The Most Important Books/Articles in Canadian Sociology in the Twentieth Century: A Report

Abstract

To mark the advent of the new millennium, sociologists across Canada were asked to nominate book monographs and journal articles which they considered to be the most important in Canadian sociology in the twentieth century. The only requirement was that the book/article had to deal with some aspect of Canadian life or that its author was domiciled in Canada or had at some point been domiciled in Canada. The division of publications into two categories, namely monographs and journal articles had the effect of eliminating other forms of publication such as book chapters and edited books. It was acknowledged that what would be considered important would obviously vary by personal preference or subdisciplinary area, but the goal was to see if there was any consensus at all about what was most important. The Call For Nominations was widely distributed in both English language and French language communities. Dozens of nominations (including self-nominations) were received by letter, personal communication, and verbally, and the nominations represented a diversity of fields -- often lone nominations were received in an area. It soon became clear that is a very relative matter (e.g.. importance for what and for whom) and that it was rather futile to generate a list which addressed all issues and all subdisciplinary areas. In view of the fact that the purpose of the exercise in the first instance was to stimulate discussion and debate rather than to produce a statistically significant result, we have decided to produce a list around which there was some consensus from the responses received. This list was presented at the 2000 CSAA meetings in Edmonton for further discussion and refinement. Rather than attempting to force others into agreeing with any listing, we decided in the end that this list would represent the personal conclusions of Langlois (the French language list) and Hiller (the English lang uage list) based on the feedback received. There is no claim to its authoritative status and others are invited to develop their own lists. In view of the public call for nominations, we felt it important to report on the response and we think it is useful to reflect on the list that has been generated. The original goal was to discover whether there was any consensus regarding what these publications would be. We feel uncomfortable in identifying these publications as representing a consensus because of the lack of scientific validity in such as assertion. On the other hand, these publications were repeatedly mentioned. We asked whether the publication nominated broke new ground in some significant way that is widely recognized among sociologists, and particularly sociologists in Canada. Did the publication spawn and inspire further research or did the publication set the research agenda in some way? Has the publication been an important contribution by a Canadian that is recognized beyond Canada's borders? Has the publication had a continuing high profile or widely cited impact on sociology in Canada or particularly Quebec? And last, did the publication make a seminal contribution to our understanding of Canadian/Quebec society or to some phenomenon occurring within Canadian society? These are the question s that framed the final selection. We have created separate lists in English and in French acknowledging that the impact and meaning of these publications hold different places in the sociological communities of the two languages. The two lists tends to be biased towards earlier publications which suggests that what we consider most important may be those publications which we consider classics and that have had many years over which to develop their impact. There were a number of nominations from the 1990's, for example, but the impact of these publications was still unclear. Publications available in both French and English are listed according to the language of first publication and apply specifically to the two books authored by Hughes and Guindon which appeared on both lists. …