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The Social Evolution of Quebec Reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Hubert Guindon
Hubert Guindon*
Affiliation:
University of Montrealand The Social Research Group
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Extract

Any attempt to assess the direction of social change in a particular society is a risky business at best. Yet, inasmuch as sociology, in its official texts on method, rests its claim to scientific status on its predictive capacities, it must somehow, sometimes, take this risk and say something about what are the significant changes occurring in the social organization of a society. In order to achieve any such general assessment the social analyst needs, it seems to me, to consider the society as a whole, and through time.

Sociologists are generally reluctant to view the whole of a society as a proper subject of study and reluctant also to study social phenomena through time. Indeed, what is at present felt to be adequate methodology, or should we say prestigeful methodology, requires living respondents whose answers can be given statistical treatment, and therefore becomes largely irrelevant for studies with historical dimensions; and while it may be quite useful in measuring change it is quite helpless of itself to account for it. Furthermore its preference for piecemeal and detailed verifications makes it a rather awkward instrument to use when dealing with general analyses. Anthropologists, by tradition, have commonly achieved such analyses in the case of less complex cultures. Even they, however, when confronted with large societies, have tended either to adopt the sociological habit of narrow investigation or to postulate that an image of the larger whole can be gleaned through the minute study of a particular instance, a particular cell such as a village, or a town. In choosing the first alternative, they abdicate what seems to have been a traditional objective of anthropology. In the second case, they stand in danger of missing the target through oversimplification.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , November 1960 , pp. 533 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1960

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Kingston, June 10, 1960. The author is particularly indebted to Mr. Fernand Cadieux of the Social Research Group. The basic ideas of this paper are the outcome of some years of intellectual companionship with him.

References

1 Steward, J. H., Area Research: Theory and Practice (Ottawa: Social Science Research Council, 1950), Bulletin 63, pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

2 One notable exception is Léon Gérin whose book Aux sources de notre histoire (Montréal, 1946)Google Scholar is an analysis which gives great insight into the social system of New France.

3 Garigue, Philippe, Etudes sur le Canada françaıs (Montréal, 1958), 8, 14, 15.Google Scholar

4 Miner, Horace, St. Denis: A French-Canadian Parish (Chicago, 1939)Google Scholar; Hughes, Everett C., French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943).Google Scholar

5 Frégault, Guy, La Civilisation de la Nouvelle France (Montréal, 1944).Google Scholar

6 The clergy, in this context, obviously includes nuns.

7 Brunet, Michel, “La Conquête anglaise et la déchéance de la bourgeoisie canadienne, 1760–1793,” Amérique française, XII, no. 2, 06 1955.Google Scholar

8 Gérin, , Aux sources de notre histoire, 228 ff., 253, 254.Google Scholar

9 Garigue, , Etudes sur le Canada français, 15.Google Scholar

10 Olsen, Robert, “A Challenging New Concept of French Canada,” Maclean's, 02 14, 1959.Google Scholar

11 Etudes sur le Canada français, 6.

12 Ibid., 15.

13 Ibid. 9.

14 Ibid., 6.

15 When Professor Garigue says that the previous French-Canadian society was an urban and commercial one, are these characterizations not themselves “ideal types”?

16 Pofessor Garigue blurs the historical record when he says (“Mythes et réalités” in L'Etude des sciences de l'homme, III, 1956, 129)Google Scholar that Gérin was Le Play's disciple. Gérin studied under Edmond Demonlins, one of Le Play's disciples.

17 Quoted by Garigue, freely translated by me. See Garigue, , Etudes sur le Canada français, 8.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 “Seule leur ignorance de l'histoire du Canada français permet de comprendre que les sociologues aient pu accorder à une telle hypothèse une importance de premier plan” (Ibid., 14).

21 Aux sources de notre histoire.

22 Ibid., esp. chaps. XIV, XV.

23 Ibid., 254.

24 Etudes sur le Canada français, 49.

25 Hughes, , French Canada in Transition, 8.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 7.

27 St. Denis, 237.

28 Here are a few stanzas: “Grâce aux nouvelles méthodes de recherche et à l'élaboration de nouveaux instruments d'analyse, nous pouvons affirmer que nous avons dépassé les pionniers” (Etudes sur le Canada français, 6). Or again (Ibid., 15): “Je pense avoir démontré que beaucoup des idées qui ont été émises par les sociologues de l'école de Chicago sur le Canada français ne sont pas valides. Il reste maintenant à montrer ce qu'est le Canada français. … Malheureusement, mes recherches personnelles ne me permettent pas encore de répondre à cette question. Et ceci pour l'excellente raison que les critères scientifiques que j'utilise demandent la mise en action de recherches très larges, faites avec des équipes de plusieurs personnes, et demandant des ressources financières importantes.” On the basis of this last sentence, Professor Garigue does not conceive of himself as a soldier in the army of science but rather as a field general. There is nothing particularly wrong in the ambition, for most social scientists cherish the same one secretly; but the common practice is not to voice it quite so openly and aggressively.

29 Ibid., 5: “L'argument que nous esquissons dans ces études est que de nombreux préjugés ont existé et existent, dans les milieux dits scientifiques, sur la nature du Canada français. …”

30 Ibid., 14.

31 Ibid., 46–9.

32 St. Denis, 235.

33 Ibid., 237.

34 French Canada in Transition, 20.

35 Area Research, 22.

36 Ibid., 51.