Search

This paper investigates the mediating role that technologies of classification and identification have on individual performances and subsequent identity construction. During WWII in Canada, ID surveillance technologies were developed to govern the behaviours of individuals conscripted into the Armed Forces. Legislation, however, limited how these conscripted soldiers could be deployed. Due to a cultural perception of a lack of patriotism associated with these conscript "Zombies," the Army consciously developed policy to have conscripts adopt additional performances to identify them as Zombies in order to shame them into "volunteering" for General Service. This paper argues that as a result of implemented governing technologies, conscripted individuals took up new and undesired performances as Zombie soldiers, and furthermore, that these performances impacted how they were perceived culturally and worked to mediate their constructed sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Books and their reviews are considered to be central to knowledge dissemination in the social sciences and humanities. Despite this perceive importance, few studies have assessed the relative importance of these document types in the dissemination of knowledge. This paper aims at better understanding the place of book reviews in the scholarly communication system and to shed light--through the analysis of books on Canada, United Kingdom and United States and their reviewers--on the international circulation of ideas in the social sciences and humanities. Based on 1,675,999 book reviews indexed in the Social Science Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index over the 1975- 2016 period, our results show that book reviews are decreasing in importance in all disciplines-especially those where books have historically been peripheral. We also observe a high rate of homophily between reviewers and reviewed books, with researchers being primarily interested in the books that have been written by someone from their own country. Hence, despite the now widely held assumptions of the globalization of science, social science and humanities remains a highly localized activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper enquires into the nexus of migration with sexual health among gay Latino migrants in Canada. Interviews with 25 Spanish-speaking interviewees are examined in light of models developed from studies of Latinos in the United States. Canadian immigration policy appears to result in a somewhat different selection of immigrants compared to the United States. Migrants come from a wide range of national and regional backgrounds intersected by race, generation, and social class that influence their perceptions of and adjustment to Canadian society. Pre-migration HIV knowledge varied strongly by generation with older men recalling public panic concerning HIV and younger men receiving formal education about it. Migration enters into the mix of conditions as kin ties can be less confidently relied on among gay men compared to their heterosexual counterparts and by exacerbating vulnerability among those seeking to develop new social and sexual networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the original version of the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (2014), dual citizens having committed high treason, terrorism or espionage could lose their Canadian citizenship. In this paper, we examine how the measure was discussed in Canada's mainstream newspapers. We ask: who/what is seen as the target of citizenship revocation? What does this tell us about the direction that Canadian citizenship is moving towards? Our findings show that Canadian newspapers were more often critical than supportive of the citizenship revocation provision. However, the press ignored the involvement of non-Muslim, white, Western-origin Canadians in terrorist acts and interpreted the measure as one that was mostly affecting Canadian Muslims. Thus, despite advocating for equal citizenship in principle, in their writing and reporting practice, Canadian newspapers constructed Canadian Muslims as suspicious and less Canadian nonetheless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Canadian Journal of Sociology on 'Contentious Mobilities' showcases Canadian scholarship that investigates mobilities in the context of unequal power relations. Mobilities become contentious when they confront the systematic exclusion of others, advance unconventional mobile practices and defy or destabilize existing power relations. Increasingly, mobilities are contentious in relation to rapidly changing economies, societies and environments. This special issue stages an overdue encounter between the mobilities paradigm and research on sociopolitical contention. Simultaneously, this special issue addresses an empirical gap, featuring Canada as a prolific and influential site for leading-edge research. Five key themes emerge amongst the diverse papers in this issue: life and death, employment-related mobility, intersectionality/ in(visibility), governance, and automobility. Further, we identify five potential topics for Canadian mobilities, including climate change, disaster, technology and travel, the good city and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing rates of religious non-affiliation have been a fundamental transformation of Canadian society since the 1970s. Such increases, present across the West, have received much attention from researchers and sparked much debate. Two competing frameworks identify differing mechanisms behind the rise in individuals declaring having no religion. Secularization theories see this trend as indicating a decline of all things religious. By contrast, individualization theories argue it is only institutional indicators of religiosity which are on the decline, and individually constructed spirituality systems are becoming the norm. Yet, little systematic empirical testing has been done on this subject, especially in the Canadian context. Generating single- and multi-level regression models with data from the Canadian GSS and the ISSP, this paper undertakes a novel comparison of religiosity levels among the unaffiliated between Canadian provinces, between a number of Western nations and regions as well as between age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest for self-knowledge has been a guiding principle throughout history. Plato acknowledged the duality of self-knowledge as both individual (the Delphic maxim "Know thyself") and societal. "[I]f a Canadian is to seek self-knowledge that is essential for both health and wisdom, he [sic] must have access to a wider self-knowledge of his historical community and its contemporary circumstances" (Symons 1975:14). Thus began the Canadianization project which saw Canadian artists in all fields recognized; Canadian subject matter and data taught in universities, colleges, and public schools; Canadians hired as faculty at our universities; and Canadian Studies programs flourish. Census data and census making are key means by which we know ourselves as Canadians, both at present and from whence we came in families and collectively. The Census is a unique way of knowing ourselves since it enables collection of data on everyone from the most disadvantaged and hidden members of society to the best known individuals. The Census is the preeminent text for us all, particularly those who are silent or weak, to make claims for recognition. The Census is also an increasingly utilized resource for tracing ancestry, to know ourselves as descendents. In this paper, we rely on Plato's duality of self-knowledge to explore some examples of the making of claims for recognition by groups past and present that may be lost with the cancellation of the mandatory long-form Census for 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses accounts of a racialized Canada/US border gathered from young white Canadian border residents. I argue that these accounts clearly support scholarly and activist reports of the "racial profiling" of non-whites. While some white interviewees criticized the border practices that they described, some also suggested that nonwhites were appropriately targeted for greater surveillance as part of a binational security project. Meanwhile there was little acknowledgement of the significant benefits of whiteness in the racialized border context. While these white narratives contradict official denials of "racial profiling," I suggest that they ultimately offer limited challenge to racially differentiated border im/mobilities that reproduce racial inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that a life course perspective on social assistance use in Canada can offer a more nuanced theoretical understanding of both individuals' experiences and the importance of social structure, than more traditional sociological or economic approaches to welfare use. We also propose that examining social assistance use in this way does not require longitudinal quantitative or qualitative data, as is sometimes suggested, but that cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative data can be interpreted through a life course lens. We demonstrate this by examining the covariates of social assistance receipt using crosssectional quantitative data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, and by analyzing qualitative interviews with recipients about the process of beginning and barriers to ending benefit receipt. These analyses show not only how the cross-sectional data can easily be considered from the perspective of the life course, but also how this perspective provides a more satisfactory understanding of how social assistance policies can be thought of as both providing resources that are important in individual decision-making and as shaping lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]