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Purpose: This paper is a qualitative study of how social sciences faculty construct their research workflows with the help of technological tools. The purpose of this study is to examine faculty scholarly workflows and how both tools and practices support the research process. This paper could inform academic libraries on how to support scholars throughout the research process. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative study case study of ten faculty members from six research universities from the United States and Canada. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and recorded. Atlas.ti was used to code and analyze the transcripts; each participant was a separate case. Descriptive coding was used to identify digital tools used for collaboration; process and descriptive coding was utilized to examine practices in scholarly workflows. Findings: Through case study analysis the results of this study include the role of technology in faculty research workflows. Each workflow was grouped into four categories: information literacy, information management, knowledge management, and scholarly communication. The findings included scholars creating simple workflows for efficiency and collaboration and utilizing workarounds. Research limitations/implications: The study did not observe faculty in the process of doing research and, thus, only reports on what the researchers say that they do. Originality/value: The research is unique in that there is almost no research on how social scientists conduct their research workflows and the affordances/impasses of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the manners in which Indigenous and allied non-Indigenous researchers, medical directors, and knowledge-keepers (among others) extend the ethical precepts and social justice commitments that are inherent in community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches to genomics. By means of a genealogical analysis of bioethical discourses, I examine the problem in which genomic science claims to offer potentially beneficial genetic screening tools to Indigenous and racialized peoples who have and continue to struggle with historical health inequity, exploitation, and exclusion by the very biomedical institutions which would be charged with the task of ethically introducing these biomedical tools. This investigation focuses on Indigenous data sovereignty (IDS) as an approach established by Indigenous communities and scientists to gain access to the benefits of genomic health which, if the field's promises are true, aims to counter the historical neglect or exploitation by biomedical researchers and institutions. I chart the role of CBPR principals as it pertains to collective efforts by both Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous allies to create the social, biomedical, and institutional conditions to improve Indigenous health equity in the context of genomic science in two specific studies: the Silent Genome initiative (British Columbia) and the Aotearoa Variome (Aotearoa/New Zealand). This investigation contributes insights to social science literatures in health equity for racialized communities, biomedical ethics, Indigenous Science and Technology Studies, and decolonial biomedical and technoscience histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-national collaboration has been shaped by internationalization of scientific relationships. To study the synergic network of high quality research patterns, this paper collects a total of 300 top 50 items, in each indicator from the big database, Essential Science Indicators, which lists top-ranking papers, scientists and institutions from 2005 to 2015. First, the country level relations of co-authorship addresses in five indicator variables are extracted in the field of social sciences to build international collaboration networks. The social network analysis (SNA) method was applied to calculate the metrics of vertices, edges, average degree, average shortest path, diameter, clustering coefficient and betweenness centrality to illuminate the structural characters and collaboration patterns. Based on the international collaboration similarities, this paper also visualizes the endemic clustering groups of six networks, as cluster dendrograms, using Hierarchical Clustering (HC) method. Findings illustrate that USA, England and Canada are outstanding countries in the international collaboration networks of five indicators. There are geographical groups in European countries in the collaboration networks of scientists, institutes and countries/territories. It is also found that international collaboration contributes to both highly cited papers in the recent 10 years and hot papers in the recent 2 years in this field, rather than geographical similarity does. Those conclusions are critical for policy makers to produce guidelines on how to encourage researchers to build collaboration networks with high-level scholars in different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The last two decades have witnessed a considerable growth in the literature focusing on LGBTQ2S+ employment, labour market inequality, and income. During the same period, Canada has emerged as a trailblazer in employment protections for both sexual and gender minorities. Unfortunately, the Canadian literature on LGBTQ2S+ employment outcomes and experiences is disperse and underdeveloped. Objective: This paper brings together this disperse research and provides the first systematic review of Canada’s LGBTQ2S+ employment and earnings literature. Methods: We start with a systematic review and thematic synthesis of the broadly defined literature on LGBTQ2S+ poverty in Canada. We use a thematic synthesis to isolate the LGBTQ2S+ literature on employment, labour market inequality, and earnings. Our search of electronic databases took place in April 2018 and was updated in January 2019. Results: A total of 532 abstracts and full texts were screened by reviewers, which resulted in 84 articles included in our final sample. These articles were then sorted by keywords and those pertaining to employment, labour market inequality, and income (n = 31) were included in this analysis. While estimates of sexual minority wage gaps vary depending on the data and methods used, most studies have found wage penalties for gay men and wage premiums for lesbians, relative to their heterosexual counterparts. The literature on bisexual employment is particularly scant but finds that bisexual men and women also earn less than their heterosexual counterparts. Research on the subjective workplace experiences of LGBTQ2S+ individuals find unique challenges, barriers and, at times, exclusion from the Canadian labour market. Conclusions and implications: While the literature on LGBTQ2S+ employment outcomes and experiences in Canada is growing, much is left unknown. The principal limitation for researchers continues to be the dearth of population-based surveys that include questions on sexual orientation, gender identity, and relevant employment characteristics. To date, few studies have explored employment outcomes or the subjective workplace experiences of bisexuals, transgender, two-spirit or other gender minority peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To conduct a time-cost analysis of formatting in scientific publishing. Design: International, cross-sectional study (one-time survey). Setting: Internet-based self-report survey, live between September 2018 and January 2019. Participants: Anyone working in research, science, or academia and who submitted at least one peer-reviewed manuscript for consideration for publication in 2017. Completed surveys were available for 372 participants from 41 countries (60% of respondents were from Canada). Main outcome measure: Time (hours) and cost (wage per hour x time) associated with formatting a research paper for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Results: The median annual income category was US$61,000–80,999, and the median number of publications formatted per year was four. Manuscripts required a median of two attempts before they were accepted for publication. The median formatting time was 14 hours per manuscript, or 52 hours per person, per year. This resulted in a median calculated cost of US$477 per manuscript or US$1,908 per person, per year. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the cost of manuscript formatting in scientific publishing. Our results suggest that scientific formatting represents a loss of 52 hours, costing the equivalent of US$1,908 per researcher per year. These results identify the hidden and pernicious price associated with scientific publishing and provide evidence to advocate for the elimination of strict formatting guidelines, at least prior to acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological production is prompted and affected by the major social preoccupations of the society it stems from. This is an inherent feature of the social sciences because those who produce knowledge, in this case sociologists, participate in the society they study. The aim of this article is to highlight the social and historical conditions that are at the root of the production of knowledge in the sociology of sports, and the role the latter has played in the exercise sciences in Quebec. This article is composed of two parts. First, it will try to shed light on the social dynamics that created the sociology of sport. Second, it will try to show that the researchers' problematics and the theoretical traditions they have followed were a part of the power dynamics specific to Quebec society and the field of physical education. Briefly, this paper aims to show that the sociology of sport in Quebec has been shaped by the socio-historical conditions in which it has been created and that, at the same time, it has generated a specific social and academic dynamics.

The author reflects on the fiftieth volume of the periodical "Canadian Slavonic Papers". The author ackowledges all the editors and contributors of the issue referred to as a milestone, a testimonial piece that depicts the periodical's contribution in history, language, literature, and social sciences in Canada and across the globe.

Background: Previous research has identified the impacts of legal frameworks that criminalize HIV non-disclosure among people living with HIV (e.g., elevated stigma and violence). However, far less is known about the perspectives or experiences of people–particularly, men–who are HIV-seronegative or who are unaware of their status. The objective of this paper is to describe the health and social risks that young men perceive to be associated with an HIV diagnosis in the context of Canada’s current legal framework pertaining to HIV non-disclosure. Methods: We analyzed data from 100 in-depth interviews (2013–2016) conducted with 85 young men ages 18–30 in Vancouver on the topic of the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. Results: Our analysis revealed two dominant narratives in relation to HIV criminalization: (a) interrogation and (b) justification. An interrogation narrative problematized the moral permissibility of criminalizing HIV non-disclosure. In this narrative, Canada’s HIV non-disclosure legal framework was characterized as creating unjust barriers to HIV testing uptake, as well as impeding access to and reducing retention in care for those living with HIV. Conversely, a justification narrative featured a surprising number of references to HIV as a “death sentence”, despite effective treatments being universally available in Canada. However, most of those who presented the justification narrative asserted that the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure was morally justified in light of the perceived negative stigma-related impacts of HIV (e.g., discrimination; being ostracized from sex or romantic partners, friends, family). The justification narrative often reflected a belief that the legal framework provides both punishment and deterrence, which were perceived to supersede any barriers to care for both HIV-positive and -negative individuals. Conclusion: Public education regarding contemporary medical advances in HIV may help contest lay understandings of HIV as a “death sentence”, which is particularly relevant to destabilizing justification narratives. However, significant strengthening of HIV stigma-reduction efforts will be needed to move society away from narratives that attempt to justify Canada’s current HIV non-disclosure legal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature on internationalization, in relation to the absence of objective and measurable performance indicators for the process of how firms sequentially enter external markets. To that end, this research develops a quantitative tool for use as a performance indicator of gradualness for firms entering external markets at a sectoral level. The performance indicator is based on firms’ export volumes, number of years operating in the export market, geographic areas targeted for export and when exports began to each area. The indicator is tested empirically in the wine sector. The main contribution of this study is the creation of a reliable international priority index, which can serve more widely as a valuable tool because of its potential use in other industry sectors and geographic areas, and which would allow the analysis of how geographically differentiated internationalization strategies develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As commonly accepted, the stakes of sustainable development (SD) are altogether highly serious, complex, and diverse, spanning from changing living standards to the very future of mankind. Although it has long been argued that such complexity warrants radical change in the way “good” knowledge is conceived of and produced, it appears that much of sustainability research – including its grounding in social sciences – has yet to extend beyond the institutionalized precepts of natural science with regard to validity and credibility. In this context, this paper argues that crucial insights can be developed by opening social sciences’ theorizing process to undervalued forms of knowledge including art in general, and science-fiction literature in particular. To support this argument, current non-scientific productions of knowledge are reviewed in light of alternate conceptions of epistemological value. The potential of science fiction as thought experiments and inspiration for both problematizing and theory building in the social sciences is explored. In particular, certain science-fiction texts are thoroughly examined to illustrate how current problems pertaining to firm theories and management practice may be “discovered” (or made visible) only through science-fiction hindsight . Ultimately, the research shows how this hidden potential may be employed by social research to radically stimulate theoretical imagination and benefit sustainability research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece is a self-reflexive essay examining our experiences during an important transitional moment, what we will identify as a ‘constitutional moment’, in engineering education in Canada. We are a collection of scholars who specialize in the study of the interface between technology and the humanities and social sciences (most of us identify as Science and Technology Studies scholars). Housed within the Center for Engineering in Society, itself housed within a faculty of engineering, we find ourselves presented with dual challenges of introducing insights from the critical studies of the relationship between science, technology, and society into the engineering curriculum, while also maintaining legitimacy among the engineering faculty that we find ourselves a part of. This paper is a result of our attempts to understand the challenges in engineering education that are unique to our Canadian context and to systematize our responses to these challenges. The aim of this paper is to share our experiences navigating the relationship between the construction of our center's identity as an Engineering Studies hub and our critical participation in engineering education practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanism-based explanations are gaining in popularity in the social sciences. Canadian political science has somewhat embraced these debates. Recent work has explicitly identified with mechanismic explanation and, at the same time, there is a point to be made about the compatibility of CPS's cannons with a mechanism-based understanding of causation. In this paper, we survey past and recent work aligned with this ontological approach. We demonstrate a heterogeneous engagement with the methodological literature regarding mechanisms and different understandings as well as uses of mechanisms in political analysis. This survey allows us to argue for the potential of mechanism-based explanations for CPS while also forcing us to advocate for a sober and discerning use of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question of what constitutes science has been debated for a long time in philosophy of science, where some authors even consider the debate pointless (e.g. Auroux, 2000). However, increased regulations in research ethics in Canada have made the debate a concrete preoccupation. Research ethics regulators have had to define research (e.g. TCPS, 1998; 2010) and consequently, in the course of their work, ethics committees in Canadian universities are compelled to reflect on whether projects submitted to them represent scientific research. Citing real cases, this paper presents three types of projects in social sciences that appear not to meet commonly accepted criteria for scientificity, all the while representing a considerable number of projects involving human participants regularly examined by ethics committees. The typical pattern of a purely qualitative study based on a very small number of participants is described, highlighting the frequent absence of hypothesis testing, hypothesis generation, variables, or systematicity. The paper raises again the question of applicability and/or generalizability of data as a criterion for determining the scientific nature of projects. It also suggests that social sciences, like natural sciences, can be either scientific or not, if this determination is based not on the topic that is investigated but on the way researchers investigate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the findings of an unusual international endeavour that combines action research with leadership development for 40 senior officials from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. The four nation Leadership Across Borders programme, co-delivered by the governments' business schools of each country, set out to explore and understand some of the most significant facets of public service ranging from citizen engagement to whole-of-government complexity, and from the economic downturn to crisis management. Over the 10 months of the programme, the senior group engaged with heads of the public service, leading academics, delivery experts, leaders of civic society and scores of street level service users. This paper highlights the critical importance of understanding complexity and the role of 'systems thinking' in dealing with modern problems. But it also points to a new order of innovation required of leaders if they are to bring value to problems such as deprivation and global financial crises, and if they are to successfully bring about citizen-centred services in increasingly complex societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Difficult health care encounters often do not translate into expressions of dissatisfaction with care. This paper focuses on the ‘non-expression’ of dissatisfaction with care in the accounts of 12 people in Canada who provided care to a relative or friend who died of breast cancer.The analysis foregrounded in this paper began from the observation that as difficult health care experiences were elaborated, speakers located health professionals’ actions in relation to various situational factors, including the fact of a (cancer) death and conditions of constraint in the health system. Set alongside these two realities, expressions of dissatisfaction tended to be disarmed. Results of this study suggest that the cost of articulating dissatisfaction with care is high where the cared-for person has died, and the perceived value of focusing on difficult experiences is low. Further, respondents in this study took the specificity of the situation and the setting into account in formulating beliefs about the care outcomes for which health professionals could be held responsible. When conditions in the health system and the disease process of advanced cancer were positioned in talk as ‘ultimate limits’ on health professionals’ actions, perceived lapses in care were excused. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

While climate scientists have developed high resolution data sets on the distribution of climate risks, we still lack comparable data on the local distribution of public climate change opinions. This paper provides the first effort to estimate local climate and energy opinion variability outside the United States. Using a multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) approach, we estimate opinion in federal electoral districts and provinces. We demonstrate that a majority of the Canadian public consistently believes that climate change is happening. Belief in climate change’s causes varies geographically, with more people attributing it to human activity in urban as opposed to rural areas. Most prominently, we find majority support for carbon cap and trade policy in every province and district. By contrast, support for carbon taxation is more heterogeneous. Compared to the distribution of US climate opinions, Canadians believe climate change is happening at higher levels. This new opinion data set will support climate policy analysis and climate policy decision making at national, provincial and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the case study in sociology, and in the social sciences in general. The classical definition attributed to the case study is examined here by recalling the methodological conflict in sociology, marked by a rift between qualitative and quantitative methods, and by a retrospective look at the well-known case studies that American researchers devoted to French Canada (or Quebec), more particularly to its rural culture whose transformation relates to the 'meeting of two worlds.' The criticism levelled at these case studies are examined, especially those concerning their presumed lack of representativeness and objectivity. This lack was invoked without these terms being really stated or clearly determined. In this article, objectivity is defined as being the detailed account of the methodological strategies and operations guiding the approach to an object of investigation. Moreover, a distinction is made between statistical representativeness and sociological representativeness which best determines the generalization value of the case study. Finally, while this approach is considered as a study, or even as descriptive theory, this paper shows that description proves essential in the definition of explanatory theories. The example of the case study approach to the French-language economy in Quebec is presented in order to re-examine, in strictly methodological terms, all the points raised in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores social scientists' and humanities (SSH) scholars' integration within the academic medical research environment. Three questions guided our investigation: Do SSH scholars adapt to the medical research environment? How do they navigate their career within a culture that may be inconsistent with their own? What strategies do they use to gain legitimacy? The study builds on three concepts: decoupling, doxa, and epistemic habitus. Twenty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with SSH scholars working in 11 faculties of medicine across Canada. Participants were selected through purposeful and snowball sampling. The data were analyzed by thematic content analysis. For most of our participants, moving into medicine has been a challenging experience, as their research practices and views of academic excellence collided with those of medicine. In order to achieve some level of legitimacy more than half of our participants altered their research practices. This resulted in a dissonance between their internalized appreciation of academic excellence and their new, altered, research practices. Only six participants experienced no form of challenge or dissonance after moving into medicine, while three decided to break with their social science and humanities past and make the medical research community their new home. We conclude that the work environment for SSH scholars in faculties of medicine does not deliver on the promise of inclusiveness made by calls for interdisciplinarity in Canadian health research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses research on electronic waste in Canada and Bangladesh. We engage with ongoing debates in geography and the broader social sciences on the need to move beyond linearity in the analysis of commodity/value chains and global production networks. Our analysis suggests that the problem of linearity may be an artefact of theoretical and methodological presuppositions, which explains its longevity as an issue in methodological approaches and empirical research. Recent theoretical insights from actor network theory, combined with our own research on electronic waste, provide a potential solution to the problem of linearity. Our research points to the need for a focus on 'actions', not just 'things', in tracing economic activity. This signals a shift away from beginnings and endings in production network approaches to analyses that are concerned with boundaries and edges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s a growing body of literature has taken a 'geographic turn' and sought to incorporate the study of spatial factors into the social sciences. Building on this theoretical literature, this study undertakes a spatial analysis of the contentious politics that have become so closely and regularly linked to international summit diplomacy. The paper examines and compares the protests surrounding two international summits held in Canada: the Vancouver Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (1997) and the Kananaskis G8 summit (2002). These two cases serve to demonstrate many of the important ways in which space is controlled and contested by both protesters and state actors such as the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The closure of Université de Moncton's sociology department in the spring of 1969 constitutes a unique event in the history of Canadian academics. In this paper, the authors examine the causes behind this closure. They present an intermingling and collision of motivations of different actors and movements in Acadian academic life during the late sixties: student associations, the young sociology professors, the professors association, the university administration, etc. Beyond being simply a historical anecdote, the closing of the sociology department symbolizes a larger political crisis, where two social conceptions compete: the administration envisaged a rational administration of the social, while the sociology students and professors wished for a society based on socialist and participative principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - Environmental assessment (EA) is a proactive planning tool designed to consider the ecological, cultural, socio-political and economic impacts of potential projects, making it a major tool for achieving sustainable development. Meaningful EA requires a bridging of the natural sciences with the social sciences to broaden understanding of the overall environmental impacts of development projects on humans, the natural environment and other organisms. As a result of this complexity, education and training needs are great. The purpose of this paper was to consider EA educational opportunities at Canadian universities and to test a model for the analysis of the state of such education. Design/methodology/approach - The research design used a qualitative interactive approach, including a survey of 2001 university course calendars, participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Findings - Results indicate that the number of universities offering EA courses has tripled to 40 since the mid-1980 s. While this is a positive finding, data illustrate that the bulk of the courses offered are survey-oriented and introductory in nature, with little opportunity to specialize. This cursory approach is exacerbated by a lack of teaching resources and instructor development. Despite the nature of the courses offered, many professors encourage critical thinking and use innovative teaching techniques, including role-playing, to promote self-reflection. In fact, the interdisciplinary approach to the curricula and the promotion of critical thinking outside disciplinary boundaries are two strengths of current EA programming. Originality/value - In light of this state of formal EA education in Canada, more research and international level dialogue are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Canada's response to the challenge of informing public social policy. A task force was established to assess the barriers that needed to be overcome in order to meet the challenges; Description of how the Canadian social science research community responded is presented.

Canada's immigration discourse tends to treat immigrants as the object of inquiry. The discourse itself is taken for granted and is seldom scrutinized. This paper discusses the framework by which the immigration discourse is shaped and articulated. The aim is to understand the representation of immigrants in the construction and safe-keeping of Canada's actual and virtual boundaries. The place of immigrants in territorial and social space reveals the discursive grounds by which "insiders" represent and racialize those deemed to be outside and different. In turn, plotting the place of "others" reinforces the proprietary claim of territorial and social space by those who have secured legitimacy and power. Thus, the discursive mapping of immigrants in Canada's territorial and social terrains is an extension of politics of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a list of books received in the October 2001 issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology.

This paper is concerned with epistemological and attitudinal problems encountered in communicating geographical concepts to non-geographers. It reflects a Canadian context and offers a case study of a group of non-geographers whose special needs are often overlooked: the teachers of social studies. An inductive approach, using systematic geography only as required in order to understand a case study, is found to be effective in building bridges for those new to the subject. The choice of sequence should be from the empirical to the theoretical, in which fieldwork fulfils a point of entry for non-geographers. [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]

The importance of infrastructural work for the mobility of practices and for the capacity of centers to act on distant sites is stressed in both science studies and the sociology of state formation. Employing Kula's typology of metrological systems, this paper examines four areas of metrological reform in pre-Confederation Canada, stressing the existence of metrological hybrids. Metrological standardization is held to depend upon the exercise of sovereign state power at the same time as it extends the administrative capacity of state agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's comments on the paper Canada's Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis in Anglo-Canadian Sociology. Do grand visions and preoccupations with how we ought to be doing our work have a place in the contemporary world of Anglo-Canadian sociology or should we avert our gaze from the flood of imperatives that we are implored to take seriously and just get on with it? Get on with the teaching? Get on with the scramble for resources and recognition? Get on with the construction of our world, the consensual observations that once on the page are us, the texts of sociology? Recognition and reputation do flow from publication and engaged teaching. That much we know or should know. So why not just do it and, thereby, perhaps, banish or, at least, reduce the innervating gloom of collective self-doubt that seems to be so much with us these days? So why not stop wringing our hands about our journals and simply fill their pages with worthy observations? So why not stop complaining about the quality of our meetings and take up the challenge of finding there those who can understand our specialized ways of talking and writing? McLaughlin provides us with plenty of reasons why not,

This section introduces the articles featured in the spring 2002 issue of The American Sociologist. The half-dozen articles here, along with Brym's engaging introductory essay, help us regain a sense of sociology as an unfolding international movement and also of the distinctive experiences of sociologists in particular national contexts. Rather ironically, in light of the sweep of the paradigms and macro-level theories that are sociology's coin of the realm, there are strong parochial tendencies in the field. In the United States, for instance, many departments of sociology tend to relegate international and cross-cultural matters to anthropologists, and many textbook writers produce analyses that focus overwhelmingly on their home country. One consequence of such tendencies is to speak as though formulas that fit one context have a general or universal applicability. As the papers here inform us time and again, sociology in Canada has struggled with the Anglo-French division of society and culture, which has generated two separate and largely unengaged spheres, and has segregated even the respective social sciences. Meanwhile, Canadian sociologists have worked to develop a voice of their own that is not distorted by the influence of sociology produced in the United States or in Europe.