Gary Barron

Independent Scholar

University rankings have been widely criticized and examined in terms of the environment they create for universities. In this paper, I reverse the question by examining how ranking organizations have responded to criticisms. I contrast ranking values and evaluation with those practiced by academic communities. I argue that the business of ranking...

In this paper, I describe dividing practices in making up a specific medical-legal category—the revolving door patient—to identify, label, and direct the actions of particular people living with mental illness. The revolving door patient was a category that had been spoken of for some time, but became a formal legal subject with the introduction of...

Alberta Health Services (AHS) was awarded a grant from the Alberta Ministry of Human Services to promote applied mental health research within areas of interest to the Ministry. The grant funded the Collaborative Research Grant Initiative: Mental Wellness in Seniors and Persons with Disabilities (CRGI), designed to collaboratively generate knowledg...

Sociologists have long asked why some people obtain more education and, in turn, higher status occupations. Previous research has shown that the children of more educated parents typically acquire more education and better jobs. This paper examines the links between parents’ and children’s social standing in Alberta in the late 1990s and early 2000...

Visit my blog to see an abstract and watch a video of the talk with the slides: http://gbkb.ca/ranking-business

Book Review of Huey, Laura, Jennifer L. Schulenberg, and Jacek Koziarski, Policing Mental Health: Public Safety and Crime Prevention in Canada.

The sociologies of quantification, university rankings, and infrastructure are a loosely connected set of scholarly endeavors. Research in these areas typically examines production of certain types of quantification, their effects, and institutionalization. Despite these commonalities, scholars have noted a lack of conceptual coherence, debates on...

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a sociology that focuses on the everyday world as problematic. As a theory/method of discovery, it focuses on how the work people do is organized and coordinated by text-mediated and text-regulated social organization. Actor-network Theory (ANT) is a theory/method that is concerned with how realities get enacted. A...

Full text available at the Canadian Journal of Sociology, which is a fully open access journal: https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/CJS/article/view/28643/21089 Measures are useful. They allow us to represent the world and intervene in it. We often believe measures to be objective representations that inform us of a reality, but seldo...

This article develops new understanding on the inter-generational succession process in family business. We apply an institutional logics perspective to examine how multiple logics intersect to condition local practices and field level affects in a set of family businesses in the real estate sector in Canada. We examine and contrast the organizatio...

Immigrants are among the most vulnerable population groups in North America; they face multidimensional hurdles to obtain proper healthcare. Such barriers result in increased risk of developing acute and chronic conditions. Subsequently a great deal of burden is placed on the healthcare system. Community navigator programs are designed to provide c...

To summarize information obtained from original research about barriers to access of primary healthcare by Canadian immigrants' and to identify research gaps. Electronic databases of primary research articles and grey literature were searched without restricting the time period. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses...

One important and interesting trend in sociology over the past 20 to 30 years is the shift away from simplicity toward complexity. Much contemporary sociology concerns the articulation of a local, contingent, situated, and nuanced description of how old notions of universal laws ignore much of reality. Mark Bird’s Laws in Sociology do not fit this...

The title, Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World is ambiguous. To me, the phrase " leading research universities " suggested a focus on the strategies and experiences of individuals who lead universities. I soon realized that the title refers to research universities that lead others. Here " leading " refers to holding a top spot in...

Fabris expertly weaves a narrative of his own experiences with " mental illness " through this timely and thoughtful critique of the mental health system and Community Treatment Orders (CTOs). Community Treatment Orders have been legislated across Canada in one form or another since the mid-1990s and are agreements signed between a mental health pa...

While interdisciplinary research is necessary to understand the causes and consequences of complex health issues such as obesity, few studies utilize appropriate methods to evaluate interdisciplinarity. This study uses social network analysis, a methodology developed in anthropology, psychology, and sociology, to examine collaboration among health...

HAVING SPENT ONE’S LIFE FULLY IMMERSED in researching social life and developing the theoretical tools by which to understand it, what is left to do upon approaching the end of one’s life? It seems only fitting to apply those theoretical tools to oneself. In his Sketch for a Self-Analysis Bourdieu uses the theoretical concepts he devised over his c...