Leo Driedger

Ethnic identity and social mobility: A test of the "drawback model"*

The debate as to whether ethnic identity is a resource or a drawback for social mobility led the authors to compare Germans, Italians, Jews, and Ukrainians in Toronto to test four hypotheses. The study concludes with Tepperman, Darroch, and Herberg that simplistic claims of ethnic identity drawbacks to mobility must be rejected. All four groups made significant gains in educational and occupational mobility supporting convergence theories. Of the sixteen possible tests of occupational mobility using a combination of social, cultural, interal, and external dimensions, very few supported the notion that ethnicity is a drawback to mobility. Significant differences between type of group, level of identity retention, number of generations, and status at point of entry were all taken into account. Findings suggest that ethnic identity is as much a resource as a drawback to social mobility.

Mennonites in the global village

Before the 1940s, ninety per cent of Mennonites in North America lived on farms. Fifty years later, less than ten per cent of Mennonites continue to farm and more than a quarter of the population - the largest demographic block - are professionals. Mennonite teenagers are forced to contend with a broader definition of community, as parochial education systems are restructured to compete in a new marketplace. Women are adopting leadership roles alongside men. Many Mennonites have embraced modernity. Leo Driedger explores the impact of professionalism and individualism on Mennonite communities, cultures, families, and religion, particularly in light of the scholarly work of futurists Alvin and Heidi Tofler, which has described the shift from a homogeneous industrial society to a diversified electronic society. Driedger contends that Mennonites are in a unique position in meeting the electronic challenge, having entered modern society relatively recently. He traces trends in Mennonite life by reviewing such issues as the shift from farming to professionalism, the role of mass media, the role of active leadership, and increased social interaction. Menonites face many of the other challenges that religious minorities in North America encounter in the move to modernity, and this study provides in-depth insights into this transition.

Immigrant/Ethnic/Racial Segregation: Canadian Big Three and Prairie Metropolitan Comparison*

This article uses factor analysis to examine the three largest Canadian metropolitan centres, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, finding that the three represent distinct ecological segregation types. Montreal represents the dominant French charter type, Vancouver is a western multicultural type, and Toronto has changed from a dominant British charter type to a more recent visible minority type. Having found the Big Three residential segregation types, the study turns to regions, to examine metropolitan centres on the prairies, finding that Winnipeg is similar to Vancouver, but has its own aboriginal low socio-economic aboriginal factor which makes it a unique prairie hybrid type. Residential patterns in Edmonton and Regina are quite similar to those in Winnipeg. Calgary however, tends to follow the Toronto visible minority pattern, but also has some prairie aboriginal features which make it unique as well. Future studies need to explore

Mennonite identity in conflict

Mennonites still comprise one of the most markedly rural ethno-religious groups in North America, but are urbanizing faster than other groups. This study illustrates how they have survived, how they are changing, and how they have dealt with internal and external conflict in the process.

Individual Freedom vs. Community Control: An Adaptation of Erikson's Ontogeny of Ritualization

The author uses a modified version of Eriksons six-stage (numinous, judicial, dramatic, formal, ideal and nomatic) ontogeny of ritualization to discuss the problems of individual freedom and community control. A case study of Johann Driedger is used to highlight the struggle for individual freedom within a rural conservative Old Colony Mennonite community. The leaders of this ethnoreligious community sought to control their members in numinous rural villages by judicious means. Some members, like Driedger, tested the boundaries of the Gemeinshaft, by introducing new initiatives and industry. The church, however, judiciously discouraged such innovations by excommunication and the ban. The ritual process got stuck at the judicious stage two. Driedger experimented with new initiative (stage 3) and industry (stage 4), but in the end was forced to retreat. He died before his vision of a new ideology (stage 5) took hold; he did not experience the certification of a new nomatic religious community (stage 6).

Dualistic and Wholistic Views of God and the World: Consequences for Social Action

The authors pose dualist and wholist types of orientation to social action and propose that these types represent distinctly different views of God and the World. which should result in very different forms of social attitudes. They identify respondents on the dualist end of the continuum as fundamentalist theologically who come more often from ethnic rural communities. Wholists are more liberal theologically and operate within a social system that is more urban and more open culturally. They found that Dualists who show more other-worldly tendencies are less involved in this-worldly processes and are also more supportive of traditional personal morality and the ethnic community. Wholists, on the other hand, are more this-worldly and more liberal with regard to traditional personal morality, community control, and minority rights. Wuthnows dualist and wholist perspectives seem to apply to religious Mennonite adherents, and the two views of God and the world result in very different social attitudes.

Pro Life or Pro Choice: Politics of Career and Homemaking

The United Nations Conference held in Cairo in September 1994 was dominated by the debate on abortion. The strong opposition to abortion, and attacks on feminist attitudes by the Vatican could not be ignored, even though many Catholics in Catholic countries did not share the Vaticans views (Keyfitz 1995, pp. 81-89). Support for the Vatican from Muslims also made abortion a significant issue in the debate and resulted in the 1994 Conference having a stronger impact on the public than previous UN population conferences. In this paper we examine attitudes to abortion in a North American ethno-religious group with its own ethics the Mennonites who provide an ideal setting for testing the impact of a number of variables on attitudes to abortion, including religious commitment, pacifism, socio-economic status, and individualism. Mennonites were chosen because they were a branch of the Anabaptists who were radical pacifists and refused to take part in wars. They moved into cities after the end of World War II, and by 1989 half of them (48 per cent) were town dwellers and more than four times as many worked as professionals (teaching, health, welfare, legal, social services), rather than farmers (28 per cent and seven per cent respectively). The theoretical perspective which we found useful in our study is that put forward by Kristin Luker who claims that the abortion controversy was less concerned with the welfare of the fetus than with the social status of women and mothers. Abortion represents

Properties of Norms as Predictors of Alcohol Use among Mennonites

In spite of the traditionally important role that the concept of “norms” has played in sociology, there is little agreement on how it should be defined or measured. This paper uses the framework suggested by Gibbs (1965, 1972, 1978) who proposes that we focus on normative properties whose presence or absence is a matter of degree. The set of normative properties analyzed in this paper relate to collective evaluations about alcohol use among Mennonites in Canada. Variation in degree of group agreement, evaluative intensity, saliency of the issue, permissible variation in situations and actors are measured. Regression procedures are used to test the relationship between these normative properties about alcohol use and self-reported alcohol consumption in five independently selected samples of Mennonites. Since the groups vary in their evaluation of alcohol use, the usefulness of the normative properties as predictors of behavior can be tested. While the percent of the variance explained is high and quite consistent across the groups, the relative importance of the normative properties within and between the groups varies substantially.

Religious Typology and the Social Ideology of the Clergy

A BASIC CONCERN of religious bodies is how their adherents relate the secular world to the afterlife. Religions which traditionally emphasize the afterlife have been labelled theologically conservative. These bodies typically avoid becoming involved in secular issues and they tend to accept the status quo (Berger, 1969). Thus, there tends to be an isomorphic relationship between conservative theologies and conservative social ideologies (Driedger, 1974). However, certain forces complicate this isomorphism. For example, as denominations become institutionalized, their clergy and congregation may alter their religious or secular beliefs. Niebuhr (1929) and others ably documented how the social and economic mobility of church members altered the religious and political positions of their denominations (Baer and Mosele, 1970; Marnell, 1967; Kersten, 1970). In addition, clergies and congregations can differ in their theological and social beliefs. While upwardly mobile congregations may become politically conservative, their professionally trained clergy may emphasize liberal theologies and social ideologies (Lenski, 1961; Stark and Glock, 1971). For this reason, the highest authorities in centralized churches may enunciate a liberal secular ideology while the local congregations remain apathetic or conservative (Zimmerman, 1964). Sometimes individual congregations change in terms of secular beliefs while others do not. In short, simple classifications of religious bodies into sacred-secular, liberal-conservative, and sect-denomination dichotomies may not sufficiently describe the position of their members or clergy on social issues. A number of individual attributes which point to important structural characteristics of church bodies and their personnel, when studied, might provide a more adequate explanation of the relationship between ideology and social issues. Research evidence suggests that the type of church polity, and its stage or age are fundamental institutional attributes which might affect the social ideology of its members and clergy, and that theology and social status are

Ethnic Demography: Canadian Immigrant, Racial and Cultural Variations.@@@Canadian Society: A Macro Analysis.

Canada is a country of immigrants of different ethnic origins. This is the first volume that provides the demographic profile vital to an understanding of this country. Twenty-five of the top demographers in Canada draw upon 1986 and 1981 census figures and social surveys.