Canadianization Revisited: A Comment on Cormier's "The Canadianization Movement in Context"

Abstract

In Canadianization Movement in Context, Jeffrey Cormier (2005) analyzes and compares the structure and work of two different forces in the movement: a broadly public community that we started to form in 1968, and a more narrowly based, academic, disciplinary organization--the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association (CSAA). Although Cormier does not explicitly identify his context, one presumes that it must be his history of the struggle as presented in The Canadianization Movement: Emergence, Survival, and Success (Cormier, 2003). Readers may recall that Cormier argues in this book that the movement went through three phases. The first consisted of its launching at Carleton University in December of 1968, our framing of the terms of the debate, and the vigorous public discussion that followed over the next two or three years. The second phase he describes as beginning when the CSAA became active on the question, internally in 1972 and publicly in about 1973. Cormier's report of the CSAA's activity until about 1976 suggests to readers that the most important activity relating to Canadianization took place in that organization. Cormier's third phase began (with some overlap) in the late 1970s and culminated in 1981 with the adoption, by the federal Department of Manpower and Immigration, of new immigration rules for the employment of foreign scholars; this phase consisted primarily of a growing awareness within the CSAA of the need for Canadianization and the CSAA's elaboration of specific policies with respect to disciplinary teaching and research, employment practices, and immigration. For Cormier, this phase was the work of professional anthropologists and sociologists working within the formal constraints of their academic organization, and it represented the movement's essential success. In Part 1 below, we suggest that this analysis of the two extremely different elements comprising the movement and their three-phase developmental context is inadequate. Citing evidence from a small survey of course descriptions, we argue that Cormier has completely overlooked and thus excluded an important element in the movement which should be taken into consideration. In Part 2, we make some observations as outside observers about the work of the CSAA in relation to the Canadianization movement. Our remarks are for the most part skeptical, and our suggestion is that the role ascribed to the CSAA by Cormier is exaggerated. In Part 3, we discuss Cormier's analysis of the public movement and the role he has assigned to us, arguing that that there are serious deficiencies in his account. Our Conclusion suggests that, although Cormier's work may be praiseworthy as an initial attempt to understand a complex matter, his treatment of the movement is misleading as social and political history and problematic as a study of a social structure. We then spell out several questions in the hope that they will lead to further study. Part 1: A False Dichotomy: The Case of a Missing Dimension The main problem with Cormier's argument is that his account is based on a simple dichotomy that completely overlooks a third element that was at work during the seventies. This constituent added an effective component to the kind of reform being advocated both by the public community and the CSAA and thus formed an extremely important part of the movement's structure. It consisted of many hundreds, if not thousands, of individual university teachers who worked diligently and effectively in their respective departments to bring Canadian material into their courses. Their work brought about a major enduring curricular reform that was one of the movement's most important achievements, and may have been, to use Cormier's term again, its main success. Before describing the details of this work (which are suggested by Table A), we would ask our readers to recall that very few new appointments were made in Canadian humanities and social science departments for about ten years after 1971. …