Simon Langlois

Recent social trends in Canada, 1960-2000

An encyclopaedic reference work on Canadian society that charts changes to the social landscape.

Cross-section versus time-series income elasticities of Canadian consumption

Abstract Five Canadian surveys are used to compute cross-section and time-series income elasticities. Within pseudo-panel elasticities differ significantly from between elasticities for most consumptions. Thus, income elasticities computed using cross-section data cannot be used to predict changes in consumption over time.

Social cohesion in Canada

Canada is a diverse society of almost 34 million people. Its population is about half the size of Great Britain and France, the two nations whose colonization projects strongly shaped Canadas development. For most of the countrys history, the original or Aboriginal peoples have been marginalized despite the many ways in which they contributed to the nations economic, social and political development. After the British took Quebec from France, formalized in 1763, the French Canadians relied upon natural increase in order to sustain their population, while Great Britain encouraged mass immigration from the British Isles to increase population, practices which ensured national duality. During the 20th century, Canada recruited more than 13 million immigrants, mostly people of European background, but immigrant recruitment over the past forty years has been increasingly diverse. Canada has become a multicultural society characterized by very diverse ethnic and cultural origins. The Canadian federation is a complex society whose components are provinces with a great autonomy, regions with different resources, a diverse population that include many ethnic groups, two official languages, and fifty-seven aboriginal nations with their own national identities. The remarkable and continuous transformations of the Canadian population over the centuries has deeply marked its social cohesion and posed strong and varied challenges from one epoch to another.

A Productive Decade in the Tradition of Canadian Sociology

Canadian sociology is now a very diversified field. Important studies or books have been published in most major areas, including the new developing ones: social networks, consumption, social capital, gay studies, communication studies, and sports, among others. On the one hand, it is interesting to note that a majority of empirical studies now take gender into account and make a clear distinction between men and women whenever it is pertinent. Looking at the number of books published recently one cannot say that the life experience of women has been ignored. On the other hand, the situation is different when one considers national duality, English Canada and Quebec. Many studies consider the latter, but a certain number continue to present the whole of Canada as a normative unit overlooking the differences, which may be important in some cases. Language has always been an important barrier which has, to some extent, created two different sociologies in Canada, even when taking into account that francophone scholars refer to their English-speaking colleagues more frequently. Compared to France, the United States, Great Britain or Germany -- countries of reference for many English and French speaking sociologists -- social theory is less well developed in Canada. In English Canada, there is no equivalent to Fernand Dumont or Michel Freitag, two great thinkers who have built important theories. In this short contribution, I will refer to seven books and I would also like to include at least four others to this list. Of course other studies should also be added as the nineties produced a large number of excellent publications. Canadian sociologists continue to express a strong interest in stratification, and especially in class analysis, a topic privileged since the publication of the seminal work of John Porter in 1965. I have therefore chosen some books in this field, especially important for English speaking sociology. Canadian sociologists did not participate in the international research program initiated by John Golthorpe on social class in advanced industrial societies (the Casmin Project), but a team of researchers was involved in another project -- which adopted an approach closer to a Marxist one -- directed by Eric Olin Wright. Two Canadian sociologists, Wallace Clement and John Myles, were involved in this last research enterprise where they analysed the role of class and gender in the stratification process in Canada and in other developed countries. The results of this research, Relations of Ruling (1994), have suggested that new relations of ruling were constructed around class and gender in all advanced capitalist societies. The feminization of class structure has had an important impact on the workers claims and work issues, and it brought new issues to the table: pay equity, child care, paid leaves of absence to care for family, and policies against sexual harassment. It also transformed the material interest of the working class and the conditions under which the capital-labour wage relation is negotiated. Among many interesting results, I will mention two findings. First, their comparative analysis showed that Nordic families (including Canadian ones) tend to be less patriarchal in terms of decision-making. Second, postindustrialism in Canada has brought a break with the industrial past and nation-specific class attitudes have been either resilient in the face of, or reinforced by, postindustrialism. Social class was probably the key concept of Anglo-Canadian sociology during the seventies and eighties, as we can see in reading the table of content of the two major journals of sociology published in English. However, is social class still a useful concept in explaining social phenomena? Today the answer is not as clear. For example, research done by Statistics Canada showed that wage polarization or growing labour market insecurity have grown within, not between, social classes. …

Wellbeing in Canada

Canada was a pioneer in building a composite index measuring wellbeing in a developed society. The Canadian index covers eight domains pertaining to good life: the living standards of households, health, community vitality, democratic engagement, leisure and culture, time allocation, education and the environment. Between 1994 and 2010, GDP grew by 29 % and CIW, by only 5.7 %. Overall, six dimensions increased during the 14-year period while two decreased. One of the most important improvements between 1994 and 2008 were the living standards that increased by 26 %. Followed by education (+21.8 %), community vitality (+10.3 %). Three dimensions of wellbeing showed a small improvement: democratic engagement (+7 %), health (+4.9 %), and time allocation (+1.3 %). The leisure and culture dimension has deteriorated (−7.8 %), and the environment dimension deteriorated the most (−10.8 %). Canada has a wealthy and prosperous economy, but Canadians saw only modest improvements in their overall quality of life and wellbeing at the turn of the century.

Defining the Quebec Nation: Ten Years of Debates and an Emerging Consensus

Defining the nation in Quebec has been the subject of heated debates since the 1990s. History will certainly see this period as politically interesting as lively debates have taken place to self-define Quebec society. The national question took a new turn when the Bourassa Government negotiated the Meech Lake Accord (rejected in 1990) wherein Quebec was referred to as a ‘distinct society.’ Later - and more so after the 1995 Referendum - the question of Quebec’s nationhood came once again to the forefront. Jacques Parizeau’s reference to “money and some ethnic votes” as the main causes of the defeat of the sovereigntists’ option and his use of “we, Quebeckers” raised many questions on the night of October 30th 1995. Who exactly were the ‘we’ so often used not only by the Parti Quebecois but also in many milieus of the Quebec society?

Alexis de Tocqueville: un sociologue au Bas-Canada

Tocqueville est ne en 1805 en Normandie, pres de Cherbourg, dans une grande famille aristocratique francaise. Il etait l’arriere-petit-fils de Malherbes et le cousin de Chateaubriand. Son pere et sa mere ont ete emprisonnes a Paris sous la Terreur, a l’epoque de la Revolution francaise, et sauves in extremis de l’echafaud. Avocat de formation, il est devenu magistrat au debut de sa carriere et il a epouse une anglaise, Marie Motley. A vingt-six ans, il a traverse l’Atlantique, officiellement afin d’etudier le systeme penitencier americain, mais aussi dans le but de comprendre les institutions democratiques et le systeme federal de la nouvelle republique. Il publie en 1835 De la democratie en Amerique en deux tomes. Le premier connut un enorme succes d’edition; il s’agit d’une description minutieuse de la societe americaine de l’epoque et de ses institutions. Le second livre est different, plus un ouvrage de sociologie et de philosophie politique qui prend pretexte des Etats-Unis pour analyser aussi les societes europeennes en mutation. Tocqueville y enonce deux idees maitresses sur le progres de l’egalite et sur l’avenement de la centralisation dans les societes