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This paper deals with a formerly quiet French-Canadian country town, now transformed into one of the leading Canadian centres of textile manufacture. Specifically, it describes the present competitive position of various classes in the town and relate the relevant facts to traditional life-objectives and expectations. Since but one case is presented, the treatment cannot be considered comparative in the full sense. A similar analysis could be made profitably in any community undergoing this type of change. The paper makes explicit use of the concept of position and implicit reference to the concept of status. Position is an individual's place in a competitive system. Status is an attribute of a person in society. Subjectively, it consists of his own definition of his place within a system of recognized duties and privileges; objectively, it is the recognition that the person occupies in fact, such a place. In a well integrated system of life, status and position tend to correspond. Each type of position in the existing competitive system would, in the logically ideal case, be defined as a status.

The article examines the characteristics of the youth culture among upper middle-class Canadian and Swiss boys. According to the article, recent social and economic change in Canada has made possible a culture of leisure and an affluent and highly industrialized society. This has resulted in an unexpected emergence of a prestigious youth culture and the highly glamorized, socially celebrated role of teenager. Big business has been quick to appreciate and influence the purchasing power of young people. Through the mass media it has promoted the "needs" of younger age groups, publicized the adolescent market and colorfully highlighted, as a moral imperative, active participation in teenage events. Although Switzerland is one of the affluent countries of the world, it ranks objectively lower than either Canada or the United States. Here the family unit is apt to be relatively stable, authority still vested firmly with the parents, and the rights and obligations governing parent-child relationships clearly defined and respected.

The relationship between social class structure and political institutions and behaviour has been one of the dominant interests of social scientists since the time of sociologist Karl Marx. More specifically social class structure has been the main source of theory for the explanation of voting behaviour and it is probably the most frequently investigated area empirically. The connection between some indicator of social class and voting behaviour has been amply demonstrated in many studies in many societies. However, the way in which occupation, education or income has its effect on voting has rarely been considered. The purpose of this article is to consider this large array of indicators of status and conditions of living and working, of intervening variables of social involvement, personality characteristics and attitudes. The article will demonstrate which variables should be pursued for further theoretical development and research, and which should be abandoned. The data are drawn from a larger study of voting behaviour, collected at the time of the 1968 Canadian federal election, in the province of Ontario.