Kevin Walby

Ph.D. (Carleton, 2010)
Assistant Professor

Kevin Walby is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. He completed his doctoral dissertation under Aaron Doyle at Carleton University (2005–2010). His dissertation research was awarded the Governor General’s Medal. Prior to joining the Department of Sociology in 2011, Walby was a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Centre of Criminology (2010-2011) and a lecturer at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University (2010-2011). He is the prisoners’ struggles editor for the peer reviewed Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP), published by University of Ottawa Press.

Walby’s research interests fall into four areas. (1) Policing, security, surveillance Walby is currently working on The Institutionalization of Streetscape Video Surveillance in Canada with Sean Hier. Walby is also conducting research on conservation officer policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) security intelligence work, and municipal corporate security. His articles on policing, security, and surveillance appear in Alternatives, Antipode, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Culture and Organization, International Sociology, Media, Culture, and Society, Social & Legal Studies, Social Movement Studies, and Surveillance & Society.

(2) Representations of crime and criminality Walby’s research on representations of crime and criminality has two components. The first component involves theorizing the late 19th-century rise and early 21st-century resurgence of biological theories of crime. One of his articles appearing in Criminology & Criminal Justice concerns bio-criminological claims about the etiology of ‘criminal man’. The second component examines representations of crime and punishment. His articles in the British Journal of Criminology and Punishment & Society focus on representations of criminality, penal museums, and prison tours (also see the co-edited special section of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons concerning prison tours).

(3) Access to information and freedom of information law Walby’s research on Canadian access to information (ATI) and freedom of information (FOI) legislation has two components. First, Walby uses interviews and ATI/FOI requests to investigate the application of Canadian federal and provincial ATI/FOI legislation. With Mike Larsen, he has edited a volume on ATI/FOI, law, and qualitative research methods entitled Brokering Access: Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (with University of British Columbia Press). Second, Walby uses ATI/FOI requests to examine policy transfer between local policing and national security agencies, and information management in criminal justice institutions.

(4) Sex work and sexuality Walby has an ongoing research interest in sex work and sexuality. He has completed a book manuscript entitled Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting. Drawing on interviews with male escorts from Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, New York (USA) and London (UK), the book explores issues such as labeling, stigma, and male escort relationships with clients. Supplementing sexual scripting theory, Walby draws from Blumer and Goffman to provide a more comprehensive interactionist account of sex and sexuality. Findings from this research appear in Qualitative Research.

Professor Walby is keen to serve on supervisory committees for graduate student research in the following areas: policing; security; surveillance; risk; imprisonment and punishment; critical criminology; socio-legal studies; access to information and freedom of information law; Foucault; Blumer; Goffman; qualitative research strategies, including institutional ethnography and narrative analysis; urban studies; sociology of the body; sex work; sexuality; and the sociology of emotions.

Tri-council funding: 2011-2014: ($115,000) SSHRC standard research grant “The Institutionalization of Public Area Video Surveillance Systems in Canada” (Sean Hier, primary investigator) 2011-2013: ($49,567) SSHRC Insight grant “The Rise of Municipal Corporate Security in Canadian Cities” (with Randy Lippert) 2011-2016: ($215,000) CIHR team grant “Sex Work, Violence and Health in Canada” (co-PI on Project 6 with Fran Shaver & Project 7. Cecilia Benoit team leader and primary investigator, overall budget $1.2 million)

Committee work: Undergraduate Committee, completing a program review and a document entitled ‘Report on the Sociology Major at the University of Victoria’ Newsletter Committee, completed UVic SOCI newsletter

Publications

Books

Emotions Matter: Explorations in the Sociology of Emotions. Co-edited with Alan Hunt and Dale Spencer. Forthcoming with University of Toronto Press.

Touching Encounters: Sex, Work and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting. Forthcoming with University of Chicago Press.

Brokering Access: Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada. Co-editedwith Mike Larsen. Forthcoming with University of British Columbia Press.

Refereed Articles

Walby, Kevin and Mike Larsen. ‘Access to Information Requests as a Neglected Means of Data Production in the Social Sciences’. Forthcoming with Qualitative Inquiry

Walby, K. and J. Monaghan. ‘Dark Side of the Security-Development Nexus: Canada’s role in the Securitization of Haiti, 2004-2009’. Forthcoming with Alternatives

Fiddler, J., A. Smith, K. Walby and S. Hier. ‘Risk, Politics, and Institutional Trust: Policy Rhetoric and the Men Who Have Sexwith Men Blood Donor Deferral Policy in Canada’. Forthcoming with Canadian Review of Sociology

Monaghan, J. and K. Walby. 2011. ‘Making up ‘Terror Identities’: Security Intelligence and Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre’. Forthcoming in Policing & Society

Walby, K. and R. Lippert. 2011. ‘Spatial Regulation, Dispersal, and the Aesthetics of the City: Conservation Officer Policing of Homeless People in Ottawa, Canada’. Forthcoming in Antipode

Walby, Kevin and Mike Larsen. 2011. ‘Getting at the Live Archive: on Access to Information as Data Collection in Canada’. Forthcoming in Canadian Journal of Law and Society

Hier, Sean P., Dan Lett, Kevin Walby, and André Smith. 2011. ‘Beyond Folk Devil Resistance: Linking Moral Panic and Moral Regulation’. Criminology and Criminal Justice 11, 3: 259–276

Walby, Kevin and Justin Piché. 2011. ‘Dark Tourism and Ontario’s Penal History Museums’. Forthcoming in Punishment & Society

Hier, S. and K. Walby. 2011. ‘Privacy Pragmatism and Streetscape Video Surveillance in Canada’. Forthcoming in International Sociology

Walby, K. and J. Monaghan. 2011. ‘Private Eyes and Public Order: Policing and Surveillance in the Suppression of Animal Rights Activists in Canada’. Social Movement Studies, 10/1: 21–37

Walby, Kevin. 2010. ‘Interviews as Encounters: Issues of Sexuality and Reflexivity when Men Interview Men about Commercial Same Sex Relations’. Qualitative Research, 10/6: 639-657.

Walby, Kevin and Nicolas Carrier. 2010. ‘The Rise of Biocriminology: Capturing Observable Bodily Economies of ‘Criminal Man’. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 10/3: 261-285.

Piché, Justin and Kevin Walby. 2010. ‘Problematizing Carceral Tours’. British Journal of Criminology, 50/3: 570-581.

Walby, Kevin and Jeff Monaghan. 2010. ‘Policing Proliferation: on the Militarization of Police and Atomic Energy Canada Limited’s Nuclear Response Forces’. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 52/2: 117-145.

Lett, D., S. Hier and K. Walby. 2010. ‘CCTV Surveillance and the Civic Conversation: a Study in Public Sociology’. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 35/3: 437-462.

Walby, Kevin. 2009. ‘“He asked me if I was looking for fags…” Ottawa’s National Capital Commission Conservation Officers and the Policing of Public Park Sex’. Surveillance & Society, 6/4: 367-379.

Walby, Kevin and Aaron Doyle. 2009. ‘‘Their Risks are My Risks’: On Shared Risk Epistemologies, including Altruistic Fear for Companion Animals’. Sociological Research Online, 14/4.

Walby, Kevin. 2008. ‘Hunting for Harm: Knowledge Networks, Local Governance and the Ottawa Needle Hunters Program’. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 23/1: 154-171.

Hallgrimsdottir, Helga, Rachel Phillips, Cecilia M. Benoit and Kevin Walby. 2008. ‘Sporting Girls, Streetwalkers, and Inmates of Houses of Ill-Repute: Media Narratives and the Historical Mutability of Prostitution Stigmas’. Sociological Perspectives, 51/1: 119-138.

Walby, Kevin. 2007. ‘On the Social Relations of Research: A Critical Assessment of Institutional Ethnography’. Qualitative Inquiry, 13/7: 1008-1030.

Walby, Kevin. 2007. ‘Contributions to a Post-Sovereigntist Understanding of Law: Foucault, Law as Governance, and Legal Pluralism’. Social & Legal Studies, 16/3: 551-571.

Walby, Kevin. 2007. ‘Mode of Production versus Mode of Information: Marx, Poster, and an Argument for Anti-Capitalist Praxis’. Critical Sociology, 33/5: 887-912.

Hier, Sean P., Joshua Greenberg, Kevin Walby, and Dan Lett. 2007. ‘Media, Communication, and the Establishment of Public Camera Surveillance Programmes in Canada’. Media, Culture, and Society, 29/5: 727-751.

Walby, Kevin. 2006. ‘Locating Televisual and Non-Televisual Textual Sequences with Institutional Ethnography: a Study of Campus and Apartment CCTV Security Work’. Culture and Organization, 13/2: 153-168.

Walby, Kevin. 2006. ‘Little England? The Rise of Open-Street Closed Circuit Television Surveillance in Canada’. Surveillance and Society, 4/1: 29-51.

Hier, Sean P. and Kevin Walby. 2006. ‘Competing Analytical Paradigms in the Sociological Study of Racism in Canada’. Canadian Ethnic Studies, 38/1: 83-104.

Walby, Kevin. 2006. ‘Risky Spaces, Algorithims, and Signifiers: Disappearing Bodies and the Prevalence of Racialization in Urban Camera Surveillance Procedures’. Topia: a Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 16, Fall: 73-90.

Walby, Kevin. 2005. ‘Institutional Ethnography and Surveillance Studies: An Outline for Inquiry’. Surveillance and Society, 3/2-3: 158-172.

Walby, Kevin. 2005. ‘Open-Street Camera Surveillance and Governance in Canada’. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 47/4: 655-683.

Walby, Kevin and Sean P. Hier. 2005. ‘Risk Technologies and the Securitization of Post-9/11 Citizenship: The Case of National ID Cards in Canada’. Socialist Studies, 1/2: 5-30.

Walby, Kevin. 2005. ‘How Closed-Circuit Television Surveillance Organizes the Social: an Institutional Ethnography’. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30/2: 189-215. Re-printed in The Surveillance Studies Reader. 2007. Hier, S. and J. Greenberg (eds). UK: Open University Press.

Book Chapters

Larsen, Mike and Kevin Walby. ‘Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada’. Brokering Access: Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada. Larsen, M. and K. Walby (eds). Forthcoming with University of British Columbia Press.

Walby, Kevin and André Smith. ‘Sex and Sexuality under Surveillance: Lenses and Binary Frames’. In Policing Sex. Johnson, P. and D. Dalton (eds). London: Routledge.

Walby, K. and D. Spencer. 2011. ‘Objects, Organizations and the Emotional Climate of a Mass Spectrometry Laboratory’. Forthcoming in Emotions Matter. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Walby, Kevin, Dale Spencer and Alan Hunt. 2011. ‘For A Relational Approach to Emotions’. Forthcoming in Emotions Matter. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Walby, Kevin and Dale Spencer. 2011. ‘How Emotions Matter to Moral Panics’. Hier, S. (ed). Forthcoming in Tightening the Focus: The Past, Present and Future of Moral Panic Studies. London: Routledge.

Doyle, A. and K. Walby. 2011. ‘Cab Cameras: the Case of Surveillance in Ottawa Taxi Cabs’. Doyle, A., R. Lippert and D. Lyon (eds). Forthcoming in Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance. London: Routledge.

Walby, Kevin. 2011. ‘What Keeps Men Who Have Sex with Men Up At Night: Sexual Stigma and Homophobia’. Bruckert, Christine and Stacey Hannem (eds). Stigma Revisited: Negotiations, Resistance and the Implications of the Mark. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

Walby, Kevin. 2010. ‘Anarcho-Abolitionism: a Challenge to Conservative and Liberal Criminology’. Doyle, Aaron, and Dawn Moore (eds). Critical Criminology in Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Walby, Kevin. 2009. ‘Surveillance of Male with Male Public Sex in Ontario, 1983-1994’. Hier, Sean and Josh Greenberg (eds). In Surveillance: Power, Problems and Politics. Pp 46-58. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Walby, Kevin and Sean P. Hier. 2009. ‘Securitizing Citizenship: ID Cards, Passports and Border Surveillance in Canada’. Rollings-Magnusson, Sandra (ed). In Anti-Terrorism: Security and Insecurity After 9/11. Pp 125-140. Halifax: Fernwood.

Hier, Sean P., Kevin Walby and Joshua Greenberg. 2006. ‘Supplementing the Panoptic Paradigm: Surveillance, Moral Governance, and CCTV’. Lyon, David (ed). In Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Pp 230-244. Cullompton: Willan.

Huey, L., K. Walby, and A. Doyle. 2006. ‘Cop Watching in the Downtown Eastside: Exploring the Use of (Counter) Surveillance as a Tool of Resistance’. Monahan, T. (ed). In Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics in Everyday Life. Pp 149-156. London: Routledge.

Other Publications

Carrier, N. and K Walby. 2011. ‘Putting Claims about the ‘New Paradigm’ of ‘Biosocial Criminology’ in Context: a Rejoinder to Beaver and Chaviano’. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice.

Piché, J. and K. Walby. 2011. ‘Carceral Tours and the Need for Reflexivity: a Response to Wilson, Spina and Canaan’. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice.

Walby, Kevin and Dale Spencer. 2010. ‘In Conversation with the American Sociological Association President: Randall Collins on Emotions, Violence and Interactionist Sociology’. Canadian Review of Sociology, 47/1: 93-101.

Walby, K. and M. Haan. 2010. ‘Counting, Caste and Confusion during Census Enumeration in Colonial India’. Tepperman, L. (ed). In Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives 2nd Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Piché, Justin and Kevin Walby. 2009. ‘Dialogue on Prison Ethnography and Carceral Tours: an Introduction’. Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 18/2: 88-90.

Hurl, Chris and Kevin Walby. 2009. ‘We are the Student Movement? Remembering the Rise and Fall of the Canadian Union of Students, 1965-1969’. Upping the Anti. Number 9. Pp 105-121.

Monaghan, Jeff and Kevin Walby. 2008. ‘The Green Scare is Everywhere: The Long Reach of the War on “Eco-Terror”’. Upping the Anti. Number 6. Pp 93-112.

Contact and other information

Office: Cornett A368
Phone:250-853-3783
Fax: 250-721-6217
Email: kwalby@uvic.ca
Homepage: n/a

Department of Sociology