Prejudice and Pride: A Commentary on "Canada's Impossible Science"Author(s): Raymond MurphySource: The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 30, No. 4(Autumn, 2005), pp. 529-532Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4146178 .

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Prejudice and Pride: A Commentary on "Canada's Impossible Science"

Raymond Murphy

For a work advocating historical-comparative sociology and empirically based explanations, McLaughlin's (2005) article predicting the coming crisis in Anglo-Canadian sociology is stunning in its lack of comparative evidence. It asserts that the USA is "the dominant global force in sociology today" (5) without presenting a shred of comparative evidence. That assertion might have been true a quarter of a century ago, but it ignores the tremendous recent development of sociology in other countries, of the European Sociological Association, of the International Sociological Association, etc. American sociology is big and bigness brings power, but the paper fails to present convincing evidence that the USA is the dominant global force in terms of quality publications. The American Sociological Association meetings are impressive in terms of the excellence of some presentations but others are characterized by sleep-inducing mediocrity, as is the case with other confer- ences. Those meetings are organized on the basis of intelligent practices (selection founded on complete papers not just abstracts) and rather dumb practices (the factory-farm approach of maximizing verbal output for input of time consumed on the program by having ten speakers presenting concurrently to ten round tables in the same room). The article declares that Britain "remains a relative backwater with regards to the discipline of sociology"(16), but only supports this putdown with hearsay and references to the pre- 1945 and pre-1914 period. No evidence is presented documenting that the big three British journals (BJS, Sociology, Sociological Review) are of lesser quality than the big three American journals (ASR, AJS, SF). It is unacceptable to

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 30(4) 2005 529

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530 Canadian Journal of Sociology

make an unsubstantiated slur of a nation's sociology as a "backwater," and then leave it to others to disprove. The author assesses dominance and backwater by simply dismissing from the discipline anything he does not like, thereby silencing the creative debate of ideas, impoverishing the discipline, and limiting sociology to an ultra-narrow orthodoxy.

The article asserts that "Canadian universities have a local and provincial feel to them" (11), that the University of Alberta "now has a very large cultural

studies/literary feel to its theoretical orientation" (15), that "Anglo-Canadian universities have always had a British flavour to them" (16), and that the Canadian journal Studies in Political Economy "and its networks retain a sectarian feel" (21). One person's sense of feel or flavour does not constitute rigorous sociological documentation. The article's conjecture that the general explains the particular - that pan-Canadian characteristics of institutional flatness, of the important role of the state, and of anti-Americanism have led to weaknesses and crisis in the specific discipline of sociology and only there - is entirely unconvincing and can only be sustained by ad hoc add-ons.

The discussion of the "flat institutional structure of Canadian higher education" is an incoherent jumble of "flat" in terms of similar levels of institutional prestige, "flat" in terms of the same quality of research publica- tions, and "flat" in terms of equal tuition fees, with no evidence presented to confirm that the three are closely related. If equal tuition fees leads to low-

quality research, how did the University of Toronto ever become a "prestigious research-oriented university" when its tuition fees are no higher than those at Brock or Trent Universities (10)? McGill University must be much worse in research than Acadia University since its tuition fees are much lower. I can

suggest a different answer to the question of the relationship between tuition fees and research quality: there is no relationship. Germany (Habermas, Luhmann, Beck) and France (Bourdieu, Foucault, Latour) are now among the leaders in the discipline of sociology, yet tuition fees in those two countries are

vanishingly close to zero precisely because the state maintains its support of

higher education instead of privatizing it. American high-tuition-fee, private universities have failed to produce contemporary sociologists of that caliber. For all their endowments and soaring tuition fees, where is the evidence that the sociological publications written at Ivy League universities are proportion- ately better than those coming out of other American universities?

I agree with McLaughlin that sociology has many institutional problems, and that it risks becoming a service discipline because of emerging competition from its applied or interdisciplinary offshoots. I also agree that academic market pressures have created the danger of superficiality: judging dossiers by number of publications rather than their quality and rewarding research administration more highly than quality publications. But this is the case in

many countries including the United States and in other disciplines. A crisis

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Raymond Murphy's Comment on Neil McLaughlin 531

may come in Anglo-Canadian sociology, but not for the reasons given in this article. Sociology's problems are due in large part to the deafened ears upon which its messages are now falling because of the resurgence of neo-liberal conservatism in many societies over the past two decades with its accentuated

inequalities and disempowered state. The cure advocated in the article (more inequalities, less government, imitate the present-day USA) is instead the

problem. The article refers to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (13), so it would

be instructive to learn from what sociologists who work there have concluded. In his autobiography written shortly before his death, the American sociologist Frederick H. Buttel wrote as follows. "I have studied or worked at some of the

greatest public and private universities in the country (Wisconsin, Yale, Cornell). ...While some of these great public and land-grant universities

[namely Wisconsin, with Cornell being a hybrid] are now elite universities, in the sense that their research and graduate programs are distinguished, their

public character prevents them from degenerating wholesale into pomposity. ... I worry that a coincidence of interest between the affluent - who are

willing to destroy our institutions to save a few dollars on their tax bills - and most politicians is leading to the progressive dismantling of our great university [University of Wisconsin]. An unthinking electorate has stood idly by as the dismemberment of a system which has contributed so profoundly to

my development - and so mightily to our nation's and the world's develop- ment - has been allowed to proceed. ... Today, as our universities, both public and private, are forced to rely ever more on donations from rich people, a good many universities are crossing the fine line between entrepreneurship and

selling their souls. I fear for my University in this regard." When the article attempts to substantiate its claims of weaknesses of

Canadian and British sociology, it refers to sociologists in those countries who are critical of their national sociology in order to improve it. Many American

sociologists adopt a similar critical analysis of American sociology and of American universities to make them better, but you won't find that in this uncritical, self-satisfied account of American academia. Such an account consists of pride based on prejudice and of nationalist American rhetoric

unworthy of the excellent American sociologists I have known and read. The article presents "possible sociologies for Canada: pride versus prejudice or

prejudice without pride?" (24). Let us develop a proud Canadian sociology that does not construct the need to prejudge as inferior sociologies on all other continents of the world.

The meaning of "residual anti-Americanism" (25) is left undefined in the article, but the author seems to associate it with skepticism toward his taken-

for-granted claims i) that American sociology is superior to all others, and ii) that Canadian, British and other sociologies are mere "backwaters." Canadians

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532 Canadian Journal of Sociology

have been immunized against such accusations by their experience with the charge of anti-Americanism leveled against them when they disagreed with the Bush administration's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in search of mythical weapons of mass destruction. Just as one can be a friend of the United States on a deeper level by refusing to participate in a war that will eventually be judged illegal, so too it is possible to recognize the weaknesses as well as the strengths of American sociology and of the American academic system without being anti-American and without succumbing to a narrow-minded blindness to the strengths of sociology done elsewhere.

McLaughlin is certainly right to argue that Canadian sociologists should build strong academic reputations in the broader world. To accomplish this, it is necessary to transcend a myopic fixation on the big parish next door. One does not avoid parochialism just because one's parish is bigger. Canadians would be well-advised to participate in the rich developments in sociology at an authentic international level.

References

Buttel, Frederick H. 2003 "Autobiography." http://www.drs.wisc.edu/people/faculty/buttel/buttel.htm.

McLaughlin, Neil 2005 "Canada's Impossible Science: Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis

in Anglo-Canadian Sociology." Canadian Journal of Sociology 30 (1): 1-40.

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