Search

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 analyzes the results of a unique 2000 study of Canadian academics (n=3,318), providing the first empirical assessment of Burawoy's intellectual types: professional, critical, policy, and public. After determining the distribution of academic types in the Canadian professoriate as a whole, the paper demonstrates that academic types fall along a left-right continuum; different fields of study contain different distributions of academic types; and public, policy, and critical academics tend to have different sociodemographic and economic characteristics than professional academics. The picture that emerges from the analysis is of a professoriate whose contours substantiate the broad outlines of Burawoy's typology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies and repositions some of the controversies generated by Burawoy's defense of public sociology and his vision of the mutually stimulating relationship between the different forms of sociology. Before arguing if, why, and how, sociology should or could be more "public," it is useful to reflect upon what we think we, as sociologists, know that "lay people" do not. This paper thus explores the public sociology debate's epistemological core, the issue of the relationship between sociologists' and non-sociologists' knowledge of the social world. Four positions regarding the status of sociologists' knowledge versus lay people's knowledge are explored: superiority (sociologists' knowledge of the social world is more accurate, objective, and reflexive than lay people's knowledge, thanks to science's methods and norms); homology (explicit lay theories about the social world often parallel social scientists' theories); complementarity (lay people's and social scientists' knowledge complement one another; the former's local, embedded knowledge is essential to the latter's general, disembedded knowledge); and circularity (sociologists' knowledge continuously infuses commonsensical knowledge, and scientific knowledge about the social world is itself rooted in common sense knowledge; each form of knowledge feeds the other). For each of these positions, implications are drawn regarding the terms, possibilities, and conditions of a dialogue between sociologists and their publics, especially if we take the circularity thesis seriously. Conclusions point to the accountability we face towards the people we study, and to the idea that sociology is always performative, a point that has, to some extent, been obscured by Burawoy's distinctions between professional, critical, policy, and public sociologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Op-eds in newspapers represent an important form of intellectual debate that helps shape public opinion and elite policy. For academics, writing op-eds offers an opportunity to publicize a book or other research findings, and to gain influence and attention for their ideas. Given a reward structure within the academy that stresses peer review publication, professors are at a decided structural disadvantage, compared to journalists, when they try to enter the oped space. Thus op-eds give us a useful window into how academics and public sociologists enter the public sphere in comparison to columnists, think-tanks, politicians, social movement activists, and corporate leaders. Drawing on the innovative theoretical approach outlined by Ronald Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley, this paper offers an analysis of a selected set of Canadian op-eds and suggests a research agenda for studying op-eds in Canada. Not surprisingly, we find that journalists dominate the space of the op-ed in Canada. We also find that sociologists are fairly underrepresented compared to our obvious competitors in the social sciences. We conclude with thoughts about the implications of our findings for further research in the sociology of sociology, public sociology and the study of the social space of opinion. We also offer informed suggestions regarding normative and practical issues that Canadian sociologists should consider in light of these broader empirical patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Burawoy's plea for a "legitimate" public sociology that would help to realize a progressive, social democratic political project, in particular by contributing to the spread of human rights, has rekindled a very old, heated, and divisive debate over the nature and purpose of the discipline. My paper focuses on the contribution to this debate made by John Porter (1921-1979), probably Canada's most famous and influential English-language sociologist to date. Following in a tradition of "New Liberal" scholarship developed in England near the end of the 19th century by Leonard Hobhouse and others, and introduced into Canadian academia and public service in the early decades of the 20th century, Porter developed and practised a type of methodologically sophisticated, "scientific" sociology that rejected the doctrine of value neutrality and advocated a form of "engaged practical intellectualism" intended to create a more thoroughgoing democracy in Canada. His approach is significant not only because it is an important and undocumented development in Canadian intellectual history, but because it has current relevance. My comparison of Porter's notion of New Liberal sociology and Burawoy's public sociology reveals many parallels between the two and demonstrates that a rereading of Porter's work would add to the current debate on what a "legitimate public sociology" might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the debate surrounding Michael Burawoy's plea for public sociology, it is all too often presented as the opposite of the detached, purely objective observation of society. But sociology is not torn between these two poles: the political and the scientific/empirical. Rather, the discipline is structured around three fundamental axes or dimensions: professional, descriptive, and political, embodying three essential aims which, in turn, constitute the respective roles sociology can play in academia and society depending on the specific publics the discipline seeks to address. Acting as professionals, sociologists try to attain prestige by accumulating social or symbolic capital among their colleagues. If they serve science for science's sake, they find their reward in the advancement of knowledge. If they adopt an activist political stance, they measure the value of their work on a different scale. This paper focuses specifically on French-language sociology in Quebec from the late 19th century to 1970 and argues that the dilemma of juggling these three axes, aims, and roles is one which has deeply influenced not only the discipline as a whole but the generations of Quebec sociologists who have attempted to balance these dimensions in their scholarship. There were three basic schools or approaches during this period, each embedded in the social conditions of its time. Sociologists' public engagement depended on specific historical conditions much more than it did on personal preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism has already raised significant questions about the relationship between the cultural and the physical. However, this tends to open up science to the social, leaving the actual materiality of organic and non-organic matter intact. That is, whilst feminism has cast light on social and cultural meanings of sexual difference, there seems to be a hesitation to delve into the actual physical processes through which differentiation and change take place. The momentous shift in the natural sciences towards openness and play within the living and nonliving world will have an enormous impact on sociologists who increasingly grapple with issues involving life and matter (for instance in discussions of 'the body'). The aim of this paper is to pay tribute to the work of Australian feminist theorists, whose recognition of the importance of new materialism for socio-logical theory is prescient. I will argue that Australian feminist research is a major attempt to deal directly with materiality. [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]

This article examines the life histories of ten anglophone Canadian pioneer women sociologists: Helen Abell, Grace Anderson, Jean Burnet, Eleanor Cebotarev, Kathleen Hennan, Helen McGill Hughes, Thelma McCormack, Helen Ralston, Aileen Ross and Dorothy Smith. All were born before 1930, encountered significant sexism, and found jobs very easily. This pattern is placed into the context of a politics of gender and a politics of knowledge. Politics of gender in the institutional context and in family rules resulted in disadvantages, while the effect of the women's movement led to solidarity among women sociologists and eventual improvements in their situation. The simultaneous emergence of the women's movement and the Canadianization movement led to a politics of knowledge which proved advantageous for both. Nevertheless, the sociological canon so far has hot included women pioneers -- the author needed to conduct interviews since almost no published information existed about most of these important sociologists prior to this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the distribution of males and females of British, French and "other" ethnic origins among sociology and anthropology professors from 1971 to 1996. The results suggest that there has been a steady increase in the proportion of females compared to males, however, most of the increase has been experienced by women of British and French origins. The British and French females increased their representation both in terms of first time employment into the rank of assistant professor and with respect to promotion to higher ranks. In contrast, females of "other" ethnic origins were less likely to move into the university setting, but, once there, they were more likely to move up into higher ranks. In general, the study suggests that we should not view the category of "woman" as monolithic: British women are more privileged than French and "non-charter" women and men in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]