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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]

This paper traces racial nationalism through three recent sites of controversy relating to citizenship: the banning of face coverings while swearing the citizenship oath, the evacuation of Canadians abroad, and the revocation of the citizenship of 1,800 alleged to have gained citizenship through fraudulent means. Racial nationalism is an architecture of race-thinking defined by (1) cultural racism, which operates as a strategy of "sorting out" outsiders from insiders and (2) expulsion or what Hage refers to as the logic of pure exclusion. Through an interrogation of online reader commentary responding to news reporting, this paper examines three allegorical figures at the core of public discourses representing citizenship: the recalcitrant alien, the citizen of convenience, and the fraudulent citizen. [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]

This paper considers the implications of the 2010 cancellation of the Canada mandatory long-form census in terms of citizenship and the citizen-state relation. Inspecting census questions, Statistics Canada publications, and the arguments of ethnocultural groups pushing for reinstatement of the census, we find a version of citizenship rooted in ethnocultural group membership and the mosaic metaphor. The second part of this paper seeks an historical explanation for the cultural shift away from this version of citizenship that allowed for the cancellation of the census. Here we discuss the state monopolization of gambling. Inspecting advertising and government policy we find a rhetoric of counting that encourages a risk-assessing, individualized, neoliberal, and utilitarian citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main issues in the long-form census controversy concerned the relationship between science and politics. Through analysis of the arguments and underlying assumptions of four influential and exemplary interventions that were made in the name of science, this paper outlines a normative account of this relationship. The paper nuances the science-protective ideals that critics invoked and argues that such conceptual resources are needed if science is to be protected from undue political encroachment. However, in their zeal to defend the rights of science critics claimed for it more than its due, eclipsing the value dimension of policy decisions and failing to respect the role of politics as the rightful locus of decision making for value issues. An adequate normative account of the relationship between science and politics in public policy must be capable not only of protecting science from politics but also of protecting politics from science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address two bodies of sociological research: the effects of globalization and theories of pay. Most sociological writings on globalization emphasize its negative consequences. Most sociological writings on pay allow no role for productivity but, rather, assert the importance of power in the production of labour market outcomes. In this paper we examine the effects of three forms of globalization — exporting, foreign ownership, and outsourcing — and include in our analysis institutional features of organizations typically associated with worker power. Using the rich data available in the Workplace and Employee Survey we find: i) pay tends to be higher in workplaces that export and are foreign owned; ii) employees in more productive workplaces are paid more; iii) pay is higher where internal labour markets are present; and iv) treating productivity and power as alternative explanations for pay differentials is a mistake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines shifts in the regulation and governance of environmental crime over the twenty-year period since the passage of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) in 1988, tracing its history, policies, and enforcement record from 1989-2008. Documents assessed include Environment Canada's enforcement data, Annual Reports, reports on its Plans and Priorities, the Senate and House of Commons five-year reviews of CEPA 1988 and CEPA 1999 and the government's response to these reviews. The purpose of the paper is to document the process and compromises that have shaped federal environmental protection, and explore the policy paralysis this has produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political commentators have asked if Canada could see the rise of an American-style "Culture War," where evangelical Protestants are rallied by moral issues to support the Conservative party. This paper argues that even though Canadian evangelicals are just as morally conservative as American evangelicals, they work from very different understandings about the relationship between religious morality and national identity. We predict that rank-and-file Canadian evangelicals will be less responsive to political mobilization around moral issues because they construct their subcultural identity differently than American evangelicals. This paper uses a multimethod strategy to analyze the political impact of evangelical subcultural identity, a cultural mechanism that mediates the political effects of moral attitudes. We illustrate this multidimensional concept of subcultural identity through survey data, in-depth interviews, and comparativehistorical data. This comparative framework for studying subcultural identity helps explain why the content of evangelical Protestant morality becomes linked to political behaviour in some national contexts and historical periods but not others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the bio-medically informed discursive practices of the Canadian government that aim to make the phenomenon of embodied differences intelligible as conditions possessed by people who, with the correct programmatic support and the right attitude, can be integrated as participatory "citizens with disabilities." Specifically, this paper examines In Unison documents (1998, 2000) produced by Federal/ Provincial/ Territorial Ministers Responsible for Social Services. These documents claim to provide a "blueprint" for the inclusion of disabled people. Employing a disability studies approach, the paper reveals that the Canadian governments' discourse on disability and inclusion is a technology by which individuals and populations are constituted as a problem, and is the mechanism through which collective relations to this "problem of disability" are governed. Finally, this paper also shows how "disability" has become a prime site for the constitution of the neo-liberal version of the individual -- "the abled-disabled" -- whose participatory power is tied to an ability to conform to normal society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the governance of organised crime in Canada as it developed over the course of the 1990s. It looks especially at the micro-processes of knowledge construction about organised crime groups as it was carried out in the policing sector in Canada during the period. On the basis of empirical fieldwork, it describes in detail the process of measuring the threat of organised crime and explores its lacunae. The paper observes that the object of governance that is organised crime is not all that organised crime can be. It argues further that what can be observed about the governance of organised crime is more governance through organised crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which both fish farmers and environmentalists use frames to socially construct the salmon farming industry in British Columbia. Advertisements and other promotional materials contain movement actors' justifications for promoting or opposing the industry; these rationalizations are good reasons for understanding fish farming in a particular way. Because salmon environmentalists must both rely on what people already know, they create frames that direct the viewers's gaze of salmon aquaculture in surprisingly similar ways. It was found that frames created by both proponents and opponents of the industry are structured around the inter-related concepts of production, efficiency, and technology. As a result, farmed fish become natural-social hybrids. Farmed salmons are framed in both common-sensical and hyper-real ways as naturally efficient bits of living technology. This paper suggests that an awareness of the performance aspects of environmental farming allow people to live more astutely in a world of burgeoning controversy over natural resource issues.

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]

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]

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 1 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. [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]

Developments in computerisation and neo-liberal state logics have promoted the growth of private police services. This paper theorises the evolution of the "hyperpanotics" of "parapolice" surveillance by examining the practices of The Law Enforcement Company in Toronto, Ontario. Neo-liberal task markets are anomic and fear-inducing, and propel developments in the commodification of surveillance. The new parapolice of late modernity are charged with making "dangerous" populations "known." This is accomplished through a process of perpetual examination, and the erection of digital, virtual, hyperpanoptic systems geared to making both security employers and the populations they monitor transparent and accountable. This parapolice machine, and the actuarial practices it supports, can then be resold to a consumerised citizenry. This paper maps these processes along with the multiple modes of resistance employed by actors under its purview. [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]

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]

This paper applies urban and environmental sociological theory to survey data on self-reported sustainable consumption practices, using a matched sample of central city and suburban residents in Edmonton, Alberta. We use cluster analysis to create an ordinal typology of four types of consumers, conduct an analysis of variance to characterize the resultant clusters, and perform logistic regression to predict the net effect of urban and neighbourhood context on sustainable consumption practices. We find that neighbourhood and environmental attitude are the strongest predictors of sustainable consumption practices. We conclude by arguing many sustainable activities are more difficult to incorporate into daily routine when residing in the suburban neighbourhood. While suburban residents may feel strongly that they should consume less, their geographic location appears to significantly constrain their ability to meaningfully reduce their own consumption. This urban Canadian case study has implications for middle class environmental practices in other North American urban and suburban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the sociology of vital statistics by examining the understandings of infant mortality which circulated in Alberta in the early 20th century. In those years, infant mortality came to be represented as an unnatural and unacceptable diminishment of Alberta's population and an appropriate object of political concern. This paper deals with the ways in which infant mortality became saturated with symbolism, even before the full emergence of policies and programs for reducing it. Using a database of 73 digitized Alberta newspapers, I identify the dominant metaphors for infant mortality as economic inefficiency and military defeat. I also set this concern for lost infant life within the context of other population anxieties, including xenophobic fears about "unnatural increase" through immigration and fears about "population quality" which culminated in calls for eugenic sterilization. I argue that infant mortality is a unique form of population process in that it temporally fuses birth and death, creating, in the collective imagination, a spectral collection of those who might have lived, had they not been deprived of life unnaturally soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has clearly shown that there is a gap in the cognitive skills scores between children living in poverty and those who are not. Although sociologists have focused on the educational environment of the home as an explanation for this gap, breastfeeding advocates have suggested that breastfeeding could address these disparities. In this paper, I assess the relative potential of these factors for remediating poverty gaps in cognitive skills among Canadian four and five year olds using cycles 6-8 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Breastfeeding and an educationally rich home environment both have significant positive impacts on child cognitive skills, however, only the latter reduced the cognitive skills gap between poor and non-poor children. Thus, policy efforts should focus on comprehensive antipoverty strategies and not rely on mother's infant feeding practices to address class based cognitive skills gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was undergoing major change influenced by New Public Management. In-depth interviews with 45 front-line service providers revealed widespread frustration with working conditions and relationships with management. We interpret this response as an embodied expression of hysteresis, a term that Bourdieu used to describe the gap between changing field conditions and habitus. We argue that organizational change posed challenges for these workers because it produced a rupture between their taken-for-granted ways of being a "good" public servant (i.e., public service habitus) and what was expected of them during restructuring. Moreover, on the basis of gendered occupational class differences in employees' practices, we suggest that hysteresis is itself a socially structured phenomenon that reflects the tacit calculation of what was possible (or not) for workers occupying specific positions within the stratified order of the organization. [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]

Environmental movements depend on mass media to reach the public and shape political decision-making. Without media access, social movements experience political marginality. In this paper, we examine whether the internet is a more open space than traditional media for activists to speak on behalf of nature. Our analysis is based on newspaper coverage and environmental organization websites that focus on the conflict over the proposed Jumbo Glacier Resort ski resort in British Columbia. Environmental websites and mass media texts both define Jumbo Pass as wilderness and grizzly bear habitat, while focusing on ecological concerns as well as questions of local democracy. However, environmental group websites discuss a greater range of environmental risks and provide more detailed discussion of these issues. Environmentalist websites also integrate scientific experts and celebrity supporters to a greater degree than mass media texts, which are dominated by environmentalist, ski industry, and provincial government news sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the logics underpinning obscenity and indecency law in Canada from R. v. Hicklin (1868) to the present day in R. v. Labaye (2005) to discuss the emergence of a precautionary principle in the law governing sexually explicit materials and conduct. The most recent Supreme Court decision on obscenity and indecency law (R. v. Labaye 2005) is interesting for its appropriation of a security inspired logic of pre-emption (or precautionary governance) into the heart of obscenity and indecency law. The replacement of the community standards of tolerance test for the undue exploitation of harm with a new, socalled objective test for risk of harm, obviates the need for empirical evidence of harm to justify the exercise of state power. Today, risk of harm becomes a stronger element within the rubric of obscenity and indecency law thus enabling criminalization on the basis of a judge's perception of the imagined negative effects of sexual conduct and materials on constitutional values such as liberty and equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matt kept the operable window in his office open all the time because he needed unlimited access to fresh air. This was terminated after a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system was installed in his Government of Canada office building. Once Matt's access to fresh air was mechanically controlled through externally developed air quality standards, the workplace became a barrier for him. Matt was diagnosed with a disability known as environmental sensitivity because he became ill every time he spent more than 45 minutes inside his office building. Yet, according to a textually mediated assessment of Matt's workplace performed by a Compliance Review Officer from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, his workplace was barrier-free. Using Dorothy E. Smith's institutional ethnography, this paper explicates how the social organization of workplace accommodation and compliance — processes that were developed to promote inclusion — are exclusionary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a number of scholars have offered a variety of constitutional critiques and political analyses for the 2008 prorogation of parliament, to date no comprehensive theoretical exploration has been attempted. In addition to the widespread agreement that the use of prorogation to avoid a potential nonconfidence vote was problematic, some have acknowledged that efforts to undermine the role of parliament in Canada have become routine. Combined with the role nationalistic tensions played in justifying such a profound departure from the principles of responsible government, this paper accepts the view that the 2008 decision to prorogue parliament constituted a "harm." Using routine activities theory it explores the events before, during, and after prorogation based on the confluence of a motivated actor, a suitable target, and the lack of a capable guardian. While this theory frames past events in a new way, of specific value is how the theory can be used to begin to chart a course to correct what has been called a dangerous constitutional precedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent spate of foreign takeovers once again raises the question of whether Canada's corporate elite is being "hollowed out" in a silent surrender to foreign-based transnational firms. Using data from a study of interlocking directorates among the largest corporations in Canada and the world for the years 1996 and 2006, this paper assesses whether recent changes in the Canadian corporate network indicate a process of hollowing out or the reproduction of a domestic elite within global circuits of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take up the debate about public sociologies by drawing on critical feminist sociology in Canada. While we applaud Burawoy's efforts to contextualize US sociology and to embrace engagement with various publics, we discuss four limitations of his model. First, it does not adequately reflect the practice of feminist research that is interdisciplinary and simultaneously professional, critical, policy, and public sociology. Second, it does not take into account feminist methodology as an integrative form of sociology. Third, it does not sufficiently provincialize US sociology nor address how American "professional" sociology can operate as a threat rather than a standard-bearer in Canada. Fourth, it requires more concrete examples of public sociology and how it is undertaken in specific situations. We briefly discuss our research to illustrate "organic" public sociology in the Canadian context. [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]

This article examines the mode of entry into adulthood of two cohorts of young Quebecers born between 1942-1951 (lyric generation) and between 1962-1971 (X generation). Examining the net effect of labour market casualization with the help of the General Social Survey 2001's retrospective data, the goal of this paper is to answer this specific question: to what extent do the 1980- 90 economic mutations explain the extension of youth and the desynchronization of life courses? The analysis reveals that the casualization of employment is not highly related to the mutations of life courses. In fact, the desynchronization of life courses can be better explained by noneconomic transformations such as the longer length of education and the easing of certain normative constraints within Quebec society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the reasons often provided for the salary gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians is the difficulty experienced by many immigrants in securing recognition for skills acquired overseas. In this paper, we examine the extent to which, after arrival, immigrants find jobs in the same occupations in which they were employed in their home countries. We also examine the effect on earnings of a match between the pre- and post-immigration occupations. The data come from the longitudinal survey "Établissement des nouveaux immigrants" which followed a cohort of immigrants who arrived in 1989. Our results suggest that most recent immigrants move into a new occupation when they arrive in Canada and that those whose pre- and post-immigration occupations match tend to earn more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social role of universities has been the subject of a lengthy debate as to whether those who teach in the academy are system-legitimizing conservatives or radicals helping to generate critical thinking that challenges the status quo. The aim of this paper is to evaluate political affiliations of Canadian university professors based on a national survey conducted in 2000. The study shows that Canadian professors' political affiliation can be identified as either left or right depending on how the political orientation of political parties is conceptualized. University professors tend to vote more for the Liberal Party than other parties, and view it as centrist party. Moreover, the study highlights a complex and non-monolithic picture of the Canadian academy. University professors are not politically homogenous and party vote depends on the prestige of their university, their discipline, gender, ethnicity, marital status, generation, and agreement with liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the positions of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) peoples, and visible minorities as distances from the cultural "centre" of White European culture. It then assesses the relation of information and communication technology (ICT) to these locations among Canadian youth using three data sets: the 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey, the 2000 Youth in Transition Survey (older cohort) and its 2002 follow-up, and a 2004-2005 survey collected by the authors. Findings indicate that the idea of cultural centrality is useful in locating FNIM groups and visible minorities vis-à-vis the cultural centre and each other and highlighting the stratified heterogeneity of these groups. Access to, use of, and development of ICT skills tend to mirror the relative positions of these groups in terms of cultural centrality. Further, youth who retain close ties with traditional culture are less likely to develop facility with ICT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critical review of the literature, this paper identifies four implicit assumptions which underlie much of the empirical literature on housework: that housework is performed exclusively by couples within their own homes; that it consists primarily of a set of repetitive physical tasks; that it includes childcare, but not care of adults; that it remains largely stable over the life course. Using data from a Canadian study, these assumptions are examined and shown to be false. A new definition of household work is proposed. It identifies four dimensions of household work: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, integrates housework with care work, includes all those who contribute to household work, whether on a paid or unpaid basis, acknowledges cross-household exchange of work and its changing nature over the life course. Using this definition of household work would lead to new questions as well as to a reinterpretation of some currently accepted generalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the enabling and constraining effects of culture on the framing efforts of social movements by examining the use of children in materials produced by opposing sides of the Newfoundland "Confederation debate" of 1948. Cultural perceptions of children as "future citizens" of the nation coincided with a denominational schooling system which Newfoundlanders had long trusted to administer their children's civic education. The state thus had little role to play in the production of Newfoundland nationals, a situation that induced pro- and anti-Confederate frames to diverge from more familiar discourses on children and nation. The analysis shows how the coincidence of culture and structure generates cultural constrictions that shape social-movement initiatives in sometimes unexpected ways. It also contributes to the literature on the place of children in political debate, and on Newfoundland Confederation more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human Resources Development Canada (now Human Resources and Social Development) developed in the early 1990s a classification of occupations having a more sociologically sensitive major groups structure than older codes such as the CCDO of the 1970s or the SOC of the 1980s. This National Occupational Classification (NOC) was updated in 2001, but the system is not used as widely as might be expected. Researchers seem to want major groups that are ordered, such as the Pineo, Porter, McRoberts scale of 1977. In 2005, a national level study of occupational prestige in Canada was collected by telephone interviews. The survey included prestige ratings of the 26 major groups of the NOC. With ratings at the major group level, every occupation in the Canadian labour force can be assigned a prestige score. The focus on NOC major groups also avoids problems that otherwise might arise in disclosure analysis in public use versions of Statistics Canada data sets. The paper describes the construction and validation of the scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses Habermas' concept of refeudalization and the public debate over genetically modified (GM) foods in Canada. An initiative of the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee is evaluated according to Habermas' ideal-typical public sphere criteria. The author examines the ways in which political and economic conditions under a globalized system hamper prospects for rational-critical public debate, specifically with regard to the GM foods industry, and argues that international competition and economic pressures have caused the Canadian government to promote contradictory policies.

The paper explores cohabitational living in Quebec, Canada and the influence of religion on its acceptance. The author proposes that because the majority of Quebec's French speaking population was Catholic, and the church's strict doctrines on sexuality and marriage were inconvenient to modern Canadian society, the gradual abandonment of traditional Catholic values opened the door for cohabitation. The author claims that the path along with any society proceeds toward cohabitation should be examined in the political, legal, social and institutional contexts.

We still know relatively little about how young people rationalize their educational and occupational plans and what this might tell us about the relationship between structure and agency in school-work transitions. In this paper, based on a multi-method comparison of youth apprentices in Canada and Germany, the range of school-work transition alternatives realistically under consideration was circumscribed by socio-economic status, habitus, cultural capital, and institutional factors. While their vocational choices reproduced their class position, youth apprentices nevertheless saw their entry into the trades as an expression of a preference for, and identity with, working-class ideals of manual work. Further analysis suggests, however, that these narratives can also be interpreted as post-facto rationalization strategies in response to public discourses that equate life course success with ever higher levels of educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]