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This article lists names of various books reviewed in the September 1, 1986 issue of the periodical "Canadian Journal of Sociology."

This section presents a list of books on sociology and social sciences.

This article presents a list of books received by the "Canadian Journal of Sociology" as of September 2004.

This section presents a bibliography of books on Canadian sociology.

A lists of books received for review consideration including "Lengthening the Arm of the Law: Enhancing Police Resources in the Twenty-First Century" by Julie Ayling, "Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data" by Joel Best, and "From Rights to Needs: A History of Family Allowances in Canada, 1929-1992" by Raymond B. Blake.

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The paper indicates how a critical sociology could contribute to environmental impact assessment (EIA). It argues how sociologists must become involved in evaluating the EIA process itself. Topics examined include: how EIA excludes and frames social issues; why social science should precede natural science; the social construction of impact science; bias and the circulation of EIA consultants; and fairness when talking in public hearings. The author proposes an activist role for sociologists. Many EIA conventions described in this paper are examples of knowledge as a discursive source of power. Applied to EIA hearings, conversation analysis and discourse analysis could pry open conventions and suggest tactics for lay people, minorities and women to overcome obstacles, and make the hearing process more fair. The role for critical sociology in EIA that author has outlined is not neutral, or cloaked in claims to objectivity. It begins from the premise that knowledge is socially constructed.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This section discusses articles and issues which reflect the attempt to assess and evaluate important aspects of the publishing record in Canadian sociology during the last millennium as important reflections of the evolution of the discipline in Canada during the last century. In one of the classic documents of Canadian sociology, Everett Hughes suggested that sociology in this country should be framed by what he called the more-so principle, that is, what are the features of Canadian life from which we would learn more about as an aspect of society that we would not learn about as much elsewhere. He suggested that sociology in Canada had to be rooted in and must begin with its own societal context. Thus it can be concluded that as the societal context changes, Canadian sociology itself should reflect both the unique aspects of the society's character as well as the evolution of the society. The occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association provided a significant opportunity for sociologists in Canada to reflect on their organizational history and the practice of their craft in Canada. The results of this work is contained in an article by William K. Carroll, Linda Christensen-Ruffman, Raymond F. Currie, and Deborah Harrison.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When the notion that Quebec is a distinct society within Canada became the chief object of discord during the Meech Lake constitutional debate, sociologists were offered a golden opportunity to participate in shaping the evolving understandings that Canadians have of their country. But this opportunity was not grasped. This paper evaluates some of the discursive conditions that have produced the apparent indifference of Anglo-Canadian sociologists to this most crucial of sociological questions as it applies to their own country: what is a society? Of particular interest are the general underconceptualization in sociology of "society," and the conceptual confusion that links "society" to "nation," "state," and "country." Canada's political-economic autonomy relative to the United States is quite limited, and Canadian "sense of society" is vague and is challenged from within.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Two central questions are explored in this paper. First, what are the essentially American elements of American interpretive sociology as an intellectual discipline or set of related disciplines and second, at what points has American interpretive sociology borrowed significant elements from European traditions to redirect and revitalize its basic paradigms. These questions are addressed by using an approach to the sociology of knowledge that assesses the dominant features of selected disciplinary paradigms and discourse styles with particular attention to periods of crisis or change. In its concern with meaning and consciousness, interpretive sociology has historically drawn upon European currents of thought. With recent developments in the sociology of everyday life and semiotic studies, interpretive sociology has taken on new dimensions.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Thomas Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" has generated a great deal of controversy in the philosophy of science, but its treatment in sociology has been rather different. Generally, Kuhn's analysis has been used as a framework to explain why social science is not like natural science with its developed "paradigms." Jeffrey C. Alexander's recent paper in this journal, "Paradigm revision and Parsonianism," follows a rather different strategy; it uses the development of thought among the followers and students of Talcott Parsons to argue that theoretical change, at least in social science, does not conform to Kuhn's model. Alexander's brief account of theory revision is very close indeed to the account which Kuhn gives of normal science and written in almost Kuhnian language. Alexander disagrees not with Kuhn's view of normal science but with a caricature of Kuhn's view of scientific revolutions extrapolated to all science. This critical comment will show that Alexander seriously distorts Kuhn's views both of the development of natural scientific theories and of the applicability of the natural science model to social science.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper raises doubts about the traditional justification of the autonomy of the sociological object in terms of the "discovery" of "society" as demarcated from the state. Against the tendency to homogenize social theory from an overly "Anglosaxon" or liberal image of its early history, it offers a triadic, "knowledge-geographical" tableau of interpretations of the social object-and-project, which aligns it more closely with political ideology, resisting any clear-cut delineations in state vs. society terms. In the threepartite space of emerging social science, the French and German-Italian branches stuck significantly closer to the political and staatswissenschaftliche tradition than the Anglosaxon branch, and exemplified not so much a rupture with as an innovatory continuation of "Aristotelian" political philosophy, extending and generalizing its scope of analysis from state sovereignty towards a more inclusive theory of the generation and distribution of social power. This approach introduces a new specification of the unity and diversity of the sociological object-and-project, which may be re-described as that of knowledgeable organization: an appelation which at once defines the classical promise and the classical hubris of the sociological tradition in its three intellectual-geographical zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article sociologist David Cheal responds to the criticism of his writings on sociology. Sociologist Bonnie Fox describes that Cheal's argument about polycentric closure is characterized by "sexist, racist innuendo." Fox complains that post-modernists are leading sociology into a dangerous abandonment of the study of society for the examination of the texts. Cheal responds to this statement and states that in most of his academic career, he has tested hypotheses. The write-up discusses Professor R. Brym's constructions of disputes in which Cheal is also involved. The literary critic Charles Newman states that the term post-mortem describes the world created by a generation strong enough to dissolve the old order. Post-modernist such as Jane Flax recognize that the thinking fragments of Cheal are inconsistent with the enlightenment belief that conflicts between truth, knowledge and power which can be overdone by grounding claims to authority in reason.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Waters, The Death of Class. London: Sage, 1996, 173 pp., paper. What would sociology lose if it abandoned the concept of class? Nothing, according to Jan [...]

The article discusses the future of Anglo-Canadian sociology as a scientific discipline. Several prominent members of the field have speculated on the possible imminent demise of the discipline and point to loss of identity and autonomy as the primary cause. The author examines the issue thoroughly, concluding that the direction of Anglo-Canadian sociology lies in the professional attitudes and activities of its members. Suggestions for future avenues of sociological research and activity are provided.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a comment on the article "Positivism Redivivus? A Critique of Recent Uncritical Proposals for Reforming Sociological Theory (and Related Foibles)," by Joseph M. Bryant that appeared in the January 1992 issue of the "Canadian Journal of Sociology." The critics of positivism are now more prevalent than the theorists they scorn. Indeed, contrary to Bryant's comments, there is no clear revival of positivism; rather, theory today is now a mixture of commentaries on: (1) the faults of positivism and scientific sociology; (2) the ontological and epistemological problems of theorizing about human interaction and organization; (3) the offering of alternatives which take into account human agency, indeterminacy, history, context, or contingency; (4) the advocacy of critique of technology, capitalism, and assorted evils or the offering of a program and plan for doing criticism when all the philosophical issues are worked out; (5) the worship of the masters through history of ideas, name dropping and quoting, or scholarship on particular theorists; and (6) the fine-tuning of the lost art of discourse. The result is that much sociological "theory" does not seek to explain how the social world operates. Bryant's critique of positivism performs at least four of these tasks: it faults the work of positivists; it tells positivists that they have not seriously considered the epistemological and ontological issues; it proposes an alternative that encompasses (3) above; and it invokes the great masters, Karl Marx and Max Weber, to substantiate the critique against positivists.

If one reads the major North American journals in social sciences, it would appear that the life continues as usual in these fields. The emphasis is on uncovering factors thought to explain particular outcomes or conditions of human existence. The thrust is casual and quantitative. Concerns are focused on the operations of variables, hypothesis testing, sampling, the acquisition of rate data and establishment of cumulativeness in the literature. While a considerable variety of works are encompassed by the interpretive paradigm, the premises of sociology provides some general points of reference. The interpretive critique provides a vital forum for stock taking and assessments of epistemological foundations of the social sciences. This interchange is not to be avoided. It is essential. Without it, there may not be much of social science to pass along to the future generation of scholars.

On the face of it, "technological change," literally the application of new ideas for concrete purposes, is a difficult concept to oppose. Technology has made possible advances in civilization, eliminating many of the harsher aspects of life and permitting the creation of a progressively more comfortable and prosperous material existence. Yet dissension over the social effects, and particularly the employment effects, of technological change has been a dominant and recurring theme throughout the industrialized era. The rapid diffusion of computer-based technologies is clearly affecting employment in a number of fundamental ways from the availability of jobs and the nature of work to the organization of the workplace and the relationship between labor and management. The implications are serious in both economic and social terms. It is important to note that research on the diffusion of CBT in the 1980s has emphasized the indeterminate nature of the technology itself. Consensus is growing that the nature of innovation and its implications are the product of a complex interplay of social and economic factors.

In recent years, a number of books and articles in major sociology journals have cast doubt on the theoretical assumptions, methods, and results of positivist sociology. In contrast to earlier positivism debates, the current critique comes from positivist sociologists themselves, including some of the leading representatives of quantitative research. Although limited by a continuing commitment to the positivist paradigm, their discussion suggests that this paradigm may be intrinsically unsuitable for the analysis of social processes whose non-linear and chaotic nature conflicts with the assumptions of linear causality and predictability basic to positivist analysis. Ironically, one impetus for this reevaluation comes from the natural sciences from which positivism has taken its cues for such a long time, in particular the development of theories of chaos which have replaced linear Newtonian physics in the analysis of many inherently unpredictable natural phenomena.

The articles provides information about the contemporary demographic evolution of Quebec society. It considers population growth in Quebec and the respective contributions of natural increase and migration to the present rate of growth. It considers issues of linguistic composition, language assimilation and the volume of and the composition of immigration to Quebec. Nuptiality, fertility and divorce are all touched upon in as much as they bear upon procreation. It also draws attention to the aging of the Quebec population.

The article presents an immanent critique of the social imaginary of otherness based in a definition of the cultural difference between English Canada as an absent nation and Quebec as an absent region. This is grounded in an examination of the dialogical forms of the life worlds in each society across three interrelated contexts of social discourse, world view, utterance and word.

The article provides a comparative analysis of the historical constitution of philosophical and sociological thought in Quebec. It reveals that in contrast to other Western societies, the human sciences in Quebec fulfilled the cognitive and social functions ascribed to philosophy elsewhere. This is particularly striking at the level of their inverted conceptualization of Quebec as a global society. The human sciences would have created both the mythical and societal ground allowing then, the emergence of a philosophical project.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article represents the prevailing methodological position regarding the relationship of national identification and the development of sociological knowledge in Canada. Canadian sociology cannot be content to investigate the factors that have contributed to the sheer survival of the nation, but must go on to discover the complex web of economic, political, and cultural domination which has aborted the birth of an independent Canadian nation. It would appear that functionalism continues to influence a good number of sociologists in Canada. In the Canadian context functional theory easily translates into some form of the now familiar ideology of continentalism. in this view, Canada and the United States are by history and culture joined in a mutually beneficial arrangement that enables both countries to achieve high levels of industrial prosperity. The other wing of the "old" sociology, abstracted empiricism, has also been an inhibiting force on Canadian social science. It is today easy to denounce blatant empiricism as a hindrance to Canadian sociology since it is abrogated, if unofficially, in many professional circles on both sides of the border.

This article seeks to bring together a display as well as an analysis of the elements of fact and myth, which play their part in Canadian nationalism. The author's efforts to combine the methods of Marxism and phenomenology should be taken as a commitment to a particular style within the possibilities of Canadian sociology. It can hardly be claimed that Canada's experience of US economic domination has driven her into Third World revolution, although Canada shows occasional interest in the Mexican response to its problems with the US border. Everywhere one turns, the facts of US exploitation is clear enough to raise the voice of national indignation. The struggle over nationalist and scholarly interests in the Canadian University is exacerbated by attacks upon the university's role in society. Furthermore, the author discusses Canadian nationalism by turning from the consideration of the intellectual background predisposing to the myth of the nation to the consideration of the problems of national myth-making itself. Canadian sociology remains nerveless, ruled by its poor but legal use of American sociology.

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Disaggregation might well advance the understanding of the causes of homicide, but if it is not coupled with strong macrosociological concerns it also runs the risk of deflecting the attention from the study of whole societies--an interest that lies at the very heart of the classical tradition in sociology. That this concern is wholly missing in the programmatic statement offered by Leslie J. Kennedy, David R. Forde, and Robert A. Silverman is also methodologically problematic. By denying that data aggregated at the national level are worthy of study sui generis, they diminish the value of cross-national research. Yet methodologists generally agree that the societal level is just as worthy of analysis as the individual, group, or institutional levels. One set of social "laws" may govern the homicidal behaviour of individuals; a somewhat different set may govern the homicidal behaviour of groups; a third set may govern the homicidal behaviour of entire societies. As Kennedy, Forde, and Silverman suggest, a full analysis of homicide would have to specify the laws operating at each level of analysis and the manner in which these laws are connected. But none of these sets of laws necessarily obscures more than it reveals; they all illuminate different levels of social reality.