Professor Joe Hermer was recently featured in an article on a new bylaw in Prince George, British Columbia, that has tightened restrictions on homeless people in the city. Professor Hermer, who has done extensive research on homelessness, policing and municipal bylaws called the new bylaw "particularly severe" and noted that when looked at as a whole, a ban on loitering, public sitting and sleeping as well as panhandling, essentially prohibit homeless people from being in public spaces at all. Read the full story here.
Release of Rise of the Spectacular: America in the 1950s - In this prequel to Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (1998), his acclaimed book about the post-industrial city as a site of theming, branding and simulated spaces, sociologist John Hannigan travels back in time to the 1950s. Unfairly stereotyped as ‘the tranquillized decade’, America at midcentury hosted an escalating proliferation and conjunction of ‘spectacular’ events, spaces, and technologies. Rise of the Spectacular will appeal to architects, landscape designers, geographers, sociologists, historians, and leisure/tourism researchers, as well as nonacademic readers who are by a fascinating era in history. For more information, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Rise-of-the-Spectacular-America-in-the-1950s/Hannigan/p/book/9780367902803
Professor Patricia Landolt recently co-authored an article titled “Suburban monumentalism: How do we change Indigenous-settler relations when there are no statues to destroy?” on The Conversation. Professor Landolt argues that although suburbs are often overlooked as places of action, they have also played a role in the Indigenous dispossession and settler-colonial violence. She gives the example of suburban monumentalism in Scarborough where “historical plaques erase Indigenous histories and presence on the land.” Read the full story here.
Professor Joe Hermer recently published an article titled “Homeless encampment violence in Toronto betrays any real hope for police reform” on The Conversation. The piece argues that when police officers forcibly and violently demolished homeless encampments in parks across Toronto they broke a trust with the public that they had committed to repairing just a few months earlier. Their betrayal of public trust now calls into question their capability of caring for marginalized and vulnerable people. Read the full story here.
Professor Joe Hermer was recently featured in an article titled “Policing and evicting people living in encampments will not solve homelessness in Canada". The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rise in homelessness and policing of encampments in Canada. Homeless people who live in these encampments face the risk of being ticketed or evicted by police officers. Professor Hermer studies the survival strategies and policing of vulnerable people. He finds that similar to the historical vagrancy laws, Canada’s current municipal bylaws “work together to criminalize being homeless”. He says that it is impossible for a homeless person to “exist in public space without breaking one of these laws”, such as the anti-loitering and anti-camping laws. As a result, these bylaws aggravate the already dire situation of homeless people. Read the full story here.
On an early Thursday morning, students, scholars and community members walked into IC 138 to participate in the workshop, Crossing Scarborough: Nation, Migration and Place-Making between the TRC and the 150 workshop. Organized by Assistant Professor Paloma Villegas and Associate Professor Patricia Landolt, both from the Department of Sociology, the event brought together scholars from various disciplines and focused on Scarborough’s layered history assessing topics such as migration and settlement.
Kathy Liddle wins University of Toronto Teaching Fellowship.
Info about the general program is here
Blogpost about TRC course: Residential school survivors and University of Toronto students gather to build relationships and find pathways to reconciliation.
Award-winning podcast records Scarborough's immigration history
Migration and Ethnicity (SOCD15)
We are pleased to announce that Jaishree Nayyar has received a University of Toronto Excellence Award. Ms. Nayyar is a double major in Sociology and Psychology. With Prof. Childress this summer she'll be working on a project on the relationship between aesthetic preferences, sociodemographics, and entrenched inequalities. Upon graduation she plans to attend law school.