Patricia Cormack
Biographic Data
| ID | 149953 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patricia Cormack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patricia |
| FAMILY NAME | Cormack |
| SIGNATURE | CORMACK P |
| AFFILIATIONS | St. Francis Xavier University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5037-4447 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
New Canadian Cannabis Trust Regimes: Where is the Local Pot
In the 6 years since legalization of recreational cannabis, most Canadians have shifted their trust to the government regulated market, motivated primarily by product safety. In this case study of the province of Nova Scotia's cannabis market, we find that this disembedded trust regime of federal government oversight frustrates local producers’ efforts to make and market their products because regulation inhibits consumers from establishing local…
The State and the Legal Canadian Cannabis User: Revisiting Howard Becker
Drawing on Howard Becker's classic 1953 sociological interpretation of the process of becoming a cannabis user, this paper analyses how the Canadian state shapes the social and political meanings of cannabis and its use in the context of recent legalization. Our analysis moves from concrete face-to-face subcultural life studied by Becker to state discourses and administration, examining Canadian government commissions, task forces, and legislatio…
Making Markets out of Vice: Gambling, Cannabis, and Processes of State Legitimation and Formation in Canada
The legalization of gambling and cannabis and the transformation of these practices/substances into consumer markets are processes of state legitimation, naturalization, and (re)formation in Canada. This article examines the moral-cultural transformation of gambling and cannabis over the last 50 years and analyzes these transformations in terms of state-culture dynamics. Where lotteries were legalized in the context of the welfare state, the expa…
Staying The Blazes Home: Group Charisma, Government Messaging and Covid-19
This case study of Nova Scotia, Canada, inspects the uptake and circulation of provincial government health messaging during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, organized around the motto “stay the blazes home.” Messaging and collective narratives are analyzed by way of Norbert Elias’s “established/outsider” dynamics, especially focusing on his concepts of “group charisma” and “praise and blame gossip.” Economic realities and identity practi…
A Spectacle of Silencing: A Rural African-Canadian Woman’s Media Trial
This thematic case study explores international, national, and local media coverage of a conflict between Barb Reddick, a rural, working-class, African-Nova Scotian woman, and her nephew over the ownership of a winning ‘Chase the Ace’ lottery ticket. Beginning from general media valuation of lottery winners, and Canadian coverage of the Nova Scotia CTA lottery ‘craze’, we find when Reddick goes off script as loving aunt she is pathologized and de…
Enjoy your experience”: Symbolic violence and becoming a tasteful state cannabis consumer in Canada
This article explores the legalization and marketing of recreational cannabis in Canada, specifically the province of Nova Scotia, that has extended state monopoly over sales. Beginning with Howard Becker’s classic analysis of “becoming a marijuana user,” this ethnographic investigation of the first day of state cannabis sales utilizes and extends Bourdieusian analyses, particularly by showing how “symbolic violence” and “taste distinctions” work…
Justin Trudeau and the play of celebrity in the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign
This article examines the 2015 Canadian federal election in which the Liberal Party took office under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. Celebrity was a dominant theme during the campaign, applied by the Conservative Party to discredit Trudeau by playing on his youthful good looks and ‘new masculinity’. The Conservative campaign drew attention to Trudeau and its own aggressive tactics and entered into a spiral of negativity that the Liberals would…
The Two Durkheims: Founders and Classics in Canadian Introductory Sociology Textbooks
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
A funny thing happened on the way to sociology: Goffman, Mills, and Berger
This article discusses the merits of a sociology informed by humour, linking these merits to sociological issues of representation and the ways in which humour has pedagogical and epistemological relevance for the depiction and construction of the everyday lifeworld. The works of Erving Goffman, C. Wright Mills, and Peter Berger are treated as exemplifying the use of humour in sociological work. Significantly, while having different perspectives …
A meaningful meaninglessness: Canadian university culture as gendered and class-based privilege
Recent Canadian university student misbehaviour (rape chants, harassment, sexual assault, and anti-social media posts) has garnered much attention in the media and from university administrations. Most research concerned to address these issues focuses on sexual attitudes, gender, and party culture. In this study, we analyse student interviews from a narrative perspective and find that students use storytelling devices to construct a gendered, bu…
Marland, Alex, Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control
S tephen Harper's government was known above all for one thing - message control.Brand Command, written by Memorial University political communications expert, Alex Marland, helps make sense of this message control and explores the implications of such control for democracy in Canada.It is a well-researched and well-written book, but it is not a comforting read.Marland takes a provocative and highly relevant position visà-vis Canadian politics, p…
State celebrity, institutional charisma and the public sphere: Managing scandal at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This article investigates the rise and scandalous fall of celebrity host Jian Ghomeshi within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We draw upon Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatus to analyse how the CBC made use of Jian Ghomeshi as a state celebrity to ‘hail’ the audience/citizen and contribute to the CBC’s ‘institutional charisma’. The discussion also demonstrates the dependence of the CBC on types of legitimate aut…
Theorising the state celebrity: A case study of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This paper explores a rarely discussed side of celebrity – the ‘state celebrity’ produced by state broadcasting systems. The state celebrity is explored by way of a case study of four central television personalities – not, incidentally, all white men – found on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The state celebrity differs in important respects from individual entrepreneurial celebrities found in commercial contexts. As such, theories of cel…
Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication
Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication. New Edition. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012, 128 pp. $14.95 paper(9781584350576) It is somewhat unsettling to find oneself writing a retrospective piece on the 25th anniversary reissue of The Ecstasy of Communication. Jean Baudrillard would smell a rat right away. After all, this text was already retrospective in itself, serving as his habilitation thesis meant to review the assumed coherence and tr…
Double-Double: Branding, Tim Hortons, and the Public Sphere
Desiring Canada: CBC Contests, Hockey Violence and Other Stately Pleasures
What do Tim Hortons, Hockey Night in Canada, and Rick Mercer have in common? Each is a popular symbol of Canadian identity, seen across the country – and beyond – on television and in other forms of media. But whose definition of ‘Canadian’ do they represent? What does it mean to be Canadian? Do we create our own impressions of Canadian identity, or are they created for us? In Desiring Canada, Patricia Cormack and James F. Cosgrave delve into the…
Who Counts Now? Re-making the Canadian Citizen
This paper considers the implications of the 2010 cancellation of the Canada mandatory long-form census in terms of citizenship and the citizen-state relation. Inspecting census questions, Statistics Canada publications, and the arguments of ethnocultural groups pushing for reinstatement of the census, we find a version of citizenship rooted in ethnocultural group membership and the mosaic metaphor. The second part of this paper seeks an historic…
True Stories' of Canada: Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity
This article discusses the connection between brands, national identity and the social and historic practices of the Canadian nation-state. Specifically, it examines the long-running `True Stories' ad campaign of Tim Hortons coffee shops, Canada's most successful quick-service restaurant chain. These ads insert Tim Hortons into customers' stories about travel, endurance and adventure, and authorize Tim Hortons itself as both the site and source o…
The Depth of Shallow Culture: The High Art of Shoes, Movies, Novels, Monsters, and Toys
Come take a closer look at ordinary footwear, like sneakers, or children's toys and Saturday cartoon TV shows, or make a comparison between Don Quixote and John Rambo of the Sylvester Stallone movie. Although some regard popular culture as shallow, this book reveals that it is more often complex, deep, meaningful and subject to the style changes we associate with high art. Bergesen shows how complex philosophical ideas of reincarnation are embedd…
Angels, bells, television and Ireland: The place of the Angelus broadcast in the Republic
This article examines Ireland’s Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) Angelus broadcast - a one-minute, televised observance of prayer. Two critical tensions are identified in the broadcast. First, while the RTE Angelus apparently portrays modern, everyday people in the Irish Republic pausing to attend to the sound of the Angelus bell, in fact it relies on pre-modern, mythic versions of community and association, themes generated earlier in the 20th centur…
Guarding authenticity at literary tourism sites
Making the Sociological Promise: A Case Study of Rosemary Brown's Autobiography
Cet article reprend les formules de C. Wright Mills, la « promesse sociologique » et l'« imagination sociologique », et considère son engagement, de même que l'engagement de la sociologie, envers les récits populaires. On se rappelle que, selon Mills, la pensée sociologique est une question de narrations biographique et historio‐graphique, des pratiques le mieux illustrées, affirme‐t‐il, par la prose non savante. En examinant une autobiographie p…
The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method
Guarding authenticity at literary tourism sites
A funny thing happened on the way to sociology: Goffman, Mills, and Berger
This article discusses the merits of a sociology informed by humour, linking these merits to sociological issues of representation and the ways in which humour has pedagogical and epistemological relevance for the depiction and construction of the everyday lifeworld. The works of Erving Goffman, C. Wright Mills, and Peter Berger are treated as exemplifying the use of humour in sociological work. Significantly, while having different perspectives …
True Stories' of Canada: Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity
This article discusses the connection between brands, national identity and the social and historic practices of the Canadian nation-state. Specifically, it examines the long-running `True Stories' ad campaign of Tim Hortons coffee shops, Canada's most successful quick-service restaurant chain. These ads insert Tim Hortons into customers' stories about travel, endurance and adventure, and authorize Tim Hortons itself as both the site and source o…
The Two Durkheims: Founders and Classics in Canadian Introductory Sociology Textbooks
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
Justin Trudeau and the play of celebrity in the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign
This article examines the 2015 Canadian federal election in which the Liberal Party took office under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. Celebrity was a dominant theme during the campaign, applied by the Conservative Party to discredit Trudeau by playing on his youthful good looks and ‘new masculinity’. The Conservative campaign drew attention to Trudeau and its own aggressive tactics and entered into a spiral of negativity that the Liberals would…
Theorising the state celebrity: A case study of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This paper explores a rarely discussed side of celebrity – the ‘state celebrity’ produced by state broadcasting systems. The state celebrity is explored by way of a case study of four central television personalities – not, incidentally, all white men – found on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The state celebrity differs in important respects from individual entrepreneurial celebrities found in commercial contexts. As such, theories of cel…
A meaningful meaninglessness: Canadian university culture as gendered and class-based privilege
Recent Canadian university student misbehaviour (rape chants, harassment, sexual assault, and anti-social media posts) has garnered much attention in the media and from university administrations. Most research concerned to address these issues focuses on sexual attitudes, gender, and party culture. In this study, we analyse student interviews from a narrative perspective and find that students use storytelling devices to construct a gendered, bu…
Who Counts Now? Re-making the Canadian Citizen
This paper considers the implications of the 2010 cancellation of the Canada mandatory long-form census in terms of citizenship and the citizen-state relation. Inspecting census questions, Statistics Canada publications, and the arguments of ethnocultural groups pushing for reinstatement of the census, we find a version of citizenship rooted in ethnocultural group membership and the mosaic metaphor. The second part of this paper seeks an historic…
Enjoy your experience”: Symbolic violence and becoming a tasteful state cannabis consumer in Canada
This article explores the legalization and marketing of recreational cannabis in Canada, specifically the province of Nova Scotia, that has extended state monopoly over sales. Beginning with Howard Becker’s classic analysis of “becoming a marijuana user,” this ethnographic investigation of the first day of state cannabis sales utilizes and extends Bourdieusian analyses, particularly by showing how “symbolic violence” and “taste distinctions” work…
State celebrity, institutional charisma and the public sphere: Managing scandal at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This article investigates the rise and scandalous fall of celebrity host Jian Ghomeshi within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We draw upon Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatus to analyse how the CBC made use of Jian Ghomeshi as a state celebrity to ‘hail’ the audience/citizen and contribute to the CBC’s ‘institutional charisma’. The discussion also demonstrates the dependence of the CBC on types of legitimate aut…
The Depth of Shallow Culture: The High Art of Shoes, Movies, Novels, Monsters, and Toys
Come take a closer look at ordinary footwear, like sneakers, or children's toys and Saturday cartoon TV shows, or make a comparison between Don Quixote and John Rambo of the Sylvester Stallone movie. Although some regard popular culture as shallow, this book reveals that it is more often complex, deep, meaningful and subject to the style changes we associate with high art. Bergesen shows how complex philosophical ideas of reincarnation are embedd…
Angels, bells, television and Ireland: The place of the Angelus broadcast in the Republic
This article examines Ireland’s Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) Angelus broadcast - a one-minute, televised observance of prayer. Two critical tensions are identified in the broadcast. First, while the RTE Angelus apparently portrays modern, everyday people in the Irish Republic pausing to attend to the sound of the Angelus bell, in fact it relies on pre-modern, mythic versions of community and association, themes generated earlier in the 20th centur…
The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method
The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method
Making the Sociological Promise: A Case Study of Rosemary Brown's Autobiography
Cet article reprend les formules de C. Wright Mills, la « promesse sociologique » et l'« imagination sociologique », et considère son engagement, de même que l'engagement de la sociologie, envers les récits populaires. On se rappelle que, selon Mills, la pensée sociologique est une question de narrations biographique et historio‐graphique, des pratiques le mieux illustrées, affirme‐t‐il, par la prose non savante. En examinant une autobiographie p…
Guarding authenticity at literary tourism sites
Angels, bells, television and Ireland: The place of the Angelus broadcast in the Republic
This article examines Ireland’s Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) Angelus broadcast - a one-minute, televised observance of prayer. Two critical tensions are identified in the broadcast. First, while the RTE Angelus apparently portrays modern, everyday people in the Irish Republic pausing to attend to the sound of the Angelus bell, in fact it relies on pre-modern, mythic versions of community and association, themes generated earlier in the 20th centur…
The Depth of Shallow Culture: The High Art of Shoes, Movies, Novels, Monsters, and Toys
Come take a closer look at ordinary footwear, like sneakers, or children's toys and Saturday cartoon TV shows, or make a comparison between Don Quixote and John Rambo of the Sylvester Stallone movie. Although some regard popular culture as shallow, this book reveals that it is more often complex, deep, meaningful and subject to the style changes we associate with high art. Bergesen shows how complex philosophical ideas of reincarnation are embedd…
True Stories' of Canada: Tim Hortons and the Branding of National Identity
This article discusses the connection between brands, national identity and the social and historic practices of the Canadian nation-state. Specifically, it examines the long-running `True Stories' ad campaign of Tim Hortons coffee shops, Canada's most successful quick-service restaurant chain. These ads insert Tim Hortons into customers' stories about travel, endurance and adventure, and authorize Tim Hortons itself as both the site and source o…
Double-Double: Branding, Tim Hortons, and the Public Sphere
Desiring Canada: CBC Contests, Hockey Violence and Other Stately Pleasures
What do Tim Hortons, Hockey Night in Canada, and Rick Mercer have in common? Each is a popular symbol of Canadian identity, seen across the country – and beyond – on television and in other forms of media. But whose definition of ‘Canadian’ do they represent? What does it mean to be Canadian? Do we create our own impressions of Canadian identity, or are they created for us? In Desiring Canada, Patricia Cormack and James F. Cosgrave delve into the…
Who Counts Now? Re-making the Canadian Citizen
This paper considers the implications of the 2010 cancellation of the Canada mandatory long-form census in terms of citizenship and the citizen-state relation. Inspecting census questions, Statistics Canada publications, and the arguments of ethnocultural groups pushing for reinstatement of the census, we find a version of citizenship rooted in ethnocultural group membership and the mosaic metaphor. The second part of this paper seeks an historic…
Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication
Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication. New Edition. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012, 128 pp. $14.95 paper(9781584350576) It is somewhat unsettling to find oneself writing a retrospective piece on the 25th anniversary reissue of The Ecstasy of Communication. Jean Baudrillard would smell a rat right away. After all, this text was already retrospective in itself, serving as his habilitation thesis meant to review the assumed coherence and tr…
Theorising the state celebrity: A case study of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This paper explores a rarely discussed side of celebrity – the ‘state celebrity’ produced by state broadcasting systems. The state celebrity is explored by way of a case study of four central television personalities – not, incidentally, all white men – found on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The state celebrity differs in important respects from individual entrepreneurial celebrities found in commercial contexts. As such, theories of cel…
A meaningful meaninglessness: Canadian university culture as gendered and class-based privilege
Recent Canadian university student misbehaviour (rape chants, harassment, sexual assault, and anti-social media posts) has garnered much attention in the media and from university administrations. Most research concerned to address these issues focuses on sexual attitudes, gender, and party culture. In this study, we analyse student interviews from a narrative perspective and find that students use storytelling devices to construct a gendered, bu…
Marland, Alex, Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control
S tephen Harper's government was known above all for one thing - message control.Brand Command, written by Memorial University political communications expert, Alex Marland, helps make sense of this message control and explores the implications of such control for democracy in Canada.It is a well-researched and well-written book, but it is not a comforting read.Marland takes a provocative and highly relevant position visà-vis Canadian politics, p…
State celebrity, institutional charisma and the public sphere: Managing scandal at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
This article investigates the rise and scandalous fall of celebrity host Jian Ghomeshi within the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). We draw upon Althusser’s conception of the Ideological State Apparatus to analyse how the CBC made use of Jian Ghomeshi as a state celebrity to ‘hail’ the audience/citizen and contribute to the CBC’s ‘institutional charisma’. The discussion also demonstrates the dependence of the CBC on types of legitimate aut…
A funny thing happened on the way to sociology: Goffman, Mills, and Berger
This article discusses the merits of a sociology informed by humour, linking these merits to sociological issues of representation and the ways in which humour has pedagogical and epistemological relevance for the depiction and construction of the everyday lifeworld. The works of Erving Goffman, C. Wright Mills, and Peter Berger are treated as exemplifying the use of humour in sociological work. Significantly, while having different perspectives …
The Two Durkheims: Founders and Classics in Canadian Introductory Sociology Textbooks
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
Justin Trudeau and the play of celebrity in the 2015 Canadian federal election campaign
This article examines the 2015 Canadian federal election in which the Liberal Party took office under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. Celebrity was a dominant theme during the campaign, applied by the Conservative Party to discredit Trudeau by playing on his youthful good looks and ‘new masculinity’. The Conservative campaign drew attention to Trudeau and its own aggressive tactics and entered into a spiral of negativity that the Liberals would…
A Spectacle of Silencing: A Rural African-Canadian Woman’s Media Trial
This thematic case study explores international, national, and local media coverage of a conflict between Barb Reddick, a rural, working-class, African-Nova Scotian woman, and her nephew over the ownership of a winning ‘Chase the Ace’ lottery ticket. Beginning from general media valuation of lottery winners, and Canadian coverage of the Nova Scotia CTA lottery ‘craze’, we find when Reddick goes off script as loving aunt she is pathologized and de…
Enjoy your experience”: Symbolic violence and becoming a tasteful state cannabis consumer in Canada
This article explores the legalization and marketing of recreational cannabis in Canada, specifically the province of Nova Scotia, that has extended state monopoly over sales. Beginning with Howard Becker’s classic analysis of “becoming a marijuana user,” this ethnographic investigation of the first day of state cannabis sales utilizes and extends Bourdieusian analyses, particularly by showing how “symbolic violence” and “taste distinctions” work…
Making Markets out of Vice: Gambling, Cannabis, and Processes of State Legitimation and Formation in Canada
The legalization of gambling and cannabis and the transformation of these practices/substances into consumer markets are processes of state legitimation, naturalization, and (re)formation in Canada. This article examines the moral-cultural transformation of gambling and cannabis over the last 50 years and analyzes these transformations in terms of state-culture dynamics. Where lotteries were legalized in the context of the welfare state, the expa…
Staying The Blazes Home: Group Charisma, Government Messaging and Covid-19
This case study of Nova Scotia, Canada, inspects the uptake and circulation of provincial government health messaging during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, organized around the motto “stay the blazes home.” Messaging and collective narratives are analyzed by way of Norbert Elias’s “established/outsider” dynamics, especially focusing on his concepts of “group charisma” and “praise and blame gossip.” Economic realities and identity practi…
The State and the Legal Canadian Cannabis User: Revisiting Howard Becker
Drawing on Howard Becker's classic 1953 sociological interpretation of the process of becoming a cannabis user, this paper analyses how the Canadian state shapes the social and political meanings of cannabis and its use in the context of recent legalization. Our analysis moves from concrete face-to-face subcultural life studied by Becker to state discourses and administration, examining Canadian government commissions, task forces, and legislatio…
New Canadian Cannabis Trust Regimes: Where is the Local Pot
In the 6 years since legalization of recreational cannabis, most Canadians have shifted their trust to the government regulated market, motivated primarily by product safety. In this case study of the province of Nova Scotia's cannabis market, we find that this disembedded trust regime of federal government oversight frustrates local producers’ efforts to make and market their products because regulation inhibits consumers from establishing local…
Sociology (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Media studies (12 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Art (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · History (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)