Saeed Hydaralli

Dr. Hydaralli holds a Ph. D in sociology from York University. His research, scholarship and teaching are directed to an examination and clarification of some of the questions with which social actors must contend in pursuit of healthy and meaningful lives. For instance, his previous research has examined: (i) The social phenomenon of the complaint as a form of interaction and engagement with collective life; (ii) The opioid public health crisis and its relationship to the health problem of chronic pain; (iii) The urban soundscape (conventionally translated as the problem of noise pollution) as it relates to health, wellbeing and city life; (iv) The life and death issue of the threat posed by food allergies as it relates to the elementary and secondary school environments; and (v) The conflict that street vending has historically precipitated in many North American cities. 

His current research includes: (i) Women’s infertility and government refunded in-vitro fertilization as it relates to the question of motherhood and women’s place and status in the social order; (ii) The persistent conflict that proposed bicycle lanes tend to engender in many North American cities; and (iii) In collaboration with RWU colleagues, a study seeks to identify and assess the health impact (including physical activity, social capital, and health equity benefits) of public transport for users in Rhode Island.

His future research, having been sketched and presented at conferences, includes: (i) The on-going controversy over the Confederate monuments (and other Confederate related memorialization, such as the Confederate battle flag) that dot the American landscape in some very prominent public places, especially in the South; (ii) An analysis of the ramifications for collective life of the persistent inequality in our society; and (iii) The everyday implications of being black in America.

Prior to his engagement with teaching, research and scholarship, Dr. Hydaralli worked for a relatively brief period of time as a marketing manager in consumer-packaged goods marketing, and as a copywriter in advertising. 

The following is an abbreviated description of research that Dr. Hydaralli has completed:

Hydaralli, Saeed. 2016. “The Complaint: An Analysis,” in The Reflective Initiative. Stanley Raffel and Barry Sandywell  (eds.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pp. 156-166.

This research paper is an analysis of the social phenomenon of the complaint.

The paper inquires into the meaning and place of the complaint in social life in the face of the tension between the annoyance that the complaint often engenders and the persistence of the complaint as a form of social interaction and engagement with collective life. 

Hydaralli, Saeed. 2015. “Chronic Pain and Human Rights: The Opioid ‘Public Health Crisis’,” in Righting Humanity: In Our Time? Merle Jacobs and Livy Visano (eds.). APF Press. Pp. 121-141.

This research paper is an examination of the opioid public health crisis and its relationship to the health problem of chronic pain. The analysis uses a case study approach by examining a specific piece of legislation that was introduced in the Province of Ontario (Canada) in 2010 directed to imposing greater stringency in the ability of physicians to prescribe prescription narcotics to their patients. 

The paper argues, in part, that chronic pain, because of its complexity, often represents a conundrum (mystery) for medicine in ways that necessarily complicate the public health response to the opioid public health crisis. Chronic pain represents a unique challenge to medicine that has resulted in a variety of, and often conflicting, attitudes and approaches towards the handling of the patient experience of pain. In part, that challenge is a function of a medical curriculum that does not adequately prepare physicians to understand and treat chronic pain, and the unwillingness of some physicians to invest the necessary time during a consultation to fully grasp the patient’s situation. This carries the extreme, and opposite, risk that the patient is prescribed unnecessary opioids or the patient who needs a prescription is denied one because they are viewed as “opioid seeking”.

Hydaralli, Saeed. 2012. “When is a Sound Noise? A Phenomenology,” in Reverberations: The Aesthetics, Affect and Politics of Noise. Michael Goddard, Benjamin Halligan, and Paul Hegarty (eds.), London: Continuum Books. Pp. 219-232.

This paper takes up the public health problem of noise pollution, which is typically handled by noise pollution bylaws. The analysis is facilitated by examining a specific case (using almost three thousand pages of court transcript), in the city of Toronto, of a noise complaint that was adjudicated in a court of law.

The paper makes a very important contribution in relation to the public health issue of noise pollution by arguing for and developing the social character of noise versus the previously taken for granted, and widely accepted, technical understanding. By disclosing the social character of noise, the paper reveals the soundscape of the city to be far more complex and ambiguous than implied by noise pollution bylaws. 

Hydaralli, Saeed. 2011. “Life-threatening (anaphylactic) food allergies: School life, health and well- being,” in Spectacular Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Mortality and (Un)Representability. Tristanne Connolly (ed.), Bristol: Intellect Press and the University of Chicago. Pp. 217-230.

This paper engages the life and death issue of the threat posed by food allergies as it relates to the elementary and secondary school environments. The analysis is facilitated by the examination of a specific public health bylaw (Sabrina’s Law) that was introduced into the Province of Ontario to try to protect students in the wake of the death, from an anaphylactic reaction, of a 13-year-old by the name of Sabrina Shannon.

The contribution of the paper is found in its disclosure of the unstated and implicit price that must be paid by the student and life of the community to ensure, in the form of Sabrina’s Law, the anaphylactic student’s physical well-being. 

The paper is an instance of research and scholarship that is consistent with, and exemplifies, my work in the areas of the sociological analysis and public health.

Hydaralli, Saeed. 2011. “Inspiration and Burden: The Conflict over Street Vending,” in Derivateur. Issue 1. New York. Pp. 9-15.

This paper examines engages the conflict that street vending has historically precipitated in many North American cities.

The contribution of the paper resides in its disclosure that the anxiety that street vending provokes is, in large measure, an inescapable feature of the organic and dialectical relationship that abides between the city and street vending. That is, the city provides for the existence of the street-vendor by virtue of the density and agglomeration that is distinctive to the city. Street vending, in turn, provides for its persistence in the city by displaying inventiveness, an innovative character that incessantly seeks to enjoy unregulated practice. The city however is charged with a regulative responsibility that is inextricably linked to its capacity for being, which then relentlessly brings the city and street-vending into confrontation, now implicit, now explicit, but never dormant.