Editor's IntroductionAuthor(s): James CurtisSource: The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 9, No. 3(Summer, 1984), pp. v-viiPublished by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3340154 .

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Editor's Introduction

The study of social inequalities has been probably the most active field of in- quiry for sociologists in Canada. This results from the breadth of this area of study and the importance of its research and theory for understanding the shape of society and social change. Because of these facts I was delighted when asked to help edit this special issue of the Canadian Journal of Sociol- ogy on class and social stratification. This area involves, of course, both stud- ies of social class in the Marxian sense and studies of various other types of inequality - socio-economic statuses, educational statuses, power differen- tials and forms of ascribed status. In the case of each of these topics relevant studies deal with the character of the social inequalities, their sources, their consequences, their relationships to other types of inequalities, their relation- ships to ideology, and changes in each of these phenomena over time. Therefore, we could hope for coverage of only a small part of this broad ter- rain in a short volume such as this one. The articles in this volume deal with five quite different research problems, however, with an important yield in each instance. The articles also reflect the variety of research approaches and theoretical starting points which characterizes studies of class and strati- fication.

The articles deal with these different topics: elite arrangements, changes in the class structure over time, correlates of beliefs about work, workers, and management, educational stratification, and ethnic stratification. The different research approaches in the papers range across analyses of public records on corporations and their directors, personal interviews in the workplace, secondary analyses of national survey data, and analyses of Sta- tistic Canada's tabular data from the Census and from Labour Force Sur- veys (two studies). The papers build from elite theory, Marxian-theory and "middle range" theories on class and politics, changes in social class differ- ences in educational attainment, and changes in ethnic differences in occupa- tional attainments.

The first article is William Carroll's study of Canadian corporate power. Its research problems derive from elite theory and Marxian theory, it em- ploys the research technique of network analysis, and its data are drawn from public records. Carroll identifies and describes a "financial group," an interest group within the structure of corporate power. His work should serve as a useful prolegomenon to studies of how this interest group matters for so-

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cial processes in Canadian society. For example, as Carroll suggests, there are ready hypotheses on the implication of this group for the process of accu- mulation, and these warrant research attention.

The next article by Carl Cuneo uses Statistics Canada data sources to look at changes in the size of the petit bourgeois class in this country over the decades. The analyses are both global and for specialized pockets of the economy. One of the findings is that, contrary to conventional understanding, there have been periods where the petite bourgeoisie remained stable (or even had some growth). A Marxian theoretical frame- work is employed in interpretations.

Julian Tanner's article takes us to more of a micro-sociological set of re- search concerns, but ones with obvious macro-sociological implications. His exploratory study looks at the relationship between skill levels among man- ual workers and left/right orientations toward industrial work and manage- ment. The study employs interviews with samples of workers from two firms in Edmonton, Alberta. The relevant theoretical backdrop to the research is theories, Marxist and otherwise, on the internal stratification of the working class and the political orientations of segments of this class. Tanner finds, among other things, that skill level does not show consistent relationships with beliefs across firms. If this is generally the case, there are, of course, im- portant implications for theories of the differentiation of the working class.

Neil Guppy, Paulina Mikicich and Ravi Pendakur present a study of his- torical trends in the relationship between father's occupation (and parents' education) and educational attainment. Their research technique is birth co- hort analysis, using secondary analyses of a large sample survey. The results suggest that there has been some lessening of the effects of social origins on educational attainment over time, and that this lessening varies by the level of education considered and by the occupational status of the father. The au- thors speculate that there may not be a continuance of these trends into the near future because of recent changes in the organization of education.

The last article by Hugh Lautard and Donald Loree considers changes in the associations between ethnicity and occupation over time, but it focuses upon the extent of the relationship in the most recent year for which Census data are available. The authors conclude that some qualifications are called for in recent interpretations which suggest that the Canadian "vertical mo- saic" has nearly waned away.

As a concluding point, let me indicate that, as I read this set of papers, I could not help noting that many of their research concerns were first studied, or were hypothesized about, by John Porter in his Vertical Mosaic and re- lated publications. We can see, also, the same influence and relevance of Porter's work in most other pieces in the current literature on social inequali- ties. This volume, then, gives more testimony to the magnitude of Porter's contribution in mapping the terrain of, and breaking some ground in, the

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study of Canadian social inequalities. We will, no doubt, continue to start out with his maps, for some time to come, as we cover this territory. However, we must also do as all good map-makers do and ask how what we have before us is incomplete or out-dated, and could better be drawn. The papers in this volume proceed in these directions.

I am indebted to, and would like to try to thank, the several readers who provided always very helpful reviews of the papers submitted for considera- tion for this volume. Thanks are also due Laura Hargrave, assistant to the editors of the Canadian Journal of Sociology, and the editors for their assist- ance.

University of Waterloo James Curtis

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