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The current paper presents the results of a national survey of 190 full-time members of Canadian sociology departments to examine the state of the discipline in 2014-15. The paper focuses on the extent of epistemological diversity in an effort to answer two key questions. First, what intellectual perspectives prevail among Canadian sociologists and, along these lines, does any particular perspective hold greater prominence? Second, what might explain the variation in the epistemological stances most commonly endorsed? The evidence reveals a preponderance of critical and feminist scholars, which can be explained in large measure by considering the social locations of sociological practitioners. The results of a logistic regression model confirm that gender, generation, geography, and disciplinary genre are significant predictors of critical and critical-feminist orientations. A discussion of qualitative responses fleshes out the dominant themes that Canadian scholars expressed in their survey responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) is highly contentious. Particularly contentious are those parts of the program that have allowed for exploitative labour practices and the replacement of Canadian workers. Mobility for employment has been increasing, and researchers have focused on different types of mobile workers ranging from international (including the TFWP) to intra-provincial migrants, often in isolation from each other. Less research has focused on multiple mobilities within one industry to understand how and why labour force composition and employee mobility patterns change over time. Also under researched is why demand exists for TFWs in areas with high unemployment. This paper uses a case study of the seafood processing industry (both wild and farmed) in a rural region of New Brunswick to explore this industry's claims about labour shortages and serial reliance on differently mobile labour forces over time. It draws on findings from a review of relevant documents and ethnographic fieldwork including interviews. Using the historical changes in the (im)mobility patterns of processing workers in this region, this paper highlights how the increased use of the TFWP by seafood processing companies is tied to manufactured raced and gendered employer practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical accounts of the business response to basic income proposals imply that employer attitudes have been mixed. In the 1970s and 1980s, when an array of basic income schemes was proposed, some groups were supportive and others were opposed. This paper shows that, in a number of high-profile proposals in Canada and the US, behind the apparent dissensus among business groups lays a consensus stance against universalistic and unconditional guaranteed income schemes. The disagreement among business groups comes down to either (1) a basic misunderstanding of proposal details, or (2) the fact that the policy itself can take on a wide range of concrete forms. To the extent that business has exhibited support for guaranteed income policies, the actual policies in question tended to be "two-tiered" rather than unitary, selective rather than universal, and miserly rather than generous. The income maintenance policies that garnered some support among business groups would all include explicit or implicit work requirements for "able-bodied" adults. By contrast, generous, unconditional guaranteed income policies that reduce workers' market dependence-namely, those that basic income advocates find desirable-found no audience in business circles. I close by exploring the mechanisms underlying the impact of basic income on bargaining relationships in the labour market and comment on the promises and pitfalls of a social policy that continues to be highly malleable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to studies from the United States and English Canada, student achievement gaps grow over the summer months when children are not attending school, but summer literacy interventions can reduce those gaps. This paper presents data from a quasi-experiment conducted in eight Ontario French language school boards in 2010, 2011 and 2012 for 682 children in grades 1-3. Growth in literacy test scores between June and September are compared for 361 attendees of summer literacy programs and 321 control students. Summer program recruits initially had lower prior literacy scores and grades, and tended to hail from relatively disadvantaged social backgrounds. Yet, summer programs narrowed those pre-existing gaps. Effect sizes from a variety of regression and propensity score matching models ranged from .32 to .58, which is quite sizeable by the standards of elementary school interventions and summer programs. Effects were stronger among students whose parents reported not speaking French exclusively at home. Our paper considers learning opportunity theory in light of the "non-traditional" student in Ontario French language schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a case study of Progressive Discipline (PD), this paper asks: How does greater discretion, flexibility and parent involvement affect the application of school policy? What are the consequences of these conditions? PD is part of a suite of changes that caters to students' individualized academic and social needs while formalizing increased parent involvement. Drawing on fortyfour interviews with school staff members, we find that PD has the potential to enhance students' social and behaviour literacy. And yet, educators are unable to fully tame higher-SES (Socio-Economic Status) parents. According to our interviewees, higher-SES parents are more likely to participate in disciplinary proceedings, confront and threaten school staff and negotiate more favourable disciplinary outcomes for their children. Our paper contributes to cultural capital theory by examining how higher-SES families exploit "discretionary spaces" (i.e., opportunities that allow parents to improve their child's social, academic or disciplinary outcomes) in schooling organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent CJS special issue developed around their paper titled “The Institutionalization of Symbolic Interactionism in Canadian Sociology, 1922-1979: Success at What Cost?” Helmes-Hayes and Milne (2017) document the emergence and establishment of symbolic interactionism (SI) in English-language Canadian sociology, and then consider its fragmentation and decline from 1979 into the present period. This is followed by commentaries from Jacqueline Low (2017), who gives a more optimistic impression of the present state of SI in Canada, and Neil McLaughlin (2017), who considers its sectarian nature as a social and intellectual movement. This is a worthy discussion in the history of Canadian sociology and the sociology of ideas. Certainly Canadian SI is an important part of our wider national sociology tradition, and it is important that we recognize its past, present, and future institutional development in light of as much evidence as possible. [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]

While it is widely acknowledged that Canadian Muslims are targeted at airports and borders, few studies have focused on their actual experiences of state surveillance practices. Moreover, little attention has been paid to how these experiences impact and shape identity formation and their understanding of citizenship. To address this gap, we conducted 50 in-depth interviews with young Canadian Muslims living in Vancouver and Toronto. Our interviewees referred to being repeatedly stopped, questioned, detained, and harassed by security personnel. They felt that any evidence of their Muslim identity - name, country of birth, appearance, or clothing - makes them a target for extra surveillance, resulting in heightened fears about being stripped of their rights and a lack of ability to assert their religious identities. This paper explores the implications of racialized border practices on identity formation and citizenship depletion among Muslim Canadians. [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]

This paper examines why some small firms offer Flexible Workplace Policies (FWPs) while others do not and what factors contribute to the offering and use of FWPs within small firms. A multiple case study is employed using multiple data sources on seventeen information technology (IT) small firms in Canada. Findings reveal three types of firms with regard to their flexibility, working hours, and approaches to time. Among these firm types, discernible patterns emerged based on the owners' past employment experiences and personal approaches to work-life balance. Our results suggest that structured social relations experienced through past places of employment have lasting effects on small firm owners in their current firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, Canadian social science research funding underwent a transition. Social science health-research was shifted from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), an agency previously dominated by natural and medical science. This paper examines the role of health-research funding structures in legitimizing and/or delimiting what counts as 'good' social science health research. Engaging Gieryn's (1983) notion of 'boundary-work' and interviews with qualitative social science graduate students, it investigates how applicants developed proposals for CIHR. Findings show that despite claiming to be interdisciplinary, the practical mechanisms through which CIHR funding is distributed reinforce rigid boundaries of what counts as legitimate health research. These boundaries are reinforced by applicants who felt pressure to prioritize what they perceived was what funders wanted (accommodating natural-science research culture), resulting in erased, elided, and disguised social science theories and methods common for 'good social science.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to this special issue of the journal that features the article "The Institutionalization of Symbolic Interactionism in Canadian Sociology, 1922-1979: Success at What Cost?" by Richard Helmes-Hayes and Emily Milne and includes responses to that paper.