The "Second Shift" of Canadian Sociology: Setting Sociological Standards in a Global Era

Abstract

Neil McLaughlin's article in the Canadian Journal of Sociology (2005) on the future of Canadian Sociology touches a sensitive nerve. For many, it raises questions about the viability of our discipline. For other Canadian sociologists, it deflects attention away from the important business of getting on with what we do as sociologists (Simpson 2005). For Canadian nationalists, McLaughlin's article conjures memories of struggles to hire qualified Canadians first and to develop home-grown journals. For other nationalist scholars, these disciplinary trends are largely irrelevant to the larger political goal of battling Canada's neo-colonial relationship with the United States Empire. (3) For sociologists integrated with US research networks, McLaughlin's article suggests a need for Canadian sociology to abandon unproductive antiAmericanism, and engage more seriously with US sociology, including the top ranked American journals, departments, and the American Sociological Association's annual meetings (the ASAs). As a sociologist trained in Canada, and working in a department where almost all of my junior colleagues are American or American-trained, McLaughlin's article suggests the importance of having an open dialogue about disciplinary standards. (4) How do we decide, and who decides, what constitutes quality sociology? In the wake of postmodern critiques of universalizing truth-claims, the discipline lacks clear answers to these questions. Partly in reaction to extreme relativist positions on epistemology associated with postmodernism, and partly as a backlash to the perceived insurgency of cultural-studies and sustained critiques of positivist methodologies, some sociologists have dug in their heels to reaffirm the superiority of top US departments and journals. The alternative to the great US Sociology Triumvirate (of American Journal of Sociology [AJS], American Sociological Review [ASR], and Social Forces) is presented as an intellectual anarchy where anything goes. Even the Saskatchewan Journal of Nursing can be taken seriously, as one senior colleague commented with exasperation. Subtle denigrations of gendered occupations and Western Canada aside, the absence of disciplinary standards is a recipe for a narrow academic trade-fair where multiple disciplinary traditions may flourish in Canadian sociology, as McLaughlin notes, but without always talking to each other. These intradisciplinary boundaries have a high intellectual cost. Writing in CJS in 1990, Bernd Baldus described sociology as a kind of self-policing professional paradise whose inhabitants are safely sheltered from the ill winds of criticism--a critique that resonates with junior scholars today (1990b:474). I. Interrogating Disciplinary Standards: The Need for Norms In this response, I argue that there is a profound need for Canadian sociology to critically interrogate the underpinnings of our disciplinary standards. There is a large quantity of quality sociology in the ample area between AJS and specialized provincial nursing journals. While insular, exclusionary nationalisms are outdated and unproductive, the concerns of Canadian scholars are not always the paranoid, anti-American rantings of aging Anglophone nationalists. Discrimination, inequality, and status displays are a key part of our profession, as much as they are the subject of our sociological interrogations (Bourdieu 1984). Critical dialogue within departments and within the discipline is needed to distinguish sociological excellence from unsubstantiated status markers--markers that frequently devalue Canadian research traditions, denigrate Canadian journals and graduate students as second-rate, and occlude the exceptionally negative effects of institutional and national hierarchies. Reading McLaughlin's well-written and provocative article, the normative distinctions underpinning sociological standards are not always easy to tease out. McLaughlin makes a case for deeper integration with US sociology, while being careful to acknowledge the positive attributes of a critical Canadian sociological tradition (e. …