 |
 |
Home | About Us | Resources | Contact Us |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||
|
UPCOMING EVENTS GUEST LECTURER Wednesday, November 16, 2011 "The Social Lives of Older Widowers ******************************************* BOOK LAUNCH
Friday, November 25, 2011
****************************************** PAST EVENTS Sixth Annual Qualitative Lecture and Worskshop Keynote Speaker Lecture In this talk Jeff Ferrell recounts his long-term participation in the illicit worlds of urban trash picking, informal street recycling, and second-hand living. Upon returning to his home town of Ft. Worth, Texas, Jeff spent a year living as a full-time trash picker and ‘dumpster diver’, travelling from trash pile to trash pile on a scrounged bicycle, learning the tricks of the trade from those he met in the streets and alleys, and dodging the attention of police officers and security guards. Since that time he has written the book Empire of Scrounge about his adventures and returned to conventional work as a professor—but he continues to dumpster dive daily, with most of his finds now going to charity. In telling his story, Jeff takes us from the back alleys of Ft. Worth and other North American cities to the global economy of waste, exploring the contemporary culture of consumption and disposability, and suggesting some street-level alternatives for sustainable living. Workshop The past few decades have a seen a distinct turn toward reflexivity and self-awareness in ethnographic research, as embodied most clearly in the practice of authoethnography—the ethnographic exploration of the self. If such exploration is not to devolve into narcissistic self-examination, though, it must remain firmly situated within the larger practice of sociological ethnography. The self that is the subject of autoethnography can most usefully be investigated not as an isolated entity, for example, but as intertwined with the lives of others and emerging within and between social situations. Likewise, the disjunction between ethnographers’ professional status and their in-the-field identities and experiences—that is, the various forms of status inconsistency that develop within ethnographic work—can be utilized to reveal deep structures of power, marginalization, and self. In all of this, autoethnography can help make manifest emotional and epistemic connections between ethnographers and their subjects of study, and can serve as an important narrative tool for creating affiliations between ethnographers and their audiences. Ultimately, authoethnography of this sort may even suggest a fusing of ethnographic sensibility and everyday life, and so a sort of post-methodological social research. *************************************** BOOK LAUNCH
Friday, September 16, 2011
************************************** Keynote Speaker Lecture
Many philosophies of well-being share a common mantra, and that is to live in the present moment. This is an established part of many spiritual traditions and the practices of mindfulness are now becoming more prominent in many healing professions including medicine, psychology, addictions and family therapy. A search of the web reveals that mindfulness is now advocated for just about anything you can imagine including: golf swings, investment strategies, poker playing, improving optimism, overcoming depression, preventing cancer, attracting women (or men), weight loss, and being a better mother. In my own efforts to pay attention to the present, I am always amazed at how difficult it is to accomplish such a simple task. Apparently, I am not alone. The focus of this talk is to examine our inclinations to live any time but now. I report on my research that focuses on an examination of mindfulness blogs as a way to understand the obstacles that get in the way of being mindful in a variety of contexts. I approach this puzzle from my background as a student of time. As a sociologist, I have been interested not so much in how much time people spend in various activities, but have sought to understand how people subjectively live in the past, present and future. It is the challenge of subjectively being in the present that is particularly difficult and the focus of this presentation. Workshop Grounded theory methodology is premised on the assumption that the outcome of our analysis is theory. Considerable confusion exists, however, about what theory is, how it is created and how we can know a good theory from a bad one. Furthermore, many articles that are published using grounded theory methodology do not have explicit theory as part of the final product. The construction of a good theory is an art form that has few guideposts. Nevertheless, theories do not just emerge from data, but are carefully shaped throughout the entire research process. In this workshop, we will discuss the stages in the development of a grounded theory, the interplay between induction, deduction and abduction in the process of generating theory and how the processes of theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation serve theory development. There will also be a discussion of how we evaluate generated theories and move toward formal theory. I will be using examples from several qualitative studies that I have conducted including infertility, fatherhood and how women and men negotiate time in families. ************************************** Monday, April 26, 2010 This talk presents an overview of the research on late life widowhood that I have conducted over the last (almost) twenty years. Widowhood, for older women at least, is a highly likely life event and whilst less common for men, it nevertheless carries with it profound consequences. This talk focuses on three broad aspects. First, in the ugly I talk about the effects on mental and physical health. I discuss the rational discussions older widowed men have about the value of their lives. Second, in the (not so) bad, I examine three areas where I have been able to identify factors that are helpful in dealing with bereavement, and other factors that are less than helpful. Finally, in the good, I examine the factors that determine whether widowed people are resilient. I will also discuss the ways that older widowed people talk about their widowhood focusing on masculinity, narrative and identity. I also draw attention to issues of gender, social relationships, and individual differences that impact on the experiences of late-life widowed people. **************************************** BOOK LAUNCH
Friday, April 16, 2010
Fourth Annual Qualitative Lecture and Workshop Keynote Speaker Lecture Universities are embedded in an ever-changing technological landscape that is reshaping modern education, as well as the cities that host these institutions. Academic and public libraries must meet individuals’ varied information needs in campus and community environments that are continually evolving to meet today’s technological possibilities. Wireless computing, electronic books, 24-hour chat reference, social computing (such as Facebook, Twitter and wikis) and other recent advances are changing the ways that librarians, teachers and people engage in libraries. At the same time, more people are returning to postsecondary study; university administrators must struggle to keep pace in terms of space and resource planning, faculty must integrate new technologies into the classroom, while students must find available spaces where they can read, write, and collaborate on group projects. In designing effective spaces for students to engage in their academic work – in classrooms, computing labs, and in the academic library – universities must respond to undergraduate students’ pedagogical and social needs. This talk will examine recent research on the ways that students engage with their academic and community environments – from the academic library to computing labs and campus social spaces – including the emotional impact of physical spaces and technologies on how we live and learn in today’s knowledge economy. Workshop Qualitative research involves the organization of extremely rich data in a process that can prove overwhelming and time-consuming – and methods texts offer few concrete approaches to the intellectual work of the coding process. The theory and principles that govern information scientists’ approaches to organizing knowledge offer solutions for coding qualitative data – and allow researchers to address many troubling questions: How precise and specific should the codes be? How do you decide what one code ‘means’, and when new meaning demands a new code? When does the coding process end? How do these decisions affect data analysis? This workshop will explore techniques for assigning effective codes and categories to qualitative data – from the intellectual work of category creation to implications for effective data analysis – by applying the core principles of knowledge organization to qualitative data. The workshop will include a hands-on exercise with sample interview transcripts. **************************************** Third Annual Qualitative Lecture and Workshop Keynote Speaker Lecture Workshop Two of the most dramatic transformations in Canadian families over the past four decades have been increases in fathers’ responsibility for childcare and mothers’ responsibility for breadwinning. Evidence of this shift can be seen in the growing numbers of stay-at-home fathers, the rise of single-father and gay father households, as well as the astonishing fact that Canadian women are primary breadwinners in one-third of dual-earner households. Set against this changing social landscape, Andrea Doucet shines a spotlight on the lives of fathers who take on sole or shared primary care of children, (specifically stay-at-home fathers) and mothers who are primary breadwinners. Doucet spent nearly four years talking to over 100 Canadian fathers – truck drivers, mechanics, writers, physicians, and accountants, as well as gay fathers, Aboriginal fathers and ethnic minority and immigrant fathers. Those conversations led to a book entitled Do Men Mother? as well as to her current research on women who are primary breadwinners. In her lecture, Doucet tells a story about fathers and mothers who are taking on the work that has, for centuries, been overwhelmingly in the hands, minds, and hearts of the other gender. What happens to families, gender relations, and to masculinities and femininities when men and women move into work, practices and identities that have culturally, socially, and symbolically been centrally tied to the other gender? What happens when men and women turn the world on its head? Andrea Doucet is Professor of Sociology at Carleton University. Her book Do Men Mother? (University of Toronto Press, 2006) was awarded the John Porter Tradition of Excellence book Award by the Canadian Sociology Association. She is the author of over thirty book chapters and articles and co-author of a new book entitled Gender Relations (with Janet Siltanen, Oxford University Press, 2008). She is the 2007 recipient of the SSHRC Thérèse Casgrain Fellowship, from which she is currently writing a book on women as primary breadwinners, tentatively titled: Bread and Roses and the Kitchen Sink **************************************** Second Annual Qualitative Lecture and Workshop Keynote Speakers This presentation examines the ways in which the family home (its material structure and arrangements) influences the socialization of family members. This presentation's analysis is based upon the view that architectural features are cues that people interpret and act upon in their relationship to others. In this study they attempt to describe the typical characteristics of family home dining rooms, living rooms, entrances, exits, "family rooms", bathrooms, and - the specific topic of this presentation - bedrooms, and then to interpret the behaviour that occurs within. Workshop In the social production of qualitative research knowledge much has been written about selecting settings, gathering data, coding the information obtained, theoretical sampling, saturation and sorting, and producing draft manuscripts. However, before research can become part of the disciple's core, it must be published. Relatively little is known about negotiations that go on between authors, editors, and reviewers. In addition to some of these topics, they will also discuss a few of the more "elaborate" negotiations that went on "backstage" before some of their research was accepted for publication. ****************************************** First Annual Qualitative Lecture and Workshop Keynote Speaker Lecture What’s happening when parents take their kids to the zoo? More than you might think, I claim. I will illustrate some uses of a microsociology of public space through analysis of the invisible work that supports the “family outing” and a consideration of how the outing is shaped by its social and spatial contexts. The research raises questions about changing economies in North America and the politics of public provision for families. Workshop I will present an overview of several varieties of interview research, and discuss some of the different ways that interview researchers think about “experience.” My presentation will emphasize narrative analysis and institutional ethnography, approaches to interviewing that work closely with language and talk. In an interactive portion of the workshop, I will discuss with participants issues in designing interview studies, conducting interviews, and beginning to analyze interview data.
|
|||||
© 2006 Atlantic Centre for Qualitative Research and Analysis |
||||||
