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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.

The article focuses on the sociological research opportunities that can be found in Canada. The Canadian case offers a veritable cornucopia of research opportunities for the American sociologist. Although Canada is similar in many ways to the U.S., it also differs in significant respects. Given that many important variables can be held more or less constant, opportunities for theoretically meaningful research abound. Likewise, implications for policy are plentiful. The rapidly evolving nature of race relations in Canada might well inform discussions in the U.S. Until as late as 1975, Canada's racial minorities were a minuscule proportion of the overall population. After a change in immigration policy, the percentage reached 6.3 percent in 1986; and 11.2 percent in 1996. In the Canadian census, as well as in standard academic discussions, aboriginals are not included with visible minorities. While there is variation in the situation of visible minorities--some are quite prosperous--the situation vis-a-vis aboriginals is otherwise. The figures on poverty, unemployment, life expectancy, incarceration, murder, and so forth are extreme and show only modest signs of improvement. Canada has always been bilingual. Canada is also a bi-religious country. It used to be that Protestants outnumbered Catholics in a pattern somewhat similar to that in the U.S.

Arthur K. Davis was President of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1975–1976 and in 1995 received the association's Outstanding Contribution award. In Canada, he was particularly known for his article on “Canadian Society and History as Hinterland Versus Metropolis,” originally published in Ossenberg's anthology of 1971. This article was frequently cited from 1972–1994 and was reprinted a number of times. Davis was also known for his articles on Thorstein Veblen, which continue to receive citation. Davis' career merits careful study for at least two reasons. The first is that he was a Ph.D. product of the early Harvard sociology graduate program, which has received much less attention than it deserves from sociological historians (unlike the Chicago School). As such, Davis studied under of Talcott Parsons, Pitirim Sorokin, and Robert K. Merton. The second reason is that Davis' career clearly illustrates the usefulness of Robert W. Friedrichs' distinction between the priestly and prophetic roles that sociologists may fulfill. Davis' career started under the influence of a priestly orientation (as symbolized by his doctoral supervisor Talcott Parsons) and then gravitated to a prophetic stance as influenced by Pitirim Sorokin, Paul M. Sweezy, and, more distantly, by Marx and Veblen. Since this transition took place just when the Cold War was falling, his career reveals some of the pitfalls that await the prophetic sociologist in times that favor security and conservatism rather than activism and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I focus on four major concerns in Canadian sociological analyses of the labour market: (1) the distribution of employment of varying quality among different groups; (2) aggregate trends in the quality of employment and the incidence of unemployment often associated with globalization and technological change; (3) the effects of the relative dependence of the economy on resource extraction; and (4) various comparisons of Canadian labour market performance with that of Sweden, usually to the disadvantage of the former. I argue that these concerns have generated useful research, to varying degrees, but have tended to produce needlessly pessimistic conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the sociological dimensions of the impact of feminism on Canadian sociology. Counter to the U.S. and Europe, sociology in Canada is still a young discipline. Hiller (1980) proposes a four-step periodization for understanding the development of Canadian sociology: first, a period of European transference, which ends about the time of World War 1. During the second period, which Hiller names the period of environmental adaptation (essentially the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s) sociology was taught in conjunction with economics and political science as part of an interdisciplinary approach. Hiller names the third period one of disciplinary differentiation and specialization (the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s). The fourth period of consolidation, sarting in the 1970s, also involved the development of a truly Canadian sociology, stimulated and carried forward both by the Canadianization movement and the women's movement, which largely coincided timewise. In the middle to late 1960s the women's movement in Canada started to become a social force, kickstarted by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In 1972, the first session ever on women took place in the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association. It was organized by Marylee Stephenson, with three speakers: Lorna Marsden, Dorothy Smith, and Margrit Eichler.

This article presents the results of a survey administered to discover how much concern there is with teaching sociology at the introductory level in the U.S. and Canadian sociology departments. Findings indicate that sociology departments are grappling with the problem of making beginning sociology a more relevant intellectual experience for students with an ever-growing range of interests and expectations. In the survey, 71.1 percent of the U.S. sociology departments had the conventional one-course format in the 1971-72 academic year while 28.9 percent had some other format. Because sociology is undergoing such rapid growth, the authors wanted to find out the degree to which schools were contemplating change in the future. Some critics feel that sociology departments have failed to adapt their course formats to changing student needs. Baker and Behrens feel this way and state that "it is imperative that we ... respond to the plurality of students' abilities, interests, and expectations." The survey indicates that this pessimism represents a metaphysical pathos and that, in fact, U.S. and Canadian departments of sociology are facing the demand for change. Perhaps the most telling evidence of departments' commitments to deal with changing student needs is in the departmental responses.

This article reports on the growing number of U.S. faculty members in Canadian faculty positions. According to Canadian government figures for 1970-71, Canadian citizens comprise less than 60 percent of the faculty in Canadian higher education. Some observers feel that even this percentage is inflated by the inclusion of marginal institutions and marginal faculty. There is a growing concern of Canadian academics on the number of non-Canadians in general and U.S. citizens in particular in Canadian faculty positions. There is also mounting unrest concerning the extent to which Canadian social science fails to reflect its Canadian context. According to recent estimates, these situations are growing worse not better. Carleton University in Ottawa is reported to have received 800 applications for 12 recent vacancies, and some 750 were from outside of Canada with the overwhelming majority from the U.S. The case of Carleton suggests that the U.S. encroachment may be particularly strong in the best of the Canadian institutions where the proportion of Canadian faculty may be far less than 60 percent and dwindling annually. The problem is compounded by rifts within Canada itself so that institutions in western Canada may prefer U.S. candidates to those from eastern Canada.

The article provides statistical information regarding sociologists in the U.S. as of 1972. The U.S. Office of Education annually undertakes a survey of earned degrees in each academic field by each institution of higher learning. Their latest report includes data for 1969-70 based on a total of 1,617 institutions. The entry for sociology in this report provides one operational definition of the number of sociology departments in the U.S. As a conservative estimate, then, there are at least 988 departments of sociology in the 1,617 institutions of higher learning in the U.S. presumably, sociology is also offered in most of the other colleges and universities but no degrees were reported as conferred from these schools in 1969-70. It should also be noted that these data do not include reference to community or junior colleges. Another source of data on the number of departments can be found in the 1972-73 edition of the Guide to Graduate Departments of sociology published by the American Sociological Association. The Guide reports the number of graduate departments in the U.S. and Canada. Over the four editions, the Guide has listed the following number of departments in the two countries: 1969--169; 1970--178; 1971--184; 1972--175.