Merin Oleschuk – Josée Johnston

Maintaining Meat

Why do people continue to eat meat, even when they are aware of its health consequences, the environmental externalities, and the harsh conditions in many confined animal feeding operations?

In this article in Sociological Forum, we examine a diverse sample of Canadian meat eaters and vegetarians to study justifications for eating meat. We identify 4 key cultural repertoires that people employ to make sense of their continued meat-eating: embodied masculinity, cultural preservation, consumer apathy, and consumer sovereignty. Building off prior psychological findings, the identification of these cultural repertoires allows us to understand more fully how and why people maintain their meat consumption—even in the face of growing public discourse about meat’s significant health, environmental, and social risks.

Article by Merin Oleschuk et al. on community-based participatory research

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Merin Oleschuk, one of the PhD candidates I am supervising, recently co-authored Leadership in Community-Based Participatory Research: Individual to Collective. Published in The Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning, the article was written with Maria Mayan, Sanchia Lo, Ana Laura Pauchulo, and Daley Laing. Merin describes the article here:

This article looks at how leadership works within community based Participatory research (CBPR). Drawing from experience with a CBPR project involving 16 organizations from the community, government, and university sectors, we completed a focused ethnography where we interviewed 18 partnership members who were instrumental in, accountable for, and knowledgeable about Partnership’s formation. These interviews revealed that leadership was exercised in three ways during the formation stage of this CBPR: (1) through individual characteristics; (2) through actions; and (3) as a collective. These findings show that CBPR leadership requires a specific set of skills that draw, not only on collaborative leadership, but also leadership from more traditional, hierarchical settings. While CBPR leadership shares many of the characteristics of traditional leadership, this study shows that non-hierarchical leadership is also possible as Partnerships adapt to support the collaborative process of CBPR.

HuffPo article on pressure of cooking holiday family meals

5209107871_dcd07c7dbe_o — By Satya Murthy on Flickr Creative Commons: https://bitly.com/

The Huffington Post just published a short, seasonal piece I co-authored with PhD Candidate Merin Oleschuk and Professor Kate Cairns. In our article, we reflect on ways to alleviate some of the pressures behind the idealized family meal, particularly as they pertain to economic and gender inequality.Continue reading “HuffPo article on pressure of cooking holiday family meals”

Journal article by Merin Oleschuk on foodies of colour

merin01 Merin Oleschuk, one of the PhD candidates I’m supervising, just published a brilliant article in Cultural Sociology called “Foodies of color: Authenticity and exoticism in omnivorous food culture.” Her article focuses on the framing of particular foods as ‘authentic’ and/or ‘exotic,’ and how foodies of colour in Toronto reproduce, adjust to, and resist ethnoracial inequalities in gourmet food culture. Check out this write-up on the story behind Merin’s research.