Showing papers in "Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2000"

The market as an object of attachment : Exploring postsocial relations in financial markets

Abstract: This paper rests on the assumption of an increased presence and relevance of object worlds in the social world. It holds that this influx of object worlds coincides with changing patterns of human relatedness that can be glossed by the notion postsocial forms. Postsocial forms include object-relationships where the objects are non-human entities. One characteristic of the present situation is that perhaps for the first time in recent history it appears unclear whether other persons are, for human beings, the most fascinating part of their environment. Objects may also be the risk winners of the relationship risks which many authors find inherent in contemporary human relations. Postsocial forms "step into the place" of social relations where these empty out, where they lose some of the meaningfulness they have had in earlier periods. A condition for understanding this role of objects is that we develop, in social theory, adequate concepts of objects that break with the tradition of seeing them merely as abstract technologies that promote alienation or as fetishized commodities that freeze and numb any human or political potential (Marx). In this paper, we use a different conception developed in an earlier paper. We also explore in some detail a notion of postsocial relatedness that is based on the idea of a dynamic of wantings and lacks of fulfilment. The paper explores this framework in the area of financial markets, where traders relate to the market as an object of attachment within an environment of reiterated lacks.

Self-control and social control : An examination of gender, ethnicity, class and delinquency

Abstract: This paper tests the relationship between self-control, social-control, gender, age, ethnicity, social class and delinquent behaviour. The data source is a survey of senior and junior high school students in Alberta, Canada. Results offer strong support for the General Theory of Crime (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990), in that self-control is the strongest predictor of all types of delinquency. Moreover, self and social-control interact in their relationship with delinquency, as suggested by the control theories. However, among various dimensions of self-control, risk-seeking followed by impulsivity are more predictive of delinquent behaviour than other dimensions. Contrary to our hypothesis, present orientation, carelessness and restlessness are unrelated to delinquency. Finally, gender, age and ethnicity maintain a significant relationship with delinquency even after controlling for self- and social-control. Resume: Cet expose examine le rapport entre la maitrise de soi, le contrele social, le sexe, l'age, les racines ethniques, la classe sociale et la delinquance. Les donnees sont issues d'un sondage effectue aupres d'etudiant(e)s de niveau secondaire en Alberta, Canada. Les resultats tendent a confirmer la theorie generale du crime (Gottfredson et Hirschi, 1990), en ce que la maitrise de soi est le plus fort indicateur de tous les types de delinquance. De plus, la maitrise de soi et le controle social interagissent dans leur rapport avec la delinquance, comme le suggerent les theories de contro1e. Cependant, de toutes les dimensions de la maitrise de soi, le desir de prendre des risques ainsi que l'impulsion sont respectivement les plus determinantes sur le plan de la delinquance. Contrairement a notre hypothese, l'orientation actuelle, la negligence et l'agitation n'ont aucun rapport avec la delinquance. Enfin, le sexe, l'age et les racines ethniques maintiennent un rapport important avec la delinquance meme apres le controle pour la maitrise de soi et le controle social. The role of control in reducing crime has been one of the main focuses of criminological theories. These theories explain crime in terms of weak internal control mechanisms developed in early childhood in combination with weak or absent social rules. Control theories suggest that left on their own (in an unsocialized state) people will deviate. Internal and external control mechanisms prevent them from doing so. One can trace ideas about this kind of control of behaviour to early philosophy (e.g., Hobbes in Leviathan) and through the modern development of sociology and criminology (Reiss, 1951; Reckless, 1955; Nye, 1958, for examples). However, research on control theory has moved in two directions. One body of research places emphasis on the importance of external (social) control while a second body focuses on internal (self) control. It is rare that the two are treated simultaneously. It is our contention in this paper that the two interact in a way to better explain behaviour. In the late 1960s Hirschi (1969: 16-34) argued that socialization processes (in the family and other societal institutions) foster an individual's bond to society. Social-control was operationalized as a bond to some part of society. The social bond is said to have four dimensions: attachment or ties to significant others (peers or parents), commitment or investment in conventional society (as in education), involvement in conventional behaviour (such as participation in recreational activities), and belief in society's values (respect for law and authority). Consistent with this theory, empirical research shows that attachment and commitment to, involvement with and, belief in conventional institutions reduce criminal tendencies (for the importance of family see Glueck and Glueck, 1950; Nye, 1958; Hirschi, 1969; Hagan et al., 1985, 1988; Rosenbaum, 1989; McCord, 1991; Wells and Rankin, 1991; Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1993, and for the importance of school see Stinchcombe, 1964; Wiatrowski et al. …

Economic Returns of Immigrants' Self Employment

Abstract: Research on ethnic business and immigrant entrepreneurship has posed two major questions. First, why are some immigrant groups more inclined toward entrepreneurship and self- employment? Second, are those immigrants who engage in business better remunerated than

Time constraints and relative resources as determinants of the sexual division of domestic work

Abstract: Based on data from the 1992 Canadian General Social Survey on time-use, the time spent in housework and in child care are analysed for women and men who are working full-time in dual-earner families. Time demands of the family and time availability are found to be important determinants of time spent in child care for both men and women. However, the relative resources of partners are found to have less predictive power, except that women spend less time in housework if they earn more than half of the family income. There were also important elements of gender asymmetry in the results. In particular, women's time in housework is increased when their husbands spend more time in paid work, but men's time in housework is not significantly affected by the employment time of their wives. Resume: Nous analysons le temps employe, par les femmes et hommes travaillant a plein temps, pour les travaux domestiques et l'entretien des enfants, a base de donnees de l'Enquete sociale generale 1992. Les contraintes familiales et le temps disponible sont des determinants importants du temps passe a l'entretien des enfants, pour hommes et femmes. Par ailleurs, les ressources relatives ont moins d'impact, sauf que les femmes font moins de travail domestique si elles apportent plus que la moitie du revenu familial. Il y a aussi des differences importantes par sexe; en particulier, le temps des femmes en travail domestique augmente quand leur marl passe plus de temps en travail paye, mais le temps domestique des hommes n'a pas une relations significative avec le temps paye de leur epouse. The movement of married women into paid work and the consequent rise of the dual-earner family as the modal family form in Canada has had a significant impact on the division of household labour within couples. However, it is generally agreed that this change has affected women more than men, and that women bear the brunt of the "time crunch" arising out of the family-work interface (Hochschild 1989; Kempeneers, 1992). Nonetheless, Shelton (1992) observes that the change in women's paid work is now affecting both women and men. The search for explanations of the distribution of household labour can usefully be divided between economic and cultural considerations (Brines, 1994), or between "pragmatic strategies" and "patriarchal dynamics" (Haddad, 1996). The economic perspective pays particular attention to the relative amount of income and other resources that spouses may exchange for unpaid work. It also focuses on the practical considerations associated with time availability and the demands on an individual's time. On the other hand, the cultural perspective considers the normative context of housework, and focuses in particular on the relationship between unpaid work and the social construction of gender. The pragmatic strategy approach is based on questions of specialization and efficiency. Parsons and Bales (1955) argued that a role differentiation based on male specialization in instrumental activities and female specialization in expressive activities permitted a functional allocation of tasks within families. Similarly, Blood and Wolfe (1960) theorize that the sexual division of domestic labour is a function of spouses' relative contributions of resources to the household. The person with more resources would do less domestic work. Becker (1965, 1981) bases his understanding of families on the efficiency that is obtained by spousal specialization in income generation and unpaid work respectively. In effect, these conceptions are based on the view that the key issue is not gender, but rather a pragmatic allocation of tasks. The patriarchal dynamics approach pays particular attention to the social construction of gender through the division of work and the allocation of unpaid work. Engels (1975) argued that the separation of domestic and economic spheres in the context of the historical development of class society led to the economic disempowerment of women and the evolution of the family as the primary site of women's subordination and exploitation. …

Ethics of Individuals

Abstract: „Private Sprache“, so Ludwig Wittgenstein, ist ein Oxymoron — oder, wenn man das Lateinische dem Griechischen vorzieht, eine contradictio in adiecto. Sprache setzt eine Sprachgemeinschaft voraus; Sprache ist eine „Form des Lebens“ — und zwar des miteinander geteiltenLebens, des Zusammenlebens. Offensichtlich lasst sich ahnliches von der Ethik sagen. Gabe es nicht ein Netz wechselseitiger Abhangigkeiten zwischen Individuen, wurde die Vorstellung einer Ethik keinen Sinn ergeben. Ein Einzelwesen, dessen Leben von anderen unberuhrt ist und das selbst kein anderes Leben beeinflusst, ware ein nicht-ethisches Wesen. Es ware weder gut noch bose, weder moralisch noch unmoralisch, denn es geht bei der Ethik nicht darum, was ein Einzelwesen sich selbst, sondern was menschliche Wesen einander antun. Allerdings konnte ein „Einzelwesen“ auch kein menschlichesWesen sein. Wie schon Aristoteles bemerkte, sind nur Bestien oder Engel fahig, ein Leben in Vereinzelung fuhren. Bei einem Sein*, das nicht (wie Martin Heidegger es ausdruckte) ursprunglich Mitsein*ist, handelt es sich um eine Widersinnigkeit. Es ist das Mitsein, das jenes Sein konstituiert, und es gibt kein Sein, das nicht schon Mitseinist. Man kann daher sagen, dass potentiell alles ethisch ist: Die notwendige Bedingung fur die Moralitat des Menschen-in-der-Welt war — ist — erfullt, unabhangig davon, wann (und ob uberhaupt) Konzepte von „gut“ und „bose“ entwickelt und ein Moralkodex schriftlich fixiert wurden.

Neighbourhood Poverty in Canadian Cities

Abstract: The recent surge of poverty in the industrial nations seems to be accompanied by increasing concentration of the poor in urban space. As a problem distinct from poverty, the spatial concentration of poverty, reflected in the rising number of poor neighbourhoods, has some serious social consequences of its own ranging from concentrating problems such as crime, school drop-out, and teen-pregnancy in few neighbourhoods, and the development of a sub-culture distinct from mainstream culture. Despite its seriousness, however, neighbourhood poverty has not received much attention in Canada. Addressing this gap in the literature, the present article examines the magnitude of the problem in Canada and its changes between 1986 and 1996. The findings of the study clearly indicate that the urban areas in Quebec and the Prairie, Montreal and Winnipeg in particular, are most severely hit by the rise of neighbourhood poverty. Other cities in these areas, along with Toronto, Kingston, Halifax, and St. John's have begun to experience an alarming rise only between 1991 and 1996. Smaller cities in Ontario, along with Victoria in B.C., are the only ones that have witnessed a decline in their neighbourhood poverty rates. The regional variations in the magnitude of the neighbourhood poverty in Canada may indicate, among others, that the economic recessions of the mid-80s and early-90s have affected certain areas more severely than others. Resume: La recente vague de pauvrete qui a deferle dans les pays industrialises semble s'accompagner d'une plus grande concentration de pauvres dans l'espace urbain. Quoique distinct de la pauvrete, la concentration spatiale de cette derniere, qui se traduit en un nombre de plus en plus grand de quartiers pauvres, presente des consequences sociales graves en soi, allant de la criminalite, au decrochage scolaire, a la grossesse chez les adolescentes dans quelques quartiers et au developpement de sous-cultures distinctes des courants dominants. Malgre sa gravite, la pauvrete pauvrete de voisinage n'a pas attire beaucoup d'attention au Canada. Dans l'espoir de combler cette lacune, cet article examine l'ampleur du probleme au Canada ainsi que les changements qui se sont produits entre 1986 et 1996. L'etude demontre clairement que les regions urbaines du Quebec et des Prairies sont les plus touchees par la hausse de la pauvrete de voisinage, tout particulierement Montreal et Winnipeg. D'autres villes dans les memes regions, ainsi que Toronto, Kingston, Halifax et St. John's n'ont remarque une hausse alarmante qu'entre 1991 et 1996. Les villes plus petites en Ontario, tout comme d'ailleurs Victoria, en Colombie-Britannique, sont les seules a avoir vu le taux de pauvrete de voisinage diminuer. Les ecarts regionaux de l'ampleur de la pauvrete de voisinage au Canada peuvent indiquer, entre autres, que les recessions du milieu des annees quatre-vingts et du debut des annees quatre-vingt-dix se sont davantage fait sentir dans certaines regions que d'autres. Introduction In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new dimension of poverty attracted the attention of researchers in the United States. This new dimension involved neighbourhood poverty, also referred to in the literature as urban concentrated poverty and spatial concentration of poverty. The first attempt to study this dimension of poverty analytically was made by Wilson (1987), furthered by Massey and Eggers (1990), Massey and Denton (1993), and Jargowsky and Jo Bane (1991), among others. The main thrust of these studies was that, during the 1980s and 1990s, poor individuals and families tended increasingly to be concentrated in a few neighbourhoods in each city. This phenomenon, the studies argued, had profound social and cultural consequences for those living in such neighbourhoods as well as for the larger society. One serious consequence of the poor being concentrated in a few areas of a city -- that is, high levels of neighbourhood poverty -- is the massive breakdown of social institutions in such areas (Massey and Eggers, 1990). …

Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses

Abstract: This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the "base" of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historically unsituated, free floating universalism. The contemporary versions of the hermeneutic, communitarian approaches emerge in response, with thinkers like Walzer, Boltanski and Thevenot, Taylor, and Young arguing for the situated self, community based standards, cultural specificity, and relativism. It is demonstrated, however, that within each of these works there is a decisive space that is, or must be, given to some more universalizing sphere of justice. Responding to this possibility, against these communitarian and hermeneutic approaches, there developed internal revisions of the neo-Kantian, externalist approach, beginning with the large shift manifest in the Rawls of Political Liberalism. Similar changes are demonstrated in the works of thinkers like Benhabib, Honneth, and even in Habermas himself. Just as the communitarians move back, with difficulty, toward universalism, so do these universalists seek to move back, with difficulty, to particularism. In the concluding section of this paper, I argue that if we look empirically at the actual nature of the discourses about the good society that circulate in Western societies, we will see both of these discourses, the universalist and the particular, acting side by side. I try to explain how they actual intertwine in a systematic way, as what I call a "binary discourse of civil society." Resume: Ce document examine deux manieres fondamentalement differentes que les philosophes d'aujourd'hui utilisent pour elaborer des theories sur la societe ideale. Ce document demontre aussi que chaque tradition a adopte des vues revisionnistes qui la rapproche de sa rivale traditionnelle. Rawls et Habermans representent la base de cet effort contemporain quia jete les assises des positions neo-kantiennes dans les annees soixante et soixante-dix, marquant un premier effort de theories sur la societe ideale dans le cadre d'un universalisme libre et non situe dans l'histoire. Des versions contemporaines de cette demarche hermeneutique et communautarienne surgissent alors avec des penseurs tels que Walzer, Boltanski et Thevenot, de meme que Taylor et Young qui defendent le sol localise, les normes axees sur les collectivites, la specificite culturelle et le relativisme. On prouve par ailleurs que dans chacun de ces travaux, il existe un espace decisif qui doit, ou devrait, etre laisse a une justice plus universelle. Reagissant a cette possibilite, a l'encontre des demarches communautariennes et hermeneutiques, des revisions internes de la demarche externaliste neo-kantienne sont apparues en commencant par le manifeste radical du Everywhere we look today, certainly in philosophy and even in a great deal of social science, we see a decided turn to ethical and moral concerns, not only as an empirical object but as a practical goal towards which empirical and theoretical investigations aim. It has not always been so. In the two decades after World War II, it was widely believed that morality -- "value orientation" in Weber's influential formulation -- did not need to, and should not be allowed to, play a direct role in social science or even in much of philosophy. In social science, it seemed possible to uphold this position because the moral seemed imminent to the progressively unfolding historical progress that functionalists called modernization and Marxists called socialism or the welfare state. In the decades preceding the Second World War, of course, this optimism would have seemed totally absurd. In the unstable and threatening time between the two world wars, philosophers and sociological theorists struggled to expand their understandings of action and order so that notions of moral responsibility could become more central and the relation of theorizing to political action more concrete. …

Homeownership and politics : Testing the political incorporation thesis

Abstract: Marxists and other sociologists alike have suggested that homeowners will be more involved in politics and hold more conservative attitudes than will tenants. However, there has been only limited research done on these topics, with very little of it having to do with Canadians. Underlying this hypothesis is an assumption that homeowners are more socially and economically integrated than are tenants, and that, therefore, homeowners act more conservatively and participate more. This study tests the "political incorporation" predictions for a national sample of Canadians. It asks whether the predictions hold overall, and whether the effect extends to people who express dissatisfaction with their material standard of living. Further analyses also ask whether there are differences between homeowners with and without a mortgage. Some theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Resume: Tant les marxistes que les liberaux ont formule l'hypothese selon laquelle les individus qui sont proprietaires de leur logement sont a la fois plus politises et plus conservateurs que ceux et celles qui sont locataires. La recherche a ce sujet demeure cependant limitee, tout particulierement dans le cas canadien. Cette hypothese repose sur la premisse selon laquelle le conservatisme et la plus grande participation politique des proprietaires proviennent de leur plus grande integration sociale et economique. La pressente etude soumet cette hypothese -- dite de "l'incorporation politique" -- a une nouvelle verification, utilisant un echantillon de Canadien(ne)s. L'auteure se demande si cette hypothese se confirme dans le cas des proprietaires dont le bas niveau de vie constitue une source d'insatisfaction, et cherche a determiner si la detention d'une hypotheque (ou non) introduit une variation significative. Enfin, l'auteure reflechie sur quelques implications theoriques de l'etude. Introduction The Hypothesis that Homeownership Affects Political Activity and Political Attitudes Scholars from differing theoretical perspectives have shared the view that homeowners will think and act in ways that protect their stake in the system. It is suggested that because homeowners gain materially through domestic property ownership they will be both more likely than tenants to participate in mainstream political activities and to assume more conservative political attitudes on economic and social issues. This set of predictions is articulated, for example, in the Marxist "political incorporation thesis" and in British neo-Weberian consumption sector theories. Of course, there are also marked differences within and among these two schools of thought. This study is concerned with testing the political incorporation predictions concerning homeownership and politics. Engels first articulated the political incorporation thesis concerning homeownership in The Housing Question (1972[1936]). This is the position that workers will become "incorporated" into the ideology supporting capitalist class relations to the extent that their demands for decent working and living conditions are satisfied. Since Engels' work, various neo-Marxists have discussed the results of labour's struggles outside of the workplace for improved provisions of collective consumption (e.g., Castells, 1977; 1978; Harvey, 1976; 1978). According to Harvey (1976), one of the ways in which capital responded to workers' protests around housing was to promote homeownership. He argues that extending homeownership to the working class serves to reinforce capitalist hegemony because it legitimizes market-based approaches to the provision of housing and promotes the acceptance of victim-blaming themes to explain housing inequalities (also see Edel, 1982; Jaret, 1983). The more general Marxist proposition that worker affluence serves to diminish working class loyalty is captured in the "political embourgeoisement" thesis. In the postwar period, embourgeoisement theorists predicted a decline in working class politics as workers became more affluent and assumed "bourgeois" consumption habits and values. …

"Too Much Money off Other People's Backs": Status in Late Modern Societies

Abstract: This paper revisits debates on occupational prestige in light of recent shifts in sociological conceptions of status, culture, and identity. Using multidimensional scaling and clustering of data collected from electricians, university professors, and students in adult education, it explores how people differently located in social structure perceive occupations. Results indicate that prestige scales are one among many cognitive schemata available in collective consciousness for representing social structure, drawing symbolic boundaries, and evaluating others. How this is done, however, varies with social location. Compared to electricians and students, professors see more congruence between occupational prestige and worth. Electricians and students use normative evaluations of worth as alternative criteria for evaluating occupations and drawing boundaries, in an effort to enhance their own social position and downgrade others. Resume: Cet article examine les debats sociologiques entourant le prestige occupationnel a la lumiere des transformations recentes des concepts de statut, de culture et d'identite. Sur la base d'une analyse multidimensionnelle et typologique de donnees recueillies aupres d'electriciens, d'etudiant-es et de professeur-es d'universite, il explore comment des acteurs differemment situes dans l'espace social percoivent les occupations. Les resultats indiquent que les echelles de prestige constituent dans la conscience collective un schema cognitif parmi d'autres permettant de representer la structure sociale, d'y tracer des frontieres symboliques et d'evaluer les occupations. L'utilisation de ces schemas cognitifs varie cependant selon la position sociale. Les professeur-es percoivent une forte correlation entre le prestige et certains criteres normatifs d'evaluation des occupations. Les electriciens et les etudiant-es, par contre, utilisent ces derniers pour tracer differentes frontieres symboliques qui rehaussent leur position sociale. Introduction The development of occupational prestige scales by North and Hatt, in the 1940s, gave rise to heated debates about the meaning of these scales and the inferences that could be drawn from them. Sociologists emphasizing the consensual nature of occupational ratings argued that they expressed collective beliefs about the worthiness of occupations (Shils, 1975; Treiman, 1977). Positions which ranked highest on the scales were those which were most highly valued by a collectivity, either because of their functional importance (Davis and Moore, 1945) or because of their proximity to order-creating values and institutions (Shils, 1975). This interpretation fit in very well with neo-Durkheimian and functionalist theories of stratification, according to which consensual evaluations of positions constitute a necessary foundation for social life. They provide a shared normative framework which ensures social integration and legitimates inequality. Normative interpretations, however, were never very popular among sociologists who used prestige scales in empirical research. While most remained agnostic on the assumptions and implications underlying their use in research, some argued that occupational prestige reflects factual knowledge about the material rewards attached to occupations (Featherman and Hauser, 1976; Nam and Terrie, 1982). A commonly accepted interpretation, proposed by Goldthorpe and Hope (1974), is that occupational prestige scales measure the "desirability" of occupations in terms of socioeconomic rewards. Other things being equal, they argue, people generally agree that positions offering high rewards are more desirable than those affording low rewards. High levels of consensus among raters simply mean that people are generally aware of the economic and cultural advantages attached to occupations and value them as desirable accordingly. Goldthorpe and Hope (1974) acknowledge that their concept retains an evaluative component, but contend that this component has no normative connotation and no legitimating significance with regard to social inequality. …

"If You Don't Speak French, You're Out": Don Cherry, the Alberta Francophone Games, and the Discursive Construction of Canada's Francophones

Abstract: The Alberta Francophone Games (AFG), a yearly weekend-long sporting and cultural event, were instituted in 1992 to create an attractive space where young French speakers would produce themselves as "francophones." In the newspaper version of "Coach's Corner," hockey commentator Don Cherry has argued that it is "unfair" to allocate government funding to the AFG because participation is restricted to French speakers. In this article, we relate Cherry's comment not only to the discourses of francophone identity produced at the Alberta Francophone Games, but also to those that circulate in Canadian society in general, all of which generate competing "truths" that make the francophone subject discursively unstable. We offer an analysis of "francophone" performance at the intersection of the AFG's main identity discourses which play their small, but revealing, part in the overall Canadian production of uncertain "francophone" communities and identities. The paper also suggests that Canada's minority francophonies provide a rich ground for the development of discourse theory along the problematic of identity/difference. Resume: Institues en 1992, les Jeux francophones de l'Alberta (JFA) sont un evenement sportif et culturel qui vise a encourager les jeunes d'expression francaise a se produire en tant que "francophones." Dans la chronique "Coach's Corner" publiee dans les journaux, le commentateur de hockey Don Cherry a declare "injuste" l'allocation de fonds gouvernementaux aux JFA puisque seuls les parlants francais peuvent y participer. Notre analyse porte initialement sur la performance "francophone" produite a l'intersection des principaux discours identitaires aux IFA, discours qui jouent un role -- petit, mais revelateur -- dans la production d'identites et de communautes "francophones" incertaines. Ainsi, nous campons le commentaire de Cherry non seulement dans le cadre des discours sur l'identite francophone aux JFA, mais aussi dans le cadre de discours circulant dans la societe canadienne en general. Comme ces discours sur l'identite francophone produisent des "verites" contestees, le sujet francophone est discursivement instable. L'article suggere aussi que les francophonies minoritaires canadiennes offrent un contexte opportun au developpement d'une problematique d'identite/difference dans le cadre de la theorie du discours. Introduction: On Don Cherry and Canada's francophones This paper addresses how meaning circulates in society, and especially the meaning about Canada's francophonie in its relationship with (anglo-) Canadian identities. The media play a key role in circulating meaning in contemporary societies, including bridging small-scale, more or less local, phenomena and events on the one hand, and society-wide understandings on the other. When a few people in a small Ontario town, for example, stomp on a Quebec flag before a television crew, the repeated airing of this outburst in Quebec's francophone media makes it -- rightly or wrongly -- exemplary of the rifts between "English Canada" and Quebec. This media effect created a connection between Don Cherry, an oddly and truly Canadian celebrity and media personality, and the Alberta Francophone Games (AFG), an event involving at most three hundred participants -- and a small budget. Francophone studies recognize the social construction of identity and have focussed on the types of social relationships forging francophone communities and affiliations (Breton, 1983, 1985a, 1985b; Juteau-Lee 1979, 1980, 1983; Juteau-Lee et Lapointe, 1983; Theriault, 1994). Building on this groundwork, we aim to study further the complexity of francophone identities, focussing on individual identity as a dynamic process wherein one's different allegiances may be congruent or in conflict: French speakers' identities are multiple and hybrid as well as fluid, in a constant process of (re)invention. Our analysis is informed by these studies, but we choose a different affinity by drawing ideas about identity predominantly from discourse theory (Butler, 1990, 1993; Foucault, 1976, 1983, 1984), rather than drawing theoretical assumptions from ethnic studies. …

Distinguishing non-knowledge

Abstract: Abstact: In the following essay, reference is made to the ambivalent position of non-knowledge between ensuring the production of scientific knowledge and risky decision-making It will also be shown that this ambivalence is the result of system-internal operations and not of external facts, on which "incomplete constructivism" essentially depends Finally, it is shown that the concept of risk marks the interface where modern society oscillates between experience (cognition) and action (risk) and that even this state is due to its own operations and not to an overall insight into some better option Basically, the argument of this article demonstrates fundamental modes of framing uncertainty in modern society Resume: L'auteur se penche sur la place ambivalente du non-savoir entre la production de connaissances scientifiques et la prise de decision a risque Il montre que cette ambivalence est le resultat d'operations propres au systeme et non pas de facteurs externes -- d'un constructivisme inacheve Il conclut que la notion de risque caracterise cette interface ou la societe moderne oscille entre l'experience (cognition) et l'action (risque); et que cette situation est le produit de fonctionnements internes plutot que d'une perception ou d'une representation d'ensemble d'options meilleures En bref, le present article releve des modes d'apprehension de l'incertitude dans la societe d'aujourd'hui 1 Knowledge and Consensus In the tradition of the sociology of knowledge, non-knowledge (equivalent: lack of knowledge, ignorance) is largely viewed as a kind of deviation from true knowledge, eg in the shape of interest-driven ideology Behind this is the honourable assumption that social interaction is based on consensus, on shared knowledge (see critically Smithson 1985) Attempts to revise this naive position of a single true knowledge have remained half-hearted to the extent that they have retained the essential distinction between construction and reality, and thus the distinction between construed reality and non-construed reality This distinction always leads to a devaluation of non-knowledge, since -- notwithstanding all kinds of qualification by the sociology of knowledge -- the quality of a comprehensible, knowable reality sui generis is pervasive If then, neither true knowledge nor consensus can any longer be viewed as the foundation of social interaction, then non-knowledge cannot simply be implicitly devalued It should rather be explicitly named and described(1) This is possible if non-knowledge is (literally) regarded as the other side of knowledge, and thus as the other hall of a distinction Non-knowledge can then be distinguished (from knowledge) and be -- independently -- labelled Knowledge (or cognition) is fixed as a case of the application of observation operations, just as is the case in the perspective of action(2) This suggests the operative relevance of non-knowledge not only for cognitive operations, but for the entirety of communicative operations, and thus also for social action: unity may be seen in risk, but precisely this assumes the difference between specific and unspecific non-knowledge In specific non-knowledge (eg unknown ways of transmissibility of the BSE-agent related to knowledge on BSE-symptoms), we are dealing with a science which is operating along already known solutions which create new non-knowledge and thus cannot rid itself of the shadow of uncertainties Unspecific non-knowledge (eg unknown ways of transmissibility of the BSE-agent related to perception of high risk or catastrophe) is the presupposition of actions or decisions, which exploit ignorance (March/Olsen 1995, 199ff) Ignorance is used for increased preparedness to take preventive action in the face of risk-aversion like import bans against British beef Risk as a more or less calculated decision is a result of perceiving specific non-knowledge as a resource for risky action and less so for cognition …

Constructing rBST in Canada: Biotechnology, Instability and the Management of Nature

Abstract: One of the recurring focuses of much philosophical and sociological research concerns the relationship between science, technology and nature. This locus remains vital to any attempt to understand and critique the rapid scientific and technological change which characterizes today's society. Through this paper I pick up this challenge through a sociological narration of the controversy surrounding the regulation of rBST in Canada. Building on a social constructivist perspective of science, technology and nature, I trace Monsanto's failed attempt to produce a stable and progressive image of rBST through the forum of a Canadian Senate Committee inquiry. Instead, it is suggested that these failures surrendered a definition of rBST to the uncertainty and potential dangers associated with biotechnology and failed attempts to genetically manage nature. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the risk society and challenge the assumed relationship between social constructivism and stability, and to raise questions about how governments and regulators can cope with the routine uncertainties associated with biotechnology. Resume: Les relations entre la science, la technologie et la nature continuent a etre au coeur d'une bonne partie de la recherche philosophique et sociologique. L'analyse de ces relations demeure essentielle pour toute tentative pour comprendre et critiquer le developpement rapide de la science et de la technologie qui caracterise les societes contemporaines. Dans cet essai, j'analyserai plus en detail la relation entre la technoscience, la nature et la societe par une mise en narration sociologique de la controverse sur la regulation du STbr au Canada. Adoptant une perspective >, je retrace les efforts rates entreprirent par Monsanto pour produire une image stable et progressiste de STbr dans le forum de recherche que le comite du Senat canadien lui a consacre. Je montre qu'en fin de compte cette tentative de definition de STbr a echoue a cause des dangers potentiels qui sont associes a la biotechnologie et l'ingenierie genetique de la nature. Afin de contester la relation presumee entre le constructivisme social et la stabilite et ouvrir la question sur la facon dont les gouvernements et les instances de regulation peuvent prendre en compte les insecurites routinieres associees a la biotechnologie, je termine l'essai avec une discussion de la societe du risque. Introduction With the innovation of biotechnology now entrenched within the fabric of Canadian society, questions once again need to be raised concerning the relationship between science & technology, society and nature. Whether we consider Dolly the genetically cloned sheep, bio-engineered super crops, or the use of synthetic growth hormones to increase agricultural productivity it is clear that the artificial boundaries erected between society and nature during the Enlightenment have collapsed. It is no longer possible to imagine science simply as the means with which society is able to grasp true expressions of nature, or to envision technologies as socially or naturally autonomous, determined, or inherently progressive (Latour, 1993). Theory aside, the discovery of the ozone hole, the Chernobyl meltdown, the Exxon oil spill, and the advent of "mad-cow" disease all bear witness to the failures and consequences of the modern ethos and humanity's attempt to dominate an external nature. Instead, these catastrophes point to another reality, one characterized by impure sciences, impure technologies, and the routine production of risk and uncertainty. Therefore, the challenge left for the governments, social theorists and consuming populations which face the proliferation and rapid commodification of biotechnology is twofold. If it can be established that science and technology are impure, then it is first necessary to explore the cultural processes and social relations involved in the production of biotechnology. …

A very qualified success, indeed : The case of Anthony Giddens and british sociology

Abstract: Anthony Giddens as a Symptom of Sociology's Decline The Gulbenkian Commission on the future of the social sciences has popularized the idea that sociology is a discipline that has outlived its usefulness (Wallerstein 1996). According to this argument, sociology had made sense over the previous 100-150 years, with the ascendancy of Euro-American nation-states increasingly concerned with integrating diverse peoples in terms of various social functions, to which the standard-issue sociology textbook dutifully assigns a chapter apiece. Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons marked high points in this conception of the rise of sociology. However, with the end of the Cold War has come the decline of the "welfare-warfare state" that had kept the forces of global capital in check. The result has been the increasingly indeterminate and permeable boundaries of social life that mark "the postmodern condition." For example, while topics relating to social deviance -- be it defined in legal or medical terms -- retain their traditional popularity, "deviance" is now put in scare quotes and researchers wince at the "social problems" perspective from which the field arose. After all, deviance presupposes a strong sense of "normativity," which after Michel Foucault has acquired a negative connotation that Durkheim would not have recognized. Moreover, these postmodern sociologists justify their rejection of the norm-deviance binary, not on grounds of political correctness, but simply the increasing practical difficulty of enforcing the distinction. Consequently, historically innocent empirical researchers in "cultural studies" can discover nascent "identity politics" in heretofore "deviant" groups. However, this probably has more to do with the retreat of state power from civil society than any philosophically inspired realization of the inherent perniciousness of binary oppositions. While this begins to explain the global decline in sociology's disciplinary identity, much more needs to be said to explain the peculiar form it has taken in the United Kingdom, the major nation with probably the weakest institutional tradition in the field. Here sociology remains very popular with students, largely because it is the natural home of cultural and media studies programs that in, say, the US would be housed in departments of literary studies. In this respect, British sociology has turned its disciplinary permeability from a weakness to a strength, effectively rendering itself "the science of the postmodern." Moreover, there is a thriving, albeit publisher-led, sociological book industry in the UK. On the one hand, this means that British sociology journals exert relatively little impact on the field' s global research agenda; on the other, it ensures that sociology is seen by people in other disciplines and countries through the eyes of British teachers. From this milieu emerges Anthony Giddens, the first Professor of Sociology at Cambridge and now Director of the London School of Economics. As the principal theorist behind the "third way" between capitalism and socialism that enabled Labour to regain control of Parliament in 1997, Giddens is probably the most internationally influential British social scientist since John Maynard Keynes -- ironically another thinker who was often portrayed as offering a "third way" between these very alternatives. However, despite the Cambridge connection, Giddens and Keynes demonstrate rather different paths to influence. Keynes hailed from the social science -- economics -- in which the UK has been an acknowledged world leader. Moreover, his career involved shuttling between Kings College tutorials and Treasury assignments. In contrast, Giddens has always been oriented to pedagogy, be it the large introductory classes he continues to teach at the LSE or the academic publishing empire he founded that is Polity Press. Seen in world-historic perspective, two features of Giddens' career stand out. …

The contemporary structure of Canadian racial supremacism : Networks, strategies and new technologies

Abstract: In the past five years, public debate has increasingly centered on racial supremacists who use the internet for advertising and recruitment. Yet, to date, this phenomenon has attracted little sociological attention. As such, the present paper seeks to accommodate for this curious silence in the literature by drawing on data gathered from an investigation of the Freedom-Site, a racial supremacist Web site run out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In addition to updating the body of literature concerned with Canada's racial supremacists, three arguments are presented: first, there exists a considerable gap between the public images that racial supremacist groups attempt to present on the interact and a far less benign image that emerges upon closer analysis; second, exemplified by the Freedom-Site, the interact has facilitated a greater degree of solidarity between racial supremacist organizations; and third, given the impersonal nature of the interact, there exists a certain degree of danger that otherwise ordinary citizens will become more susceptible to the ideology of racial supremacism. These arguments are incorporated into an examination of why racial supremacist groups have appeared on the interact and what the implications of this presence are. Resume: Depuis ces cinq dernieres annees, le debat public se concentre de plus en plus sur l'utilisation du reseau Interact par des mouvements racistes a des fins publicitaires et de recrutement. A ce jour, le phenomene n'a que tres peu attire l'attention des sociologues. Ce memoire cherche a compenser ce curieux silence en termes de documentation ecrite en puisant dans des donnees provenant d'une enquete du Freedom-Site, site Internet raciste etabli Toronto (Ontario, Canada). Ce memoire presente non seulement un ensemble dc documentation ecrite traitant des mouvements racistes au Canada mais avance egalement trois arguments : premierement, il existe un fosse considerable entre l'image que les groupes racistes tentent de donner d'eux-memes sur le reseau Internet et celle, bien moins benigne, qui emerge d'analyses plus approfondies; deuxiemement, scion l'exemple du Freedom-Site, le reseau Internet a favorise une plus grande solidarite entre les organisations racistes; et troisiemement, etant dorme la nature impersonnelle d'Internet, il existe un certain danger a ce que le citoyen moyen devienne plus sensible aux ideologies racistes. Ces arguments ont ete integres a une etude examinant la raison pour laquelle les groupes racistes auraient fait leur apparition sur le reseau Internet et sur les implications de leur presence sur le reseau. In cyberspace, communication and co-ordination is cheap, fast, and global. With powerful new tools for interacting and organizing in the hands of millions of people worldwide, what kinds of social spaces and groups are people creating? (Smith and Kollock, 1999:1) Introduction Is Canada racially tolerant? Aggregate data collected over the past several years have indicated that a significant portion of Canadians not only have abandoned blatant manifestations of racism (Reitz and Breton, 1994), but that many forms of institutional racism are diminishing in the country (see, for example, Guppy and Davies, 1998).(2) Challenging these findings, however, are numerous studies which continue to indicate a widespread intolerance in Canada. Henry and Tator (1994:2), for instance, argue that white Canadians tend to dismiss the large body of evidence documenting racial prejudice and differential treatment while "fundamental inequality exists and continues to affect the lives and life chances of people of colour" (see, also, Henry, Tator, Mattis and Rees, 2000). Writing on Canadian Native Peoples, LaRocque (1989) has reasoned that this tendency equates to a denial mechanism on the part of [white] society that racism is a problem in Canada. And although attitudinal surveys conducted since the second World War paint an optimistic picture where [white] Canadians' perceptions of racial minorities are concerned, this is of little comfort to natives, immigrants and other disadvantaged persons who continue to express very serious concerns about racial prejudice and discrimination in Canada (Buchignani, 1983). …

The New Genetics: A Social Science and Humanities Research Agenda

Abstract: 1. Introduction Modern genetics and its applications promise a radical transformation of health care practice and even conceptions of health and illness. Genetic development entails a perspective, a set of concepts, together with a variety of techniques, which are increasingly impacting on a number of areas of medicine. The impact is already observable in the emergence of genetic counseling and clinical genetic units, which cooperate with an increasing range of other medical disciplines. In this context, one already observes the emergence of new specialties, new professional relationships, and, to a greater or lesser extent, a partial re-organization of clinical medicine as well as even more profound transformations. As Mendelsohn (1999:90) suggests: Old boundaries are being challenged concerning what is ethical, what is normal, what is human? ... The genetic sciences are robust and challenging, even if not always wise. By contrast, social and ethical analysis and social and ethical policy making, while earnest, lack clarity and focus. Technical developments are taking place in a recognizable range of institutions guided by a mix of scientific enthusiasm, institutional imperative, search for rewards (both monetary and professional) and an honest attempt to put science to work. Social and moral discourse, by comparison, seems scattered, unfocused and at times quixotic -- how many times is the paradoxical identified? This lack of disciplined analysis and lack of firm institutional bases has weakened the sometimes important questions asked and proposals made. The science seems strong (too strong?) and goal-oriented and quite prepared to ignore important caveats. The expectation is that genetic technology will be applied in four "waves", moving from genetic testing and screening for inherited disease (contentious because most existing tests only indicate susceptibility; there is no certainty) to pharmacogenetics (using genetic testing to match patients with existing therapeutic options), to population genetics (which may potentially aid the development of new therapeutics including gene therapy), to pharmacogenomics (designing drugs and genetic vaccines to meet the specific needs of different patient groups suffering from the same disease). Research, pilot schemes and more developed services are already being supported by European and North American healthcare providers in some of these areas. As shown in earlier work (Machado, 1998), the introduction and widespread application of a high-tech or advanced scientific medicine result in ethical, legal, and organizational problems, challenges, and transformations.(1) Since the 1970s, the technical advances in human genetics -- and its applications in the clinic -- have far outstripped policy and regulative formation and created important and dangerous strains in the relationship between genetic science and society. In general, policy and regulation tend to lag behind technical developments Mendelsohn (1999:64). As Mendelsohn (1999:64) argues: The task for the immediate future is to establish a means to integrate the social and moral critique into the decision-making processes of the practical sciences, so that social analysis becomes part of a feedback system to assure wisdom in scientific advance, not merely technical achievement. There are potentially significant costs to allowing social policy to lag behind scientific and technical advance. Solving the "technically sweet" problem first and only then turning to examine the moral and social consequences, then turning to examine the moral and social consequences has, in the past and can in the future, prove to be too costly. We have launched a research program (Machado, 2000), employing a research strategy similar to that in Machado's 1998 book. This entails an integrated investigation and analysis of key ethical, legal, and clinical administrative problems -- and attempts to solve the problems - associated with the introduction of genetic knowledge and techniques in clinical practice. …

Beginning Anew: Doing Qualitative Research

Abstract: This article reports on the author's first experience in qualitative research. As a social scientist trained almost exclusively in quantitative methods, the author describes some of the difficulties, dilemmas, fears, challenges, and rewards of conducting a study involving long intensive and relatively unstructured interviews. The subject of the research -- the association between religious faith and personal well-being -- is of less importance here than the methodological insights that may be of use to other quantitatively-oriented researchers who venture into qualitative work. Specifically, the paper discusses the place of the authorial voice, the salience of emotion and language in interview-based research, the need to reconceptualize the meaning of common quantitative terms such as "data" and "analysis," and the challenges of communicating the results of the research in a very unfamiliar way. Resume: Cet article relate la premiere experience de l'auteur dans le domaine de la recherche qualitative. En tant que specialiste des sciences humaines presque exclusivement formee en methodes quantitatives, l'auteur decrit des difficultes, dilemmes, craintes, drifts et satisfactions rencontres au cours d'une serie de longues interviews non structurees. Le sujet de cette etude, l'association entre la foi (religieuse) et le bien-etre personnel, est moins important ici que les reflexions methodologiques que d'autres chercheurs d'orientation quantitative peuvent trouver utiles s'ils se lancent dans la recherche qualitative. Plus particulierement, l'article examine la place de la voix de l'auteur, l'importance de l'emotion et du langage pour la recherche basee sur des interviews, la necessite de redefinir des termes quantitatifs ordinaires comme donnees et analyse, et le defi de communiquer les resultats de la recherche. I've never been this nervous about any research project in my whole career! I wonder how much longer I can avoid getting started with the real work of interviewing. (The first entry in my field notes, dated October 12, 1994, some seven months after I received the study grant.) Introduction It ought to be quite clear from this quotation that I was a very nervous novice when I began this qualitative study. My first experiences with qualitative research may not be strikingly different from those of other quantitatively-trained investigators who have made the transition. I believe, nonetheless, that the tale is worth telling again, in yet another context and yet another voice so that perhaps one more researcher may see the benefits of using different approaches to learning about the social world and may become open at least to the consideration of some of these approaches. It is my hope that the telling will not resort to what Tierney (1995: 382) has called "navel gazing." I believe that it is important for those who read about the study (Perry, 1998) to understand how I came to do it, how I did it, and how I felt about the whole process. I also believe that it is important for quantitatively-oriented researchers to stand back and examine the work in a somewhat dispassionate way, especially around the issue of the involvement of the investigator in the investigation. In most qualitative work, especially in long interviews, the researcher literally becomes part of the project design (cf. McCracken, 1988). There is, therefore, an obligation on the part of the researcher to allow the reader to learn something about the kind of person undertaking the investigation and the kinds of motivations that led to the inquiry in the first place (Wolcott, 1990: 19; Rubin and Rubin, 1995). Such self-revelation can be extremely challenging for the newly-initiated qualitative investigator who is struggling with a host of other challenges in unfamiliar terrain. I have had a long-abiding professional interest in the determinants of individual well-being and recently I became interested in the relationship between religious faith and well-being. …

A Productive Decade in the Tradition of Canadian Sociology

Abstract: Canadian sociology is now a very diversified field. Important studies or books have been published in most major areas, including the new developing ones: social networks, consumption, social capital, gay studies, communication studies, and sports, among others. On the one hand, it is interesting to note that a majority of empirical studies now take gender into account and make a clear distinction between men and women whenever it is pertinent. Looking at the number of books published recently one cannot say that the life experience of women has been ignored. On the other hand, the situation is different when one considers national duality, English Canada and Quebec. Many studies consider the latter, but a certain number continue to present the whole of Canada as a normative unit overlooking the differences, which may be important in some cases. Language has always been an important barrier which has, to some extent, created two different sociologies in Canada, even when taking into account that francophone scholars refer to their English-speaking colleagues more frequently. Compared to France, the United States, Great Britain or Germany -- countries of reference for many English and French speaking sociologists -- social theory is less well developed in Canada. In English Canada, there is no equivalent to Fernand Dumont or Michel Freitag, two great thinkers who have built important theories. In this short contribution, I will refer to seven books and I would also like to include at least four others to this list. Of course other studies should also be added as the nineties produced a large number of excellent publications. Canadian sociologists continue to express a strong interest in stratification, and especially in class analysis, a topic privileged since the publication of the seminal work of John Porter in 1965. I have therefore chosen some books in this field, especially important for English speaking sociology. Canadian sociologists did not participate in the international research program initiated by John Golthorpe on social class in advanced industrial societies (the Casmin Project), but a team of researchers was involved in another project -- which adopted an approach closer to a Marxist one -- directed by Eric Olin Wright. Two Canadian sociologists, Wallace Clement and John Myles, were involved in this last research enterprise where they analysed the role of class and gender in the stratification process in Canada and in other developed countries. The results of this research, Relations of Ruling (1994), have suggested that new relations of ruling were constructed around class and gender in all advanced capitalist societies. The feminization of class structure has had an important impact on the worker's claims and work issues, and it brought new issues to the table: pay equity, child care, paid leaves of absence to care for family, and policies against sexual harassment. It also transformed the material interest of the working class and the conditions under which the capital-labour wage relation is negotiated. Among many interesting results, I will mention two findings. First, their comparative analysis showed that Nordic families (including Canadian ones) tend to be less patriarchal in terms of decision-making. Second, postindustrialism in Canada has brought a break with the industrial past and nation-specific class attitudes have been either resilient in the face of, or reinforced by, postindustrialism. Social class was probably the key concept of Anglo-Canadian sociology during the seventies and eighties, as we can see in reading the table of content of the two major journals of sociology published in English. However, is social class still a useful concept in explaining social phenomena? Today the answer is not as clear. For example, research done by Statistics Canada showed that wage polarization or growing labour market insecurity have grown within, not between, social classes. …

Essai Critique Sur Le Discours Socio communautaire

Abstract: Ce texte expose les arguments du discours socio-communautaire dans le champ des politiques sociales. Ce discours defend une meme evaluation critique des services etatiques, des pratiques professionnelles et institutionnelles. Il questionne autant les relations entre l'Etat et la communaute que la conception des droits sociaux et l'efficacite des services. Il propose un autre modele de politique sociale qui se presente comme une « solution sociologique » a la crise de l'Etat-Providence et se pose en concurrence et en opposition vis-a-vis de l'alternative neo-liberale dominante. Cependant, par les categories qu'il utilise pour penser le monde social, par les distinctions qu'elle propose, ce discours, comme raison pratique, produit des schemes cognitifs qui sont aussi appeles a fonctionner comme normes sociales

A Personal Take of Some Engaging Books from the Past Decade

Abstract: On a recent sabbatical in New Zealand, I learned something of the vicissitudes of scholars who live and work in small countries. In New Zealand, there are only four universities with sociology departments. Scholars there who write books which analyze national questions and which are vital to the establishment of the discipline in NZ can expect print-runs measured in several hundreds of copies -- if they can find a publisher at all! What motivates such scholars? Obviously, they are not driven by financial considerations, since these are negligible. They undertake their work to enlarge the discipline's grasp of New Zealand, its changes and its developments compared to related societies. As John O'Neill says in a different context, borrowing from Mauss, people in receipt of a gift from previous generations are compelled to return something back to the same society. In this country, we too have a small market and I thought as we moved into the new millennium, it might be appropriate to celebrate some of the monographs which colleagues have published in the past decade and to identify how they have tried to enlarge our discipline and our understanding of society. Some of my choices are volumes that most colleagues would acknowledge immediately, while others are gems which have attracted little of the attention I think they deserve. They fall into two general areas -- works about Canadian society in some substantive way, and works written by Canadians which focus on the cognitive structures of societies more generally. Class, Gender, Age and Language Clement and Myles's Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies (1994) is an ambitious comparative analysis of how changes in postindustrial capitalism have transformed social classes. It is based on the Comparative Project on Class Structure and Class Consciousness originally initiated by Erik Olin Wright and employs social surveys from Canada, the US, Finland, Norway and Sweden in the early 1980s. Clement and Myles conclude that in addition to the persistence of the 19th century conflict between classes of capital and labour, there has been a revival of the old middle class (the small time entrepreneur, investor, landlord and consultant), and the advance of a large new middle class consisting of managers who lack ownership of the means of production but who exercise control and surveillance of labour. Postindustrial societies have been marked by a massive shift from wealth earned by primary production, building, transportation and manufacture, to societies dominated by the service sector (fast food and merchandising chains) but also including the highly skilled information sectors associated with the welfare state -- schools, health care, and social services. The latter occupy a precarious place in the class scheme ("the aristocracy of labour") since their skills and life chances have little in common with the traditional blue collar working class. The rise of postindustrial classes has also been accompanied by tremendous changes in gender. As women have moved from unpaid domestic circumstances into the labour market they often face a "double day" of labour resulting from their continuing responsibility for domestic work at home. They struggle not only with class tensions but "relations of ruling" (a term borrowed from Dorothy Smith) that are rooted in patriarchy and the dominance of men both at home and at work. Here the circumstances across the various nations yield important differences. In contrast to the expansion of low paid service jobs in the private sector in North America, the welfare state in the Scandinavian countries has created demands for high paid, public sector service jobs. In both cases, the issues for women have not been limited to better pay and working conditions but involve pay-equity, affirmative action and sexual harassment policies to combat sexual exploitation. Since unions often have different gender constituencies, this has created conditions for conflict between labour unions, and has resulted in many of the issues of gender and environment being advanced outside the labour union framework. …

What Is to Be Done? (the Nonprofit Sector in Canada: Roles and Relationships; Room to Manoeuvre? Globalization and Policy Convergence; Restructuring Societies: Insights from the Social Sciences)

Abstract: A review of Keith G. Banting, editor, The Nonprofit Sector in Canada: Roles and Relationships. Kingston, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, 2000; Thomas J. Courchene, editor, Room to Manoeuvre? Globalization and Policy Convergence, Montreal and Kingston, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University and McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999; David B. Knight and Alun E. Joseph, editors, Restructuring Societies: Insights from the Social Sciences, Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1999. All three of the edited collections under review here are informed by the idea that the environment of Canadian public policy has changed in important ways. The elements of change are globalization, technology, and the political emergence of something called "the new right." These changes in the environment have led to "restructuring" and may lead to even more. This raises several questions. First, given globalization and changes in technology, do governments have choices with respect to policies? If there is a choice, what policies should be chosen? Finally, might it be sensible to select policies the consequence of which is to limit future choices? This latter issue is often central in discussions with respect to the desirability of free trade treaties. Room to Manoeuvre? is a set of careful examinations of the effects of globalization and technology on Canadian policy options. It contains the most direct consideration of the issue of constraint on policy. The editors' introduction to Restructuring Societies asserts the importance of globalization. It is followed by a set of essays that vary considerably in their attention to globalization but several of which seem to be unsympathetic to the "new right." The Nonprofit Sector assumes changes in the policy environment that have led both to a growth in importance of the sector and changes in its organization. In what follows I will consider each collection separately and then, briefly, return to the broader questions sketched above. Writing the introductory essay to their collection must have been something of a challenge to Knight and Joseph. The contents of the essays are all over the place. Bob Rae seeks inspiration in Edmund Burke and George Orwell. Each, it turns out, was opposed to extremism. Neither, he thinks, would have been enthused by the "libertarian excesses" (p. 30) of the new right as embodied in the current Progressive Conservative government of Ontario. Moran attempts to draw lessons for Canada from the new right-inspired changes that began in New Zealand in the 1980s. While "according to most macroeconomic criteria, the reforms would be considered a success" (p. 51), Moran seems to think that this would be less the case in terms of the satisfaction of health care and education employees (p. 53). Barling assembles a set of conventional indicators (working hours, the incidence of involuntary part time work and self-employment, duration of unemployment, a sense of ambient insecurity) to make a case to the effect that there has been a decrease in the quality of employment relations in Canada. He further claims that the rise in insecurity has been bad for profits and productivity. Leach and Winson show that most workers who were laid off when their plants closed were subsequently worse off. The collection finishes with two essays on aboriginals (Dickason, Wolfe-Keddie) that are quite interesting but have little to do with the other essays. Knight and Joseph are a bit ambiguous on the issue of choice. On one hand they argue that "a new form of capitalism characterized by the increased mobility of capital and the rise of transnational corporations, facilitated by the rapid evolution of world-wide digital communications technology" holds "increasing sway" and "presents a challenge to states" (p. 3) -- which rather suggests increasing constraint. On the other hand, "there is no single path along which states are being forced or led" (p. …