An unofficial AU advocate at large, Jason never misses a chance to recount the merits of an Athabasca education. Jason’s studies began alone in front of a rustic rural fireplace in December of 2003 and carried on through various brick and mortar college classrooms yet always with Athabasca as part of his journey. In 2014 he completed his BA in Sociology and in 2022 graduated with an MA in Cultural Studies. To this end, his columns seek to explore edifying moments of learning how to learn within the challenging ideological terrain of that great bugaboo facing students everywhere: the real world!
The meat of a matter, any matter, lies in what we decide truly counts. Values adjust to the times, are updated, and we find ourselves living perpetually in a changing society. Our inner psychological realm likewise morphs and evolves as we learn and grow; our brains are as permeable a membrane as an apple skin. … Read more »
Kathleen Hanna, of the post-punk dance band Le Tigre, in a song once sang (or, rather, spoke) “we favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape, because it has the impact of the unequivocal.” To paint with broad strokes, like mapping one’s identity onto this or that spectrum, is… Read more »
Cultural problem-solving (CPS) is all around us: it’s where entertainment explores a dicey topic in an approachable way. CPS is in movies, where the lustrous term verisimilitude explains the way given scripts and settings convey a sense of reality. CPS occurs anywhere a person performs for an audience who in some ways relate to the… Read more »
“What ever could life have been like before there was Tik Tok? Wasn’t everyone awfully, irremediably, bored to tears? And what was it like not having influencers for you to relate to?” These questions, when asked to any of us wizened over-thirty types, might elicit snorts and guffaws, but it merits more than a cursory… Read more »
Developing a nose for the inane is a vital tool for neophyte social theorists. Each sniff of trite entertainment leads to an understanding of the social cause of the sensation; few things in culture are quite what they seem, after all. Take the phrase “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” This tongue… Read more »
Q: “You act like you’re the smartest person in the room; why does everything have to be a lengthy lecture with you?” A: “Oh yeah, no, I know I’m acting!” Performativity, that cherished theme of Mannville, Alberta’s sociological superhero Erving Goffman, is ground zero for how we present ourselves. Yet, even if we know that… Read more »
With minced footfalls through societal jungles, we learn to assess emergent dangers and take a few risque risks. Lording over us within the rarified air of popular culture, flocks of cultural influencers call us forth to this or that cause for concern – some say these denizens of behaviour feed on our decay, but that’s… Read more »
William Hazlitt described how life has more than one propeller driving us toward enlightenment. “The child is a poet in fact when he first plays at hide and seek…the country man when he stops to look at the rainbow”. With the turning of a mental page we can find ourselves face to face with the… Read more »
Technology, that manna from nerd heaven that turns slinky skateboarders into sedentary specimens and geeky weirdos into well-heeled billionaires, in our times has assumed the mantle of a Good Thing. When deployed properly, the wisdom goes, there’s a general consensus that technology can wend us out of many a challenge. This parallels the delicious synchronicity… Read more »
A memorable childhood moment from the 1980’s was Rick Hansen’s Man in Motion wheelchair tour across Canada. In glowing terms my kindergarten teacher explained to us that anytime Hansen felt the urge he could wheel himself up to the drive-thru window of a local McDonalds. Whipping out a special card designed for the purpose, while… Read more »