Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Philosophy Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Sociology

Selected Works

2016

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Registered Savings Plans And The Making Of Middle Class Canada: Toward A Performative Theory Of Tax Policy, Lisa Philipps Jul 2016

Registered Savings Plans And The Making Of Middle Class Canada: Toward A Performative Theory Of Tax Policy, Lisa Philipps

Lisa Philipps

Politicians across Canada’s political spectrum strive to position themselves as defenders of the middle class, and tax policy is a prime vehicle for making this pitch. Any tax reform proposal can be examined critically to evaluate its likely distributional impacts and how well these map onto specific definitions of the middle class. This article attempts, however, a different project. Drawing on the ideas of Judith Butler, it analyzes instead how tax policy produces middle-class identity through the very process of claiming to advance middle-class interests. The case study for this purpose is the rise of tax incentives for saving as …

Go to article

Diffractive Possibilities: Cultural Studies And Quantification, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román Dec 2015

Diffractive Possibilities: Cultural Studies And Quantification, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román

Ezekiel J Dixon-Román

The belief in the methods of quantification has not been widely shared in cultural studies. On the one hand, the dominant orientation of quantitative social science research continues to hold on to positivist assumptions of objectivity and the privileged access to the “truths” of natural phenomena via the logics of mathematics. On the other hand, cultural studies has maintained a hermeneutics of suspicion toward the methods of quantification. But, to what extent does this suspicion toward quantitative inquiry compromise the deconstructive project of cultural studies by falling into the trap of the quantitative/qualitative and, related, nature/culture binaries? Building on new …

Go to article

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2015

Incumbent Landscapes, Disruptive Uses: Perspectives On Marijuana-Related Land Use Control, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The story behind the move toward marijuana’s legality is a story of disruptive forces to the incumbent legal and physical landscape. It affects incumbent markets, incumbent places, the incumbent regulatory structure, and the legal system in general which must mediate the battles involving the push for relaxation of illegality and adaptation to accepting new marijuana-related land uses, against efforts toward entrenchment, resilience, and resistance to that disruption.

This Article is entirely agnostic on the issue of whether we should or should not decriminalize, legalize, or otherwise increase legal tolerance for marijuana or any other drugs. Nonetheless, we must grapple with …

Go to article