Digital Commons Network^™

Frontiers Of Care, Thomas E. Randall

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Care ethics is a feminist normative theory that emphasizes the moral significance of our relational interdependency in the provision and receipt of care. On this view, ethical action is situated and evaluated as it emerges through caring relations. However, an oft-cited criticism of care ethics is that its normative frontiers cannot be extended to the wider concerns of justice that lie beyond our relational limits. In this dissertation, I outline and defend an interpretation of care ethics that shows how the values of care identified within our personal relations can be abstracted to show that we do have certain obligations …

Services, Systems And Policies Shaping Community Mobility For People With Mobility Impairments: A Case Study From Northern Iceland, Sigrun Kristin Jonasdottir

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Community mobility, or the act of moving around within the community, can be thought of as an occupation, but also as a means to occupation, because it is essential for people to have opportunities to participate in society. People with mobility impairments do not have the same opportunities as other people to move around because of multiple challenges in the environment. This research aimed to enhance understanding of how services, systems and policies shape community mobility of people with mobility impairments in the town of Akureyri in northern Iceland. This dissertation further raises awareness about human rights, occupational rights and …

A Study Of Six Nations Public Library: Rights And Access To Information, Alison Frayne

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Contemporary Indigenous public libraries play a critical role in providing access to information in Indigenous communities. My research focuses on the relationship between rights and access to information for individuals and communities within the context of Indigenous public libraries. I use a qualitative case study methodology of the Six Nations Public Library (SNPL) in Ohsweken, Ontario, Canada. Interviews were conducted with SNPL patrons and library management and with off-reserve participants from government and library associations.

I analyse four themes, library governance, rights, library value and access to information, which are outcomes of the SNPL case study findings. This analysis reveals …

Learning Lessons From The Impacts Of Relocating Indigenous Scholars For Academic Appointments, Andrew Judge

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2014 and 2015, significant efforts were made by colleges, institutes, and universities to overhaul Indigenous post secondary education in Canada. For universities, the reasons are clear. University achievement rates for Indigenous peoples living in the sixty-five closest communities to where the 15 research intensive universities in Canada (U15) are located is five times lower then the national average. Three major documents outlining strategic plans identified a need to increase Indigenous faculty who represent just .3% of total academic staff at U15. To better grasp how increasing IUI numbers at U15 will impact them a multisite exploratory case study grounded …

Exhibiting Human Rights: Making The Means Of Dignity Visible, Amy J. Freier

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the visual communication of human dignity. With the opening of human rights museums, such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, human dignity’s visual communication has been exposed to new issues of corporeal and mediated expression. In response to photographic mediation and theory, which often poses individuals as central claimants or possessors of human dignity, human rights museums openly suggest that communities and relationships between individuals are central to human dignity’s visibility outside of the law. As such, I propose that curatorial mediation is important to the contemporary apprehension of human dignity because its notable forms – …

Terrorism, Islamization, And Human Rights: How Post 9/11 Pakistani English Literature Speaks To The World, Shazia Sadaf

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The start of the twenty-first century has witnessed a simultaneous rise of three areas of scholarly interest: 9/11 literature, human rights discourse, and War on Terror studies. The resulting intersections between literature and human rights, foregrounded by an overarching narrative of terror, have led to a new area of interdisciplinary enquiry broadly classed under human rights literature, at the point of the convergence of which lies the idea of human empathy. Concurrently with the development of human rights literature as a distinct field of study, two new strains of Pakistani literature have emerged on the Anglophone literary scene. Firstly, there …

David Miller's Nationalism: A Critique, Ali Can Seven

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines David Miller’s defence of nationalism. It considers what is termed “the compatriot partiality thesis”, that is, the view that we are justified in giving our compatriots more moral consideration than we give to outsiders. It examines the debate between Miller’s own ethical particularism and the ethical universalist position. Miller’s particularist view rests in part on his view that political theory must embrace a feasibility constraint, and his case for that is examined. Finally, Miller claims that his defence of nationalism is consistent with the endorsement of human rights. The thesis examines his attempt to incorporate an idea …

Social Movement Organization And Robust Action: Creating A Pre-Movement In A Movement-Inhibiting Environment, Yanfei Hu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Social movements are extra-institutional forces that stimulate institutional and social change. Research has emphasized political opportunities, consciousness and organizational readiness as critical conditions for movements. In this thesis, I argue that such a conceptualization couches agency under structure, and does not explain how activists may create movement potentiality when none of the aforementioned conditions exist. This omission is significant because many movements can be traced to a pre-movement period when one (or a few) activist group(s) operated in movement-inhibiting environments to create conditions that enable future movements. In particular, the current literature lacks insights regarding the following question: How does …

Accommodating Complex Disabilities: Chronic Pain Disorders In The Canadian Workplace, Maia Abbas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The duty of accommodation has enabled great progress in Canadian human rights law for persons with disabilities, particularly in the workplace. However, persons with chronic pain disorders have faced greater challenges in accessing the accommodation duty’s promise of equality, which is demonstrated through caselaw analysis. To assess the efficacy of the accommodation of persons with chronic pain disorders, we must answer three questions: (1) what is the theoretical understanding of disability and chronic pain disorders; (2) how are chronic pain disorders accommodated practically (using the workplace as our social illustration); and, (3) what happens after accommodation fails. A hierarchy of …

Climate Change And Human Rights: A Case Study Of Vulnerability And Adaptation In Coastal Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Idowu M. Ajibade

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lagos, Nigeria is one the world’s megacities at risk from climate change. Communities along the coast have been hit hard by floods, storm surges, and rising seas, due to the city’s geographic location, inadequate infrastructures, and poor urban governance. These factors together with social inequality have been known to shape vulnerability to climatic hazards but less understood is the role of human rights.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a grounded understanding of the links between human rights and the vulnerability of people to climate change impacts (i.e. floods and storm surges). The study combined qualitative and quantitative …

Rights As Praxis: Sartre And The Politics Of Human Rights, William Samson

Digitized Theses

The object of this thesis is to determine why the human rights discourse has failed to usher in an age where the rights of man are respected, and what might be changed in order to facilitate such an age. We move from a discussion of the classical and contemporary versions of the human rights discourse to a critical examination of it through the lens of Jean-Paul Sartre's later writings on ethics, politics, and sociality. Through this analysis, we find fault with the individualizing and isolating aspects of the human rights discourse, and conclude with a discussion of alternate social formations …

A Comparative Approach: Denial Of Justice In Nafta Chapter 11 And The European Convention On Human Rights, Heather L. Bray

Digitized Theses

Denial ofjustice is an important concept in international law that holds states accountable for administering justice in a fundamentally inadequate way. While denial of justice is one of the oldest concepts in international law, it remains ambiguous. This thesis seeks to provide normative content to the term ‘denial of justice.’ It does this by employing a comparative methodological approach that compares the denial of justice standard contained in Art. 1105 NAFTA with the fair trial guarantees embodied in Art. 6 ECHR. This comparison exposes essential similarities between investment law and human rights law (origin, function, purpose, and substantive provisions) but …

“From Canada. For The World”: National Myth And The Canadian Museum For Human Rights, Brendan Mcgeagh

Digitized Theses

On April 20, 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced plans for a new national institution, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). This announcement was swiftly followed by amendments to the Museums Act, and a unanimous Parliamentary endorsement of the museum. It is from here that the questions of my thesis arise: What notion of “human rights” is being evoked and promoted by the CMHR? How does this national human rights museum both lean upon and support national identity? And, how does the museum’s version of human rights generate definitions of citizenship and responsibility? Much human rights activism is at …

Socio-Economic Rights And The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms : The Prospects For Domestic Enforcement Through The Courts., Sean D. Taylor

Digitized Theses

The issue to be examined is whether the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are capable of affording protection to socio-economic rights. It will be demonstrated that the provincial and federal governments of Canada are obligated at domestic and international law to provide socioeconomic rights protection, and the courts are required to enforce those obligations. The provisions of the Charter are one mechanism that can be used to enforce the governments’ obligations, as the Charter was intended to give effect to our societal goal of affording equal respect and concern to all individuals. Fulfilling that intent requires …