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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]

This paper examines the most cited books in Canadian sociology published between 1975 and 1987 as measured by the Social Science Citation Index. It contrasts books which received twenty or more citations over a five-year period from all sources (thirty-one books in all) with how many citations these books had received in the two core Canadian anglophone sociology journals. The latter list at its upper levels was mainly oriented to feminist sociology and political economy (stratification and regionalism). The overall list was broader in its coverage of topics and the paper advances possible explanations for the difference between the two lists. Finally, the paper examines the one socio-demographic factor of sex to see whether women published highly visible books below, at or above their numbers in the sociological population. In fact women were more likely to publish (highly cited) books compared to articles in core journals. The reason is related to book publishing's receptivity to qualitative methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will briefly outline how sociology has interpreted the French Canadian collectivity from the end of the last century to the present time. I argue that the French-speaking collectivity in Canada has been ascribed, both successively and simultaneously, the characters of race, ethnic group, society, and nation through the prism of sociology. The cultural specificity of this collectivity has been alternately perceived as either a stigma or as an element of pride. My paper has three parts: Léon Gérin and Marius Barbeau, or "the Quebec difference" as a handicap; the External perspectives of Horace Miner, Everett C. Hughes, and the Laval School; and what "Quebecitude" (the cultural specificity of the Quebec character) means. These three perspectives correspond to three periods in the history of Quebec sociology: The pioneers (before 1939); the institutionalization of (academic) sociology (1940-1969); and the "nationalization" of Quebec sociology (1970 until now). The 1960s and the 1970s are viewed herein as the "Golden Age" of sociology in Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confucius Institutes (CIs), modelled on similar European organizations, promote China's official national language and culture abroad. Unlike their European counterparts, however, the interactions between CIs and Canadian audiences are haunted by complex histories of a racialized "Oriental Other" in Canada and "Western Other" in China. Through ethnographic research on the Confucius Institute in Edmonton and the CI Headquarters in Beijing, this paper explores racialized representations of China and Chinese culture, as well as racialized understandings of the desired Western audience, in both locations. I argue that representations of Chinese culture are caught between two competing logics which I term reorientalism and reorientality. Reorientalism attempts to reclaim definitions of Chineseness and redress misunderstandings about China while simultaneously making China comprehensible and ultimately marketable through reorientality, or a use of familiar Orientalist tropes. Canadians (most often imagined and represented as white) are encouraged to engage with this reorientality through their own performance and embodiment of Chinese culture (a conceptually distinct process I call re-orientality) as a means of understanding the project of reorientalism. However, the spectacle of Chinese culture through CIs resonates with Canadian multiculturalism in ways that may unintentionally reproduce a social landscape that normalizes whiteness and the consumption of ethnicized Otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of sociology as a discipline in Canada is intimately related to its institutional position within Canadian universities. As student bodies expanded, not only did the demand for university-based sociologists increase but there was also a demand for society-specific class material for sociology courses. This paper examines the textbook, particularly in the 1970's, as a symbol of changes and developments in the discipline and demonstrates its role in synthesis-building, community-building, and nation-building in anglo-Canadian sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian sociology has contributed to and been transformed by the "new" Canadian political economy tradition emerging in the early 1970s. The macrosociological tradition within Canadian sociology readily melded into this new scholarship. This paper reflects upon these mutual influences and ponders the prognosis for sociology's viability in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 internet and a far less benign image that emerges upon closer analysis; second, exemplified by the Freedom-Site, the internet has facilitated a greater degree of solidarity between racial supremacist organizations; and third, given the impersonal nature of the internet, 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 internet and what the implications of this presence are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical examination of Sampson and Laub's social control theory. It tests the effects of family structure, family attachment, school attachment and peer attachment on a generalized form of risk-taking behaviour which includes delinquency and drug use. The data come from a single stratified sample of 1,075 high school students in Ontario. The findings suggest that the effect of family attachment on risk-taking is moderated by both school and peer involvement. When family attachment is tow, school attachment inhibits risk-taking and strong peer attachment reinforces it. [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.