Competing Analytical Paradigms in the Sociological Study of Racism in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT/RESUME: Whereas many scholars continue to offer studies that lay claim to the pervasiveness of or racism in Canada, a growing body of evidence contests the extent to which the categories of race and/or ethnicity function as categorical determinants of the inequitable distribution of services and resources in Canada. We seek to bring greater clarity to these competing claims by demonstrating different analytical assumptions in sociological research produce inconsistent knowledge about racism in the country. We enact two ideal-typical folk paradigms to problematize the decoupling of reductive and essentializing research interventions. We do not attempt to render a verdict on how much racism exists, but rather to develop one set of explanations to account for cleavage in the sociological study of racism in Canada. We conclude by encouraging a critically reflexive research agenda able to account for the multidimensional realities of racism in Canada. Bien que beaucoup de chercheurs continuent a offrir des recherches declarant que le racisme de l'institution ou du systeme se trouve partout au Canada, de plus en plus l'evidence se dispute dans quelle mesure servent les categories raciales ou ethniques de fixer la distribution injuste des services et des ressources au Canada. Nous cherchons a eclaircir ces demandes qui concourent en montrant comment des suppositions analytiques differentes dans les recherches sociologiques produisent du savoir inconsistant sur le racisme au Canada. Nous mobilisons deux paradigmes folkloriques ideals-typiques afin de problematiser le decouplage des recherches qui diminuent et qui essentiellisent. L'article ne tente pas a determiner la quantite de racisme, mais il developpe une serie d'explications afin d'expliquer cette division dans les recherches sociologiques du racisme au Canada. Nous finissons en encourageant un programme de recherche critique qui peut expliquer les realites multidimensionnelles au Canada. In spite of the historical and contemporary evidence of racism as a pervasive and intractable reality in Canada ... citizens and institutions function in a state of collective denial ... [i]n recent years, racism has received increased attention. Racial unrest in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax and demands of racial minority communities for greater participation in Canadian society have become difficult to ignore. Henry, Tator, Mattis, and Rees 2002, 1-2 Canada remains one of the most desirable countries of immigration for most of the poorer and conflict-ridden countries. The largest Canadian cities have become functioning and tolerant multiethnic communities, the envy of most urban areas elsewhere. Canadian institutions and laws reflect an inclusiveness that appeared utopian half a century ago. This is not to suggest that Canadian society is free of problems.... But in spite of the problems, Canada is a success story. Levitt 1997, 47 THE PROBLEM In the final installment of his trilogy on punishment and control in modern societies, David Garland (2001) draws from Michel Foucault to argue that if critical theory is to be taken seriously, it will have to first engage with things as they are. In the sociological study of racism in Canada, things actually are is a contentious matter. Analyses concerned with racism have diverged into two discernible, albeit oversimplified, directions. On the one hand, many sociologists continue to offer studies that lay claim to the pervasiveness of or racism, invoking a standard set of concomitant assumptions pertaining to the totality of ethno-racial exclusions, restrictions, and material inequities. On the other hand, a growing body of evidence contests the extent to which systemic barriers restrict the full and equal institutional participation of all members of all ethno-racial minority groups in Canada. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".