PhD Oral Exam - Amanda Pichette, Social and Cultural Analysis

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Everyday urban life is held together by countless small moments of shared presence. People move through streets, parks, shops, and transit spaces alongside others they barely know, adjusting their conduct just enough for encounters to remain workable. Much of this coordination passes unnoticed. This dissertation begins from that ordinary achievement. It asks how people living in, or regularly spending time in, the Montréal district of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) coexist amid diversity, and what practical and moral repertoires help sustain everyday co-presence.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in NDG, the dissertation follows routine situations in which residents encounter one another across sidewalks and bus stops, in cafés and dépanneurs, in parks, and at local events. It attends to the micro-settings through which people come into view of one another and to the small adjustments through which ordinary sociability is managed. Rather than assuming diversity as a stable background condition, the analysis examines how difference becomes salient in particular situations, how it is handled through ordinary interaction, and how it can also recede as other practical concerns take precedence. These encounters are shaped by uneven constraints in daily life, including time, fatigue, and material insecurity.

The dissertation shows that living side by side often appears possible without shared identity or strong collective belonging. Everyday coordination is sustained through small procedural acts that do not presume intimacy or shared understanding. I describe these competencies as convivial repertoires: practical skills learned through repetition and exercised within the constraints of particular settings. These repertoires are materially situated. The built environment and the organization of local spaces condition what forms of attention, avoidance, acknowledgement, and coordination become possible.

By foregrounding ordinary encounters as a primary site of social labour, the dissertation contributes to debates on urban sociality, civility, and coexistence by working at the scale of practice rather than policy or explicit discourse about diversity.