From ethnicity to race in the Canadian Review of Sociology, 1964 to 2010.
Ramos, Howard
ONE OF CANADIAN sociology's main areas of concentration is
ethnicity and race. (1) It is a topic that is prominently featured in
introductory texts and series on Canadian sociology (see, e.g., Brym and
Lie 2009; Fieras and Elliott 2003; Stazewich and Liodakis 2007;
Tepperman, Albanese, and Curtis 2012). Ethnicity and race is also an
area of central importance to the annual meetings of the Canadian
Sociological Association, generating numerous sessions and papers. The
field of ethnicity and race is also seen as important enough to warrant
investigation in this special anniversary issue of Canadian Review of
Sociology {and Anthropology) {CRS). (2)
Through an analysis of publications in the CRS and comparison to
general trends in other leading journals, this paper examines why
ethnicity and race have been so central to Canadian sociology. The paper
also asks if and why sociological engagement with ethnicity and race has
changed over the last half century. These questions are explored through
an analysis of publications in the CRS between 1964 and 2010.
THEORETICAL PROPOSITIONS
The prominence of ethnicity and race as a sociological field of
study may surprise some, given post World War II efforts to discredit
race as a concept. As Satzewich and Liodakis (2007:11) note, in an
excellent review of literature in the area, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization played an active role
in debunking the scientific merit of the concept and this led to the
conclusion that "race" is a social construct. A number of
prominent sociologists concurred, such as Gans (1979), van den Berghe
(1981), and Gilroy (1998) to name but a few. This critique occurred at
the very same time the first issues of the CRS were being published in
1964 and shaped how ethnicity and race have been analyzed in Canada over
the last half century. Yet, despite efforts to contest the term decades
ago, ethnicity and race are still socially relevant today and are
subject of numerous Canadian sociological investigations. One might ask
why this is the case and if anything has changed?
A number of possible explanations can be offered to respond to
these questions: (1) Canada is very much still defined by ethnic and
racial inequities; (2) government policies have institutionalized both
concepts; (3) demographic shifts and immigration have made ethnicity and
race more visible; and (4) the process of contesting ethnicity and race
and advocating against inequities based on these social markers reify
them as meaningful categories. Let me elaborate on each in turn.
Whether or not ethnicity and race are socially constructed
concepts, like many countries, Canada continues to be defined by ethnic
and racial inequities. This means that even if they have no scientific
merit, they are still relevant markers of Canadian identity and society.
In fact, the country is still profoundly shaped by both ethnicity and
race, as can be seen in relations among English, French, and
"other" Canadians (see Winter 2011), or the relations among
settlers and indigenous peoples (see Dickason 2003; Frideres and Gadacz
2012), or through the ongoing plight of African Nova Scotians (see
Nelson 2008) and other racialized people (see James 2010; Reitz and
Baneijee 2007), not to mention the experiences of immigrants (see Boyd
and Vickers 2000). Ethnic and racial inequities still shape contemporary
Canada and this might be why the terms are still widely used in public
discourse and why sociologists continue to analyze them.
Another reason for why ethnicity and race are still important is
that the Canadian federal government has enacted a number of significant
policies to entrench both concepts. One can easily cite policy that
emerged out of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism in
the 1960s, the adoption of the immigration points-based system in 1967,
official multiculturalism in 1971, and the inclusion of ethnicity and
race in the Constitution (3) as just a few examples. The introduction of
the measurement of the "visible minority" population in the
1981 Census, moreover, and the continual capture of it as well as
ethnicity in Statistics Canada data sets may also have contributed to
their use both in public discourse and academic investigation. This is
not to mention the introduction of policies, such as Employment Equity
in 1988 that raised heated debate over racialization and equity and are
still contested today. Scholars of nationalism, such as Skocpol (1979)
or Brubaker (1994), would rightly argue that such institutional
practices play important roles in keeping the concepts alive and the
identities they invoke. As Brubaker, Loveman, and Stamatov (2004) note,
policies and statistical data shape the very schema that people use to
navigate their social worlds.
Ethnicity and race may also still be important to Canadian
sociology because of the country's demography. Like many settler
nations, Canada has been profoundly shaped by immigration. It is
important to recall that until the immigration system was revised with
the introduction of the points-based system in 1967, immigration policy
in Canada was set to maintain the English and European dominance of the
country (Boyd and Vickers 2000). After its introduction, Canada not only
became more ethnically diverse, but also more racially diverse
(Basavarajappa and Ram 2008; Boyd and Vickers 2000; Reitz and Bannerjee
2007). Since the 1970s large numbers of immigrants have moved to Canada,
with about 250,000 arriving annually since the 1990s. This is both the
by-product of policy changes and an impetus of many of the policies on
ethnicity and race cited above. If sociology is a discipline that
analyses social trends, then demographics will certainly influence the
kind of sociology practiced.
One last reason for the continued prominence of ethnicity and race,
not to mention the changes in how they are examined, may be that the
process of contesting the categories and the inequities that come with
them may in fact reify the concepts (Gilroy 1998, 1999; Goldberg 1990).
Take for instance the heated debate around the Human Genome project
during the 1990s that added yet more scientific evidence against the
biological underpinnings of ethnicity and race. In the same decade,
another example can be seen in what was to become known as the
"culture wars," where both concepts remained prominent in
academic analysis. The same can be said with antiracist scholars who
argued for moving toward a process-oriented notion of race through the
advocacy of terms like racialization instead of a static notion of race
(see Dei 1996). These recent critiques have changed how sociologists use
the terms theoretically and how they research what the terms signify,
but at the same time they maintain the concepts as relevant. In other
words, if sociologists counter problematical social categories they must
still invoke them in their efforts.
In the rest of the paper, I will examine these propositions through
an analysis of articles using the terms ethnicity and/or race in the CRS
between 1964 and 2010. The primary goal of the paper is to explore how
the terms are used by scholars publishing in the CRS and to track
changes in how they have been deployed over last 50 years.
METHODS
To examine trends in Canadian sociology of ethnicity and race in
the CRS, a keyword search of publications was conducted on EBSCO
Host's SocIndex with Full text, using "TX all text" and
"select a field (optional)" searches, and limiting results to
those from the CRS or comparator journals alone. Searches used two
Boolean phrases, "ethnicity" and "race," applied
related words, left document type and language open, and were conducted
for five different time periods: 1964 to 1970, 1971 to 1980, 1981 to
1990, 1991 to 2000, 2001 to 2010. Each search was saved as a PDF. (4)
By searching publications with the "TX all text" setting
results yield any mention of the keywords in a publication. When using
the default of "select a field (optional)" search, EBSCO
SocIndex searches: "all authors, all subjects, all keywords, all
title information (including source title), and all abstracts. If an
abstract is not available, the first 1,500 characters of the HTML full
text of the article are searched" (EBSCO 2012). This type of search
offers a more conservative harvesting of publications than a search of
any mention in text. The publications gleaned from these searches thus
focus on ethnicity and/or race and are not merely publications using the
terms in passing. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the
"TX all text" search as "Any Mention" and the
"select a field (optional)" search as
"Title/Abstract/Keyword."
To analyze how sociologists use the keywords, the publications
retrieved from the Title/Abstract/Keyword search were open coded for
different characteristics. In total 137 publications in the CRS were
captured by that keyword search, of which two articles did not use the
keywords in a manner related to conventional social science usage and
five were books received. These were eliminated from the data used for
detailed analysis, leaving a sample of 130 articles.
Of the characteristics originally coded, five variables (5) are
used in this paper, including: keyword and decade of publication that
are self-explanatory. Also analyzed are Subjects covered by a
publication, which were open coded based on the publication's
titles and abstracts into 18 different foci. Coding reflects my
interpretation of the main focus of different articles and thus some
articles cover a range of different subjects that are not captured by a
focus on a single subject. Although all articles can be said to analyze
the theoretical construct or empirical underpinnings of ethnicity and
race, the coding of subject was done in order to drill down even further
from the broad search offered on publications focusing on the area to
understand how the topics are engaged. Titles of publications were
examined through ATLAS.ti software to look at the words used in titles
and to iteratively code them. This was done using the "simple
quantitative content analysis" tool to get a better sense of what
types of subjects were engaged by authors in CRS. Analysis was done for
the entire 1964 to 2010 period and then again within decades. The last
element of analysis was the Methods used in a publication. These were
coded based on titles, abstracts, and methodology sections (when
available) of publications. Nine different methods were coded. Most
contentious is the fact that articles are analyzed in concert with book
reviews, comments, research notes, and "other" articles that
did not fit these categories. The decision to treat these as
publications in the analysis is based on an effort to offer a broad
sense of how ethnicity and race have been engaged in the CRS and to give
credit to the scholarly importance of less conventional forms of
publication in journals. Book reviews in particular offer insight into
broader trends in the area occurring outside of the journal and in books
considered relevant to the journal's subscribers. The paper
presents these data in tabular form to offer a general portrait of
trends in how ethnicity and race have been engaged in the CRS over the
last half century and to see how the propositions advanced above help
shed light on them.
ANALYSIS
An Any Mention search of publications in the journal between 1964
and 2010 shows that roughly 39 percent of all publications (6) in the
CRS mentioned ethnicity and/or race. As Table 1 illustrates, if
additional terms like ethnic, nation, Indian, or native are added the
percentage is even higher. This is not to mention the many other
keywords that fall within the area and not included in the table, such
as immigration, citizenship, or nationalism.
Admittedly, the analysis that follows is tempered by the decision
to limit the examination to the terms ethnicity and race, which are both
contested terms in the academic literature. In fact, the period analyzed
in this paper begins just after efforts were made to debase the
scientific merit of race and the acceptance by sociologists that the
term is socially constructed. Thus, the approach taken in this paper is
Bourdieusian in the sense that it examines the field within which the
terms are deployed, accepting all uses, even if contested. That said, a
fuller analysis of all possible keywords that explicitly and implicitly
engage the area would be unwieldy and would likely still miss terms
considered relevant by scholars of ethnicity and race. Additionally, the
decision to analyze "ethnicity" over "ethnic," even
though the latter of the two yields more publications, was made because
of the similar patterns seen across the keywords and again to make the
task of detailed coding of publications more manageable. These are
limitations of this paper.
With these caveats noted, we see that compared to other keywords of
sociology, ethnicity and race appear at a similar overall rate. As Table
1 shows, roughly 11 percent of publications in the same period mentioned
"crime," 25 percent noted "gender" and
"health," and 20 percent mentioned "inequality."
When a more conservative, Title/Abstract/Keyword search is conducted, we
see that overall "ethnicity" and "race" account for
about 6 percent of the publications in the CRS during this period.
Individually the terms rival alternate keywords and those representing
other areas of interest. The area of ethnicity and race is indeed a
significant concentration in the Review and this has not diminished over
time despite strong critiques of both terms as theoretical and empirical
constructs. If one revisits the four propositions advanced above, each
offers a plausible explanation for the continued prominence of the
keywords.
When the keywords are examined over time, however, we see
interesting shifts in the area as well as in Canadian sociology.
Generally, the in-text mention of the terms ethnicity and ethnic far
outnumbered race over the last half century of the CRS, especially in
the 1970s and 1980s. During those decades they were mentioned in 18 to
39 percent of the journal's publications compare to 15 and 17
percent for race. Interestingly, however, their prominence shifted over
time with race being mentioned in a greater proportion of publications
in the 2000s. When compared to mentions of keywords representing other
areas of Canadian sociology we also see remarkable shifts in the
discipline. For instance, the proportion of publications mentioning
gender or health increased substantially during the period. The shifts
in attention are also seen when looking at the sample of articles from
the Title/Abstract/Keyword search. Ethnicity is again overtaken by race
as time goes on. When publications mentioning ethnicity and/or race are
examined in isolation from other publications, the shift is even more
pronounced--ethnicity accounts for 75 percent of the sample of 130
publications and race accounts for 25 percent. By the 2000s ethnicity
accounted for just 21 percent of the sample and race 64 percent. Of the
propositions offered, the second and third appear to offer the most
insight on the changes. This becomes apparent as publications on
ethnicity and/or race are examined in more detail.
In Table 2, which reports on the primary focus or subject analyzed
in publications between 1964 and 2000, we see that the top three most
examined subjects for the period include stratification/class/
mobility/social status, ethnic/racial boundaries/identity, and
discrimination/stereotypes/racism. (Here book reviews are excluded
leaving only articles, comments, research notes, and other types of
publication.) The focus on stratification/class/mobility/social status
is heavily influenced by the legacy of John Porter's (1965)
Vertical Mosaic. In part this is reflected by his colleagues (e.g.,
Pineo 1977, 1988) and students (e.g., Clement 1981) who were
instrumental in discussing ethnic mobility and social status. It is also
seen in those who critically revisited his hypotheses in later periods
(e.g., Ogmundson and McLaughlin 1992) and is bolstered by as a special
issue of the CRS devoted to his work and legacy shortly after his
untimely death (e.g., Clement 1981; Vallee 1981). This is not to mention
those, such as Li (1978, 1979) among others, who work in the dominant
Canadian political economy tradition.
Attention to ethnic/racial boundaries/identity was less
concentrated around the work of a single scholar. Instead, articles on
these issues focused on a wider range of issues, such as Breton et al.
(1975) who offered an overview of a conference on Canadian cultures and
ethnic groups, or Makabe (1979) who looked at Nisei Japanese-Canadians
in Toronto, or Shiose (1995) who researched the construction of
"others" and Allophone communities in Quebec. If any consensus
can be found in this work it would be around the questioning of the
hegemony of a single "Canadian" identity and the questioning
ethnic and racial boundaries. Some of this work, moreover, looked at
international cases, such as anthropologists Watson (1967) and Gulger
(1975) who both looked at African cases. Also interesting is the fact
that Breton et al. (1975) reported on a conference held by the Canadian
Ethnic Studies Association, showing the importance of the journal to the
area of ethnic and racial studies and the links that sociologists and
the CRS had across disciplines and associations in its early years.
The third most engaged subject of analysis was
discrimination/stereotypes/racism. This could very well be paired with
the previous grouping; however, it differed in its approach by looking
at inequalities and inequity more than the construction of ethnicity,
race, or identity as a process in and of itself. Interestingly, some of
the scholars publishing on these issues also published in the political
economy tradition and on issues of stratification and social mobility.
However, in their later works they began to look more specifically at
specific group inequalities based on visible minority status or racial
belonging to a given ethnic or racial group. Li (1992, 1994) exemplifies
this balancing across subject areas and foci. Another group of scholars
writing on this subject focused on critical race studies, such as George
Dei (1996) who with Agnes Calliste edited a special issue of the CRS on
this topic, as well as a focus on the intersection of ethnicity, race,
gender, and other social attributes as seen in Adams (1998). As Table 2
illustrates, these subjects were far from exhaustive of those covered by
publications on ethnicity and/or race in the Review. Other publications
looked at assimilation, education, family, and gender as well as many
other issues pertinent to Canadian society. Few, however, seem to have
explicitly engaged ethnicity or race as theoretical or empirical
concepts or the debate around the Human Genome project. The closest
publications in the CRS have come to this is through studies of ethnic,
racial, and identity boundaries.
When we look at the change in subjects over time, in Table 2, we
see in later years that discrimination/stereotypes and racism rose in
prominence, as seen in the 1990s, as did attention to
assimilation/integration/segregation in the 2000s. The debates over
antiracism largely account for trends in the 1990s as well as a move
toward cultural and decolonial sociologies focusing on meaning and
antihegemonic notions of ethnicity and especially race.
When the subject of analysis is examined even further by
considering the top 10 words used in the titles of publications on
ethnicity and/or race in the CRS between 1964 and 2010, in Table 3, we
see that similar patterns are observed. (7) Perhaps as one might expect,
the most frequently used word in articles' titles is
"Canada."
This is followed by "ethnic" and "ethnicity" as
well as "Canadian" and "race." In part the
prominence of these words is inflated because of the journal being based
in Canada and because of the keywords used to search the articles.
Still, ethnic and ethnicity together account for 45 mentions in titles
compared to 14 citing race. In other words, ethnic and ethnicity are
mentioned about three times more often than race in the articles
sampled. Articles in the CRS have disproportionately focused on
ethnicity over race. This in part might reflect the observation of James
(1994, 2010) that Canadians and Canadian social scientists tend to focus
on ethnicity at the cost of race.
Looking at the other six words ranked in the top 10 mentions in
titles, one sees that many of them such as class, labour, political,
status, and economic are closely associated with a political economy
approach. Yet at the same time identity and gender also feature
prominently on the list, reflecting some of the trends documented in my
coding of articles. Also worth noting is the prominence of the word
"native" on the list. The CRS has in fact published a large
number of articles dealing with aboriginal issues captured by both
keywords. For example, Trigger (1966) focused on the Iroquois, Ralston
(1981) analyzed colonization and the role of religion and education in
settler-Mi'kmaq relations, and Satzewich (1996) looked at patronage
and recruitment of Indian Affairs staff. If additional
aboriginal-specific keywords were used the number of articles engaging
these issues would be even higher.
When we consider keywords over time, we find that during the 1964
to 1970 period there was little variety in words used, largely because
of the small number of articles mentioning the keywords in that
timeframe (therefore they are not illustrated in tabular form). The top
words for that period were: Africa, analysis, Canadian, and study--all
with two mentions compared to only one mention for all other words. In
the next decade, more articles were published and more variation was
found. Ethnic, Canadian, and Canada were the top three words mentioned.
Other words that placed prominently were related to political economy
and the city of Toronto. In the 1980s, the top three words mentioned
were: Canada, ethnic, and ethnicity, followed by Canadian and political.
Interestingly, John and Porter were tied with study for the fourth
position. Again this reflects the prominence of Porter's work and
debate around the political economy tradition. During the 1990s
ethnicity, Canada, Canadian, class, gender, labour, race, and world were
the top three mentions. By the 2001 to 2010 period, however, the top
three mentioned words in titles were race, class, and Canada. Analyses
of titles again reflect a shift away from ethnicity to race. They also
signal a shift away from a political economic approach.
The heavy focus on ethnicity in Canadian sociology and then its
transition to race likely has much to do with state policies and
demographics. It is important to recall that until the immigration
system was revised with the introduction of the points-based system in
1967, Canadian immigration maintained the English and European dominance
of the country. In 1961, for instance, just three years before the CRS
was launched, Canadians of British origin made up about 44 percent of
the population, those of other European origin accounted for 53 percent
of it, and all other ethnic and racial groups accounted for about 3
percent of Canadians (Basavarajappa and Ram 2008). Given those
statistics it is no wonder that race played a secondary role to
ethnicity. Yet, these demographics began to change significantly in the
1970s and have been compounded in the last 20 years with high levels of
immigration, roughly about 250,000 immigrants arriving a year, from
non-European countries since the 1990s. Canada's population now
looks very different; by 2006 (8) people of English descent (including
multiple responses) made up 21 percent of the population (Statistics
Canada 2006). This is less than half what was reported in 1966. More
striking is the fact that 16 percent of the population were visible
minorities (Statistics Canada 2006). In other words, Canada's
population is increasingly racialized--so much so that many scholars,
like Reitz and Banerjee (2007) warn that racial inequality in Canada is
a significant issue, with potential to create racial divisions and
tensions in the years to come.
The shift in the country's demography also contributed to many
of the policy changes seen in the 1980s, likely accounting for some of
the change in sociological focus. For instance, human rights legislation
was introduced in the 1970s and amended in the 1980s. Frideres and
Reeves (1989) published an analysis of its implementation in the CRS
shortly thereafter. The Constitution entrenched equity for racial
minorities in s. 15 in 1982 and Employment Equity legislation was
brought into effect in 1988 that sought to prevent discrimination.
Again, sociologists responded to these changes, as seen in Li (1992,
1994) who examined the impact of race and gender on earnings. The
importance of racialization and inequities of racialized Canadians can
also be seen in Dei's work (1996) and the articles linked to the
special issue of the CRS devoted to antiracism. As a result, government
policies and demographics likely help account for the move from
ethnicity to race in Canadian sociological analysis.
When methods of research are examined, in Table 4, we find that
quantitative approaches have dominated the publications on ethnicity
and/or race in the journal. Many of these articles engaged in the
Porterian tradition, with a political economy approach, and analyzed
issues of stratification, class, mobility, and inequality. The next most
prominent method was book review. Some might contend that a book review
is not actually a method, however, these were coded as such because of
their unique character as a genre of academic publication. The third
most common method was a theoretical argument and/or literature review.
Yet, these are a very distant third compared to articles using a
quantitative approach. In fact, about three times as many articles used
a quantitative approach compared to a theoretical or literature review.
As the rest of the table illustrates, a number of other methods were
also used in publications on ethnicity and/or race in the CRS. (9)
When we consider changes in the methods used in publications on
ethnicity and/or race in the CRS we see that despite an overall
importance of quantitative methods the proportion of quantitative
studies has dropped by more than two-thirds over time. In the 1971 to
1980 period these methods were used in 49 percent of the publications in
the sample; by 2001 to 2010 they had decreased to just 14 percent of
publications. In part the drop in publications using quantitative
methods is tied to the increasing proportion of book reviews on
ethnicity and race in the journal. In the 1970s book reviews accounted
for 20 percent of the sample but by the 2000s they had increased
twofold. Less strikingly, the use of qualitative methods increased over
time, to the point where they rivaled studies using quantitative methods
by 2001 to 2010, reflecting changes in Canadian sociology as a whole.
This is a trend seen in the sociologies of other countries. Platt
(2012:691), for instance, showed that despite efforts to increase the
use of quantitative methods in the United Kingdom, fewer publications
adopted them over time. She concludes this is linked to generational
change with fewer new sociologists receiving training in quantitative
methods and an increase in historical approaches and feminist critiques
of quantitative method. Table 4 shows that theoretical and
literature-based articles have decreased but continue to play a
prominent role in the types of articles published in the area. Use of
"other" methods, however, appears to have dropped.
On the methodological front the changes cannot fully be captured by
the fact that Canada is still defined by ethnicity and race. That social
fact should not affect the types of methods used. The second
proposition, with respect to governmental policy shifts also does not
fully account for a shift in methods. It is worth noting, however, that
the quantitative engagement of racial inequities in the 1980s and 1990s
was facilitated by decisions to enumerate "visible minority"
categories in Statistics Canada data. In fact, an Any Mention search
found that the first article to use the term in the CRS was Curtis and
Lambert (1975) and it was the only one to use it in the 1970s. The same
was the case in the 1980s, with again only one mention. By the 1990s,
however, 22 publications used the term reflecting a shift in focus. Many
of the articles mentioning it used quantitative analysis, but a number
also used other methods. Thus Statistics Canada usage may have increased
the overall engagement of race and rather than the methods used to
analyze it. Demographic shifts also do not fully account for
methodological changes, yet, one might argue that as new ethnic and
racial groups arrive exploratory and qualitative methods are more suited
to developing new theories and methodologies to examine their
experiences. This also may shed some light on the adoption of a
"critical" approach, which is not usually associated with
quantitative methods, in recent years.
In the 2000s scholars working on issues of ethnicity and race had
the opportunity to publish in a number of new journals such as Journal
of International Migration and Integration (JIMI) that was launched by
the Metropolis project that generated much research on immigration
beginning in the mid-1990s. This is not to mention the prominence of the
Canadian Journal of Sociology (CJS) that competes with the CRS for
manuscripts directly and Canadian Ethnic Studies (CES) that has long
been a venue for Canadian scholars of ethnicity and race. To examine how
ethnicity and race are engaged by Canadian social scientists more
generally and to see if the move from ethnicity to race documented above
appears in other venues, Table 5 looks at the usage of the keywords with
Any Mention and Title/Abstract/Keyword searches in those journals over
time.
When this is done, we find that other journals follow similar
patterns. Perfect comparison, however, is impossible because the CRS is
the oldest of all of these journals and because the Soclndex database
only began to cover CES in 1990 and JIMI in 2003. With this caveat
noted, one can see in Table 5 that Any Mention searches show that race
appears in more publications than ethnicity in later years, save for
CES. In the more conservative Title/Abstract/Keyword search, the shift
is also seen but is less stark. That being said, it appears that in the
2000s race is engaged more frequently than in past years.
Although the deployment of the keywords is similar, it is worth
noting that an increase in venues to publish appears to have taken a
toll on the CRS. In the 2000s both the CJS and CES had more publications
than the CRS. Because Soclndex does not capture the full decade for JIMI
a comparison to that journal is not warranted. A more detailed analysis
of publications in the journals is beyond the scope of this article, but
it can be noted that like the CRS, book reviews make up a large share of
publications in other journals as do other formats like research notes.
As a whole it appears that ethnicity and race is still an important area
of social scientific investigation, likely as a result of the ongoing
inequities that people face based on their ethnicities and race, not to
mention policy and demographic shifts that have entrenched them as
social categories of Canadian society.
CONCLUSION
Overall, publications on ethnicity and/or race in the CRS have
focused more on ethnicity, using a political economy approach, and
quantitative methods. Over time, however, significant changes have
occurred, including a move from ethnicity to race and a move away from
quantitative methods. In part the trends identified in the area reflect
patterns in Canadian sociology more generally and trends in other
journals. The analysis presented in this paper has shown that ethnicity
and race remain prominent sociological issues in Canada. This is largely
because sociologists respond to real world problems, which are shaped by
government policies, not to mention demographics. As sociologists engage
with these issues, both in terms of observation and critique, they
reproduce discourses of ethnicity and race in the field of sociology. As
a result, all of the propositions originally advanced are supported.
The importance of federal government policies and demographic
changes, however, are particularly noteworthy in accounting for the
shift from ethnicity to race in Canadian sociological analysis. The data
presented show that the transition in focus occurred in the 1980s and
1990s. At that time the decision to measure "visible
minorities" in the 1981 census, the partition of the Constitution,
and the incorporation of Employment Equity policies, among other
policies, created both legislation to eliminate racial inequities and
means to measure whether or not that was being achieved. These policies
and measures emerged in response to changing immigration patterns
resulting from the introduction of the point-based system in 1967 and
are linked to the heavy intake of non-European immigrants in the 1980s
and 1990s. This led to an increase in the number of racialized Canadians
and played a central role in shifting sociological analysis from
ethnicity to race.
The ability to continue to examine racial inequities at the
national level with quantitative methods, however, might become
increasingly difficult with the Harper government's decision to
limit the 2011 Census to just 11 questions--none of which deal with race
(Statistics Canada 2012). Instead such questions have been relegated to
the new National Household Survey, which is voluntary and remains
unproven. As Linda Gerbner (2010) noted, writing on behalf of the
Canadian Sociological Association on its blog and to the government in
protest of the changes, this decision will affect the ability of social
scientists to offer accurate portrayals of the country. The
accessibility of reliable and quality survey data has in the past
provided a basis for many of the articles in the CRS that have used
quantitative methods and likely the transition in analysis from
ethnicity to race. The precarious future of such government generated
data may compound the growing trend of Canadian sociologists to move
away from using quantitative methods to engage these issues in years to
come.
The move away from these methods in the CRS is also linked to a
shift away from John Porter's sociology and more recently a move
from the new political economy approach that followed it. Despite recent
reexamination of Porter's life and scholarship (e.g., Helmes-Hayes
2010), fewer and fewer Canadian sociologists teach his work--not to
mention that of his students and those who debated his findings in the
1970s and 1980s. This has meant that younger sociologists have been less
likely to come across not only Porter's work, but that of other
Canadian luminaries like Raymond Breton, Wallace Clement, or Leo
Driedger who shaped the early debates of ethnicity and race in Canada.
In part this shift occurred with the introduction of a wider range of
perspectives including feminist, decolonial, postmodern, and critical
race scholars that pushed the discipline in new directions and beyond
the new political economy identified by Brym and Fox (1989). Much recent
scholarship relies on historical, qualitative, and critical discourse
methods that add new insights to the study of ethnicity and race and
that are changing the way Canadian sociology is practiced.
Even so, as in the past, sociologists will likely continue to
engage problems faced by Canada's changing policies and
demographics. The country is still shaped by issues of ethnicity and
increasingly inequities based on race and ongoing colonization. In the
last decade the sociologists publishing in the journal have kept pace
with those changes and the CRS has been a venue for a new generation of
Canadian sociologists, who use new methods and offer innovative
insights. For example, Wilkes, Corrigall-Brown, and Myers (2010) engaged
media portrayals of indigenous protest in Canada; Clement (2011), wrote
about the history and transition of civil liberties and human rights
over the past century; and Lee and Brotman's (2011) analysis of the
intersection between migration, refugee status, ethnicity, race, and
sexual orientation all point to how the Review continues to engage
pressing contemporary social problems. These works deal with issues in a
multiplicity of ways, ranging from quantitative content analysis, to
historical analysis, to qualitative methods. They also represent how the
CRS and Canadian sociology encourage interdisciplinary work, with
publications from scholars in sociology departments as well as other
social sciences. These are all signs of the strength of sociology and
its position as middle-range social science in Canada, not to mention
the continued importance of the study of ethnicity and race.
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HOWARD RAMOS
Dalhousie University
Howard Ramos, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology,
Dalhousie University, 6135 University Avenue, PO Box 15000, Halifax,
Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada. E-mail:
[email protected]
(1) A number of colleagues have offered suggestions to improve this
article, including: Richard Apostle, Philippe Couton, Frances Henry,
Carl James, Martha Radice, Victor Thiessen, Morton Weinfeld, Elke
Winter, and Yoko Yoshida. I would like to thank each of them for their
support and collegiality. I would also like to thank the editors of the
journal and special issue as well as the blind reviewers for their
comments. All have helped improved the paper.
(2) Although the Review was originally published under the name
Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, and only changed its name
recently, for simplicity in the remainder of this paper I will use its
current name and acronym throughout.
(3) A number of sections, including s. 15 (Equity rights), 16-22
(Official Language rights), or 25 and 35 (Aboriginal rights) have
solidified the importance of ethnicity and race.
(4) Searches were conducted on March 1, 2012; July 27, 2012;
November 1, 2012; November 5, 2012; and May 5, 2013.
(5) Twenty-two different metrics were coded. Analysis of these can
be obtained upon request from the author.
(6) Unlike the rest of the analysis these figures are based on raw
searches that do not distinguish among types of publications and include
books received and potentially articles using the keywords in alternate
ways. For this reason the sample is greater than the 130 used in other
tables.
(7) Some words are excluded from the ranking in this table,
including: title, and, of, in, book, review, on and to. These were
excluded to offer a more meaningful ranking. The same is done for later
analysis by decade.
(8) The 2011 National Household Survey data on "ethnic
origin" have not been released at the time of publication and I
thus rely on older data. Newer information should only accentuate what
is presented.
(9) It should be noted that combining ethnography and ethnology is
somewhat contentious. As Martha Radice (2012) noted in personal
correspondence, ethnographies tend to examine humankind and do
ontological translation whereas ethnologies usually focus on a specific
culture, people, or folklore. The two were combined despite these
differences to facilitate parsimony and because most of the articles
using these methods were written by anthropologists who share
disciplinary similarities despite the difference noted.
Table 1
CRS * Publications by Decade, 1964 to 2010
Keywords "Any Mention" search
Years Ethnicity Ethnic Race Nation Indian Native
n = 479 800 517 694 520 545
2001-2010 21% 25% 33% 36% 13% 16%
1991-2000 18% 26% 22% 27% 15% 23%
1981-1990 20% 30% 15% 23% 18% 20%
1971-1980 18% 39% 17% 27% 31% 25%
1964-1970 10% 35% 21% 28% 18% 18%
Total 19% 31% 20% 27% 20% 21%
Years Crime Gender Health Inequality CRS Total
n = 295 646 635 524 2,567
2001-2010 14% 54% 41% 29% 100%
1991-2000 11% 45% 27% 22% 100%
1981-1990 10% 21% 23% 24% 100%
1971-1980 11% 5% 16% 13% 100%
1964-1970 12% 1% 23% 6% 100%
Total 11% 25% 25% 20% 100%
Keywords "Title/Abstract/Keyword" search **
Years Ethnicity Ethnic Race Nation Indian Native
n = 85 150 67 61 114 59
2001-2010 1% 2% 3% 3% 2% 1%
1991-2000 3% 4% 3% 3% 3% 3%
1981-1990 4% 5% 2% 1% 4% 2%
1971-1980 4% 9% 3% 2% 8% 3%
1964-1970 4% 8% 2% 3% 3% 2%
Total 3% 6% 3% 2% 4% 2%
Years Crime Gender Health Inequality CRS Total
n = 53 122 85 55 2,567
2001-2010 1% 11% 5% 4% 100%
1991-2000 3% 8% 4% 1% 100%
1981-1990 2% 4% 4% 2% 100%
1971-1980 2% 1% 1% 2% 100%
1964-1970 4% 0% 2% 1% 100%
Total 2% 5% 3% 2% 100%
* 2001-2010 searches were constructed by merging CRS and CRSA
searches.
** Title/Abstract/Keyword searches used the default setting of
"select a field (optional)" field in EBSCO Soclndex searches:
"all authors, all subjects, all keywords, all title information
(including source title), and all abstracts. If an abstract is
not available, the first 1,500 characters of the HTML full text
of the article are searched" (EBSCO 2012).
Table 2
Subject of CRS Publications on "Ethnicity" and/or "Race" by
Decade *
1964- 1971- 1981- 1991- 2001-
Subject 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Total
Assimilation/integration/ 1 4 1 0 2 8
segregation
Bilingualism/culturalism 1 0 0 0 0 1
Civil society 0 1 0 0 0 1
Colonialism 0 0 0 0 1 1
Discrimination/ 0 7 3 6 1 17
stereotypes/racism
Education 1 2 2 2 0 7
Ethnic/racial boundaries/ 1 5 6 5 1 18
identity
Family/household 1 4 1 0 0 6
Foreign workers 0 0 0 0 1 1
Gender 0 0 1 0 1 2
Health/biology/ 0 0 2 0 1 3
sociobiology
Language/culture 1 0 1 1 0 3
Nationalism 0 1 1 0 0 2
Politics/voting 1 3 2 1 0 7
Rights 0 0 1 0 0 1
Stratification/class/ 0 9 7 3 0 19
mobility/social status
Urbanism 1 0 0 0 0 1
Total 8 36 28 18 8 98
* Following the advice of one of the anonymous reviewers
the 32 book reviews coded are excluded. The total n = 130.
Table 3
Top 10 Words Used in CRS Publication Titles on "Ethnicity"
and/or "Race" 1964 to 2010
Words Rank Number
CANADA 1 28
ETHNIC 2 23
ETHNICITY 3 22
CANADIAN 4 19
RACE 5 14
CLASS 6 12
ANALYSIS 7 9
NATIVE 8 7
STUDY 8 7
GENDER 9 6
IDENTITY 9 6
LABOUR 9 6
POLITICAL 9 6
SOCIAL 9 6
STATUS 9 6
CASE 10 5
ECONOMIC 10 5
Table 4
Method Used in CRS Publications on "Ethnicity" and/or "Race" by Decade
Content or
Discourse
Historical/ Quantitative
Decade Comparative Qualitative Quantitative Analysis
1964-1970 0% 0% 25% 13%
1971-1980 7% 4% 49% 0%
1981-1990 5% 8% 38% 3%
1991-2000 12% 12% 27% 0%
2001-2010 0% 14% 14% 14%
n = 8 10 47 4
Theoretical/
Mixed Literature Ethnography/ Book
Decade Methods Review Ethnology Review Other
1964-1970 0% 25% 38% 0% 0%
1971-1980 2% 7% 7% 20% 4%
1981-1990 0% 16% 5% 24% 0%
1991-2000 8% 8% 4% 31% 0%
2001-2010 7% 7% 0% 43% 0%
n = 4 14 9 32 2
Decade Total
1964-1970 100%
1971-1980 100%
1981-1990 100%
1991-2000 100%
2001-2010 100%
n = 130
Table 5
Keywords by Journal and Decade, 1964 to 2010
Keywords "Any Mention" search
CRS * CJS **
Years Ethnicity Race Ethnicity Race
n = 479 517 413 511
2001-2010 21% 33% 14% 24%
1991-2000 18% 22% 22% 25%
1981-1990 20% 15% 15% 17%
1971-1980 18% 17% 15% 8%
1964-1970 10% 21%
Total 19% 20% 16% 20%
n (1964-2010) = 2,567 2,536
CES *** JIMI ****
Years Ethnicity Race Ethnicity Race
n = 470 420 124 135
2001-2010 44% 39% 35% 38%
1991-2000 35% 32%
1981-1990
1971-1980
1964-1970
Total 39% 35% 35% 38%
n (1964-2010) = 1,190 352
Keywords "Title/Abstract/Keyword" search *****
CRS * CJS **
Years Ethnicity Race Ethnicity Race
n = 85 67 57 50
2001-2010 1% 3% 2% 2%
1991-2000 3% 3% 2% 2%
1981-1990 4% 2% 2% 2%
1971-1980 4% 3% 3% 1%
1964-1970 4% 2%
Total 3% 3% 2% 2%
n (1964-2010)= 2,567 2,536
CES *** JIMI ****
Years Ethnicity Race Ethnicity Race
n = 122 80 16 29
2001-2010 12% 8% 5% 8%
1991-2000 8% 6%
1981-1990
1971-1980
1964-1970
Total 10% 7% 5% 8%
n (1964-2010)= 1,190 352
* 2001-2010 searches were constructed by merging CRS and CRSA
searches.
** The first issue of the CJS was published in 1975.
*** The first issue of CES was published in 1969 and is first
documented in SocIndex in 1990.
**** The first issue of JIMI was published in 2000 and is first
documented in SocIndex in 2003.
***** Title/Abstract/Keyword searches used the default setting of
"select a field (optional)" field in EBSCO
SocIndex searches: "all authors, all subjects, all keywords, all
title information (including source title), and all abstracts. If
an abstract is not available, the first 1,500 characters of the
HTML full text of the article are searched" (EBSCO 2012).
