Faculty and staff

Amber Gazso is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social, Cultural, and Media Studies.

Amber is a feminist sociologist and specializes in the following research and teaching areas: citizenship, sociology of the family and intimate relations, sociology of gender and critical sexualities, poverty, research methods, and social policy. Amber joined the School after spending some time with the Department of Sociology at York University (Toronto, Ontario).

Amber’s areas of research specialization are represented in her co-edited book with Dr. Karen Kobayashi, Continuity and Innovation: Canadian Families in the New Millennium (2018, Nelson) and her co-authored book with Dr. Katherine Bischoping, Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences: Conversation, Narrative, and Discourse Strategies (2016, Sage). Her most recent book, Substances, Welfare, and Social Relations: Breaking Stigma, Pursuing Hope (2023, U of T Press), is exemplary of her research foci and her excitement about using multiple qualitative methods. It highlights the everyday life experiences of Torontonians who follow the rules and regulations of their welfare receipt whilst also managing their use of drugs or alcohol and calls for a shift in thinking in how we imagine our futures together. Amber’s research is also featured in journals like Critical Social Policy, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Family Issues, Social Problems, the Canadian Review of Sociology, and the International Journal of Social Policy.

If Amber had chosen a path other than academia earlier in her life, she would be only hanging out with horses and competing in international Grand Prix Dressage.

PhD, Sociology, University of Alberta, 2006

MA, Sociology, Western University, 2001

BA, Criminal Justice with a minor in Sociology, University of the Fraser Valley, 1999

Amber enjoys teaching sociology in general but is most excited about teaching in the areas of sociology of gender and family relations, feminism, critical social policy analysis, social inequality, and qualitative methods. Recently she has discovered a passion for teaching the sociology of human-animal relations.

In general, Amber is drawn to exploring how the meanings attached to family and gender change over time; the relations and practices (e.g. paid and unpaid work) engaged in by family members, these informed by gendered and sexual selves; and the processes of being, becoming, or con­structing gender and family identities and relations, especially in opposition to ‘dominant norms’ of family life – e.g. the construction of fictive kin families. I especially take up these objectives in my work with low income families.   

Amber is especially passionate about researching with individuals and families to understand their relationships with social policies of the welfare state. Much of her research explores how low income single individuals and parents maintain their eligibility for welfare whilst living busy lives managing their own and others’ health, providing caregiving for dependents, and sustaining supportive relationships with friends and family, etc. In this work, Amber is committed to unpacking the contradictions between policy discourses and ideology (e.g. neo-liberalism) and the everyday experiences of individuals, especially parents of young children. 

New research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, explores how Ontarians experiencing low income manage their relationships not just with Ontario Works (welfare) but simultaneously navigate additional relationships, and so rules and regulations, with addictions and mental health, child welfare, and criminal justice systems.

Textbooks and Monographs

Gazso, Amber. 2023. Substances, Welfare, and Social Relations: Breaking Stigma, Pursuing Hope. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.  

Gazso, Amber and Karen Kobayashi, Editors. 2018. Continuity and Innovation: Canadian Families in the New Millennium. Toronto: Nelson.

Bischoping, Katherine and Amber Gazso. 2016. Analyzing Talk in the Social Sciences: Conversation, Discourse, and Narrative Strategies. London: Sage.

Chapters in Edited Collections – Selected Publications

Gazso, Amber, and Jason Webb. 2019. “Multiple Jeopardies and Liminality in Low Income Mothering: Experiencing and Resisting Social Exclusion.” Pp. 231-248 in Motherhood and Social Exclusion, edited by Christie Byvelds and Heather Jackson. Toronto: Demeter Press.

Gazso, Amber. 2016. “Low Income Lone Mothers and “Home”: The Importance of Social Relations.” Pp. 117-132 in Sociology of Home: Belonging, Community and Place in the Canadian Context, edited by G. Anderson, L. Suski, and J. Moore. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.

Gazso, Amber. 2016. “Mothers’ Maintenance of Families through Market and Family Care Relations.” Pp. 256-283 in Feminist Issues: Race, Class, and Sexuality, 6th edition, edited by Nancy Mandell and Jennifer Johnson. Toronto: Pearson/Prentice Hall. (significant revision of 2009 chapter)

Gazso, Amber. 2015. “Gendering Social Assistance Reform.” Pp. 273-287 in Welfare Reform in Canada: Provincial Social Assistance in Comparative Perspective, edited by Daniel Béland and Pierre-Marc Daigneault. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Scobie, Olivia and Amber Gazso. 2013. “‘It was easier to say I didn’t have kids’: Mothering,

Incarceration, and Relationships with Social and Criminal Justice

Policies.” Pp. 148-159 in Incarcerated Mothers: Oppression and Resistance. Toronto: Demeter Press.

Journal Articles – Selected Publications

Gazso, Amber. 2023. Managing More than Poverty When Living with Addiction: Parents’

Emotion and Identity Work. Journal of Family Issues. Published On-line September 2021.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X211041981

Gazso, Amber, Tracy Smith-Carrier, Stephanie Baker-Collins, and Carrie Smith. 2020. The Generationing of Social Assistance Receipt and “Welfare Dependency” in Toronto, Canada. Social Problems 67(3):585-601. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz032 (on-line 2019)

Gazso, Amber. 2020.“Dueling Discourses, Power, and the Construction of the Recovering Addict: When Social Assistance Confronts Addiction in Toronto, Canada.” Critical Social Policy 40(1):130-150.https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018319839158 (on-line 2019)

Gazso, Amber, and Katherine Bischoping. 2018. “Feminist Reflections on the Relation of Emotions to Ethics: A Case Study of Two Awkward Interviewing Moments.” Forum

Qualitative Social Research 19(3). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.3.3118

Webb, Jason, and Amber Gazso. 2017. “Being Homeless and Becoming Housed: The Interplay of Fateful Moments and Social Support in Neo-liberal Context.” Studies in Social Justice 11(1): 65-85.

Gazso, Amber, Susan McDaniel and Ingrid Waldron. 2016. “Networks of Social Support to

Manage Poverty: More Changeable than Durable.” Journal of Poverty 20(4): 441-463.

McDaniel, Susan, Amber Gazso, and Seonggee Um. 2013. “Generationing Relations in

Challenging Times: Americans and Canadians in Mid-Life in the Great Recession.” Current

Sociology, 61:301-321.

Gazso, Amber. 2012. “Moral Codes of Mothering and the Introduction of Welfare-to-Work

in Ontario.” Canadian Review of Sociology 49(1):26-49.

Gazso, Amber and Susan McDaniel. 2010. “The Risks of Being a Single Mother on Income

Support in Canada and the United States.” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy,

30(7/8):368-386.

Gazso, Amber. 2009. “Reinvigorating the Debate: Questioning the Assumptions About and

Models of the “Family” in Social Assistance Policy.” Women’s Studies International Forum

32(2):150-162.

Gazso, Amber. 2009. “Gendering the “Responsible Risk Taker”: Citizenship

Relationships with Gender Neutral Social Assistance Policy.” Citizenship Studies 13(1):

45-63.

Gazso, Amber. 2007. “Balancing Expectations for Employability and Family Responsibilities

While on Social Assistance: Low Income Mothers’ Experiences in Three Canadian Provinces.”

Family Relations 56(5): 454-466.

Gazso, Amber. 2004. “Women’s Inequality in the Workplace as Framed in News

Discourse: Refracting from Gender Ideology.” Canadian Review of Anthropology and

Sociology 41(4): 449-473.

Gazso-Windle, Amber and Julie Ann McMullin. 2003. “Doing Domestic Labour: Strategizing in a

Gendered Domain.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 28(3):341-366.