William Shaffir

The Jews in Canada

This work contains much of the best new research on Canadian-Jewish society, politics, and history by leading scholars in these areas. By examining the achievement of the community and the challenges it faces, this clarifies not only the evolution of Jewish people, but the evolution of ethnicity in Canadian society. The authors compare and contrast modern Canadian Jewry with their own past and their counterparts in the United States. They explore the sources for similarities and differences. The book also studies the sources and dimensions of the challenges that the Canadian Jewish community faces in attempt to survive the exigencies of modern life.

Death at the Polls Experiencing and Coping with Political Defeat

This article examines means of coping adopted by defeated politicians to manage their unexpected loss. In particular, we consider how they deploy deflection rhetoric to claim that circumstances beyond their control resulted in the undesirable outcome. The data mainly derive from transcribed conversations with Canadian politicians at both provincial and federal levels of government. The analysis offers a case study of disengagement and how individuals, forced to assume a new status involuntarily, attend to the presented challenges. An understanding of social life is enhanced by investigating not only the dynamics of identity construction but also processes of “un-becoming.”

Competing commitments: Unanticipated problems of field research

This paper examines the central problems that affected a team research effort in a study of professional socialization. The researchers draw the readers attention to the unanticipated difficulties they encountered in conducting the research—difficulties which, they suspect, are widely shared, but infrequently reported, in the discipline. The authors focus the analysis and discussion around the theme of competing commitments which affected the pace and direction of the research and created strains in team relations, leading eventually to the reconstitution of the team.