Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:21:14.201Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Authors and Publishers: An Analysis of Textbook Selection in Canadian Departments of Political Science and Sociology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

John H. Redekop
John H. Redekop
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In recent years numerous critics, generally those with strong nationalist inclinations, have attempted to demonstrate that Canadians are no longer autonomous in cultural and educational pursuits. Whether or not such autonomy ever existed to any substantial degree, especially for non-French Canada, might itself be disputed. Indeed, a good case can be put forward for the proposition that the gradual diminution of British practices, norms, and expertise in many facets of Canadian education, if not in Canadian culture generally, was accompanied by a concomitant increase in American practices, publications, and personnel rather than by any emerging period of distinctly Canadian expression. That most of the substantial Americanization in postsecondary education and many other areas was occasioned by Canadian invitation tends, however, to be widely ignored. Be that as it may, most critics now prefer to focus on the actual state of affairs and the continuing trends rather than on historical causes.

Type
Note
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 107 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Each of the following has several relevant chapters: Morchain, Janet, ed., Sharing a Continent (Toronto 1973)Google Scholar; Rotstein, Abraham and Lax, Gary, eds., Independence, the Canadian Challenge (Toronto 1972)Google Scholar; Lumsden, Ian, ed., Close the 49th Parallel, etc. (Toronto 1970)Google Scholar; Redekop, John H., ed., The Star-Spangled Beaver; 24 Canadians Look South (Toronto 1971)Google Scholar; Rotstein, Abraham and Lax, Gary, eds., Getting it Back (Toronto 1974).Google Scholar The first two contain very useful bibliographies.

2 Provocative analyses of causal factors are found in two of Grant's, George volumes, Lament for a Nation (Toronto 1965)Google Scholar and Technology and Empire (Toronto 1969), as well as in Creighton, Donald, Canada's First Century 1867–1967 (Toronto 1970).Google Scholar

3 For an informative, albeit polemical, treatment, see Mathews, Robin and Steele, James, eds., The Struggle for Canadian Universities (Toronto 1969).Google Scholar Recent statistics are given in Rotstein and Lax, Getting it Back, 192–200. See also Parai, L., Immigration and Emigration of Professional and Skilled Manpower During the Post-War Period, Special Study No. 1, Economic Council of Canada (Ottawa 1965)Google Scholar, and Rowe, Russell D., et al., Preliminary Report of the Select Committee on Economic and Cultural Nationalism (Toronto 1972)Google Scholar published by the Government of Ontario. University Affairs published by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada carried relevant articles in vol. 13, no. 2 (February 1972)Google Scholar and vol. 13, no. 10 (December 1972) as did the CAUT Bulletin, published by the Canadian Association of University Teachers in vol. 21, no. 4 (March 1973), vol. 21, no. 6 (June 1973), vol. 22, no. 3 (January 1974), and vol. 22, no. 5 (April 1974). For the most recent discussion, see Kornberg, Alan and Thorp, Alan, “The American Impact on Canadian Political Science and Sociology,” in Preston, Richard A., ed., The Influence of the United States on Canadian Development (Durham, North Carolina 1974).Google Scholar

4 In those instances where economics and political science form one department, as in Saskatchewan and Toronto, only courses which would otherwise be found in political science departments have been included. Similarly, in the several instances in which sociology forms part of a more inclusive unit, only the sociology courses have been included.

5 The twenty-four universities included the following (in several cases only one department provided a usable response): Alberta, Bishop's, British Columbia, Calgary, Carleton, Dalhousie, Guelph, Laurentian, Lethbridge, McMaster, Manitoba, Mount Allison, McGill, Prince Edward Island, Queen's, Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), Sir George Williams, Toronto, Trent, Victoria, Western Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier, Windsor, Winnipeg.

6 The most widely adopted text in both disciplines was Porter's, JohnThe Vertical Mosaic (Toronto 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar followed in political science by Dawson, R. Macgregor, The Government of Canada, fifth edition, revised by Ward, Norman (Toronto 1970)Google Scholar and Fox, Paul, ed., Politics: Canada, third edition (Toronto 1970).Google Scholar Aside from Porter's book there were no dominant texts in sociology.

7 Biographical sources of various kinds provided data. Editors were treated as if they were authors. If a book was co-edited or co-authored by scholars of different citizenship – a very rare occurrence – I focused on what appeared to be the dominant writer. The citizenship of the author at the time the book was first published was taken as his citizenship in respect to that book.

8 In all cases I categorized the publisher rather than merely a distributing publishes with Canadian rights. Only Canadian subsidiaries such as McGraw-Hill or Oxford which openly formed part of a multinational corporation were categorized as subsidiaries. Specifically Canadian firms such as Mitchell Press which might be foreign-owned but did not indicate such ownership were classified as Canadian. The American firms were numerous. Frequently cited publishers included Appleton-Century-Crofts, Free Press, Norton, Heath, Knopf, Harper, and the various university presses. A book copublished by a Canadian firm and a non-Canadian firm was entered as a Canadian publication.

9 Tables I and II and all subsequent tables involving both disciplines are skewed somewhat towards the political science data because there were more political science departments in the survey and because, on balance, the average political science department listed more required texts than did the average sociology department. Where a course listed several books by the same author – sometimes no others were cited – they were, of course, entered separately even in the unusual case of Sociology 6G03 at McMaster which listed nine required texts of which eight were written by C. Wright Mills and the ninth was G. Domhoff and H. Ballard, eds., C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite. Unfortunately, the McMaster sociology data had to be deleted because of the great gaps.

10 Although the category of non-Canadian authors published in Canadian subsidiaries accounts for relatively few textbook adoptions and is thus not very significant, the fact that about half of the authors were Americans may be seen as an additional element of American dominance of the Canadian market.

11 This assessment rests not on hard data but on a perusal of books in print as listed in the catalogues of most Canadian publishers.