A British Connexion? A quantitative analysis of the changing relations between American, British and Canadian sociologists

Abstract

Is Canadian facing a crisis? Depending on one's point of view and temperament, one can always provide arguments for comfort or alarm. Although we recognize that some debates are difficult, if not impossible to settle, we are also convinced that most questions framed in terms of crisis are unfalsifiable and particularly ill-suited for constructive analysis, and can easily lead to tavern-like discussions and grandiose pronouncements. McLaughlin's recent discussions of Canadian sociology's future (McLaughlin, 2004, 2005, 2006) and debate they have fuelled provide an illustration of such artificial polemics created by an inadequate formulation of question and insufficient methodologies to provide an answer. McLaughlin emphasizes institutional weakness of Canadian sociological tradition. This institutional weakness would be a reflection of Canadian sociology's historical connections to kind of social sciences practiced in United-Kingdom and consequently explains its meagre appeal to scientific field (McLaughlin, 2004 and 2005). Assuming that is a weakly institutionalized and that Canadian is excessively embedded within tradition, it should surprise no one that McLaughlin concludes that this has hurt development of a strong sociological perspective in (McLaughlin, 2004: 89). Combined with two other major factors--the flatness' or non-hierarchical nature of Canadian system and left-wing orientation of Canadian (McLaughlin, 2004)--the British flavour pervading Canadian universities has not only hampered development of a distinct and serious but threatens to make it cease to exist in Canada in anything more than name alone (McLaughlin, 2005: 6). In reading McLaughlin's articles it is unclear whether he believes Englishness of Canadian to be either a cause or effect of a vague but persistent anti-American sentiment among Canadian scholars. This indifference hostility to sociology (McLaughlin, 2005: 19) nevertheless is treated as self-evident. Far too much of Canadian has become dominated by a knee-jerk anti-Americanism, leaving us vulnerable to falling uncritically in with trends in European-oriented critical humanities. (McLaughlin, 2004: 92) Since article provides reader with no empirical evidence of such implicit xenophobia, one is reluctant to take author's word for it as very existence of a homogeneous American sociology is dubious at best, given its high diversity in methods and approaches. Is McLaughlin correct in assuming that continuing reliance of Canadian scholars on is something that can be seen in terms of faculty hiring, university governance, and culture as well as intellectual orientation of Canadian institutions of higher education (McLaughlin 2004: 89)? Should readers believe him when he claims that is neglected by Canadian social scientists? We leave to others to assess if McLaughlin is right in arguing that England, the homeland of empiricism, classical liberal political and economic thought, Fabian socialism and analytic philosophy, truly remains a relative backwater with regards to discipline of sociology (McLaughlin, 2005: 16). What appears more problematic in our eyes is that throughout his three lengthy papers, author mainly relies on quotations from a few Canadian sociologists, vague intuitions and unquestioned judgements to substantiate his claims. The only fact offered as hard evidence of embedment of Canadian within a tradition is that even as late as 1997, faculty in departments with M.As and PhD. Programs in Canada where ten times more likely to be trained in Britain than faculty at equivalent institutions in United States (McLaughlin, 2004: 90, emphasis by author). …