Two Modes of Interpretation of Survey Data: A Comment on Schreiber

Abstract

In a recent article, Schreiber competently investigates the nature of cultural cleavages between occupational categories in Canada. He finds that such cleavages are minimal and goes on to argue that this finding suggests that the low level of the vote in Canada may be attributed mainly to the nature of the electorate and not, as recently suggested by myself (a, b, c) to the nature of the two major parties. The purpose of this comment is neither to criticize any specific aspect of Schreiber's paper, nor to make a substantive defense of my own position. (Forthcoming papers will do this.) Rather my purpose is to comment on an implicit assumption which Schreiber, in common with most Anglophone North American social scientists, makes in the interpretation of survey data. This assumption takes for granted a question which ought to be considered problematic: the degree to which our society is democratic. Let us take the findings of Schreiber at their face value-there is minimal cultural cleavage in Canada. Now the question: Why? In which direction does the causal influence flow? Does the minimal cleavage at the mass level cause the minimization of by elites, or does it simply reflect this minimization? Schreiber, adopting the conventional mode of interpretation, tends to believe that the attitudes and actions of ordinary people, in the aggregate, determine the nature of society. Thus, when minimal cleavage is found at both mass and elite levels, it seems logical to maintain that the characteristics of the general population explain the characteristics of elite activity. In effect, this scientific position assumes the direction of causal influence. By doing so, it also assumes the effective functioning of democracy, and therefore has the ideological implication of legitimization of present arrangements. There is, however, another way to interpret these very same survey results. One can simply reverse assumptions about the direction of causal flow. The apparent lack of cultural cleavage may be taken to reflect minimization (some would say suppression) of issues by cultural leaders. Certainly, a variety of independent studies have indicated that issues receive minimal attention, not only from the major political parties, but from virtually all other Canadian opinionmaking agencies. To illustrate, the newspapers have been described by John Porter as the instrument of an established upper class (463). School texts have been found to ignore Canada's long history of bitter labor dispute and to instead inaccurately portray Canada as a land of bland consensus (Pratt). Canadian novelists, historians, and social scientists, have, perhaps until recently, ignored the