Search

This paper intervenes in debates on education and social reproduction, developing the link between ‘parental choice’, class status and spatial mobility. Drawing on research in Canada and Hong Kong with migrant students and ‘returnee’ graduates, it demonstrates the relationship between ‘choice’, social class and international mobility, arguing that geographies of middle-class decisionmaking in education have been recently transformed with the growth of a multi-billion dollar international education market. The paper unpacks the meanings and consequences of international education in Hong Kong, revealing how migration to Canada has enabled middle-class families to accumulate a more valuable form of cultural capital in a ‘Western’ university degree. It argues for a geographically sensitive account of the relative value of international education and its close links with both class reproduction and place-based transnational social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS PAPER PRESENTS a reinterpretation of the causes for the US Patriot movement of 1837-38, which rose up in support of the Canadian rebellion in Upper Canada (UC) initiated by William Lyon Mackenzie (the companion rebellion in Lower Canada is not considered in this paper since its causation was arguably considerably different). Most traditional treatments of this event, by US historians in particular, are stuck in narrative mode and lack convincing interpretation and analysis. The US Patriot war is usually quickly dismissed as the work of a few Anglophobes and adventurers seeking land and coin. The hypothesis advanced here suggests that the US Patriot movement and its progenitor rebellion in UC may be seen as an expression of the social class tensions growing out of the transition from a subsistence-barter/household economy and culture to the more impersonal commodity market economy - a transition that was proceeding in an uneven and combined manner on both sides of the nominal Canada/US border. Mackenzie's UC rebellion was both motivated by and encouragement to radical Democratic anti-bank forces in the US. Historians are urged to consider the Patriot movement in the larger context of class conflict and accommodation then being played out on a shared Canadian/American stage [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and focuses on two areas of concern in the extant literature on youth culture in Canada. The first is that analyses of contemporary developments in Canadian youth culture tend not to consider the potential contributions of the recent `post-subculture' or `club- culture' stands of theory that have emerged out of Britain. The second is that there is a relative lack of empirical research on the `rave subculture' in Canada- a middle class culture of youth renowned for amphetamine drug-use, an interest in computer-generated music known as `Techno,' and attendance at all-night `rave' dance parties - a surprising absence considering the group's sizable membership, and the notoriety the group has received in popular media, government-related health reports, and scholarly work on youth in other countries. These concerns are addressed in this paper through a discussion of the post-subculture/clubculture tradition and its relationship to classical American and British theory, a report of results from an ethnographic study of the rave subculture in southern Ontario conducted from 1995-1998, and an analysis of the study's findings drawing on both traditional and contemporary perspectives on youth (presented as `five theses on resistance'). The paper concludes with a summary of the study's contributions to theory and research on youth culture both in Canada and generally, and with recommendations for future work in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NO PERSUASIVE ACCOUNT of labour in Australia and Canada can ignore the impact that immigration has wrought on the composition of the working class and preoccupations of workers, unions, and the varied political parties they have sponsored. Highlighting both similarities and differences between countries, the paper explores the paradoxical relationship that immigration has had with the labour movements of Australia and Canada. Although immigrants have been a critical source of union recruits, new ideas, and leaders (this being especially true for British skilled men), their presence was also long a source of concern, chauvinism, and division within predominantly white, Anglo-Celtic, and male-dominated union movements that adopted exclusionary policies, particularly regarding Asian and continental European workers. A more recent shift towards non-racist and inclusive policies unfortunately has not obliterated labour segmentation along racial and ethnic lines, especially job ghettos for immigrant women. Meanwhile, global restructuring and the loss of hard-earned union protections have increased immigrant workers' historic vulnerability. In explaining differences in the two countries -for example, Australia's greater 'success' at restricting non-white immigration before 1945 and Canada's earlier experience with a racially diverse work force - the paper cautions against easy generalizations, pointing instead to a series of historically contingent factors (such as 'accidents' of geography and differing political developments) that on some occasions led to rather different outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The `Willis thesis' has two component claims. The first is that class inequalities in educational outcomes occur in part through working-class misbehaviour in schools, and that underachievement is associated with male and female forms of gender traditionalism. The second claim is that this misbehaviour constitutes a working- class cultural resistance. In this paper the first component is operationalized and tested in a statistical model of student plans in Ontario, Canada. Results show that misbehaviour is a weak conduit for differential class outcomes, though expected gender patterns emerge. While noting that findings may reflect British/Canadian differences and that recent de-industrialization may mute traditional class-related student responses, I argue that Resistance theorists have over-extended their claims, and that gender, rather than class background, is a more durable source of cultural reproduction through school underachievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of social class, occupational experiences, and a variety of stratification factors on the ranking of a set of important life goals. Based on a national sample of Canadians from 1977, the findings indicate modest class differences in the evaluation of four "self-actualization" values. Specifically, middle class respondents rank "self-development," "achievement," and "activism" as more important than do working class respondents. There are no significant differences on the fourth concern, "independence." Multi-variate analysis reveals that the class differences in values are wholly attributable to differences in occupational experiences and educational training in the two class groupings. These findings are consistent with Kohn's thesis of "class and conformity." Additional controls on a set of stratification factors—sex, income, age, and language group (English/French)—suggest almost no differences between dominant and subordinate groups in the ranking of the four values. Only age has a significant influence, with the young rating self-actualization as more important than the old. The implications of these results for the study of dominant values and ideology and for the relationship between social inequality and values are briefly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to examine the extent to which the writing of the history of both women and of the Canadian working class has converged over the last ten years, to suggest other ways in which integration of the two could be sought, and also to suggest some basic conflicts between the paradigms of each which point to areas where integration seems unlikely. It argues that if the goal of writing a history of the totality of the working class is a shared one, areas of Intersection between the two fields must be consciously sought out. New ways of integrating the history of women and of the working class must be sought. For a start, this requires a reconceptualization of the way we define the working class and work, examination of the processes of class reproduction, and acknowledgement of the importance of examining how gender definitions are transmitted, shaped and reshaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS PAPER EXAMINES two basic conceptual flaws in H. Clare Pentland's influential history of the early Canadian working class, Labour and Capital in Canada, 1650-1 850. First, Pentland's eclectic use of Marxist, staples thesis, and Weberian approaches makes for a fundamentally incoherent treatment of the subject. Second, focusing on "labour" (that is, waged labour) and "capital," Pentland neglects the central features of Canada's pre-capitalist social formations: features such as the household economy of production and direct consumption, which had little to do with waged labour or capital. Because his understanding of pre-capitalist society is so defective, Pentland is unable to deal adequately with the transition to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]