Graduate Student, Sociology
Thesis Title: The Embedded Nature of Tobacco Smoking within the Working Class Culture
About
I am graduate student at the University of Victoria currently working on my thesis: "The Embedded Nature of Tobacco Smoking within the Working Class Culture". The premise of which is an attempt to understand the persistence of smoking within lower socio-economic groups through examining tobacco smoking as cultural capital. Rather than assuming, as much of the literature does, that tobacco smoking is deviant and is engaged in by a public that is ignorant of the risks I am arguing that tobacco smoking within this group is engaged in while knowing the health risks and, importantly, this behaviour provides meaning for that group; hence the persistence.
