commonly exists as a trend, making the existence and management of celiac disease perceptible to low social legitimacy (Moore 2014). Broadly, research on celiac disease often takes a biomedical approach or fails to acknowledge the role of the social context and its influence on lived experiences of managing celiac disease. Through a qualitative analysis, using semi-structured interviews and observation within a gluten free support group, this research seeks to understand how the broader popularity of the gluten free diet influences the lived experiences, social challenges, and burdens of illness experienced by people with celiac disease in their everyday lives. It finds that irrespective of individual trend dieters, low social legitimacy more broadly magnifies the social challenges faced by people with celiac disease in four key areas: biographical disruption, and the management of cognitive, economic, and relational burdens.
Open Access
“I Feel Bad for People Who Don’t Have a Chronic Illness:” Refusing Deviance and Reframing Illness Through Summer Camp
(2024-05) Sewell, Simone
Scholarship in medical anthropology has a history of characterizing chronic illness as a “deviant” condition. Emerging research problematizes this paradigm, however, and demands its reconsideration. The growing recognition of the significance of shared experiences of illness and community in coping with chronic illness diagnoses also contradicts traditional conceptualizations of illness as disruptive and socially stigmatizing. One example of this phenomenon can be found in pediatric medical summer camps. Stemming from a personal understanding of illness and the summer camp experience, this thesis investigates the transformative nature of these experiences through semi-structured interviews. In doing so, it applies Catherine Tan’s idea of “biographical illumination” to the experience of pediatric medical summer camps, arguing that these camps reframe campers’ understandings of illness through community, shared experiences, and a focus on personal growth. With this new understanding of chronic illness, individuals refuse the label of deviance and come to consider their diagnoses as illuminating.
Open Access
The Harana Singers of Nova Scotia: Transnationalism, cultural identity, and collective music-making in a Filipino choir
(2023-05) Pilapil, Althea
The Harana Singers of Nova Scotia is a choir of mostly Filipinos, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Many studies have been conducted on Filipino migration and occupation (Gardiner Barber, 2008; Reyes, 2005), but little research has been done on other aspects of the lived experiences of Filipino-Canadians due to Filipinos being paradoxically both hypervisible and invisible in academic research (Coloma et al., 2012). As such, I explore the question of what it means to be in the Harana Singers and investigate the relationship between transnationalism, cultural identity, and collective music-making, hoping to make the invisible visible. Through a qualitative analysis of participant observation and eight semi-structured interviews with members of the Harana Singers, varying in age, gender, and musical experience, this study finds that despite their differences, members of the Harana Singers come together to learn, sing, and perform to share their music with the broader Canadian community. It finds that the choir stays together by providing its members individual benefits such as socialization, cultural enrichment, and the intrinsic value of learning, while also producing a collective sense of purpose and responsibility to share Filipino culture through music.
Open Access
Sober Sociability: How non-drinking students navigate outside the norm
(2023-05) Block, Beau
Drinking culture on campuses has been written about for decades, and drinking students see drinking culture as a means of forming and maintaining friendships, socializing in large groups and vital in their university experience. Non-drinking university students are left out of drinking literature, in turn, leaving them out of drinking discourse. I bring non-drinkers’ voices to the forefront by conducting nine semi-structured interviews with them. Through these interviews I answer the following research questions: how do Dalhousie students who do not drink feel about the drinking culture on university campuses? And what effect do they feel non-drinking has on their ability to form meaningful social circles and relationships? After thematically analyzing my data, I found that the marginalization of non-drinkers is a social process, not an internal feeling possessed by non-drinkers. Nevertheless, non-drinkers do have roles to play in drinking cultures, such as the ‘mother’ who protects drunk friends and the storyteller who remembers what others do not; they do not associate having a good time and forming friendships with drinking alcohol.
Open Access
Connecting Through Faith: An Analysis of Dalhousie and Kings Religious Societies
(2023-05) Sumner, Geordie
In Canadian society today, there is a growing problem of university dropouts and deteriorating mental health conditions in university students with a leading cause being loneliness. This qualitative sociological study explores faith-based student societies as a context for friendship making among university students to examine whether organized social faith-based clubs provide students with an environment where they can develop friendships and a sense of belonging. The research findings align with Emile Durkheim's analyses of the sacred in religious communities and highlights how important relationships in these societies are to both personal and spiritual development. Additionally, this research uses the theoretical influence of Georg Simmel and Danny Kaplan to understand how university student religious societies are socially organized and how interactions are influenced by the objective and subjective culture that surrounds the society. Participants felt that their Christian societies at Dalhousie and Kings helped them find social and personal identify, develop their religious beliefs through group ritual ceremonies, and help build an internal sense of belonging. This research points toward a future where universities will have the proper resources to help illuminate the transcendent power that friendship holds, by examining how it is found in for university students in social clubs organized based on religion.
Open Access
“They Want Me to Play F*cking Bingo!”: The Social Lives of Young at Heart Seniors
(2022-04) Pike, Paul
There are many sociological studies concerned with the social lives of senior citizens who fit the traditional aging norms of society. In comparison, the social experiences of “young at heart” seniors are relatively absent from this literature. The following research addresses this gap by exploring the social lives of seniors who feel their chronological age exceeds their biological, psychological, and social ages. More specifically, this research explores whether young at heart seniors experience social isolation as they deviate from the traditional aging norms of society. To answer this question, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight participants ages 65 and older, who describe themselves as young at heart, and reside in Atlantic Canada. After performing a thematic analysis of the data collected, my findings indicate that although traditional aging norms present obstacles in the social lives of young at heart seniors, they do not experience social isolation. Furthermore, the participants in this study describe living healthy social lives and do so through relationships with like-minded people who are often much younger than them.
Open Access
Missing the Bus, Missing School: Does Mode of Transportation Affect Educational Engagement Among High School Students in the HRM?
(2022-04) Keeping, Madelyn
Whether it is time spent sitting in traffic on the way home from work, flying to visit distant family, or simply driving aimlessly with friends, our lives are greatly impacted by mobility. This study, guided by literature from the mobilities turn and the sociology of education, considers the impact of mobility on education. Employing a quantitative approach, this project seeks to determine whether students who use public transit display varying rates of educational engagement compared to their peers who do not rely on public transit. The results show that public transit use impacts a student’s odds of reporting having missed school as well as feeling as if they waste time travelling. However, this is not paired with further implications for the educational experience. The use of public transit impacts students’ experiences getting to school; despite this, students who use public transit display similar levels of educational engagement compared to their peers who do not use public transit.
Open Access
Framing the Social Reality of COVID-19
(2022-04) Rao, Marcus
Beyond the health crisis itself, the COVID-19 pandemic has also given rise to a crisis of information, as public health authorities around the world scramble to control the flow of information about the evolving science of the disease, the interpretation of statistics on infections, hospitalizations and deaths, and the framing of restrictions on movements and gathering, often through the media. Unlike prior infectious disease outbreaks, COVID-19 provides a particularly intriguing area of research because it has affected virtually all parts of the globe. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of 127 articles, this study explores how the misinformation problem and vaccine hesitancy was written in two national news media sources: The Globe and Mail (Canada) and The Hindu (India). While the two papers framed misinformation and vaccine hesitancy in similar ways, there were some key differences. Both focused on identifying the ‘right’ experts, understanding why people were not listening to the right experts, and what should be done to remedy the misinformation and vaccine hesitancy problem. In India disseminating reliable information to large remote and isolated populations were met with high rates of illiteracy while in Canada problems arose from increasing language barriers and the lack of culturally appropriate signage. The Hindu urged for transparency and accountability from public health authorities while there were no mentions of this in The Globe and Mail. By investigating how the media framed the misinformation and vaccine hesitancy problem, this thesis highlights how media attempt to inform and shape the behaviours and opinions of a population.
Open Access
Bunching Violets: An exploration into Queer Femmes' construction of identity and belonging
(2022-04) Lee, Bronwyn
This research seeks to broaden the dialogue surrounding queer presentation, identity construction and femininity. Specifically, I look at what it takes to externalize identity within a queer context, and how femmes subvert heteronormative femininity. The intersection of femininity and queerness provides a unique case study to understand community recognition and the nuances of self-performance. Focusing on the act of queer subversion within heteronormative dichotomies, this thesis shows how gender’s inherent flexibility impacts the presentation and perception of queer femininity. Through nine qualitative interviews, I find that queer femmes engage in consistent membership negotiations by externalizing their queerness physically and verbally. Among participants, passing was an unintentional result of heteronormative norms rather than an underlying intention to cater to said norms. I argue that my participants’ femme identities were a valid and functional expression of their authentic selves.
Open Access
Forming Characters: How Reading Shapes Us
(2022-04) Schwartz, Noam
This research project seeks to address a gap in reading research – the experience of the solitary reader. Through a literature review and 10 qualitative interviews with students at Dalhousie University and University of Kings College, in Halifax, Nova Scotia I worked to further understand the deeply personal and often variable experience of reading alone. My research has revealed that experiences of reading greatly inform readers’ everyday lives and social interactions. I claim that reading, even when it is solitary, is deeply relational and social, as readers navigate between the world of books and the real world by “tapping in and out” of the world around them through the three E’s: Empathy, Escape, and Education.
Open Access
Putting the 'Cult' in 'Subculture': Investigating Group Identity Development Among Incels
(2022-04) Doras, Nathan Aurnel
In this study, I analyze the group identity development of incels. Incels are a group of men who gather in online spaces to vent frustrations about feminism and an inability to attract a romantic partner. The theoretical framework of this study includes theories of hegemonic and hybrid masculinities as well as the theories of style in subcultures, and theories of cults. I performed content analysis through hidden observation of the 15 most recent posts from 12 new users and 12 prolific users of the incels.is forum. The sample from incels.is consisted of 360 posts. I also analyzed the 5 top posts of all time and all related comments from the r/IncelExit Subreddit. The findings suggest that new users to the forum join with preexisting self-esteem issues and hateful views and seek a place to express themselves with minimal judgement. The social dynamics of the forum are consistent with literature on subcultures, as low-ranked users must adequately perform the incel identity to be accepted in the community. Social connections seem to be a major factor that keeps users on the forum longer and posting more. The findings suggest the incel community can be described as a subculture with cult-like qualities.
Open Access
Carving in and “Carving Out” Space: Gender in the Halifax Skateboarding Subculture
(2022-04) Norwood, Bridgette
Skateboarding was made without rules, confinement, or regulation; it is a subculture (Beal, 1996) with an ideology that counters normative authority and, more specifically, standards of masculinity. Yet skateboarding continues to have persistent misogynistic perspectives and gender discrepancies in participation (Beal, 1996). Therefore, it is critical to understand the experiences of marginalized genders in the skateboarding subculture to discover how ideas of authenticity are formed and upheld in the skate subculture and how these standards impact skateboarders of marginalized genders. This study uses insights from Judith Butler, Erving Goffman, and Pierre Bourdieu to frame understandings of gender, subcultural identity, and power dynamics. It examines the unexplored skateboard subculture in Halifax, N.S. through an analysis of its symbolic membership and physical and social space. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, this study identifies a disassociation from ‘typical’ masculinity and outwardly favourable attitudes towards gender diversity within the Halifax skateboard community; however, there are gender barriers within this still hyper-masculine setting disguised through support. Nevertheless, the historically resistant and rebellious attitudes that coincide with skateboarding may provide a space for fem and nonbinary skaters to counter the gender norms in the larger society and the skateboarding subculture. Keywords: Skateboarding Subculture, Gender norms, Marginalized Genders, Authenticity, Entitlement to Space, “Strategic Entitlement”, Resistance.
Open Access
Straight Until Proven Queer: Exploring Young Queer Attitudes Towards Coming Out
(2022-04) Lahey, Joseph
Much has been said about the coming out process in sociological literature — including varying characterizations of the process and varying claims about the significance of the process. This study aims to uncover how young queer people today — an emerging generation of queer people — feel about the process to explore what from the literature holds true, how queer people today characterize the process, and the attitudes they have towards it. Through a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with twelve self-identifying queer people between the ages of 18 and 24 living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, this study finds that today, queer people characterize coming out as a highly complex process that differs depending on identity and geographical location, and which happens continuously. It finds an ambivalence in how young queer people today feel about the process: participants ascribe various values and meanings to the process — including value in its strategic component, meaning in self-affirmation, and meaning in being able to share a part of themselves with others — while simultaneously longing for a life where queer people do not have to come out, for the process upholds heteronormativity and the assumption that everyone is heterosexual until otherwise stated.
Open Access
Eco-Anxiety: Exploring Existential Threats and Ontological Security among University Students
(2022-04) Barnes, Ben
The physical and mental health consequences of climate change are, and will be, an extremely important issue in the anthropology of climate change. Already, we are seeing countless examples of the effects of climate change in Canada, and around the world. Although the physical consequences have been theorized for quite some time, scholars have only recently started to study its mental health effects, an emerging component of which is eco-anxiety. Studies on eco-anxiety thus far have predominantly been studied using quantitative methods. Qualitative and mixed-methods approaches have yet to be explored in a similar way. The purpose of this honours thesis was to contribute to the overall understanding of eco-anxiety using in-depth, qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The study consisted of nine Dalhousie University students who were enrolled in programs that pertained to environmental studies i.e., Biology, Sustainability, and Environmental Science. The overall findings were fourfold. Firstly, eco-anxiety is derived from existential anxiety, which is ultimately derived from existential environmental threats. Secondly, eco-anxiety is not pathological but rather, a rational response to the climate crisis. Thirdly, the mental health effects observed usually correlated with pre existing mental health conditions, such as general anxiety. Eco-anxiety does not typically create new mental illnesses, rather it exacerbates pre-existing ones. Lastly, there are various strategies the participants used for mitigating the mental health effects of eco-anxiety.