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Sociologists have increasingly focused their analytical lenses in recent years on the role of nonhuman animals in the fabric of social life. This paper builds on this work by foregrounding the generative function of culture in defining relationships with animals. Based primarily on qualitative ethnographic and interview data, it presents an analysis of Alberta, Canada's province-wide rat control program that has allowed Alberta to boast a "rat-free" status for decades. I investigate the significance of this institutional rat control effort in Alberta's cultural life, and why being "rat free" is a meaningful distinction for Albertans. I will specifically argue that Alberta's rat control program has been shaped by the cultural context in which it has emerged, one in which whiteness and conservatism are culturally preeminent and defined by a potent nativist aversion to myriad forms of outside influence. In the process, I advance a framework for understanding multispecies relationships that draws on Bourdieu's notion of the habitus, which I call the environmental habitus. Using this formulation, I demonstrate the coconstitutive relationship between material human-rat interactions and the systems of cultural meaning within which they occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kainai Board of Education, situated at the Kainai First Nations Reserve in Southern Alberta, Canada, initiated the Aisspommootsiio'pa project in 2017. The project intended to develop teacher leadership capacity aimed at improving mathematics teaching and learning at elementary and secondary levels. In this paper, we indicate the theoretical foundations for the project. We also report on its implementation during the first two years, which involved seventeen teachers, and offer suggestions for the extension of the project at a larger scale within the Kanai Nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of the tar sands in northern Alberta represents a central contemporary environmental controversy that has received a much greater level of opposition from beyond the provincial border than within, despite the very high probability that tar sands development poses challenges to environmental wellbeing, as well as economic wellbeing and security. In this paper, we present an analysis of Premier's speeches and Legislative debates to highlight the discursive strategies that have been employed, which have had the effect of encouraging legitimacy for state support of tar sands development. In particular, state actors have been able to draw from broader discursive fields and culturally resonant frames to turn these three potential sources of legitimacy crisis on their head: effectively arguing that a failure to develop the tar sands would pose threats to our economic wellbeing, military security, and environmental wellbeing. Potential implications for legitimacy theory are explored. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Freudenburg and associates have made a significant contribution to research on risk. Their work goes beyond abstract discussions of the concept by documenting how risk has been aggravated in specific ways over long periods of time and accepted during the incubation of catastrophes. Their methodology consists of retrospective investigations in the aftermath of calamities in order to learn lessons about the exacerbation and acceptance of risk, and they present these lessons in order to avoid and/or mitigate the disasters of tomorrow. The paper then uses a similar approach but prior to disaster to examine a set of practices that are presently aggravating the risk of global warming, namely oil extracted from the tar sands of Alberta. It shows that risk is aggravated by the particular ways and pace that the tar sands are being exploited, rather than extraction per se. It also analyzes the discursive devices that are being used to sell this magnification of risk in order to make it acceptable to the population, particularly the notion of 'ethical oil' no matter how polluting it is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To overcome the "digital divide," the government of Alberta, Canada, built a high speed broadband network to connect government offices, schools, healthcare facilities, and libraries across the province. Internet service providers can connect to the SuperNet to provide high speed access to rural areas where it was previously unavailable. While the network holds promise for future opportunities and construction is complete, the SuperNet's implementation is fraught with difficulties. Research in rural areas uncovers three central obstacles: deficient communication from the government about the network and its potential; a pricing structure that is cost prohibitive to small organizations; and ISPs' lack of interest in serving rural areas. These major barriers have left SuperNet equipment sitting idle, rural community members unsure of what the network can do, and some counties creating municipally-owned ISPs to bypass private providers. This paper examines the challenges faced by rural Albertans in connecting to the SuperNet. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, young people's transitions from school to work, and to adulthood more generally, have undergone substantial changes. As young people make their way from compulsory schooling to employment, they find themselves having to navigate an increasingly complex, technologically innovative, and globalized world. These social changes have prompted youth researchers to reexamine young people's transitions within the life course while paying particular attention to the variety of different contexts and risks young people encounter. This paper examines young people's future school and work plans as they are about to graduate from high school in the northern resource 'boomtown' of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. As a result of the rapid growth of the oilsands industry in Fort McMurray due to the global demand for oil, young people have had to make decisions about employment and post-secondary schooling within the context of a rapidly growing city with an overabundance of jobs. The findings suggest that young people draw on a range of complex factors in their future school and work planning in a boomtown. In particular, young people framed their school and work understandings in terms of opportunities while downplaying risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has examined the influence of jury deliberation in the justice system and found an increase in and reinforcement of civic attitudes about citizenship for jury deliberators themselves but not for the larger public. This paper reports on public opinion before and after a public-deliberation event ("Citizen Panel") in a major Canadian city. A randomly selected group of 5,000 citizens was asked about (a) the value of public deliberation for gathering informed input into major decisions to be made by the municipal government, and (b) the substantive issues that were discussed in the Citizen Panel. Respondents' willingness to participate in a future public-deliberation event increased in strength from pre- to post-survey, suggesting that citizens who gained knowledge about the purposes and goals of public deliberation were more likely to be willing to participate in future public-involvement activities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hobbema Community Cadets Corps Program (HCCCP) is a combination of the 'best practices' of a variety of other programs developed to reduce crime, violence, bullying, drug abuse and gang association among youth. Initially developed to address concerns of First Nations and Metis youth at risk in the community of Hobbema, Alberta, Canada the program has increased positive relationships between youth, police and community members. Initiated by two police officers, HCCCP had by the end of its first year attracted over 900 youth between the ages of 6 and 18 years. In a community marked by poverty, violence, substance abuse, gang violence, and an overall crime rate seven times Canada's national rate, HCCCP offers young people hope in an environment described by many as a 'war zone'. This paper offers a description of the program, as well as a preliminary evaluation based on interviews with program staff, members, parents, and community members. We link this evaluation into existing theory and literature on gangs, and in particular on Aboriginal gangs, investigating the apparent success of the program, possible future roadblocks for HCCCP, and whether other communities can or should adopt a similar approach to youth gang involvement and youth crime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approaches to understanding resistance to wind projects often focus on one or more factors that influence the success of wind energy implementation. How individuals engage with wind energy in their community, however, is associated with far more than the 'enabling factors and barriers' that are often emphasized within empirical studies. Moving beyond a 'barriers' approach to research, we seek to give voice to public concern and resistance to wind power, in which experiences with neighbor conflicts and community decline are revealed to be as important as the design and implementation of wind energy infrastructures themselves. By asking what is the experience of wind energy development from a landowner perspective, we take seriously, and consider more deeply, public resistance to renewable energy transition. Through in-depth interviews conducted with landowners and key informants (n = 36), we identify impacts on community relations and 'neighboring' as well as threats to individual and community identity brought about by wind energy. Among energy researchers, the benefits of wind energy are rarely scrutinized. But without careful consideration for the personal experiences of communities that host wind farms, social and economic benefits to landowners and communities are not likely to be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Kuester claims that " Canada is unthinkable without its border with the US." For some, the border symbolizes connections rather than differences. The border section between the province of Alberta and the state of Montana is particularly susceptible to common links. The varieties of people who live in southern Alberta and northern Montana have created a culture unlike that which exists anywhere else along the US-Canada border. An Indian nation "the Blackfeet" straddle the border with the Blood tribe living in Canada and the Blackfeet nation headquartered in Browning, Montana. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park recognized separately as a national park in both Canada and the US, together forms a World Heritage site separated only by a 20-foot swath of cut trees. Those who would visit Goat Haunt, Montana the northern-most settlement in Montana, get there by boat from Waterton town site in Canada. This is a report on the second year of a three-year study exploring the nature of this border culture. Stress is on the visual metaphors, both fixed symbols and fluid rituals of national identity, which are common on both sides of the border. From the Milk River in the north to Montana's Sweet Grass Hills, the land dictates a way of life unchanged since the early twentieth century This photo-essay struggles to document visually the messages of connection that accompany the forty-ninth parallel as it cuts through Montana and Alberta. This border is an intersection rather than a barrier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alberta oil sands are estimated to contain 175 billion barrels of oil, the largest oil reserve outside of Saudi Arabia. Production is currently at just over 1-million barrels a day, but is projected to rise to 3-million barrels by 2015 because of massive new investments by a wide range of transnational oil companies. This study examines the mad rush to mine the Alberta oil sands in the context of the political economy of oil in the post-9/11 world. It will touch upon the relationship between capital and labour, particularly around the use of temporary foreign workers' in new construction projects; on Canada's increasing dependence on foreign transnational mining companies; and on recent struggles over economic rents in Alberta. However it will emphasize the environmental destruction and degradation that accompany mining in the oil sands, and the health problems being experienced in the aboriginal communities downstream from the extraction projects. Given the severe environmental consequences of oil sands development, a socialist approach would be conservationist: to leave as much of the oil in the ground for as long as possible while alternative sources of energy are pursued. The current boom in oil sands development in Alberta is yet another indication that the capitalism system is unsustainable, since transnational corporations are literally destroying the conditions for life in their pursuit of greater profits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]