A House to Call a Home: Housing, Governance, and Wellbeing in Nunavik
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the persistence of the housing crisis in Nunavik, Quebec by conducting an in-depth analysis of government policies and social, cultural, and economic motivations. Using a phronetic research approach based on Bent Flyvberg’s work, the analysis is conducted using ethical knowledge and “practical common sense” (known as phronesis) to derive an interpretation of the status of values and interests expressed in housing policies, agreements, and Inuit-Crown partnerships. The analysis reveals a disconnect between the intentions and promises made by governments and the programs and actions actually proposed, evidenced in the details of the actual policies and plans. The major gap is found in the goal towards wellbeing, a term that is neither well-defined nor Inuit-specific in government policies. Moreover, the foundational role of housing in Inuit wellbeing is not understood. Assumptions made about what wellbeing means and how it can be reached are largely influenced by neoliberal policies that identify solutions in economic terms. Inuit housing is framed by a capitalist welfare model that responds to housing needs rather than housing as a right. Housing is dealt with through social policy. In this context, the story of social housing as welfare, as a response to poverty, and as a drain on government resources, can only be countered with a discourse of housing as an economic asset. However, I argue that reducing the housing discourse to economic terms and technical issues (such as questions about construction and logistics) leaves no room to insist on critical political issues related to housing such as autonomy, control, and self- determination. Housing is political. It is part of the larger Inuit-state relationship framed by legal, constitutional, and policy contexts. By expressing the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the housing discourse, I survey the vast potential of the idea of home as a new focal point. Shifting from housing to home opens the door to reflect on housing for Inuit wellbeing and for self-determination. Building on Julia Christensen’s work with northern Indigenous populations that showed the material, relational, emotional, and spiritual qualities of homemaking, I explore the idea of home in detail from the literature and from reflections drawn from Inuit sources. Because home is part of what makes us human, something everyone can relate to at some level, and because home is also political, I suggest that it has the potential to change the housing dialogue and bring ethics, justice, care, and the shared value of mutual respect as key themes to include in Inuit housing decisions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".