{"id":73340,"date":"2021-02-02T15:18:02","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T20:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=73340"},"modified":"2025-10-17T18:25:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T22:25:19","slug":"understand-sociology-think-seasons","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/understand-sociology-think-seasons\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Understand Sociology? Think Seasons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Want to Understand Sociology? Think Seasons\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

A few years ago, Carleton University Sociology<\/a> Instructor Tonya Davidson<\/a> was teaching a course on the sociology of popular culture and happened to have a class on October 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tonya
Sociology Instructor Tonya Davidson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Because it was Halloween, she decided to focus the lesson on vampires and zombies. It was so much fun, she wondered why sociologist didn\u2019t do themed lectures all the time\u2014a deconstruction of rom-coms on Valentine\u2019s Day, for instance, or a philosophical analysis of the \u201cElf on a Shelf\u201d phenomenon at Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That led to a chat with ongoing collaborator Ondine Park, one of Davidson\u2019s PhD classmates at the University of Alberta, who is now a sociology professor at MacEwan University in Edmonton. They talked about Canada\u2019s seasons and how the way we divide our calendar could provide an illuminating window into the study of social life and social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Season<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate outcome of that conversation was Seasonal Sociology<\/em><\/a>, a textbook co-edited by Davidson and Park that was published last fall by the University of Toronto Press and in late January won an Association of American Publishers\u2019 2021 Prose Award as the best social sciences textbook<\/a>. (It\u2019s their second book together; they also co-edited, with Rob Shields, 2011\u2019s Ecologies of Affect<\/em><\/a>: Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new book is designed to serve both as a text for first-year sociology courses\u2014which Davidson teaches at Carleton and loves because it\u2019s when students are fresh and start to think critically about the world\u2014and as an introduction to Canadian sociologists and their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it\u2019s much more than an overview of the discipline itself.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Man<\/figure>\n\n\n

Cottages, Lattes and Spring Break<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Seasonal Sociology <\/em>is structured, as one might expect, into four sections\u2014fall, winter, spring and summer\u2014each of which has five chapters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the subjects explored are pumpkin spice lattes and branding, migrant agricultural workers, Edmonton\u2019s \u201cwinter city\u201d mindset, whiteness and the politics of sport, alternative spring break programs and Sikh spring Vaisakhi parades in Vancouver and Surrey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Prof.
Prof. Benjamin Woo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Davidson wrote a chapter on the culture of cottaging in Ontario and Prof. Benjamin Woo<\/a> wrote about blockbuster summer movies, two of the four Carleton contributors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book opens with an examination of a fall field trip to the Rideau Canal by Prof. Zoe Todd<\/a>. Draining water from the canal in the fall killed some of the fish that Todd wanted to show her students in a graduate seminar called \u201cDecolonizing the Anthropocene.\u201d She uses that experience to introduce the philosophical concepts of ontology (the study of what exists) and epistemology (the study of knowing) to discuss Indigenous ways of knowing that contrast with settler colonialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Rania Tfaily<\/a>, a demographer, wrote a chapter titled, Spring Babies, Summer<\/em> Weddings, Fall Divorces,<\/em> and Winter Deaths:<\/em> Seasons and Population<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Prof.
Prof. Rania Tfaily<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe very concept of a season is social,\u201d says Davidson. \u201cThere are changes in the natural world, but how we organize time is social.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davidson refers to a quote by founding French sociologist \u00c9mile Durkheim that\u2019s included in a chapter about the time farmers spend producing and marketing food: \u201ca calendar expresses the rhythm of collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure their regularity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cSeasonal traditions are a reflection of collective values,\u201d she says, \u201cbut our adherence to them is a collective reinvigoration of how we understand ourselves as a society in both productive, pro-social ways and in ways that can reinforce systems of oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In chapter two, for example, Ryerson University sociologist Heather Rollwagen introduces students to criminology, the sociology of education and quantitative research through the framing of \u201cback to school\u201d season and crime. She explores how schools are social contexts for types of crime and deviance that are policed in highly gendered and racialized ways, such as girls\u2019 spaghetti straps being seen as deviance and Black students facing harsher punishments, contributing to what sociologists call the \u201cschool-to-prisons pipeline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n

The Lure of Seasonal Traditions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Seasonal traditions are an example of what Durkheim described as \u201ccollective effervescence\u201d \u2014 opportunities for communities to come together and share the same thoughts and actions, such as the rush of being in a cheering crowd at a hockey game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, argues Davidson, seasonal traditions in North America also reflect the neoliberal ideology of individual responsibility: that one is responsible for their own destiny, and that for every display of togetherness there are myriad cases of social exclusion (which can be more pronounced during particularly harsh seasons).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can be seen during the pandemic in Canadian cities such as Ottawa, where a lot of attention is being paid to maintaining skating rinks and cross-country ski trails, while access to sidewalks cleared of snow\u2014which are required by a much larger and more vulnerable percentage of the population\u2014doesn\u2019t receive as much media coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The value we put on seasonal traditions was also seen this past Christmas, when nearly 50 per cent of Canadians gathered with people from outside their households, even though they were warned that this could have deadly consequences with COVID infections spiking.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n

Tackling the Big Issues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Seasonal Sociology<\/em> doesn\u2019t address regional difference across Canada head on, but with contributors across the country, it features impressive geographic diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davidson\u2019s chapter is rooted in Ontario, where every summer people are bombarded with images in TV commercials of packed SUVs arriving at lakeside cabins while bookstore windows and CBC radio promote \u201ccottage\u201d reading and chain restaurants offer \u201ccottage\u201d menus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese invocations of \u2018the cottage\u2019 seem to rely on an assumption that everyone has access to a cottage that they enjoy in the summer,\u201d she writes before going to detail how \u201ccottage ownership and enjoyment in Ontario is the result of histories of dispossession of land from Indigenous peoples,\u201d how \u201cassumptions about cottage ownership can be read as expressions of classism and conspicuous consumption,\u201d and how \u201cthe quintessential Ontario summer cottage experience has also historically been gendered, experienced differently for men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dissonance has real-world implications. Because most people in the province don\u2019t own cottages and may not even have the money or time to rent cottages for their holidays, underinvestment in local recreational infrastructure\u2014such as keeping urban wading pools open\u2014accentuates existing inequalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanadian sociologists generally do tackle big social issues,\u201d says Davidson, thinking beyond her own chapter, \u201cand look at social phenomena through a critical lens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of how much our society has been disrupted by COVID-19, Davidson thinks sociology may acquire heightened significance in the years ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cSociology should be for everyone,\u201d says Davidson.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody should have a dose of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Sun<\/figure>\n\n\n

—
\nMore Stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, Carleton University Sociology Instructor Tonya Davidson was teaching a course on the sociology of popular culture and happened to have a class on October 31. Because it was Halloween, she decided to focus the lesson on vampires and zombies. It was so much fun, she wondered why sociologist didn\u2019t do themed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":73353,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13,1592],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-73340","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_type-teaching-learning","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98018,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/73340\/revisions\/98018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=73340"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=73340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}