The Canadian case: Cornucopia of neglected research opportunities

Tracing the U.S. Deficit in PISA Reading Skills to Early Childhood

“…Ogmundson (2002) also notes that as a result of the more generous welfare system, the Canadian working class is able to enjoy greater income security and access to public services when compared with the United States (see also Zuberi 2006). Moreover, as social welfare policy is particularly important for moderating the effects of poor living conditions (Kenworthy 2011), these patterns may affect a nation's educational outcomes in meaningful ways.…”

A Canadian rejoinder: Sociology north and south of the border

“…As a consequence of this history, Anglo-Canadian universities have always had a British flavor to them, something that can be seen in terms of faculty hiring, university governance, and culture as well as the intellectual orientation of Canadian institutions of higher education. In Quebec, in contrast, one can see, especially after the 1960s, a strong French orientation, as Quebec nationalists looked to European intellectual culture as a counter-weight to the English speaking hegemony of both American and Anglo-Canadian universities (Brym, 2002;Cormier, 2002Cormier, , 2004bEichler, 2002;Fournier, 2002;Helmes-Hayes, 2002;Ogmundson, 2002;Smith, 2002;Nock, 2002).…”

“…As we discussed above, the Canadian sociology association has serious problems (Brym, 2002). And as Richard Ogmundson has argued, there is much unfulfilled potential for an empirical oriented non-Marxist sociology in Canada (Ogmundson, 2002). Cormier's excellent historical work on the social sciences in Canada relies on interviews with the "founding" generation of Canadian sociology, a cohort of scholars rightly proud of their accomplishments establishing the discipline in Canada.…”

“…There has been an extensive and heated debate in Canada about this "Lipset thesis," the details too complicated to go into in this paper (Adams, 1997;Grabb and Curtis, 1988;Baer, Grabb, and Johnston, 1990;Baer, Grabb, and Johnston, 1993;Lipset, 1990;Ogmundson, 1994). Lipset has provided the basic analytic framework for comparative U.S./Canadian studies, even though many of the details of his analysis are questionable.…”

“…5 The example of sociology in Canada, however, shows how excessive intellectual nationalism and simplistic platitudes about "critical sociology" can impede rather than help promote the development of a strong disciplinary core. Ogmundson's excellent essay "The Canadian Case: Cornucopia of Neglected Research Opportunities" is right to suggest that there are enormous opportunities for empirical sociological analysis on the case of Canada, but we need to go further than he does in understanding the structural and sociological reasons for Canadian sociology's unfulfilled potential (Ogmundson, 2002). Given new developments in the critical humanities and enormous institutional pressures towards practical relevance in contemporary universities, the Canadian case illustrates the threat to academic standards when interdisciplinary approaches are promoted uncritically by university administrators and academic entrepreneurs alike.…”