Upcoming events:
Friday, March 22nd at 10am, Room 1116, McCain Building
MA Thesis Proposal presentations
Monday, March 25th at 11:30am, Room 1102, McCain Building
SOSA Honours Information Session
Dr. Pauline Gardiner Barber
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auline has presented several papers over the past few months, including an invited talk, "The Good Migrant: Neoliberal Subordinations and New Economic Subjectivities" at the University of Copenhagen in a migration seminar series on "Landscapes of Labour Migration". This followed a related presentation in a workshop on "Marketization and Migration" at the International Metropolis Conference in Copenhagen in October 2009. She also presented in an invited panel on migration policy at the American Anthropology Association conference in Philadelphia last December. In March 2010, Pauline presented a paper on "Class, Calculation and Commitment: Factors in Immigrant Retention" at the national Metropolis conference in Montreal. She will also present at CASCA in Montréal in early July.Dr. Jerry Barkow
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erry has been appointed Honorary Professor in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is running a project on visual media from QUB, with the help of collaborators at Durham and Essex and funding from the US Air Force’s European Office of Aerospace Research and Development.Dr. Peter M. Butler
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eter has participated in a project proposal, developed by the School of Public Administration in the Faculty of Management, for a series of courses on education leadership that will be delivered to university administrators across Canada with the Canadian Association of University Business Officers. He is currently involved in a project advising with the Nova Scotia Department of Education in research on post-secondary student work patterns. While serving as a member of the Research Analysis Committee, Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission, Peter is also a Research Associate with the Strategic Counsel in Toronto. In July 2009 he was appointed Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University.Dr. Liz Fitting
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iz has organized a panel for the Canadian Anthropology Society Conference (CASCA) to be held in Montreal this spring. The panel is titled "Contested Technologies: Genetically Engineered Plants as Cultural and Political Objects". She will also present a paper at the conference. In addition, Liz’s paper "Biohegemony and Its Discontents in Mexico: En Defensa del Maíz" was accepted as part of the panel "Crisis del Régimen Alimentario Neoliberal y Sus Expresiones en América Latina" for the Latin American Studies Association Congress. Liz also continues her editorial duties for the Review section of the Journal of Peasant Studies.Dr. Christopher Helland
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ver the last year Chris had the opportunity to present his research on religious activity on the Internet at the international conference for the American Academy of Religion and the Anthropology of Religion Association. He has also been invited to the University of Bremen in Germany this summer to lecture on his current research project which examines longdistanced ritual practice facilitated through the Internet and World Wide Web. Chris was also a member of a successful MCRI grant application examining religious diversity in Canada. The $2.5 million grant brings together researchers from 24 different universities to identify the contours of religious diversity in Canada and the potential benefits of approaches to diversity that promote substantive or deep equality and move beyond tolerance and accommodation. Chris anticipates that his book, From Cyberspace to Sacred Space, will be completed in September 2010.Dr. Kregg Hetherington
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regg finished a book manuscript this year entitled "Guerrilla Auditors: Transparency, Democracy and Rural Politics in Post-Cold War Paraguay". He has an ongoing research project with two Paraguayan students on the push by international development organizations to reform land information systems in Latin America. With the help of grants from RDF and SSHRC, Kregg has begun an ethnographic project about the new state bureaucracies created to govern the soybean boom in Paraguay. Over the past year he has given invited talks about his book to the Yale Agrarian Studies Colloquium and Saint Mary’s International Development Studies Seminar and acted as a discussant at the Saint Mary’s conference on "Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change". In the coming months he will be delivering papers at the Society for Cultural Anthropology Meetings in Santa Fe entitled "Beans Have Never Been Modern" and another at the CASCA Annual Meeting in Montreal entitled "Beans As Boundaries". Kregg has also organized a panel called "Nature, Culture and the State" for the Latin American Studies Association meeting in October 2010.Dr. Liesl Gambold
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iesl has been involved in research with international retirement migrants in southern France during her sabbatical (2009-2010). She is trying to understand the decision-making process behind the movement of older people from their country of origin to a foreign country and their integration process once they make the move. In November 2009, Liesl gave a talk entitled "Trends in Retirement Migration in the Mediterranean and Abroad" at the Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme in Aix-en-Provence in France. In May 2010 she will give a talk entitled "The Emotional Institution of Labour and Collectively in Rural Russia" at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, King's College in Scotland.Dr. Jean-Sebastien Guy
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ean-Sebastien gave a presentation called "The Philosophy of Globalization" at the University of King's College in February 2010. The event was organized as a Contemporary Studies Colloquium. In March he gave lecture on Emile Durkheim to the students in the Foundation Year Program at the University of King's College.Dr. Chris Murphy
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fter six and a half years as Chair of the department, Chris has taken a much appreciated six-month sabbatical and is quickly readjusting to the freedom of being a regular faculty member. While on sabbatical he has been working on a number of projects. He is in the process of finishing off a number of Journal articles for publication as well as developing a major research proposal for future funding. In addition, Chris and Dr. Don Clairmont are assisting the Halifax Police to develop and implement an evaluation model for the public safety office, a response to the Mayor’s task force report on public safety in HRM. He is also participating as a member of the provincial advisory committee on an independent police investigation unit and has also participated as a member of the Future of Policing Academic Subcommittee of the Police Sector Council. In March 2010, Chris gave seminars on policing and sociology at the University of Pondicherry as a guest of the Dean of Social Sciences, Dr. S Naidu.Dr. Brian Noble
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rian has been involved in a number of research activities throughout 2009 and into 2010. He continues to organize activities for the Crabgrass Collective, including the symposium "Doing Politics, Undoing Anthropology" held at the 2009 CASCA meeting. While there, Brian presented his paper "Living with / Living Together" and an article entitled "Culture". He has also been engaged in a series of meetings with the MCRI Project called "Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage" and has presented and participated in co-chair meetings in Vancouver and Indiana coordinating discussions on collaborative research relations. In the area of research ethics, Brian recently submitted a comment on the new TCPS revisions called "What Conversation Is the TCPS In?" that is scheduled to appear on the Tricouncil website and several other venues. He is also advancing proposals for research on matters of inter-peoples reconciliation in relation to the practice of treaty-relations, Secwepemc territorial authority and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.Dr. Robin Oakley
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obin and her colleagues in South India are investigating the proliferation of Tamil Siddha medicine against the backdrop of India's rapidly expanding biomedical industry. Her papers (completed and in progress) include the following:• "Mantra as Narrative Healing Among Tamil Siddha Practitioners? Critical Analysis of Narritive in Medical Efficacy" (with Sasicoumar Brumont and Suresh Chandrasekharan. Presented at the 7th Indian Association for Social Science Health Conference on Health, Poverty and Human Development in March 2010 in Varanasi, Benares Hindu University, India)
• "Looking to the Past as a Form of Innovation and Praxis in the Social Sciences: South Indian Heroic Poets and Social Critique" (presented at the International Seminar on Negotiating Interventions in South East Asia in February 2010 at the Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies Rajiv Gandhi Universit Rono Hills, Itanagar Arunachal Pradesh, India)
• "Injecting the Social Factor into Health: Lysenko, Siddha and Peoples Science in South India"
• "Food Consumption and Longetivity Among Two Cohorts of Siddha Practitioners in Tamil Nadu"
• 2010 invited panelist on Cultural Determinants of Health at the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) (hosted at Dalhousie’s Global Health Research Forum in March 2010 in Halifax, NS. This forum was chaired by Verlé Harrop, PhD, Senior Scientist for the National Collaborating Centre Determinants of Health at St. FX. A podcast will be available shortly)
Dr. Mi Park
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i has successfully completed an RDF funded research project entitled "Alliances Across the Border: Transnational Anti-FTA Movements". Another RDF grant has been awarded to her next research project that investigates the prognostic framing of the alter-globalization movement (also known as the global justice movement). Mi presented her paper "Analyzing Competing Visions of Another World in the Anti-Neoliberal Globalization Movement" at the Historical Materialism conference held in January 2010 at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York (CUNY). Expanding on her New York conference paper, Mi is scheduled to present a paper "Imagining Alternatives to Global Capitalism" at the Third Global Studies Conference to be held at Pusan National University in South Korea in June 2010.Dr. Howard Ramos
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oward has continued to pursue a number of different research interests including collaboration with PhD student, Paul Armstrong, and MA student, Andreas Hoffbauer, on a SSHRC funded discursive opportunities project; the writing of the book Seeing Politics Differently with Karen Stanbridge (Memorial University) that is aimed at introducing political sociology to undergraduate students; he has also collaborated with Dr. Yoko Yoshida on a number of projects that look at the longitudinal study of immigrants in Canada which focus on why immigrants leave Atlantic Canada; and, finally, Howard has worked with Madine Vanderplaat (Saint Mary’s University) and Dr. Yoko Yoshida (Dalhousie University) to look at the role of family in immigration and the gender centered analysis of recent immigrants. Howard will also organize the McKay Lecture series for 2010-2011 which will look at global change and the need for a new social imagination.Dr. Martha Radice
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artha recently organized a panel for the 12th National Metropolis Congress held in Montréal in March 2010 called "Home Outside the Home? Building Inclusive Public Spaces". She and Karl Schmid, an anthropology post-doctoral scholar at York University, are co-organizing a panel for the Annual Conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d'anthropologie, which will be held in Montréal from May 31 to June 2, 2010. Their panel is called "Urban Connections: Anthropological Understandings and Interdisciplinary Networks".Martha was recently awarded a pilot project research grant from the Atlantic Metropolis Centre for a project investigating the role of public libraries in immigrant integration in Halifax. She will also be presenting a paper at CASCA in a symposium organized by Vered Amit and Pauline Gardiner Barber. The symposium is called "Movement and the Dilemmas of Cosmopolitan Ethics and Practices" and the title of her paper is "Citizens of the World in the Street? Figures of the Cosmopolitan and the Non-Cosmopolitan in Montréal".
Martha has also been invited to present her research at an Atlantic Metropolis Centre symposium at the Université de Moncton, La petite communauté accueillante et la représentation de l'autre au Canada Atlantique (small welcoming communities and representation of the Other in Atlantic Canada) in April 2010.
Dr. Yoko Yoshida
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ogether with Dr. Howard Ramos, Yoko presented a paper titled "Why Do Immigrants Leave Atlantic Canada?" at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Speaker’s Series and the Atlantic Metropolis Centre in November 2009. They plan to give a similar talk at the CSA Annual Meeting and Conference in May 2010.Yoko is currently involved in two major research projects with Dr. Vanderplaat (Saint Mary’s University) and Dr. Ramos (Dalhousie University). One is called "The Role of Spouses and Children in the Decision to Settle or Not to Settle into a Certain Community: A Focus on Atlantic Canada". The other is "Preliminary Gender Analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada".
Between October 2009 and April 2010 Yoko has provided two statistical workshops (Introduction to STATA and Intermediate STATA workshop) for the Atlantic Research Data Centre. She also presented a paper on handling missing observations at a community ealth and Epidemiology Department’s speaker series.
On November 6, Kregg Hetherington was invited to present a paper at the Yale Agrarian Studies Colloquium Series “Hinterlands, Frontiers, Cities, and States:
Transactions and Identity.” Dr. Hetherington’s paper was titled “Guerrilla Auditors and Duplicitous Documents: Information, Transparency and Land Struggles in Paraguay.” On the 16th and 17th of October, Dr. Hetherington was discussant at a conference at St. Mary's University called "Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change.” He has also recently published the article "The strategic incoherence of development: marketing expertise in the World Development Report," in the Journal of Peasant Studies.
At the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Dr. Christopher Helland presented the paper “(Virtually) Been There, (Virtually) Done That: Ritual Practice of the Hip and Wired in the Hindu Tradition.” His paper was part of a panel that examined the new ritual development of “Cyber Puja.”
Dr. Emma Whelan (on leave, 2010-11) presented a paper at the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology meetings in Manchester, England, September 3-5. The paper, co-authored by Mark Asbridge (Community Health & Epidemiology) and SOSA PhD student Susan Haydt, was entitled "Who's Responsible? Pain Activists and Experts on the 'OxyContin Crisis' in North America." It gave an overview of a 4-year study on the problematization of OxyContin, a prescription painkiller, and the ways those who support access to the drug for pain treatment respond to its problematization with their own moral regulation and responsibilization
strategies.
The department is pleased to announce that three of their students have received Social Science and Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) CGS Doctoral Scholarships in the 2009/2010 competition. The recipients are Catherine Bryan and Tonya Canning, current PhD (Anthropology) students in our department. The third recipient is Chris Giacomantonio, graduated in May 2009 with a Masters of Arts (Sociology). He continues his studies at Oxford University pursuing his doctoral degree.
Dr. Emma Whelan (on leave, 2010-11) has been awarded a Visiting Researcher Stay at the Fondation Brocher in Hermance, near Geneva, Switzerland. The Fondation's Stays provide accommodation, office space and living expenses to visiting scholars while they study the social, legal and ethical implications of technology in medicine. During her stay in February and March 2010, Dr. Whelan will begin her study of the use of online communication tools in the latest revision of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, working at the Fondation and the WHO Library in Geneva.
An article by Dr. Emma Whelan (on leave, 2010-11) appears in the international interdisciplinary journal Social Science & Medicine, 68(8), April 2009. The article, entitled "Negotiating science and experience in medical knowledge: Gynaecologists on endometriosis," examines the use of the concepts of science and experience as epistemic devices in gynaecological journal articles from 1985 to 2000, in the context of the concurrent rise of the movements for evidence-based and patient-centred medicine.
The department is pleased to announce that two of their faculty have received Social Science and Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Standard Research Grants in the 2008/2009 competition. Dr. Robin Oakley was awarded an SRG for her project titled “People's Science in South India: Biomedicine and Ancient Healing at the Crossroads.” Dr. Christopher Helland was awarded an SRG for his project titled “Far Away—So Close: Assessing the Impact and Implications of the Internet and World Wide Web on Diaspora Religion.” Both scholars have received funding to conduct their fieldwork and research for the next several years.
In March, Dr. Christopher Helland presented a paper at the Biannual Joint Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of Religion in Asilomar, California. The theme of the conference was "Moments of Crisis: Decision, Transformation, Catharsis, Critique." His paper was titled “Engineering an Alternative Ending: Creating Utopian Communities and Sacred Spaces in Cyberspace.”
Dr. Robin Oakley presented an Invited paper titled "Defying Profit-Based Medicine: Tamil Siddha Practitoners Perceptions and Practices of Healing" at the Sixth Conference of the Indian Association of Social Sciences and Health on Health, Equity and Human Rights March 7-8, 2009 at Pondicherry Central University, Puducherry, India.
Dr. Robin Oakley presented an invited paper at the the 4th Inter-Congress of Indian National Confederation and Academy of Anthropologist (INCAA) in collaboration with The Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad, India on the theme of Anthropology in India: Current Epistemiology and Future Challenges (February 21-23, 2009). Her paper was presented in the session "Inequality, Exclusion and Politics," organized by Prof N.Sudhakar Rao, Department of Anthropology, University of Hyderabad.
Dr. Liz Fitting organized a panel entitled "Contested ground: Agricultural GMOs and
rural futures" at the American Anthropology Association's annual conference in
San Francisco this November. As part of the panel, she presented a paper which
summarized her ongoing research in Mexico.
Dr. Liesl Gambold organized a session at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association titled “Common Work and Collective Emotions” where she presented the paper “Emotional Banking: Saving for the Future in Times of Change”. She also co-taught a one week graduate level course to natural science students at Hue University Sciences in Hue, Vietnam, with Dr. Pauline Gardiner Barber. The course was Gender and Sustainable Development and there were approximately 17 students.
Dr. Robin Oakley was invited to present the Professor J.K. Bose Memorial Lecuture at the International Seminar on Humanity and Applied Social Science in BIDISA (Khardapur, West Bengal), India this December. Her Lecture was entitled: "Biomedicine and Traditional Healing at the Crossroads in India : A Critical Anthropological Analysis". The seminar was well attended by social scientists and research scholars from all over India.
Dr. Christopher Helland was invited to present a paper at the “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual” conference in Heidelberg, Germany. The conference was hosted by the Collaborative Research Centre "Ritual Dynamics" (SFB 619 "Ritualdynamik") which is an interdisciplinary centre to research the dynamics of ritual. It is the world's largest research centre dedicated solely to investigating these issues, with over 90 scientists and researchers working in seventeen sub-projects. Dr. Helland’s paper was in the panel “Ritual and Media”, which discussed the effect new media is having on ritual practice.
Dr. Subramanyam Naidu, Senior Anthropologist and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and International Studies, Pondicherry University, is Guest Faculty in our department. He is here in a Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Enrichment Fellowship to develop a cirriculm for a new Canadian Studies Program at his University. Dr. Naidu has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among South Asian tribal communities, and his areas of speciality include Medical Anthropology and Hinduism. Pondicherry Central University is a federal Indian University and the Department of Anthropology has a strong graduate program with MA, MPhil and PhD programs.
Dr. Christopher Helland has published a chapter in the new book, Religion and Diversity in Canada, edited by Lori Beaman and Peter Beyer. Helland’s chapter “Canadian Religious Diversity Online: A Network of Possibilities” explores the ways in which religious groups are deploying new technologies to present themselves to the communities in which they live and to develop and maintain social networks. “Helland’s work also raises the important point that religious diversity within Canada is intimately connected to a global religious community for which the boundaries of nation state have limited meaning.”
Dr. Mi Park has just published her book, Democracy and Social Change: A History of South Korean student Movements,1980-2000, with Peter Lang. "The book explains the emergence of the radical student movement and the subsequent political transformation in South Korea in the last two decades. It pays particular attention to the various organizing methods, the patterns of changing ideologies, and political tactics of the student movement. With extensive interview materials taken from former student activists, the book provides insightful insiders' knowledge of what had happened in the student movement. By situating the South Korean student movement in its broad socio-historical contexts, it investigates the interplay of structural forces and agency to explain the political transformation of South Korea between 1980 and 2000." For more information go to:
http://www.peterlang.com/Index.cfm?vID=11066&vHR=1&vUR=2&vUUR=3&vLang=F
Dr. Pauline Gardiner Barber’s paper "Cell Phones, Complicity, and Class Politics in the Philippine Labour Diaspora" is now published in Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology 51 28-42. This is part of a special theme section on "Migrants, Mobility and Mobilization" which she co-edited with Winnie Lem (Trent University). She also presented a paper at the International Studies Association conference in San Francisco in March. The paper "Lost in Translation? Policy Border crossings in Philippine-Canada Migration" represents one aspect of her SSHRC funded research on Global Migration and New Economic Subjectivities. This project provides opportunities for graduate researchers at Dalhousie and Guelph, as does the Metropolis project. The Atlantic Metropolis Centre hosted the national conference on immigration and citizenship policy related research in April and Dalhousie was well represented at the conference. Pauline Gardiner Barber’s panel on the Ideal Immigrant included papers from Dalhousie students Sinziana Chira (SOSA MA 2008) and Joseph Nyemah (IDS MA 2008). Natasha Hanson, Will Silver and Chris Giacomantonio were among the SOSA graduates who volunteered at the conference.
Dr. Brian Noble was featured in the Dal News for his work examining intellectual property and cultural heritage. Dr. Noble is a co-investigator on the project "Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage: Theory, Practice, Policy, Ethics." The project has received an award of $2.5 million from SSHRC and $4 million in support from participating universities. For the full story go to: http://dalnews.dal.ca/ (May 29, 2008).
Many members of the SOSA department, past and present, faculty and students, participated in this year's CASCA (Canadian Antrhopology Society/Societe Canadienne d'Antropologie) Conference at Carleton University in Ottawa May 7-10. Professors Gambold and DuBois were there (as was Prof. Janice Graham, cross-appointed from Bioethics). Current students in attendance included: Katrina Hill, Christina Holmes, Liz Toller, Erika McCroskey, Claire Poirier. Alumni included: J. Dylan Turner (PhD student at CUNY) Chantalle LeBlanc and Yonelis Negri (both PhD students at Toronto), Mary Gaudet, Maya Shapiro, (PhD students at York), Maggie Cummings (PhD York), Stacey Lockerbie (PhD student at McMaster), Matt Theoret (MA student at Waterloo). It was a pleasure to see so many Dal people! Look for a Dal social at next year's CASCA.
Dr. Lindsay DuBois participated as a discussant at the recent CASCA conference, May 7-10. On May 23, she presented a paper "The Romance of Reminiscence: Problems posed by life histories with activist pensioners in Argentina" at the symposium The Politics of Forgetting: Stories to Pass On. The symposium was sponsored by the Centre of Excellence on Political Theory and Conceptual Change, Jyvaskla, Finland and the University of King's College, Halifax. She is also pleased to report that her book, The Politics of the Past in an Argentine Working-class
Neighbourhood (2005) University of Toronto Press, is now available in paper.
Dr. Liesl Gambold has a piece in this edition of Anthropology News (Volume 49, Number 5, May 2008), called “Retirement Migrants: The Global Flow of the Non-Working.” It is a "Commentary" in the In Focus series on Migration Policy and Transnationality. The piece discusses the critical importance of retirement as baby-boomers begin to retire and the related trend of retirees moving across international borders to live out the later part of their life course.
2007/2008 SOSA Department News
2006/2007 SOSA Department News
2005/2006 SOSA Department News