Posts com a Tag ‘McGill-Queen’s University Press (E)’
Toward the Health of a Nation: The Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation — The First Seventy Years | Leslie A. Boehm
Leslie A. Boehm | Imagem: University of Toronto
This book is a lengthy institutional history of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto, published by the Institute itself. The Institute and its various precursors were the most important public health education programs in Canada for most of the twentieth century, providing essential training for individuals who would shape public health at the local, provincial, and federal levels. The genealogy of the IHPME goes back to the founding of the School of Hygiene at the University of Toronto in 1924, with Dr. J. G.
FitzGerald as its director. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the School would establish an international reputation under FitzGerald’s leadership. The rapid expansion of hospitals after the Second World War drove demand for a new class of managers. The Department of Hospital Administration, nestled within the School of Hygiene, welcomed its first class in September 1947. Not surprisingly, graduates of the hospital administration program found employment in hospitals and in government. After 1967, the focus shifted from “hospital” to “health” administration as the school refined its programs, while concurrently solidifying its position as an important training centre for a cadre of administrators who would become influential throughout English-speaking Canada. Leia Mais
Hall-Dennis and The Road to Utopia: Education and Modernity in Ontario | Josh Cole
Detalhe de capa de Hall-Dennis and The Road to Utopia: Education and Modernity in Ontario
When you open Josh Cole’s book Hall-Dennis and The Road to Utopia you find a series of photos of children and teachers happily working in open concept classrooms, engaging with new postwar technology (TVs, headphones, tape machines), and running freely in fields. These photos are part of the 1968 Ontario education document Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education, also known as the Hall-Dennis Report. The images, along with the written report, suggest a new purpose for education, at the forefront of modernity, progress, and creativity. Cole argues these images were used to indicate schools were no longer “a place of confinement but instead a place of enjoyment,” now depicted as modern art galleries, highlighting “clean lines, bright lights and a modernistic sensibility” (185). However, Cole also suggests that the images, and much of the narrative in the report, were a veneer of openness and did not represent the real substance of the report, which was to maintain conservative libertarian positions on individualism and citizenship. Leia Mais
Zoo studies: a new humanities | Tracy MacDonald e Daniel Vandersommers
O livro de Tracy McDonald e Daniel Vandersommers (2019) é um ótimo sinalizador do potencial e dos limites que o campo de investigações identificado como zoo studies possui. Associados a campos similares, como animal studies, os zoo studies têm uma particularidade: são centrados em uma instituição que, segundo os organizadores, normaliza uma determinada maneira de estar no mundo, apartada dos demais seres viventes. Essa instituição é acusada de legitimar, por meio do cativeiro, a supremacia dos humanos sobre os não humanos, assim como de desqualificar o direito destes últimos ao mesmo planeta que habitamos. Os zoo studies surgem, portanto, não apenas para dar visibilidade aos habitantes cativos dos zoológicos, mas também para questionar o nosso próprio conceito de “humanidade”, em oposição, desde o Iluminismo, ao de “animal”.
Esses princípios são interessantes e oportunos. A academia tem, de fato, muito a investigar sobre a história dos zoológicos, assim como há muito a ser discutido, nas mais diversas áreas de conhecimento, sobre o papel que os zoológicos desempenham na sociedade contemporânea e em diversos contextos socioculturais. Não são os princípios, portanto, a razão de minha crítica ao livro de McDonald e Vandersommers. Não divergimos quanto a eles, mas na plataforma política que subjaz a esses princípios. Antes de levantar questões para um debate, farei um breve sumário do conteúdo do volume. Leia Mais
History in the age of abundance? How the web is transforming historical research | Ian Milligan
En History of the age of abundance? How the web is transforming historical research, Ian Milligan sostiene que enfrentamos un cambio de escala en el registro histórico que fue afectado, sobre todo, por la llegada de los repositorios nacidos digitales. En términos del autor, la edad de la abundancia o la era de la Big Data implican un acceso a los datos de una magnitud inabordable con los métodos tradicionales, pues actualmente son incluidas en la web los relatos de millones de personas que antaño quedaban por fuera de la historiografía. La preocupación de Milligan se encuentra en relación con sus trabajos previos sobre la historia canadiense y las fuentes digitales. En efecto, el libro presenta un estilo de escritura en la que predominan ejemplos de pesquisas que ponen de manifiesto los desafíos del trabajo histórico.
Los primeros dos capítulos de la obra están centrados en un problema fundante de los estudios históricos de Internet: la naturaleza moderna, dinámica y personalizada de la web elude inherentemente la preservación. En Exploding the Library, el primer capítulo, Milligan presenta de manera acotada, pero precisa, conceptos claves como Internet, web, hipertexto y lenguaje de marcado, siempre acompañados de una breve genealogía de los mismos. La web es definida como un conjunto de documentos conectados que pierde su efectividad si se la considera a partir de secciones pequeñas y aisladas, de allí la principal dificultad en su conservación. Según el autor, el trabajo con archivos web involucra el manejo de ciertos conocimientos técnicos ya que si no se archivan todas las páginas que se encuentran por detrás de los enlaces de un sitio, gran parte de la información se pierde. Lo mismo sucede con el lenguaje de marcado HTML que permite entender de qué manera se escriben las páginas web, ya que es aquello que codifica los recursos multimedia que se muestran en los navegadores. Sin embargo, esto no es ninguna novedad para la historia, dice Milligan, pues aprender a leer el código de marcado es similar a los estudiosos clásicos que aprenden griego o latín para comprender sus fuentes. Leia Mais
The philosophy of gesture. Completing pragmatists’ incomplete revolution – MADDALENA (C-RF)
MADDALENA, Giovanni. The philosophy of gesture. Completing pragmatists’ incomplete revolution. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015, p. 195. Resenha de: BAGGIO, Guido. Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia, São Paulo, v. 17, n. 1, p. 149-158, jan./jun. 2016.
With this well written book Maddalena proposes, in a compelling prose, a new coup d’etat similar to Kant’s “coup d’etat on philosophical mentality and reasoning” (p. 3), pushing the philosophical inquiry toward a complete synthetic pattern. The Philosophy of Gesture presents in fact a new paradigm of synthetic reasoning that considers gestures as the ordinary way in which we carry on meaning of identity through change. The word “gesture” is here taken from its Latin origin “gero” whose etymology is “I bear”, “I carry on” (but also “I produce”, “I show”, “I represent”). As Maddalena puts it, gesture is “[…] any performed act with a beginning and an end that carries a meaning […] pragmatically understood as the cluster of conceivable effects of an experience” (p. 69-70). Through a new understanding of the pragmatist tradition, the author attempts to foster “[…] a new, richer way to look at experience as a unity of theory and practice, and a profound realist view of knowledge open to metaphysics” (p. 28), that overhauls the Kantian distinctions between synthetic and analytic reasoning as well as between subject and object.
In the first chapter Maddalena puts the basis for his philosophical pragmatist revolution. In what can be considered the pars destruens of the work he exposes the critiques moved by pragmatism to the transcendental philosophy at the basis of the three Kantian key moves: 1) the grounding of Enlightment’s “[…] speculative building on a rationalist pattern of necessity composed by the hierarchical relationship between parts and whole” (p. 4-5); 2) the view of morality according to which true morals is self-consistent autonomous; and 3) the separation between sciences and humanities, mirroring that between phronesis and episteme. I shall sum up here Peirce’s critiques only, for they play the most important in the book.
Maddalena highlights Peirce’s four attacks to Kant philosophy: 1) to be nominalist, due to Kant’s affirming an unbridgeable gap between reality and reason as well as to his misconception of the continuity; 2) Kant’s preference for the unity of the logical subject (the “I think”) instead of the object, which if recognized would have led Kant to a robust realism; 3) the weakness of the “I think” as guarantee of the unity of the object because of the lack of continuity between cognitive processes and reality; and 4) the separation of the fields of Ethics, Aesthetics and Logic, as opposed to their unification.
The author thence traces the three main topics pragmatists opposed to Kant’s philosophy, which are also the philosophical tools of the pars construens of the innovative theoretical proposal. The first topic is the sign, introduced by Peirce as the tool of a new form of representation centered on the analysis of the relationship between the triad composed of the “object” of reference, the “representamen” (namely, the sign itself), and the “interpretant” (the function of interpretation). Most important is the double characteristic of “[…] hard objectivity and total interpretation” (p. 21). On the one hand there is the distinction, under the name “object”, between the dynamic object deep in the flux of reality, and the immediate object—namely, the common object of our representations. According to the author, in this distinction lies the core of Peirce’s realism. In fact, our knowledge “[…] always stems from and arrives at the dynamic object, an almost incomprehensible object which is at the beginning of our knowledge and at the end of our complete representation” (Idem).
On the other hand, immediate, dynamical, and final interpretants are “[…] those signs that permit representaments to foster and finish their representative work” (Ibidem).
Interpretation is therefore part of the sign with respect to an interpretant, and the final interpretant coincides with a “[…] habit of action.” Strictly intertwined to the sign is the topic of continuity, namely “[…] the ontological texture of experience and knowledge, according to the profound unity that defines the concept of pragmatist experience” (p. 23). The third topic is common sense, which is logically justified in its grounding on “vagueness,” namely in “[…] a state in which the object is indeterminate and would require a further determination by the utterer” (p. 26) and in which the principle of contradiction simply does not hold. “Vague,” as opposed to something that is “determinate,” “actual” and “general”, is a determination through which a “nascent” idea passes from vagueness to generality. Common sense is then the “sensitivity to vagueness” that rational beings have to have.
In the second chapter, the author faces the problematic Kantian distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, in particular with the question about the kind of necessity featuring synthetic judgments built on intuition. Analytic judgments, in fact, are necessary by definition, for they express the principle of identity and are not subject to the principle of contradiction. On the contrary, the uniqueness of space and time “recreates with singular intuitions the schema part-whole” preserving “necessity within the same part-whole scheme that is at work in analytic judgments” (p. 37-38). Kant used therefore analytic tools to define the steps through which we arrive at a synthetic representation of reality, founding again his idea of knowledge upon an analytic pattern.
Maddalena argues that in order to overcome analyticity, a different path of reasoning is needed: namely, a concrete, synthetic way of thinking. In particular, the very possibility of synthetic judgment is provided by Peirce’s distinction between mathematical/synthetic (necessary) method and logical/analytic method, through which he tried to find out how necessary and probable inferences are composed, supplemented by “[…] a kind of synthesis in which universals are known in the particulars” (p. 41).
After a propaedeutic exposition of the status questionis to justify the innovative but incomplete pragmatists’ epistemological revolution and an explanation of the conceptual tools to be used in the new paradigm, in the third chapter Maddalena presents his theoretical proposal, exposing three new definitions for synthetic, analytic, and vague judgments, which he characterizes as follows: “A synthetic judgment (and reasoning) is a judgment (and reasoning) that recognizes identity through changes” (p. 43); “An analytic judgment (and reasoning) is a judgment (and reasoning) that loses identity through changes” (Idem); “A vague judgment (and reasoning) is a judgment (and reasoning) that is blind to identity through changes” (Ibidem). Maddalena justifies the new set of definitions arguing that they allow to understand and demonstrate sintheticity of reasoning in accordance with the fundamental hypothesis of continuity. In particular, he points out two aspects of the definitions of the new paradigm: 1) any synthetic judgment “[…] coincides with the operation we have to perform in order to get at it” (p. 46); and 2) synthesis coincides with “recognizing an identity” between two parts of a transitional experience in which judgment is the substantive part (distinguished from the transitive parts as James would hold). The process that leads to the proposition links the initial vague experience to the generalized one of the proposition through a singular action with that determinate part of experience that we call “body.” The identity is always between two experiences of the same relationship(s). Occasionally, the second experience can be formulated by a proposition, but a proposition is only one of its possible realizations that can be more or less complete as any other synthetic action (p. 47).
Maddalena goes on specifying that not just any action is synthetic, and that there are several degrees of synthesis and different kinds of actions which have to be identified through a process of inquiry at the basis of which there are three assumptions based on three pragmatists affirmation: namely, that research is in fact always tied to problem solving and the main problem to solve is the “vagueness of the experience” to determine; our inquiries aim at reaching the core of a belief which involves the establishment of a habit of action; and no proposition can be absolutely final because of its grounding in experience (which is itself never final). Following these definitions and assumptions, the main questions are then: what is “change” and how can it be studied? To reply to these questions Maddalena refers to the notion of “continuity” approached from both mathematical and logical perspectives, as Peirce did. Continuity is then “[…] a possibility, namely a model that may be realized” (p. 49). Change in continuity is interpreted accordingly “[…] as a perfect continuity of possibilities of which any actual occurrence is a realization” (Idem), it is a law (general) “[…] whose internal regularity is “an immediate connection” that we can understand as the condition of every possible realization” (Ibidem).
Change is thus not a property but rather a reality to which existent things belong.
Maddalena defines the continuum by four characteristics, already elaborated by Fernando Zalamea (2001), to whom Maddalena refers: generality, that is “[…] the law of cohesiveness among parts beyond any individual and any possibility of metrically measuring it” (p. 50); modality, “[…] the fact that a continuum is not tied only to actualities but involves also possibility and necessity” (Idem); transitivity, “[…] the internal passage between modalities” as possibility, actuality, and general necessity (Ibidem); and reflexivity, “[…] any part shall have the same properties of the whole to which it belongs” (Ibidem).
The first approach to study the change in real continuity is through the logical modalities of possibility, actuality, and necessity accounting for transition within the continuum itself. As Maddalena sums up, possibility is “the may be’s”, namely “[…] the mode of reality in which the principle of contradiction does not hold” (p.51); actuality is the existence, namely “[…] the mode of reality in which both the principle of contradiction and the excluded third hold” (p. 51-52); necessity is “[…] the mode of reality in which the principle of the excluded third does not hold, namely “[…] the state of things that “would be” true, if certain conditions happened” (p. 52). Logical modalities describe reality through the transition in determination from vagueness (that is something “particular”) to determination (“singular”) and generality (“universal”). Vagueness is, according to this approach, the main character of our beliefs and acritical inferences. Abductive inferences have often to rely upon vague characters, and vague characters are the first degree of clarity, distinguished from “determination” which is match with definition, and from “generality” which is match with the pragmatic maxim. Thus, “change” as well as “changing something” is “[…] a continuous reality in continuous transition among modalities” (p. 54), whereas our synthetic reasoning is about recognizing identity through change.
The second approach to “change” is the existential graphs. It is important to note that according to Peirce, and to the synthetic way of reasoning, “working” is the necessary and sufficient condition of reality. And since in mathematics we deal with universals in particulars, “doing mathematics” through scribing graphs and diagrams, that is to perform “mathematical gestures” through which imagining hypothesis and drawing from them necessary conclusions, means already dealing with the reality of universals. Generally speaking, existential graphs are the basic iconic level of relationship with the dynamic reality and it is accordingly the original “evidence” of change through continuity for their being moving pictures of thought which represent “[…] the creation of explanatory conjectures” (p. 56). The basic idea is that the conclusion of a synthetic reasoning is perceived in all its generality, and that the existential graphs are synthetically conveying universals into singulars.
The generalization is the analytic result of the diagrams which are “[…] the synthetic happening of generals” (p. 57). The process of “re-cognizing” the identity through changes is part of this happening, and coincides with the drawing of the line which is the acceptance of the original identity of two points that are distant but the same.
Identity therefore means no longer A=A, but a non-purely-symbolizable iconic identity passing from A to B. This implies a switch to scribing the line of identity upon a multidimensional continuum, transforming the identity in a teridentity, which is a line representing two relations of co-identity. Identity is thence “[…] the continuity of possibilities of an individual considered to be a changing object in its becoming” (p. 61). Now, according to Maddalena, who follows in this Peirce, the line of teridentity is a “perfect continuum” along with the multidimensional continuum of assertion. Identity means identity of an aspect of an individual, which is a “[…] variety of presentation and representation” (MS 300:46-47), whose time and space are just two of the possibilities. A line of identity is a “perfect sign” all parts of which “[…] are possibilities that might be realized according to a general law” (p.
65), becoming more and more determinate (and thus, in the long run, necessary) within the continuum in which they are inscribed. What has to be noted is that the iconic level of teridentity is the most important for it shows the Forms and Feelings of the synthesis of the elements of thought as a continuum of dots. And the identity seen under two aspects “[…] consists merely in the continuity of being passing from one apparition to another” (CP 4.448).
In the fourth chapter the notion of “complete gesture” is introduced. A gesture is, as said at the beginning of this review, a performed act with a beginning and an end that carries a meaning pragmatically understood. Maddalena specifies that “gesture” has to be considered in a much broader than as a mere bodily articulation, that is as “[…] a completion of reasoning and communication in which words can cooperate” (p. 171n). In such completion, which is the performing of the synthetic reasoning and the “[…] original form of comprehension/communication” (p. 75) from which any other form can be derived, we transform our vague comprehension into a habit of action. He distinguishes between complete (namely perfect) and incomplete gestures, for not just any gesture is synthetic but only those respecting the characters of evidence, generalization, continuity, and “[…] an equal blending of kinds of signs” as well as of phenomena (p. 70). From a semiotic perspective a complete gesture has to have a general meaning so as to be a general law for replicas (symbol); actual (index) when indicates singular object; expressing different possibilities of forms and feelings (icon). These semiotic characters of gesture need to be reflected in the phenomenological relations of firstness, namely a pure idea or a pure feeling, secondness (a physical act involving reactions of two objects or subjects), and thirdness (generality). Examples of complete gestures are liturgies, rites, artistic performances and hypothesizing experiments. What Maddalena wants to point out here is the internal telos that the phenomenological and semiotic paths reveal (at pain of making continuity unintelligible), namely “[…] the tendency to generalize that every gesture requires as such for the dynamic of its elements (thirdness and symbols)” (p. 73). A singular person who performs a singular act is embodying a general rule according to certain interpretation, creating a “necessary” habit of action which will be fostered in a re-performance involving “a replica of the feelings” (p. 80). The gesture becomes actual only insomuch as a person is actualizing it. That singular action modifies the generality proposing new habits (or new ways of old habits). Generalization is granted by the possibility that a complete gesture is “accomplished by many”.
The fifth chapter titled “Gestures and Creativity” specifies the kind of function the complete gestures have in our knowledge. Synthetic reasoning is always a creative form of reasoning, however the creative synthetic blending of semiotic elements has some necessary conditions, first of all, a “sub-creation”, namely an author who puts the complete gesture into existence. The second element is “assent” which coincides with the interpretant, namely “[…] the outcome of the sign in a determination of the interpreter’s mind (including all non-human minds)” (p. 96). Assent is thence “[…] the condition through which our complete gesture becomes operatively meaningful” (Idem). The third element is the “normative appeal”, namely the ethical dimension involved in assent. A hypothesis might be possible but not plausible, that is not convenient to realize because it lies outside the range of effective possibility. If so, then the ethical statement is “[…] something that has to deal with the effective world” (p. 98). The voluntary act at the basis of ethics judgment is related to the knowledge of the end of the act. This knowledge, however, has not to be found within ethics but rather in aesthetics: it must be an admirable ideal “[…] into which our complete gestures, like our analytic reasoning, have to fit and with which they cooperate to propose, to enhance, and to foster” (p. 100). The ultimate immutable aim is an aim consistent with human freedom and “concrete reasonableness”, namely the human reason in its “embodiment”. What Maddalena foresees in the apex of Peirce’s doctrine of “embodiment” is what a complete synthetic pattern would be, namely the emerging of concrete reasonableness as the order that any sort of reality must have to be understood. This means, pragmatically, a progressive approach to a final recognition, to the “truth” understood as the result of inquiry in the long run. Now, the problem is that Peirce did not explain what concrete reasonableness consists in. However, as Maddalena argues in the final chapter, even if pragmatists see ethics as normative, they also understand this normativity as linked to a posteriori knowledge. And knowledge is always tied up with complete gestures (p. 138).
In the sixth and seventh chapters Maddalena tries to derive solutions to such classic theoretical topics as personal identity and artistic creativity from the complete synthetic pattern and gesture. The first characteristic of the recognition of identity is that multidimensional continuum and the line of identity expressed in the existential graphs are lodged within the person’s experience. To find out the possibility to connect one complete gesture to another Maddalena refers to Auerbach’s notion of “figurality” derived from Latin “figura”, namely “[…] something real and historical which announces something else that is also real and historical” (p. 114). Working with the idea of a “[…] recognition of identity through changes” we can see the figure as the form of the object at an iconic level and its actualization at an indexical level (examples of the latter level are proper names and pronouns). Figurality among complete gestures, that is not a mere similarity between two figures, seems to describe what happens with memory, and establishes also a path of future realization, which will be another figure in our ongoing process.
The last chapter is dedicated to tackle the Kantian legacy regarding the conception of morality. Maddalena refers again to vagueness and common sense, arguing that common sense is the kind of reality that we receive or in which we are immersed, it is applied to fundamental ways of thinking and enters in any “reconstruction” of reality: common sense is our first acknowledgment of experience, it is our inherited morality which is vague, although its vagueness is a proof of its importance and reality. Now, as synthetic gestures transform themselves into habits of actions, giving rise to new interpretations, tradition and reconstruction are two poles of the same developing whole. As Maddalena argues, “[…] any action, bad action included, can be moral insofar as it embodies its vague initial idea and its general final ideal” (p. 145). Thence, if meaning is increased and modified by complete gestures, can general aims change during the process of performing gestures? The problem concerns the subject of the ethical judgment. To respond to this question Maddalena indicates in the “rational instinct” the esthetical-ethical-logical function of the faculty of judgment at the core of the complete gesture. However he does not succeed to link the function of judgment to an ontological self, because, as he argues, the question about the ontological self “[…] goes beyond the limit of the complete gesture tool and the model of reasoning based on it” (p. 149).
With The Philosophy of Gesture Maddalena depicts an innovative epistemic tool for our everyday reasoning, opening a whole new horizon of research in various fields, from theoretical philosophy to ethics, from psychology to the social sciences.
The potentialities are really vast: think for example of the interesting application of this tool to the hypothesis about the ways in which individuals develop their “choice process” in various fields of conduct (e.g., politics, economics, laws, ethics, etc.).
There are, however, some critical comments that I hope would be productive to foster the debate about the new paradigm proposed. First of all, Maddalena refers to Dewey and Mead as the pragmatists who used the notion of gesture before him.
It is however questionable to refer to those authors for they did not use the word “gesture” in the same way Maddalena does in his book. According to Mead gestures are truncated acts representing in their original forms the first overt phases in social acts that stimulate certain response. The function of gesture is then the mutual adjustment of changing social response to changing social stimulation. On the contrary, the gesture in Maddalena’s proposal assumes a more complex function, namely that of representing a synthetic reasoning which creates new habits. What is partially common to the two different perspectives is the social function that gestures have in the changing evolution of dispositions to act at the basis of the changing of complex habits. However, in my opinion it would be better to distinguish more clearly the word “gesture” that Maddalena uses from Mead’s and Dewey’s “gesture” to avoid misunderstandings and false comparisons.
There are also some doubts that could be raised about the way in which, in the third chapter of his book, Maddalena refers to the iconic level of teridentity as the level that shows the Forms and Feelings of the synthesis of elements of thought consisting merely in the continuity of being passing from one apparition to another. One of such doubts being that to refer to representation and presentation as “aspects”, and to different aspects as two “apparitions” reintroduce in the paradigm Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. As Maddalena highlights, there is a permanence of something, “[…] a part of experience lingers while its representation evolves” (p. 66). However, in speaking about reality as something changing in aspects only, Maddalena seems to conflate the phenomenon/noumenon distinction with the substantive/transitive distinction.
The second doubt is strictly related to the first and concerns the reference to the “Forms of the synthesis” and to the analytic composition of gesture synthesis. In my opinion, in referring to such forms Maddalena revokes through singular gestures (instead of Kantian intuitions) the schema part/whole, preserving necessity within the same part/whole scheme that is at work in analytic judgments, hence referring again to analyticity. Moreover, regarding the changing of aspects, the continuity of being as “passing from one apparition to another” has to be considered as the passage from a discrete to another discrete, which is possible to define only analytically. To sum up, it seems to me that as Kant uses analytic tools to define the steps through which we arrive to a synthetic representation of reality, Maddalena uses analytic tools to expose the steps through which we recognize a synthetic reasoning. So, if the gesture is the synthetic performance of continuity, the latter can be known only a posteriori through an analytic process. Even if we accept synthetic reasoning through the tool of gesture as the core of new knowing processes, we need analyticity to re-cognize and comprehend that gesture as synthetic reasoning.
In other words, in exposing and describing the elements that compose the synthetic reasoning expressed through logical modalities and mathematical gesture Maddalena is repeating the same analytic process Kant sketched in his Critique of Pure Reason. We therefore witness a reconstruction of both the analytic/synthetic and phenomenon/noumenon distinctions as two essential parts of the experience processes.
It is possible to partially respond to these doubts by arguing that the analysis of elements composing the synthetic reasoning is always a posteriori, differently from Kant’s affirmation that analytic judgments are always a priori. And as there is no primum cognitum—as Peirce stated in the context of his criticism of intuition— we have to conclude that synthetic and analytic reasoning are two sides of the same process: namely, experience. Maddalena’s pragmatist proposal aims for the unity of experience, as it “[…] stems from experience and aims to another more general and embodied experience” (p. 67). This approach shows that gestures as “[…] the embodied way to represent or recognize identity are different from the two main representations of identity: identity as permanence of attributes and identity as dialectic” (p. 113). Moreover, Maddalena argues about the clarity of knowledge that to know “[…] something in a vague way […] is the beginning of any definition and any gesture” (p. 82). This means that our reasoning is like a “swinging pendulum”, with the extreme syntheticity of complete gesture on the one side, and the extreme analysis of formal logic on the other. Vague reasoning is “[…] an intermediate kind of reasoning through which we pass from one extreme to the other” (p. 83). However, even if in Maddalena’s view analiticity is always a posteriori, in my opinion the question remains and needs further analysis.
A last doubt concerns the problem of the nature of the subject of ethical judgment. Even though Maddalena refers to “rational instinct” as the estheticalethical- logical function of the faculty of judgment at the core of the complete gesture, the question with the ontological self is here related to that of personal identity. And even though Maddalena admits that the question “[…] goes beyond the limit of the complete gesture tool and the model of reasoning based on it” (p.
149), it remains an open question which according to me calls for an idea of the subject that cannot be considered only as function, for otherwise we fall back into the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. I think that gesture, by being related to the way reasoning functions, can indeed offer the solution. Interpreting the final aim as reasonableness calls out the postulation of a final aim of Nature (similar to what Kant did in the Critique of the Power of Judgment) in which the subject plays a crucial part. Here a metaphysical background is called for to make the aesthetic the first normative science. However, to presuppose a metaphysical background implies also to partially define the subject legitimated to interpret a gesture as complete or incomplete and to understand the admirableness of “the ultimate aim” through a “transcendental” scheme. However, who or what can be legitimated as the final interpretant of a plausible gesture? Is it really possible to define a “normative” schema through which determine the plausibility of gesture, even a posteriori? Peirce’s and Maddalena’s referring to Summum Bonum is paradigmatic to the response they give. From their perspective any performed gesture would be seen at the end, from the “ultimate aim’s” perspective, namely the “admirable ideal” as a sign of a final cosmological order, in which human reasonableness will be totally “unfolded”. The problem to face with is, however: how can free will act as the source of singular creative synthetic reasoning in this framework? Have we to judge it only a posteriori, which is analytically? I think that a possible furthering of inquiries in the new theoretical paradigm proposed by Maddalena would need to pay attention to the nature of synthetic reflective judgment Kant tackles in his third Critique. In particular it would help to develop Peirce’s aesthetics, whose comments are brief and inconsistent (a first attempt has been made by Atkins 2008 in Cognitio). I think it would be a good starting point to reach a new definition of a broader judgment than the logical judgment, one involving the relationship of a gesture to the realm of existence, which would help to understand whether a particular complete gesture is worthwhile. Strictly related to this new way of considering judgment would be a renewed attention to the Kantian’s sensus communis, which would help thinking the distinction between synthetic and analytic in new light. Obviously, this new attention would call for a rejection of the Kantian confinement of common sense to aesthetic judgments and a broader attention to what Kant called sensus communis logicus, namely the sense affecting the judgments of the intellect. Common sense as the a priori principle of the possibility of judgment on experience in general is also closely linked to the notion of finality, which in Kant assumes the meaning of a “purpose of nature”, but could also be declined pragmatistically in the teleological perspective of synthetic gestures.
References
ATKINS, R. K. The pleasure of goodness: Peircean aesthetics in light of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. In: Cognitio: revista de filosofia. São Paulo, v. 9, n. 1, p. 13-25, 2008.
ZALAMEA, F. El continuo Peirceano. Facultad de Ciencias, Bogotà: Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 2001.
Guido Baggio – Pontifical Salesian University Roma Tre University. [email protected]
A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801-1998 – MacLEOD; POUTANEN (CSS)
MacLEOD, Roderick; POUTANEN, Mary Anne Poutanen. A Meeting of the People: School Boards and Protestant Communities in Quebec, 1801-1998. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004. 507p. Resenha de: GLASSFORD, Larry. Canadian Social Studies, v.41, n.1, p., 2008.
In 1998 a major reform measure, Bill 180, took effect in the province of Quebec, reorganizing its school system from a religious to a linguistic basis. Instead of dual systems based on Catholic and Protestant, the new arrangement would feature a division based on French and English. So fundamental was the switch that it required, in addition to passage of the bill in Quebecs National Assembly, the approval of a constitutional amendment by the Canadian Parliament. Both legislatures endorsed the measure on a bipartisan basis by healthy margins, but one significant interest group did not form part of the supportive consensus. The Quebec Association of Protestant School Boards, reluctant to surrender an historic constitutional guarantee of minority school rights, launched a court challenge against the new law. Though ultimately unsuccessful, it made the point that not everyone with a stake in the issue accepted the modernist assumption that organizing (and dividing) Quebecs schools along religious lines had become outdated.
What was the essence of the Quebec Protestant school system? This is the fundamental question addressed by the authors in their scholarly treatment of developments over the past two centuries. They are at pains to emphasize that it was more than a thinly disguised vehicle to perpetuate narrowly religious biases arising out of Anglican and Calvinist worldviews. They do point out that Quebecs Protestant school system owed much to the local school governance traditions of New England, and the Scottish emphasis on universal literacy, given the predominance of early settlers from these two geographic areas in the anglophone community. However, although most of the provinces francophones were Roman Catholic, and the largest number of anglophones were Protestant, the emergence in the 19th century of a sizeable English-speaking community of Irish Catholics prevented any complete identification of language with religion. Furthermore, the existence of French Protestants of Huguenot and Swiss ancestry, though less numerous, completed the picture of complexity in the provinces school system. Thus, in the authors view, the fundamental essence of Protestant education in Quebec was a belief in public, non-sectarian and liberal education, as opposed to the conservative, parish-oriented and religiously-based instruction favoured in the opposing Catholic school system.
A parallel theme of great importance to MacLeod and Poutanen is the close identification by scattered rural communities of Protestants with their local schools. Whereas in sections of Montreal and its suburbs, anglophone Protestants often formed the majority in their districts, for Protestants in the rest of the province, minority existence was a fact of life, even in the Eastern Townships by the turn of the 20th century. The elementary school, with its elected board, represented an important community focal point. Often these schools owed their existence to local initiative, since the first schools to be established, in most parts of the province, were French and Catholic. Keeping them up and running through hard times, rural depopulation and Protestant out-migration was an ongoing struggle. It was with mixed feelings that many Protestant communities acquiesced in the loss of their local schoolhouse to larger consolidated schools by the mid 20th century. The gains in educational quality, as measured by modern facilities and single grade classrooms, could not disguise the very real loss of community associated with school centralization. Protestant parents opted for greater opportunity for their children arising from larger modernized schools, but in so doing they removed one of the institutional props supporting their minority communities. It was not an unmixed blessing.
One of the many virtues of this book is that the authors are aware of the main currents of thought in Canadian educational history, and self-consciously position their own interpretation within the mix of approaches. They are aware of the main tenets of the social control model, but are not persuaded that it offers the best set of tools for their work. While others have written histories of school systems from a metropolitan perspective, their own bias is in favour of the local school districts. In part, this is owing to their main sources of new information about Quebec schooling: namely, the carefully preserved records of Protestant school boards from across the province. The legislated termination of Protestant schools in 1998 presented an opportunity to tell a story with an obvious end point, based on two centuries of accumulated sources. 1801 was chosen as the starting point, because it marked the creation of the first public school board in Quebec, the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning. With a wealth of local school records at their disposal, MacLeod and Poutanen find that the characterization of parents and boards as tending to oppose needed reforms and progressive initiatives is well wide of the mark. What previous historians under emphasized, with their reliance on reports by Montreal-based school inspectors and other elite figures, were the very real hardships faced by local boards in providing adequate facilities and competitive teacher salaries, in the face of rural poverty and sparse populations. Far from downgrading the importance of education, parents and boards were proud of their schools and the achievements of their students, and continually sacrificed time and scarce funds to keep the schoolhouses open.
Only in the final chapters do the authors lose some of their even-handedness, as they confront the apparent hostility of francophone Quebec nationalism toward a school system which had drawn Jews, Greek Orthodox and other non-Protestant immigrant groups into its orbit. It is evident that MacLeod and Poutanen regard the apparent victory for liberalism of a school system based on languages rather than religions as a pyrrhic one. The growth of a massive educational bureaucracy in Quebec City, coupled with the loss of constitutional protection for a separate, yet publicly-funded, school system, has placed anglophone minority schools at the mercy of the francophone majority. While this book celebrates two centuries of achievement, it faces the future with obvious trepidation.
Along the way, the reader is treated to nearly 100 period photographs, 13 statistical tables, and 24 maps. Moving anecdotes of specific communities and individuals are skilfully blended with a penetrating overview that includes even the school experiences of the Cree and Inuit peoples in northern Quebec. The tone is authoritative, and deservedly so. If you can find a better treatment of Protestant schools in Quebec, buy it.
Larry A. Glassford – University of Windsor. Windsor, Ontario.
[IF]Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues – PLUMMER (CSS)
PLUMMER, Ken. Intimate Citizenship: Private Decisions and Public Dialogues. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003. 187p. Resenha de: HORTON, Todd. Canadian Social Studies, v.41, n.1, p., 2008.
Ken Plummer, a distinguished scholar of social interaction and human sexuality, has written a fine synoptical book (p. xi) that examines the realm of intimacy and the conflicts the intimate problems to which these changes constantly give rise (p. back cover). Citing turn of the millennium issues such as solo parenting, invitro ferlization, surrogate mothers, gay and lesbian families, cloning and the prospect of designer babies, Viagra and the morning-after pill, HIV/AIDS, the global porn industry, on-line dating services and virtual sex, Plummer argues that dramatic changes in our intimate lives have increasingly bound private decisions to public dialogues in law, medicine and the media. He further asserts this requires a notion of intimate citizenship (p. 50), a sensitizing, open and suggestive concept to be used in the provisional quest of exploring the nature of social change and intimacies (p. 15).
This book is a valuable addition to the growing list of books engaged in unpacking somewhat stodgy concepts like citizenship and identity and repackaging them in new, exciting and dynamic ways. While admittedly brief, Intimate Citizenship does offer a good quality synopsis of current perspectives and expertly crafts a paradigm for analysis that is sure to stimulate conversation about where to go next. Almost certainly written for students in post-secondary education and scholars in the fields of sociology, political theory and cultural studies, the book is readerly enough to be used in secondary school, albeit in excerpt form, to initiate discussion and extend perspectives.
The book is divided into nine chapters, written as an interconnected whole that builds an argument. This is followed by reference notes and an extensive bibliography. It should be stated that at the beginning of each chapter several quotes, often as many as five or six, from authors to activists, are used to foreshadow the discussion(s) to follow. While some may find the quotes distracting and perhaps a bit bombastic, they provide an indication of the perspectives that permeate the discourses within and across the vibrant field of citizenship.
Chapter One, Intimate Troubles, is an appropriate title as Plummer lays out a series of issues and choices facing people at the dawn of the 21st century. He frames the discussion around the question how do we live and how should we live our lives in an emerging late modern world? (p. 7) and offers a conceptualization of the Intimate Citizenship Project (p. 13) that uses zones of intimacies such as self, gender, identity and spirituality to explore: the decisions people have to make over the control (or not) over ones body, feelings, relationships; access (or not) to representations, relationships, public spaces, etc.; and social grounded choices (or not) about identities, gender experiences, erotic experiences (p. 14).
Chapter Two, titled Postmodern Intimacies: New Lives in a Late Modern World, expertly examines intimate troubles in more detail while chapter three, Culture Wars and Contested Intimacies delves into the ways that change brings with it dissent. It is in chapter four that Plummer outlines the core organizing concept of the book.
Entitled The New Theories of Citizenship, Chapter Four is designed to help us navigate our way through the tangled web of conflicts that now surround our personal lives (p. 49) and to a large degree it is successful, though it must be added that brevity does occasionally work against clear sailing toward his new conceptualization. Plummer begins by offering an overview of two concepts: citizenship and identity, which he believes are really about difference and unity. Moving on to new citizenships (p. 51), he focuses on the works of T. H. Marshall, the British sociologist who outlined three clusters of citizenship rights civil, political and social to which all members of a community are entitled. While Plummer does outline many of the criticisms that have been lodged against Marshalls post-WWII work, he rushes through these to get to the main point of the section that the post-structuralist approach is the most fruitful starting point in which to develop newer ideas of citizenship, including intimate citizenship. Indeed, the reader may be left with the feeling that dwelling a little longer with the myriad of authors working in the post-Marshallian field might have made arriving at the destination a little more compelling.
Chapter Four continues by outlining the issue of boundaries and exclusions (p. 53), suggesting that in any framework of citizenship runs the risk of being critiqued as to who is inside and who is outside, who is included and who is excluded, both within and across social worlds (p. 55). A proposed solution is to further develop Ruth Listers idea of a differentiated universalism (p. 55) whereby boundaries are present but shift and sway in addition to becoming more porous. After a brief but worthwhile examination of natural rights, the state, society and inequality, as well as obligations relative to rights, and identity, Plummer pauses to pay homage to the work of authors who have extended citizenship to include feminist and sexual citizenships before adeptly using all of the discussions that have come before to outline a workable, if tentative, account of the issues critical to a new intimate citizenship (pp. 65-66). Among the issues addressed is a key theme that Plummer returns to again and again that citizenship must always be sensitive to the whole panoply of inequalities – of the problem of just citizenship in an unjust society (p. 66).
Four themes provide the details of intimate citizenship in the next four chapters. Chapter Five examines Public Intimacies, Private Citizens and the ways the public sphere is being radically redrawn in the 21st century, while Chapter Six, Dialogic Citizenship, embraces the crucial role of pluralism and conflict along with the need for dialogue across opposing positions. Chapter Seven, Stories and the Grounded Moralities of Everyday Life, is particularly rich, peppered as it is with excerpts of arguments from writers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Carol Gilligan, Richard Rorty and Maria Pia Lara who support, in one form or another, Plummers belief in the importance of listening to the voices of citizens as we struggle to resolve ethical dilemmas in our daily lives. Chapter Eight, entitled Globalizing Intimate Citizenship, explores the ways many of these issues now figure on the global stage and within global fora.
The book concludes with Chapter Nines The Intimate Citizenship Project, an attempt to develop a paradigm for analysis. Having spent much of the book cataloguing issues around intimacies, Plummer does an admirable job of pulling the threads of many arguments together to present an eight-point series of concerns for an intimate citizenship (pp. 140-142) as it moves forward. These concerns are focused around questions that 21st century theorists in the area of citizenship must grapple if the field is to grow in a legally, politically and socially just manner.
The author also demonstrates the proper amount of humility when he states that his work tends to raise more questions than it answers (p. 142) and acknowledges that it can be criticized from a number of different directions including the creeping return of the meta-narrative, the need for further detail, a western bias in the conception of rights and a certain nave optimism or utopianism. Still, his closing section situates the intimate citizenship project within the ongoing effort to eliminate inequalities in the world suggesting a reasonableness and sense of proportion for the task at hand and the challenges ahead. As Plummer states: intimacies are lodged in worldwide inequalities of class, gender, age, race and the like. These inequalities structure on a daily basis the debasement and degradation, the patterns of exclusion and marginalization, the sense of powerlessness that, in one way or another, many people experience as the inevitable backdrop of ordinary intimacies. Cutting across my entire book is a persistent need to return to these issues (p. 145).
This positioning is elevated by the final section in the book, Moving On: Learning to Listen, where he entreats the reader to consider familiar words citizenship, identity, community, public sphere, morality and ethics not as tight words, defined, fixed, with established boundaries but as open, polyvocal, flexible, porous and interwoven (p. 145). This means accepting that there are no simple solutions to how to live life and embracing the permanently unsettled state (p. 145) which is our future. For those who can only envision anarchistic chaos, relativist vacuums or tribal wars emanating from his paradigmatic positioning, Plummer concludes on a note of hope, suggesting that we must listen to one anothers stories of how to make our way through the moral tangles of today (p. 145) because it is there that virtue is re/constructed, morality is debated, ethical dilemmas are re/solved and the common values that hold humanity together (p. 146) are re/discovered.
Todd Horton – Nipissing University. North Bay, Ontario.
[IF]Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870 – NOËL (CSS)
NOËL, Françoise. Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. 372p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.39, n.2, p., 2005.
In Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870, Franoise Nol portrays middle class family life in the mid-nineteenth century. The book is divided into three parts. Part one is entitled The Couple and deals with courtship and marriage. The second part concerns parents and children and discusses childbirth, childhood and parent-child relationships. The last section discusses kinship ties and community life.
The book contains several generalizations related to Canadian family history in the 1800s. The author contends that most couples married for love. Companionate marriage was the norm, and the role of parents in mate selection was no longer as significant as it had been. As well, Nol shows that relations within families were affectionate. Parents showed an extraordinary concern for their children, which continued even after they married and left home. She also illustrates that much of family life took place beyond the door of the home. Families were a part of a large social network which included kin, friends and neighbours. Sociability was an essential part of family life.
Nol’s account has many strengths. The research, as indicated by the endnotes and bibliography, is impressive. The author shows a broad knowledge of her subject. She links her findings to scholarship in the United States and Britain. She is always aware of the larger picture. Parallels are drawn between families in the Canadas and what American historians of the period refer to as the rise of the Republican Family. When discussing child rearing, she refers to the Enlightenment and the influence which thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau were having on the view that children could be nurtured. Such analysis illustrates the significance of family history as a field of study. Family history is not merely human interest stories from the past. Nor is it titillating tidbits related to love, courtship and marriage. Rather, as Franoise Nol shows, it is an important part of social history which helps us to better understand the overall nature of past societies.
I would suggest that readers begin this book by studying the introduction. Here the author discusses the sources upon which her work is based. The book’s subtitle is A View from Diaries and Family Correspondence. In the introduction Nol identifies the diarists and letter writers. We are told when and where they lived and something about the circumstances of their lives. These people appear and re-appear in the pages which follow. It is important to consider who these correspondents are when assessing the conclusions Nol reaches regarding nineteenth century Canadian families.
The diaries and letters which are used do raise some concerns. The sample is not representative of all segments of society. Nol acknowledges this limitation but suggests that the sources accurately reflect the middle class, which in itself, of course, is a valuable historical contribution. However, some questions can be asked about some of the diarists and correspondents, particularly those who are used to illustrate that family values among francophones and anglophones and people of different religious backgrounds were similar.
There is a general contention in the book that the attitudes and principles which guided family life were similar regardless of religion, language and ethnicity. Several diaries and numerous letters of English Canadians are referred to but so are those of French Canadians like Amde Papineau and Ludger and Reine Duvernay. Considerable emphasis is also placed on the journal of Abraham Joseph, a merchant and member of a well-known Jewish family in Lower Canada. The conclusion that follows is that class, not other factors, was most influential in shaping family life in the Canadas during the nineteenth century. Nol does not ignore religious and cultural differences but in the end suggests that religion was not the deciding influence. Family life of Protestants, Catholics and Jews was similar.
But can Amde Papineau and his extended family be used to prove such a point? Papineau was the son of patriote leader Louis Joseph Papineau. After the Rebellion of 1837 he lived in exile with his family in the United States. There he met and eventually married Mary Westcott, the daughter of a merchant from Saratoga, New York. Amde kept a diary rich in detail about his life before and after his marriage. After moving to Montreal following her marriage, Mary exchanged letters with her father in New York for the rest of her life. Nol uses both the diary and letters extensively throughout the book.
Amde was Catholic, and Mary was Protestant. In 1846 they were married in Saratoga by a Presbyterian minister in a fifteen minute ceremony in the Westcott home. After their move to Montreal, Mary usually attended her own church but sometimes accompanied her husband to a Catholic mass at Notre-Dame. And occasionally Amde went with his wife to a Protestant service. A daughter was baptized in the Presbyterian church and a son in the Catholic church. Clearly this was an unusually liberal attitude toward religion and inter-faith marriage. Or perhaps it was evidence of religious indifference. This unconventional family has an important place in Nol’s portrait of family life. One can well ask if Amde Papineau and Mary Westcott can be used to illustrate French Canadian Catholic families, particularly in light of the conservative forces which were growing in the Quebec church after 1850.
Despite this reservation Family Life and Sociability is a major contribution to nineteenth century Canadian social history. It will not be easily read by high school students or by students in introductory university courses. However, teachers and professors certainly can use it to introduce their students to family history as a branch of historical studies. The fascinating information which the book contains about love, birth, life and death is and always will be of interest to everyone.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns.
HOLMAN, Andrew C. A Sense of Their Duty: Middle-Class Formation in Victorian Ontario Towns. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal & Kingston, 2000. 265p. Resenha de: WILLIE, Richard A. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.2, p., 2004.
This is an important book about an elusive and neglected subject in Canadian social history. The Victorian middle class, everyone acknowledges, emerged at a time of rapid economic change in Canada and did so alongside various calls for significant political and moral reform. There is much more, however, to this story than the lingering characterization of the middle class as an amorphous, even shadowy, collection of overbearing respectables (p. ix), writes Holman. In his examination of the Ontario towns of Galt and Goderich between the 1850’s and 1890’s, he sets out to uncover this elusive group and finds them located in well-integrated and identifiable occupational roles, each exhibiting a sense of collective identity and a set of developing ideals. By focusing on businessmen, professionals and other white-collar workers who did not work with their hands, Holman reveals the processes by which each occupational group became aware of themselves as a distinct stratum in society and how the more public roles they played in defining an approach to volunteerism and in reinforcing the dictates of moral order, a role which they played along with their wives in Victorian Ontario, further assisted in securing their special place in society.
Holman rejects static structural analysis and conflict group approaches and instead adopts Anthony Giddens’ concept of ‘structuralism’ which is more directional than formulaic. This affords him, he argues, the necessary latitude to allow this social category the middle class to define itself against the distinctive characteristics of Canada’s unfolding demographic make-up and against the values of its unique political economy. By examining the workplace as an arena of stratification and as an incubator of attitudes towards types of work, he is able to suggest that while up to the 1850s and 1860s all kinds of work were equally laudatory and moral (p. 22), already subtle changes were underway. By the 1870’s a new perspective had arrived which drew perceptible lines between manual and non-manual labour (p. 26).
The most representative of this new perspective were the businessmen, local merchants, manufacturers and artisans, of small-town Ontario. In the case of Galt, success as a regional service and market centre combined with the positive character of the town’s businessmen in a Creightonesque sort of way, and provided them with the ability to claim an elevated authority for the commercial members of their occupational group. In Goderich, on the other hand, situational problems, chronic economic challenges and low credit ratings saw an insular and protective attitude develop among this business group. Relations with labour were also quite different in the two centres. In Galt, Holman found that constant labour strife and strong labour organizations actually contributed to strengthening the agendas and identity of middle class businessmen and their Board of Trade. Labour relations were less of a factor in Goderich. Galt businessmen, in particular, had come to believe that their special place in society arose from their being champions of community economic success.
A second and important element in Holman’s study were the brain workers whose main claim to special status and authority derived from their learnedness and occupational independence. Lawyers, doctors and clergymen each developed their own patterns of professionalism in Ontario which included educational institutions, professional associations, codes of ethics, and informal networks of fraternal value sharing. In this professionalization project, Holman again found that experiences differed in Galt and Goderich, but that lawyers in both towns enjoyed the greatest social prestige of all the professions. While their association with a legal culture that included the sanctity of courts and the rule of law made lawyers respected intellectual and moral arbiters in society, the emergence of industrial capitalism gave legal work and law offices greater utility. Interestingly, the locations of the county court houses powerfully influenced the local collective identity of lawyers. Lawyers in Goderich, which had a courthouse, were more prominent in community life than those in Galt, which had no courthouse. In the case of medicine, this period witnessed a medical practitioners’ monopoly organizing to exclude alternate methods (homoeopathy) while at the same time gaining greater control of education, innovation, and hospitals. Medical practitioners competed for control in both towns. In Galt the battle was much more prolonged and pronounced simply because of the pressure, created from the start, of having a wider variety of practitioners and methods available. In Goderich, Holman found that the greatest challenge to medical practitioners came from itinerant physicians. Differences between Galt and Goderich similarly resulted in the clergy in each centre having to meet various professional challenges with non-uniform patterns of response.
Holman is perhaps at his best when he identifies this nascent middle class project among white-collar workers. As commercial, government, and professional clerks these employees aspired to become middle class on the basis of their non-manual work. They received salaries rather than wages and their proximity at work to their employers, who were established middle class claimants in the community, allowed them to indulge their often-youthful anticipation of temporarily occupying a stepping stone on the way to greater prominence. Holman notes regrettably, that the entry of women into this segment of the workplace resulted in white-collar work losing its value for many young men. A generalized anxiety or fear of never rising also hampered the project for many of these in-between men and motivated many, according to Holman, to seek opportunities of advancement elsewhere.
Having obtained a measure of authority in their respective communities by virtue of the work they performed, members of this emerging middle class began to broadcast their values regarding personal deportment and social responsibility primarily through the agency of voluntary organizations devoted to charity, fraternalism and self- improvement. That these associations were visible, gendered, exclusive, and adhered to rules of order in their meetings, allowed members to reflect and to model the ideals of social order that the towns’ growing middle class valued. In both towns, work of benevolence, Holman argues, was mainly overseen by women while fraternal orders restricted membership to men, thus ensuring that proper spheres were maintained. Self-improvement societies had fewer gender boundaries and general social aims. The YMCA, for instance, sought especially to direct young men away from immoral temptations towards purposeful pastimes and to provide training grounds for cultivating the appropriate behaviours the middle class expected.
According to Holman, by the 1870s middle class interest in the cause of temperance reform in Ontario had shifted as this emerging class latched on to the cause as a means to powerfully effect societal change. Earlier in the century, those concerned over alcohol abuse had defined the problem as one of individual character deficiency. Increasingly, however, reformers from this class saw the problem as society’s moral failing and they therefore championed change as a collective response to both the danger it imposed and the negative impact it had on persons and families; they especially supported legislative remedies required to curb it. Holman is quite correct about the shift in thinking he describes, however, his view that this change was largely due to the influence of the middle class is not as developed or persuasive as it might have been since his conclusion is more asserted than systematically proved. His study also begs, but does not answer, the question of whether genuine advocacy of reform in this area was perhaps more gendered than he might suggest.
Class identity was also formed and reproduced inside the home. The ideal middle-class male was expected to be a public beacon of proper deportment in his personal conduct as well as a family man; his wife was thought of as the jewel of the home. In private as in public, the middle class cultivated an ideal image of belonging to a class set apart by its prescribed behaviours from the vulgar rich above them and barren poor below. Manners, grooming, dress, speech, carriage, and respectable recreations were all included as aspects of the self-control that the progeny of middle class parents were expected to mirror and exhibit.
In A Sense of Their Duty, Holman accurately describes an important time of class formation in Victorian Ontario and explains some of the structural and ideological mechanisms involved in the change. His book will be a necessary addition to all post-secondary libraries containing sections on Canadian studies or history.
Richard A. Willie – Concordia University College of Alberta. Edmonton, Alberta.
[IF]Far Eastern Tour: The Canadian Infantry in Korea 1950-1953 – WATSON (CSS)
WATSON, Brent Bryon. Far Eastern Tour: The Canadian Infantry in Korea 1950-1953. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. 256p. Resenha de: LeVOS, Ernest. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.3, p., 2004.
There are certain elements in this book that one finds hard to fault where the author is concerned. It is well researched and well documented with thirty-seven pages of notes; a few notes have additional explanations. Secondary and primary sources are well integrated and the author effectively analyses and explains the diverse experiences of the 25th Canadian Regiment (the Royal Canadian Regiment, the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry and the Royal 22e Regiment) in the Korean War that was a sideshow for Canada (p. 96). A significant question that arises from this work is whether the Canadian government and military have learned any lessons from the Korean War. The contributions of the 25th Regiment have been overlooked and their participation in Korea was more than police action or a peacekeeping mission: it was a war.
What did members of this distinguished regiment face? The soldiers were inadequately trained for patrol operations, and were badly in need of Canadian kit and clothing(p. 38). The problems the soldiers faced with the 9mm Sten gun conjure up bad memories of Col. Sam Hughes and the Ross Rifle fiasco during World War I. The soldiers had an inadequate knowledge of all things Korean, from foods, smells, the lack of respect for life, and even language. Consequently, it was natural, like Jacques Cartier of old, to describe the newfound country as God-forsaken. Furthermore, as journalist Pierre Berton has pointed out, soldiers and military administrators were culturally insensitive.
The author also focuses on the nature of group dynamics (p. 68). The 25th Regiment worked alongside the Korean Service Corp (KSC), an esteemed battlefield ally, and the Korean Augmentation Troops, Commonwealth (KATCOM) who were viewed as interlopers at best, and dangerous battlefield liabilities at worst(p. 68). But there were other dangers, such as having to fight a highly capable Chinese enemy that fought and outgunned the Canadian patrols (p. 80). For the most part, Canadian soldiers were unable to conduct successful patrols. They faced a dismal battlefield performance, but despite casualties in the battle of Hill 355, battle exhaustion and self inflicted wounds, Canadian casualties in Korea were extremely light [when] compared with the carnage in the two world wars (p. 108). However, Watson does emphasize the fact that clearly, the fighting in Korea was far more lethal than the euphemism ‘police action’ suggests (p. 111). The injured, unfortunately, received appalling medical treatment. For many, the injuries sustained were very traumatic and deadly.
There were other dangerous challenges the soldiers faced. Diseases such as dysentery and malaria were a serious threat to the soldiers and the 25th Brigade found itself confronting a VD epidemic unparalleled in Canadian military history (p. 133). The author makes a humble admission at this point when he writes that it is difficult for the historian writing nearly five decades after the fact to express in print the fear induced in front line troops by the ever-present threat of contracting hemorrhagic fever (p. 131).
While the first eight chapters will spark rage and sympathy among readers, chapter 9, Forgotten People, was the chapter that caught my attention: the soldiers in the firing line lived like tramps without even the most basic comforts (p. 142). The rations were unappetizing and drinking water was unsafe. There were rats and snakes to contend with, and climatic conditions in the winter and the summer posed a formidable challenge to weapons maintenance (p. 150). Writing paper was a scarce commodity and there was inadequate and unsatisfactory entertainment.
While the Canadian soldiers faced numerous hardships, deprivations and an unhappy experience in Korea, it was the little things such as a turkey dinner for Christmas that made all the difference to lowly combat soldiers (p. 156). What eventually sustained the morale of the soldiers, and in many instances, turned out to be disastrous and fatal, was the love of rum and coke as the last chapter is entitled. Alcohol, a feature of military life, took its toll.
It is unfortunate that a regiment that made significant contributions under adverse conditions would not be greeted with a parade upon their return home, nor receive the concern of their government. It was a government that was more Eurocentric in its policies, with an army that was seriously overextended during the Korean War era (p. 179). Were any lessons learned from the Korean War experience? Perhaps not, if the larger picture is considered and if an individual reads chapter three (From the Great War to the Afghan War: Canada as Soldier) of Andrew Cohen’s book While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World.
Far Eastern Tour is more than a catalogue of pathetic situations encountered by the 25th Canadian Regiment in Korea. It solicits a greater respect and recognition for the Canadian soldiers who fought in the Korean War. While it is possible to criticize the government’s policy makers and military administrators for their insensitivities, I came away from this well-written book with a greater respect for the contributions made by the Canadian Armed Forces.
This book will cater to a small audience such as high school students and university students interested in military history and in those distinguished soldiers who fought for Canada and are still living. There was a typo error on p. 39 (the word should have been mud). That aside, it would be beneficial to readers to view some photographs even wartime illustrations and posters and a map or two could have been included identifying such locations as Hill 355, Kap’yong, and the Jamestown line. For two good maps and sixteen pages of photographs, a reader should consult Ted Barris’ book Deadlock In Korea: Canadians At War, 1950-1953.
References
Barris, T. (1999). Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at war, 1950-1953. Toronto: Macmillan Canada.
Cohen, A. (2003). While Canada slept: How we lost our place in the world. Toronto: McClelland Stewart.
Ernest LeVos – Grant MacEwan College. Edmonton, Alberta.
[IF]
English Immigrant Voices: Labourer’s Letters from Upper Canada in the 1830s – CAMERON et al (CSS)
CAMERON, Wendy; HAINES, Sheila; MAUDE, Mary McDougall (Eds.). English Immigrant Voices: Labourer’s Letters from Upper Canada in the 1830s. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 527p. Resenha de: Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
Nearly one million people emigrated from Great Britain to British North America between 1815 and 1850. Most were refugees from a changing economy in which they had been marginalized. Most were small landowners or tenants but not paupers. Moreover, most came with families or as members of extended families with relatives already in North America. Some came through the assistance of the state or private philanthropy. They came from every corner of the British Isles though nearly one-half came from Ireland and one-quarter from Scotland. The story of Selkirk’s promotion of Scots settlement in Prince Edward Island, Upper Canada, and Red River is generally well known but Scotland provided a different context from England for Victorian emigration. English Immigrant Voices, for example, could be employed for a small study of English Poor Laws circa 1830.
This book is the second concerned with the immigration scheme devised by Thomas Sockett, rector of Petworth, to send English agricultural labourers and their families to Upper Canada. The project grew out of the tumult in rural England in the early 1830s during which rural labourers protested wages, working conditions and employment through incendiary attacks on farms and the destruction of machinery. Sockett persuaded Lord Egremont, lord lieutenant of Sussex, to support the project. During the years 1832-37, approximately 1,800 emigrants – men, women and children – made their way to Canada from Petworth. An account of this project, Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837, was written by Wendy Cameron and Mary McDougall Maude and published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. English Immigrant Voices – Labourer’s Letters from Upper Canada in the 1830s, a worthwhile publication, is a companion volume to this earlier study.
English Immigrant Voices contains correspondence from participants in the Petworth assisted immigration project. This correspondence provides historical evidence germane to a number of historical themes. The editors explain that
As social history these letters document the daily lives and working conditions of labouring people – they reflect a shared heritage at home and they carry precise information back to family members and friends who were thinking of emigrating. As personal records, they reveal hopes, aspirations, fears, loneliness, excitement, and wonder (pp. xii-xiii).
English Immigrant Voices contains a fine introduction to the letters and details the history of the correspondence contained in the book. The letters, dating from 1832 to 1838, fill 260 pages and are organized chronologically. They are carefully and thoroughly annotated to assist the reader with historical references contained within the letters. There are also pertinent illustrations throughout to break up the text.
The letters were written mostly by rural, working-class emigrants from the south of England who ventured to Upper Canada in the early 1830s. Most ended their travels in counties west of Toronto including Home, Grey, Niagara, London or the Western Districts. Detailed maps of Sussex, southern England and the Niagara Peninsula allow the reader to follow the progress and settlement of the subjects and authors of these letters.
The editors suggest that this correspondence should be viewed as part of the immigrant literature associated with the period of enthusiastic ‘discovery’ of Upper Canada. Many of the letters were published in pamphlet collections and in newspapers in the 1830s to encourage emigration to Canada. Even the London based Canada Land Company made some use of them.
A small number of the letters survive in manuscript form, but most exist only as part of a published record. Yes, they were edited for spelling, repetition and punctuation. English Immigrant Voices contains the edited versions even when a manuscript copy was available. It should be noted that a few letters in manuscript form without editing have been included in an appendix to give the flavour of the unedited correspondence available to the editors. Cameron, Haines, and McDougall Maude have done a substantial amount of work to prepare the letters for the eyes of readers. The result: the interaction of readers with this correspondence will be both pleasurable and rewarding.
How might they be used in the classroom? In recent years, some historians have turned to the task of opening up the past through a close reading of historical documents. Carlo Ginzburg’s micro-history, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, is now a classic in this genre. Such approaches have illuminated just how much is lost when documents-literary and otherwise-are used only as evidence of larger historical patterns. While these letters do suggest larger historical patterns they might be used even more effectively to explore human subjectivity. How did the emigrants frame their encounter with Canada’s agricultural frontier? What narratives did they use to structure their accounts of travel from the old to the new? How do these letters convey notions of social identity, class and ethnic relations that were at the centre of the culture of these emigrants? The 1830s were an era of tumult and popular movements of reform in both Britain and Canada. Do the letters contain evidence of social protest or do they suggest that the Petworth letter writers embraced orthodox social and economic views? The letters in English Immigrant Voices might also be usefully compared with immigration literature from other eras and locations in Canadian history. Here a search might be undertaken for texts on immigration made available through Early Canadiana Online. This is a service provided free of charge by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM). A search on the internet will take interested parties to the collection at http://www.canadiana.org/eco/english/about.html.
Tom Mitchell – Brandon University. Brandon, Manitoba.
[IF]Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response – STINGEL (CSS)
STINGEL, Janine. Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 280p. Resenha de: SEIXAS, Peter. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
There is a tendency for Canadians today to understand anti-Semitism as simply one more form of ethnic discrimination and prejudice that might take its place next to anti-black, anti-aboriginal or anti-Asian expressions and actions. While these forms of prejudice have much in common, each also has its own particular content rooted both in distinctive mythologies and in the differing histories of their victims and perpetrators in Canada and beyond. Anti-Semitism in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s involved an image of Jews as international conspirators, secretly plotting world domination through an inchoate combination of international banking, communism and Zionism. In the mythology, based on the forged but widely circulated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jews thus posed a threat to national sovereignty, property, peace and prosperity.
In the 1930s, Social Credit doctrine made its way from its originator, Liverpool’s Major C. H. Douglas, to the Canadian West. As Janine Stingel demonstrates, Social Credit was wholly dependent on an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory (p. 13). Anti-Semitism was not a coincidental adjunct to this right-wing populist movement, but resided at the core of a paranoid vision of bankers and money-lenders swindling honest Canadians out of the wages of their toil. Depression-era Alberta was fertile ground for such a message, particularly when it came through the medium of a popular radio-preacher turned politician, Bible Bill Aberhart. Alberta thus became home to the only North American jurisdiction with a government that officially endorsed anti-Semitism.
Stingel’s Social Discredit is constructed as a parallel history of two organizations: the Social Credit Party in Alberta (and beyond) and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The reorganization of the CJC in 1934, in response to heightened levels of nationally organized anti-Semitism, roughly corresponded to the origins of Social Credit in Canada (in 1935). The inclusion of the CJC enables the author to tell not just a story of Jews as victims, but to also give them voice as actors in response to discrimination.
That voice, as Stingel tells it however, was neither strong nor effective. The CJC leaders’ first impulse was to proceed with a positive campaign, in the belief that moral suasion and education were the key tools (pp. 33-34). Thus, rather than seeking legal measures to bar public expressions of hate, the CJC published reports on the status of Canadian Jews, demonstrating that they were not all financiers. By the end of the war, with a new kind of knowledge about the potential impact of anti-Semitism, the CJC stepped up its campaign, shifting to a broad-based appeal against all race hatred (p. 87). Yet, it remained focused on the attitudes of non-Jews and, according to Stingel, this assumption would greatly impede its public relations work regarding Social Credit’s anti-Semitism (p.87).
In the immediate post-War years, anti-Semitic expressions from Social Credit actually increased. Stingel chronicles several meetings between Social Credit and the CJC leaders which resulted in private expressions of sympathy (some of my best friends) followed by public statements that further raised the threat of international conspiracy. Even when leaders were demonstrating their commitment to disavow anti-Semitism, they ended up reinforcing it.
‘Max,’ Social Credit leader Solon Low said to CJC agent Max Moscovich in 1946, ‘you’ve known me most of my life-I am definitely not anti-Semitic’ (p. 105). Low promised to ensure that anti-Semitic statements would be eliminated from the Social Credit paper. A few weeks later he gave a national radio address on CBC:
Do you know that the same group of international gangsters who are today scheming for world revolution are the same people who promoted the world war? Do you know that these same men promoted and financed the Russian revolution? Are you aware that these arch-criminals were responsible for the economic chaos and suffering of the hungry thirties, for financing Hitler to power, for promoting World War Two with its tragic carnage? Do you know that there is a close tie-up between international communism, international finance and international political Zionism? (p. 105).
While Low did not mention Jews by name, anti-Semitic mythology was entirely intact. In the face of what was either Social Credit’s deliberate duplicity or uncomprehending blindness, as Stingel tells it, the CJC continually failed to mobilize effectively.
By 1947, when the Congress finally started to move towards legal and electoral action, there were other more potent challenges to Social Credit’s anti-Semitism. Little did [the CJC] know that Social Credit’s anti-Semitic foundations were already beginning to crumble (p.121). There was intensive pressure from the regional and national press for the Social Credit leadership to disavow anti-Semitism publicly and to bar its most virulent proponents, like Norman Jaques, from its press. Party leader and Premier Ernest Manning went far enough in his purge of anti-Semitism, that splinter groups accused him of selling out to the Zionists in a bitter factional war.
Stingel concludes that it was Social Credit, not Congress, that ultimately solved the Social Credit problem (p. 161). The CJC’s campaigns were problematicat bestgrossly ineffective at worst (p. 163). Yet the appeal of and public tolerance for anti-Semitism decreased in the late 1940s. By early 1949 Congress could safely relax its vigil on Social Credit (p. 175).
Social Discredit is traditional organizational history in that it is based heavily in the archives of the two organizations, on the public press and on the organizations’ own media. We spend a lot of time reading about who said what to whom at which meeting. Finally, having followed the leaders of the two organizations through a decade and a half, with Social Credit continuing to spout conspiracy theories and the Canadian Jewish Congress continuing to be ineffective, Stingel does not really offer an explanationat this levelof why the change in Social Credit came between 1947 and 1949. Apparently the answer does not reside in the speeches and press releases. However, if the causes of change lie elsewhere, in the larger story of the shaping of a vigorous anti-Soviet Cold War ideology and on the renewal of Western prosperity (p.189), the reader cannot help but feel a bit disappointed at having followed the organization men from meeting to meeting in such detail for two hundred pages.
Peter Seixas – University of British Columbia. Vancouver, British Columbia.
[IF]The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997 – BOSCHER (CSS)
BOSHER, J. F. The Gaullist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 331p. Resenha de: LeVOS, Ernest. Canadian Social Studies, v.36, n.1, 2002.
In this well-researched book, one learns about Charles de Gaulle and the Gaullist aggression on Quebec between 1967 and 1977. Many Quebecois were aware of de Gaulle’s French imperial connections, but separatists in Quebec, encouraged by his famous Vive la Quebec libre! speech in July 1967, ignored the fact that de Gaulle interpreted history to serve his own political ambitions. There is little literature supporting the idea that de Gaulle was an inspiration to the Quebec separatists, and this book underscores that paucity. With cogent arguments, Bosher fills a large gap in the history of Quebec separatism.
In the 1960s, during the Cold War and the period of decolonization, de Gaulle identified with the liberal and national aspirations of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec (p.14). France and Quebec initially cooperated to establish agencies to achieve social, economic and political reform, but de Gaulle had an ulterior motive to include Quebec within the French realm. He believed that France would conduct cultural and clandestine activities, through the efforts of the French Quebec mafia (that included civil servants, diplomats, government officials, parliamentarians and associates of de Gaulle), to promote an independent French-speaking republic in North America (p.29). The Acadians in New Brunswick were also part of de Gaulle’s liberation schemes. France (and the Gaullists) offered the Acadians cultural gifts and scholarships that were obviously tinged with emotional and political motives.
Eventually, the Canadian government began to watch the French Quebec mafia that supported the separatist movement and the Parti Quebecois. While the RCMP carried out surveillance on separatists, it was the FLQ Crisis in October 1970 which alerted Canadian government officials that the Gaullist activities in Quebec were more than a part of the normal intellectual process in the world of la francophonie (p.142).
Part three of the book, focusing on imperialistic dreams, offers additional and succinct insights into the mind of Charles de Gaulle. His was to be a cultural and an economic empire based on language, history, and misty feelings of cultural affinity (p.180). In chapters 14 and 15, Bosher also critically explores de Gaulle’s (and Gaullist) thinking (p.216). de Gaulle reinvented the past and three points are evident. First, de Gaulle was a revisionist. Where Allied sacrifices are concerned, he ignored Canada’s contributions at Vimy Ridge and Dieppe. Second, by an act of faith (p. 221), the French were called upon to believe in their leader and his imperial dreams. He had a sense of history that many French never ceased to admire. Third, his views of history were propagandistic and he had no qualms about distorting past events to promote present political objectives. de Gaulle’s was a home-brewed version of Quebec history (p. 230). It was clear that he interpreted history to suit his own goals and schemes.
The Guallist Attack on Canada, 1967-1997 was written for a specialized audience. In addition to individuals interested in politics and foreign policy, senior university students and students of Quebec history will find the book a useful resource. Students in introductory Canadian history and political science courses will appreciate reading about the Gaullist support for the FLQ. While the appendix with the chronology of events is useful some may find the list of names confusing. That aside, readers will find the lessons Bosher draws, thirty years after de Gaulle’s 1967 speech, enlightening.
Ernest LeVos – Grant MacEwan College. Edmonton, Alberta.
[IF]Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837 – CAMERON; MAUDE (CSS)
CAMERON, Wendy; MAUDE, Mary McDougall. Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada: The Petworth Project, 1832-1837. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 354p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.1, 2002.
Historical writing reflects the fact that Canada is a nation of immigrants. Most accounts, however, concern the twentieth century and are not about the English. This book about the Petworth Project is an exception and, although narrow in scope, greatly adds to our understanding of nineteenth century immigration to Canada.
Between 1832 and 1837, eighteen hundred men, women and children travelled from Portsmouth, England to Upper Canada under the auspices of the Petworth Emigration Committee. They came mainly from parishes around Petworth in West Sussex in southeastern England and settled in what is today south-central and western Ontario. This book, filled with personal accounts, tells the story in marvellous detail: its English setting, the voyages across the Atlantic and settlement in Toronto, Hamilton, London and their vicinities.
The Petworth immigrants were primarily poor agricultural labourers and their families who received both private and public assistance to migrate. The Earl of Egremont (who owned much of the land around Petworth), the local parishes, the British government, and colonial officials in Upper Canada were all involved. The central character in the story was Thomas Sockett, rector of Petworth, personal chaplain to Egremont and founder of the Petworth Emigration Committee. He initiated the emigrations, chartered the ships, recruited prospective immigrants and, through correspondence, carefully observed their adjustment to life in Canada. Sockett deserves much of the credit for the success of the Petworth migrations.
The emigrations occurred during the time of the Swing Uprisings in southern England. Threatening letters were circulated by a mythical Captain Swing, and during the winter of 1830-1831 there were a series of local protests involving strikes, arson, machine breaking and mass demonstrations by unemployed agricultural labourers. Those in authority grew increasingly alarmed. Egremont, Sockett, and Sir John Colborne (Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada) were Tory paternalists who supported government assisted emigration and settlement for humanitarian reasons because they believed it would solve the problem of rural social unrest by removing the unemployed poor from the local English parishes and giving them a new start in Canada. Thus, it is interesting to see that there was a link between the famous Captain Swing and some pioneers on the frontier of Upper Canada.
During the 1830s, however, a new attitude toward the poor in the countryside was emerging within the British government and, in the aftermath of the Swing disturbances, a new Poor Law was introduced. It was based on free market principles and on the belief that government assistance only perpetuated poverty by encouraging dependency on public relief. It rejected the rationale behind the Petworth emigrations. Soon this new doctrine of laissez-faire liberalism was in place in England and among government officials in Upper Canada. In 1836 Sir Francis Bond Head (who is best remembered for precipitating the uprising led by William Lyon MacKenzie) arrived in Upper Canada and replaced Colborne as Lieutenant-Governor. Bond Head was fresh from his success of efficiently introducing the new Poor Law in England’s Kent county and was opposed, in principle, to government assistance to immigrants on either side of the Atlantic. The new political ideas which were current in England and in Upper Canada help to explain why the Petworth Project did not continue and why there was no large scale government assisted emigration and settlement in the years that followed. Thomas Sockett and those of similar views opposed the poor law reforms but their paternalistic humanitarianism was out of favour in mid-nineteenth century England.
Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada is a significant contribution to the study of nineteenth century Canada and will mainly be read by historians and used in university level studies. However, immigration topics are a part of most high school Canadian Studies courses, and the Petworth Project can be used by teachers to illustrate how immigrants are affected by events in both their country of origin and their new homeland. Too often we fail to emphasize that events in Canada do not occur in isolation from the rest of the world. Wendy Cameron and Mary McDougall Maude make clear that developments in England during the 1830s, particularly those in rural parishes, were directly connected to the lives of the people of Toronto, Hamilton and the Canadian frontier.
I strongly recommend this book to all serious students of nineteenth century Canadian history. It is a remarkable achievement based on an immense amount of research, much of which, due to space limitations, has not been described in this review.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]A Short History of Quebec and Canada – DICKINSON (CSS)
DICKINSON, John A; YOUNG, Brian. A Short History of Quebec and Canada, 2nd Ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. 388p. Resenha de: BRADLEY, Jon G. Canadian Social Studies, v.35, n.3, 2001.
American historian Aileen Kraditor, in responding to student concerns about wanting to deal with ‘more modern and relevant’ events in her university classes, noted that history, by necessity, had to allow a number of decades to pass so that respectful contemplation could occur. More personally and cogently, she explained that if I can remember it then it is not history but current events! In light of such opinions and conscious of general mounting political and societal pressures to pass immediate judgement on unfolding events, one may well ask, Why is there a need for another book, a revision at that, on history?
Divided into nine chapters and structured in a mostly traditional chronological manner, A Short History of Quebec and Canada begins this historical adventure with the First Peoples prior to the European onslaught and brings the reader up to what the authors generously call Contemporary Quebec which is realistically the mid-1990’s. There are numerous black and white photographs, diagrams, maps and renditions. Additionally, each chapter is immediately followed with a concise, focused and annotated Further Readings section.
A more comprehensive and somewhat less user-friendly esoteric bibliography is printed at the back of the book. All in all, notwithstanding the odd irritating anomalies – such as small maps that are most difficult to read, the use of a space in place of a comma to separate large number segments, and the total absence of colour especially with various art work renditions – A Short History of Quebec and Canada is a nicely packaged volume which provides a comprehensive view of 400 or so years of history in the territory now known as Quebec.
While it is easy for any reviewer to comment upon tangible facets of a book – such as pages, drawings, map size and location, layout, – it is much more difficult to deal with those more ethereal aspects. Particularly, I feel that two of these less than concrete notions stand out in A Short History of Quebec and Canada.
By serious design and conscious effort, the authors have utilized a writing format that is easy to follow. They have consciously attempted to maintain what one might characterize as a direct style. In no way demeaning or condescending, the authors are able to deal with all manner of complex historical issues in a straight-forward manner. They have avoided long and tedious sidebars and patterned their tale in such a way as to bring the reader to the heart of various issues via a direct linguistic route. To a large extent, they have respected the ‘short’ designation in their title.
In sum, this book flows! Chapters melt away as the authors flirt with numerous topics, personalities, and notions. Additionally, the internal chapter sections focus the reader on selected events, issues and complexities within the overall framework of people interacting with people. In the most complex of historical issues and scenes, there is a feeling of immediacy and even a sense of modern relevance.
Additionally, while acknowledging that one cannot avoid the big political issues that mark any sweep of history, the authors have attempted to focus as much as possible on what one might broadly call a social or people orientation. Perhaps this orientation more clearly indicates their own historiography and biases as they forthrightly note: Without denying the importance of political events such as the Conquest or Confederation, we have subordinated them to a socio-economic framework that explains them in a broader perspective (p. ix).
By combining a light and unencumbered writing style with a more personal societal orientation, Dickinson and Young have been able to some extent to challenge Kraditor’s separation of history from current events. Via the overall structure of A Short History of Quebec and Canada, the reader is able to bring historical antecedents up to the present. The reader is provided with the tools to make concrete connections and to more realistically place past events onto their contemporary template.
In my view, A Short History of Quebec and Canada is a valuable volume. Cleverly designed for senior level secondary students as well as anyone interested in Quebec, its history, and possible futures within North America, Dickinson and Young are to be congratulated for a second edition that is a must for anyone with even a passing interest in the complexity and interconnectedness of Canadian history.
Jon G. Bradley – McGill University. Montreal, Quebec.
[IF]