VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Competing Subjectivities: A Comparative Study of Low-paid Care Workers in Greater Seoul and the Los Angeles Koreatown
Keywords: Care work
Domestic service work
IHSS
LTCI
Subjectivity
Women's labor

This dissertation examines how low-paid care workers, who are stratified into different sectors of the care labor market along gender, ethnicity, migration, and citizenship, form agentic political subjectivities. Through a comparative analysis of four different groups, I analyze how low-paid care workers who do similar work but are unequally positioned within social contexts give meaning to their work and cultivate a sense of worth, entitlement and dignity in relation to other care workers as well as vis-à-vis the state. Through multi-sited ethnographic research, including 98 in-depth interviews with workers in domestic service and eldercare sectors in Greater Seoul, South Korea and the Koreatown community of Los Angeles, California, I find that care workers develop distinct political subjectivities in response to their continuing precarity. This subject formation is a multi-level process that is mediated by three contexts: policy regimes, labour markets, and organizations, such as labour unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). At the policy regime level, state policies sort and channel marginalized women into the low-paid care market through targeted forms of recruitment that rely on discourses such as “co-ethnics,” “self-sufficient women,” and “care experts.” These discourses define the kind of care that different groups of workers are expected to provide, yet workers complement and further articulate the meanings of policy discourses through their own re-interpretations of policies. In doing so, they contribute to and reinforce the structure of inequality that hierarchically divides care workers along ethnicity, migration and citizenship. In this process, organizations play a significant role in translating state policies in different ways, providing workers with sources of pride, alternative language and sense of entitlement as legitimate right-bearers. Each empirical chapters of the dissertation focuses on a specific care worker group to elaborate how divergent configurations of state policies, labour organization and labour market dynamics shape multi-level processes of subject formation. By analyzing distinct subjectivity building projects, this dissertation shows that care workers’ struggles for survival and dignity are often linked to boundary drawing practices against other care workers, limiting the possibilities for cross-ethnic solidarity and the emancipatory potential of their struggles.
Reconceptualizing Urban Warfare In Canada: Exploring the Relationship between Trauma, Post-traumatic Stress, And Violence Among Male Combat Soldiers and 'Street Soldiers'
Keywords: Gang Violence
PTSD
Trauma

When we hear the word “trauma” we often conflate this term with the experiences of combat soldiers returning from war. While the current state of the art on trauma/Dissociation and PTSD has predominantly focused on the traumatic experiences of combat soldiers, less is known about other vulnerable populations who are exposed to similar types of war-related violence, including gang members (or street soldiers). Drawing on a multiple-case study approach, including, in-depth qualitative interviews, my study compared and contrasted the experiences/stories of combat veterans with those of ex-gang members as a way to understand the psychological sequelae of “gang violence”. Building on the knowledge on combat trauma, I sought to develop a Trauma-Based Theory of Gang Violence that identifies how pre-existing (i.e. poverty, masculinity and exposure to “pre-war” violence), peri-traumatic (i.e. indoctrination and exposure to violence) and post-traumatic factors (i.e. transition stress, post-traumatic stress and the reenactment of trauma) may contribute to gang membership and the cycle of violence that permeates marginalized/gang-dominated communities.
The Fit Interview and Cultural Matching: Examining Equity in Hiring Processes in Law Firms in Canada
Keywords: bias
cultural
fit
interview
law
matching

When someone says, “This person is a perfect fit for the job,” I find myself asking, “what does it mean to fit?” and “who fits and who doesn’t?” In many interview processes, recruiters assess a candidate’s fit, that is how well suited they believe the candidate is to a given workplace. Big law firms in Toronto have developed a structured interview process that formalizes the practice of assessing candidates for fit, which is referred to in this study as the fit interview. This study examines how racialized candidates are affected by the fit interview, documenting their stories to understand how they made meaning of their experiences. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 25 racialized interviewees and 5 recruiters, two of whom were racialized, who have participated in recruitment in big law firms in Toronto. The participants’ narratives were interpreted using critical qualitative analysis, rooted in critical race, feminist, and intersectional theories. All participants described experiences in the fit interview as consistent with cultural matching, that is recruiters tending to hire candidates similar to themselves in terms of personal interests, values and backgrounds, which are often linked to social identities (i.e., race, gender, class, etc.). Participants confirmed that cultural matching was more determinative in assessing candidates than competence, skills, or professional background. Participants believed that their race, gender, and class affected recruiters’ perception of whether they were a cultural match. In general, interviewees found the fit interview alienating, invalidating, and traumatizing. This study suggests that the fit interview may serve as a barrier to racialized candidates’ entry into law firms. I conclude by making recommendations for operational change, informed by the participants’ experiences and suggestions, the literature, and my experience consulting on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The theories in which this study is rooted call on researchers to catalyze systemic change by conveying findings to those who have the capacity to enact change and transform systems. Although this study is focussed on experiences of racialized people in big law firms, my hope is that the findings prompt other businesses and organizations in Canada to critically re-examine their recruitment and retention practices.
Making Rural Finance in Contemporary China: National Policies, Local Practices, Geographical Embeddedness
Keywords: China
Polanyi
rural development
rural finance
social studies of finance

Since the 2000s, the changing global financial landscape has attracted increasing attention from geographers, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis. China’s rural banking sector, still a marginal site in research on the geographies of finance, is a fast-growing financial frontier. In the decade since 2008, bank credit issued to the rural sector has increased six fold to 4.6 trillion USD in 2018. The rapid expansion of this financial frontier owes much to ongoing reforms led by the Chinese state. Since 2003, the Chinese government has been initiating a series of market-based reforms aimed at building a “modern rural financial system” to better support farmers, agriculture and rural development. This dissertation explores the changes that have reshaped the banking system in rural China as a distinct case of financialization. Building on economic geography scholarship that argues the need for financialization to be understood as place-specific social processes, this research adopts a multi-scalar approach. I link a macro-level political economic analysis of China’s rural financial policies with ground-level observation of financial practice. Primary research methods include ethnographically-informed research in a rural bank in Greater Chengdu Area (Sichuan Province), and textual analysis of policy documents and historical archives. The research finds that the transformation of the banking system in rural China that began in the early 2000s has an internal logic shaped by the political economic conditions of contemporary China, with traces of the ideals and practices of socialist development in China. Given such, China’s rural financialization cannot be framed as following a straightforward neoliberalization process, the often-applied meta-frame for financialization. Rather than providing a local variant of neoliberal globalization, I argue that financialization in rural China needs to be understood as a localized, contextualized process – the trajectory of which is shaped by contested logics operating at multiple scales.
Molecular Requirements of Class Switch Recombination
Keywords: Cas9
CRISPR
CSR
DNA repair
NHEJ
V(D)J

To meet the depth and breadth of antigen space brought to bear by potential pathogens, adaptive immunity requires somatic diversification of antigen receptors through programmed DNA damage and concomitant recombination and repair of antigen receptor loci. This biological fact is conserved in all vertebrate lineages and is elaborated upon with secondary phenomena such as class switch recombination (CSR). Together, these recombinatorial adaptive immune processes are recapitulated billions of times over in each organism, mostly without negative consequences such as undesirable mutagenesis and genomic instability. This juxtaposition of damage and repair in a physiological model has been felicitous to the understanding of DNA repair more generally, and insights into the basis of adaptive immunity and DNA repair have played off together symbiotically. In that tradition, this manuscript endeavours to examine the molecular requirements of class switch recombination (CSR) along two complementary axes. Firstly, although it is known that double-stranded breaks (DSB) are substrates necessary for CSR, it is unknown how the structure and polarity of DSBs affects downstream DNA repair. Using the Cas9 enzyme and related variants, I generated DSBs of defined structures near the switch regions of the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus (Igh) and examined the resultant CSR frequency and repair junction characteristics. I found that single-stranded breaks upwards of 250 bp apart on opposite strands could resolve as DSBs in CSR. Moreover, 5′ DSBs were more preferred CSR substrates than 3′ DSBs, although both types of staggered DSBs had a higher level of resection and microhomology usage at the repair junction than blunt DSBs. Taken together, these observations suggest that DSB structure influences the type of repair effected as well as the frequency of productive CSR. I also investigated the effect of the newly-identified shieldin complex downstream of 53BP1 on concluding CSR. Shld2–/– B cells have profoundly impaired CSR, although B cell development and V(D)J recombination were not grossly affected. Additionally, I observed an increased Ig-low population in shieldin-deficient switching B cells that was the result of extreme resection impairing Ig expression, rather than increased inversional recombination, and congruent with the proposed function of shieldin.
Legal Conceptions of Sexual Violation in Late Islamic Law and Modern Jordan
Keywords: Islam
Jordan
Rape
Sexual assault

Despite the miscarriages of justice that occur when modern governments purport to implement Islamic laws on rape, and despite continuing interest among some Muslims in present-day applications of Islamic law, not enough research exists on the approach to sexual violations in Islamic jurisprudence. Further, little is known regarding the legal approach of most Muslim-majority countries to sexual violence. Therefore, this dissertation addresses two main questions: First, how does Islamic law, as conceived by the Ḥanafī, Mālikī and Shāfīʿī schools from the 15th CE/9th h century onward, conceptualize sexual violence? Second, how does the law in Jordan conceptualize this issue? Based on analysis of fiqh and fatwās, and building on Hina Azam’s work, Muslim jurists primarily conceive of rape as a moral transgression against God rather than a crime against an individual victim. The association of rape with zinā (illicit intercourse), where jurists aim to cover the sin, precludes prosecution and compensation in many rape cases and impacts related issues such as reporting of sexual violence and standards of coercion. Further, alternate approaches to rape under usurpation (ightiṣāb) and banditry (ḥirāba), as well as tort compensation for injuries from sexual violence, are intertwined with moral considerations. Moreover, the moral framework combined with gendered concepts leads to additional difficulties for male victims. Analysis of criminal legislation, commentaries and a sample of court decisions indicates that Jordan has adopted a secular system for criminal law that contains little direct relation to Islamic jurisprudence. However, despite largely treating sexual violence as a crime against an individual victim, Jordan maintains a partially moral notion of sexual offences. While the moral slant has decreased in recent years, and although court judgments do not explicitly incorporate notions not found in the Criminal Code, there is some indication of non-written social mores guiding aspects of judicial proceedings.
Benevolence Versus Malevolence: The Development of Compassion and Schadenfreude and Their Links to Social Behaviour
Keywords: Aggression
Compassion
Development
Emotion
Prosocial Behaviour
Schadenfreude

Humans are capable of both benevolence and malevolence, but why and under which conditions do each of these capacities prevail? The aim of this dissertation was to shed light on the possible causes, consequences, and development of these divergent dispositions, specifically focusing on how two ethically relevant emotions—compassion and schadenfreude—relate to specific benevolent and malevolent behaviours across childhood and adolescence. Study 1 assessed children’s narratives of compassion, the development of compassion from mid-childhood to mid-adolescence, and whether children with different propensities for compassion varied in their prosocial behaviour. Children’s real-life experiences of compassion were multifaceted—they occurred following both physical and psychological harm and prompted various prosocial responses. Further, adolescents reported lower levels of compassionate concern than did children, and children and adolescents who expressed moderate to high levels of compassion had a higher propensity for prosocial behaviour than those who expressed little or no compassion. Employing a narrative approach, Study 2 explored how adolescents make meaning of their real-life experiences of schadenfreude. Findings showed that adolescents often mentioned feeling schadenfreude following another’s physical harm and failure for reasons of deservingness and personal gain. Age-related increases in deservingness themes were found. Study 3 assessed children’s feelings of schadenfreude in social conflict situations and how schadenfreude relates to compassion-related responding and aggressive behaviour. Findings revealed that schadenfreude was a prevalent emotional response to the “deserved” misfortune of a hypothetical peer, and that adolescents felt higher levels of schadenfreude than children. Schadenfreude rarely co-occurred with feelings of compassion and stronger feelings of schadenfreude predicted higher levels of physical aggression in girls but not boys. This dissertation contributed to our understanding of the complexities underlying the development of compassion and schadenfreude—separately and in tandem. In doing so, it showed that children may be more inclined to experience schadenfreude over compassion in contexts of deservingness with age, which calls for developmentally tailored interventions that promote kind and deter unkind emotions in childhood and adolescence. Overall, this dissertation unearthed the multifaceted nature of these emotions and provided evidence for their role in benevolent and malevolent outcomes.
From Life-like to Mind-like Explanation: Natural Agency and the Cognitive Sciences
Keywords: Affordances
Agency
Cognition
Complexity
Enactivism
Teleology

This dissertation argues that cognition is a kind of natural agency. Natural agency is the capacity that certain systems have to act in accordance with their own norms. Natural agents are systems that bias their repertoires in response to affordances in the pursuit of their goals. Cognition is a special mode of this general phenomenon. Cognitive systems are agents that have the additional capacity to actively take their worlds to be certain ways, regardless of whether the world is really that way. In this way, cognitive systems are desituated. Desituatedness is the root of specifically cognitive capacities for representation and abstraction. There are two main reasons why this view needs defending. First, natural agency is typically viewed as incompatible with natural science because it is committed to a teleological mode of explanation. Second, cognition is typically held to be categorically distinct from natural agency. This dissertation argues against both of these views. It argues against the incompatibility of agency and natural science by demonstrating that systems biology, general systems theory, and sciences that deal with complex systems have typically underappreciated conceptual and theoretical resources for grounding agency in the causal structure of the world. These conceptual resources do not, however, reduce agency to systems theory because the normativity inherent in agency demands descriptive resources beyond those of even the most sophisticated systems theory. It argues against the categorical difference between natural agency and cognition by pointing out that separating cognition from a richer web of situated, ecologically embedded relations between the agent and the world generates the frame problem, which is an insuperable obstacle to making cognition that is sufficiently responsive to the complexity of the world. Rooting cognition in natural agency is a more robust empirical bet for theorizing cognition and artificial intelligence.
The Capacity and Resolution of Visual Memory in a Statistically Structured Environment
Keywords: ensemble processing
interference
memory
visual working memory

In order to navigate the complex visual world around us, our visual memory systems must constantly manage trade-offs between capacity and resolution. Determining the optimal balance between the amount of retained information and the precision of such representation is critical to serving the goal at hand. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that this trade-off can be strongly influenced by the statistical structure of visual input. Statistical dependencies can arise either through similarity between simultaneously encoded memory items, or through similar or dissimilar visual interference. This dissertation will provide a systematic examination of how statistical covariance of information, measured by visual similarity, influences visual memory representation. Chapters 2 and 3 investigate how the similarity of visual interference can influence the granularity of what is maintained and ultimately recalled from visual working memory. Specifically, I demonstrate that dissimilar interference disrupts the coarse-grained aspects of representation, while interference of intermediate similarity disrupts the fine-grained aspects. Furthermore, my results also suggest that highly similar interference can be attenuated through surround suppression mechanisms. In Chapter 4, I extend this framework to apply to similarity between items simultaneously held in visual working memory. Finally, in Chapter 5, I investigated the neural underpinnings of how the visual memory system handles large sets of correlated items. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multi-voxel pattern analysis, I show that the visual system can aggregate multiple similar items into an ensemble representation as early as early visual cortex. Overall, this dissertation looks to further our understanding of how visual memory is affected by, and can adapt to, the statistical structure of the visual environment.
Learning to Think Like a Lawyer: Solving Ill-structured Problems
Keywords: future of law
ill-structured problems
law school
legal curriculum
legal education
thinking like a lawyer

Law schools often say that they aim to teach students to think like a lawyer. But what it means to think like a lawyer has never been static. Modes of legal analysis and argumentation have changed over time. Now, social and technological changes have transformed what it means to think like a lawyer once again. This time, though, thinking like a lawyer has expanded beyond different modes of analytical thinking to include judgment and creative thinking as well. Thinking like a lawyer in this more expansive sense increasingly involves solving complex, ill-structured problems, which have unknown elements, multiple solutions paths, vaguely defined goals, and for which the concepts, principles, and rules needed to reach a solution are uncertain. To prepare students, law schools should adopt a curriculum that emphasizes both a deep conceptual understanding of the law and opportunities to solve a wide variety of complex, ill-structured problems.
Examining Factors Associated with Sleep Quality in Parents of Children 4-10 Years with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Keywords: ASD
Parents
Sleep Quality

Background/Rationale: Sleep quality is an important health indicator, yet parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often report poorer sleep compared to parents of typically developing children. When parents do not obtain enough good quality sleep, health and daytime functioning may be compromised. This means that the onus of care is placed on already stressed and exhausted parents. Although poor sleep quality may lead to significant negative health consequences, it has been remarkably understudied in parents of children with ASD. Purpose: This study examined the prevalence of poor sleep quality in parents of children 4-10 years with ASD and tested a model of parent factors (i.e., resources, appraisals, and coping) expected to moderate the relationships between child sleep problems, parenting stress, and parent sleep quality at a single point in time. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational research, 214 parents of children with ASD completed the study. Parent sleep quality was examined using survey methods. Sleep measures included the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) (parent sleep) and the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) (sleep in children of parents in this study). Six regression models were tested using multivariable linear and moderated regression. Results: Mean (SD) PSQI scores for parents in this sample was 8.81 (3.76), with most parents scoring above the clinical cut-off of >5 (152, 77.6%). Mean (SD) CSHQ scores for children of the parents in this sample was 54.03 (8.32), which exceeds the clinical cut-off of >41, with most parents scoring their child above the clinical cut-off (182, 96.3 %). Overall, when parenting stress, child sleep problems, and all expected moderators were modelled together with parent sleep quality, child sleep problems was the only significant predictor (Beta = 0.081, p = 0.031). Significance/Implications: Findings from this study suggest that children’s sleep problems was the single most important factor when considering what impacts parent sleep quality. However, both parents and their 4-10-year old children with ASD experienced sleep disturbances. Although the expected moderators help to explain the variance in parent sleep quality, their buffering effects may not be enough when parents sleep poorly.