Dianne Lalonde, Ph.D. Candidate

dlalond3@uwo.ca

Western University

Country: Canada (Ontario)

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About Me:

Dianne Lalonde is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Political Science at Western University and a Research Associate at the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women and Children. Her research interests lie at the intersection of applied ethics and political philosophy. Her dissertation investigates the potential harmfulness of cultural appropriation and associated concepts of culture and cultural property. Dianne has also completed work on the continuum of gender-based violence including denials of women's voluntary sterilization and image-based sexual abuse though deepnudes and deepfakes.

Research Interests

Race, Ethnicity and Politics

Gender and Politics

Political Theory

Multiculturalism

Cultural Appropriation

Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Deepfakes

Countries of Interest

Canada

Publications:

Journal Articles:

(2019) Does cultural appropriation cause harm?, Politics Groups and Identities

Cultural appropriation is often called a buzzword and dismissed as a concept for serious engagement. Political theory, in particular, has been largely silent about cultural appropriation. Such silence is strange considering that cultural appropriation is clearly linked to key concepts in political theory such as culture, recognition, and redistribution. In this paper, I utilize political theory to advance a harm-based account of cultural appropriation. I argue that there are three potential harms with cultural appropriation: (1) nonrecognition, (2) misrecognition, and (3) exploitation. Discerning whether these harms are present or absent offers a means of placing specific instances of cultural appropriation on a spectrum of harmfulness. I conclude by considering how cultural appropriation, and associated appropriative harms, may be avoided.

(2018) Regret, shame, and denials of women's voluntary sterilization, Bioethics

Women face extraordinary difficulty in seeking sterilization as physicians routinely deny them the procedure. Physicians defend such denials by citing the possibility of future regret, a well‐studied phenomenon in women's sterilization literature. Regret is, however, a problematic emotion upon which to deny reproductive freedom as regret is neither satisfactorily defined and measured, nor is it centered in analogous cases regarding men's decision to undergo sterilization or the decision of women to undergo fertility treatment. Why then is regret such a concern in the voluntary sterilization of women? I argue that regret is centered in women's voluntary sterilization due to pronatalism or expectations that womanhood means motherhood. Women seeking voluntary sterilization are regarded as a deviant identity that rejects what is taken to be their essential role of motherhood and they are thus seen as vulnerable to regret.

(2017) Indigenous Research and Academic Freedom: A View from Political Scientists, The International Indigenous Policy Journal

Over the last several decades, scholars working on Indigenous topics have faced increasing pressure to engage in research that promotes social justice and results in formal partnerships with Indigenous communities. In this article, we argue that non-community-based research, in which the researcher exercises academic autonomy over the project, still has a role to play in Indigenous-focused research, depending on the research question, topic, and situation at hand. We explore this argument from the perspective of political scientists who study Indigenous–settler political relations in Canada.

Media Appearances:

TV Appearances:

(2017) The Walrus

I was a finalist in the 2017 Lieutenant Governor’s Visionaries Prize administered in partnership with the Walrus Foundation.

Other:

(2018) The Conversation

I wrote a piece for The Conversation entitled “Sexist barriers block women’s choice to be sterilized.” It was picked up by National Post, World Economic Forum, and Medical Xpress.