Adopting a structural violence approach, we analyzed 2004 Canadian General Social Survey data to examine Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal inequalities in postseparation intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. Aboriginal women had 4.12 times higher odds of postseparation IPV than non-Aboriginal women (p < .001). Coercive control and age explained most of this inequality. The final model included Aboriginal status, age, a seven-item coercive control index, and stalking, which reduced the odds ratio for Aboriginal status to 1.92 (p = .085) and explained 70.5% of the Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal inequality in postseparation IPV. Research and action are needed that challenge structural violence, especially colonialism and its negative consequences.

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Lone motherhood, welfare reform and active citizen subjectivityAbstract Welfare-to-work policies have become a central priority of governments in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and Scandinavia. Drawing on multiple in-depth interviews generated as part of a longitudinal qualitative study, we explore how welfare is imbricated in lone mothers' subjectivity and citizenship. We consider women's everyday claims-making activities as we interrogate three dimensions of welfare reform in British Columbia, Canada: (i) the employment imperative underlying active citizen subjectivity and the way this plays out in terms of gender, race and classbased occupational streaming; (ii) the coerciveness of gendered norms instantiated in such streaming; and (iii) the resulting practices of stratified reproduction. Following in the tradition of critical poverty studies, our research focuses on claims-making activities to challenge prevailing public policy practice that risks positioning impoverished lone mothers 'under erasure', invisible as mothers or moral citizens, and visible only as low waged worker citizens.

As president of the American Sociological Association in 2004, Michael Burawoy initiated a lively discussion about the sociological terrain in the United States and appealed to his colleagues to engage in more ‘public sociology’ (Burawoy, 2004, 2005a). We applaud Burawoy’s efforts to begin the task of contextualizing US sociology and of renewing the challenge to embrace rather than eschew engagement with various publics. In outlining his version of public sociology, Burawoy has provided complex, thought-provoking if ambiguous conceptualizations that have led to vigorous debate and examination of core terms. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the debate by discussing feminist sociology, particularly in Canada.

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