A Productive Decade in the Tradition of Canadian Sociology

Canadian sociology is now a very diversified field. Important studies or books have been published in most major areas, including the new developing ones: social networks, consumption, social capital, gay studies, communication studies, and sports, among others. On the one hand, it is interesting to note that a majority of empirical studies now take gender into account and make a clear distinction between men and women whenever it is pertinent. Looking at the number of books published recently one cannot say that the life experience of women has been ignored. On the other hand, the situation is different when one considers national duality, English Canada and Quebec. Many studies consider the latter, but a certain number continue to present the whole of Canada as a normative unit overlooking the differences, which may be important in some cases. Language has always been an important barrier which has, to some extent, created two different sociologies in Canada, even when taking into account that francophone scholars refer to their English-speaking colleagues more frequently. Compared to France, the United States, Great Britain or Germany — countries of reference for many English and French speaking sociologists — social theory is less well developed in Canada. In English Canada, there is no equivalent to Fernand Dumont or Michel Freitag, two great thinkers who have built important theories. In this short contribution, I will refer to seven books and I would also like to include at least four others to this list. Of course other studies should also be added as the nineties produced a large number of excellent publications. Canadian sociologists continue to express a strong interest in stratification, and especially in class analysis, a topic privileged since the publication of the seminal work of John Porter in 1965. I have therefore chosen some books in this field, especially important for English speaking sociology. Canadian sociologists did not participate in the international research program initiated by John Golthorpe on social class in advanced industrial societies (the Casmin Project), but a team of researchers was involved in another project — which adopted an approach closer to a Marxist one — directed by Eric Olin Wright. Two Canadian sociologists, Wallace Clement and John Myles, were involved in this last research enterprise where they analysed the role of class and gender in the stratification process in Canada and in other developed countries. The results of this research, Relations of Ruling (1994), have suggested that new relations of ruling were constructed around class and gender in all advanced capitalist societies. The feminization of class structure has had an important impact on the worker’s claims and work issues, and it brought new issues to the table: pay equity, child care, paid leaves of absence to care for family, and policies against sexual harassment. It also transformed the material interest of the working class and the conditions under which the capital-labour wage relation is negotiated. Among many interesting results, I will mention two findings. First, their comparative analysis showed that Nordic families (including Canadian ones) tend to be less patriarchal in terms of decision-making. Second, postindustrialism in Canada has brought a break with the industrial past and nation-specific class attitudes have been either resilient in the face of, or reinforced by, postindustrialism. Social class was probably the key concept of Anglo-Canadian sociology during the seventies and eighties, as we can see in reading the table of content of the two major journals of sociology published in English. However, is social class still a useful concept in explaining social phenomena? Today the answer is not as clear. For example, research done by Statistics Canada showed that wage polarization or growing labour market insecurity have grown within, not between, social classes.