La classification canadienne des occupations pendant l'entre-deux-guerres: réflexion sur un cas d'indépendance statistique

Abstract

AbstractDuring the first decades of this century, British and United States census officials constructed social classifications based upon the opposition between intellectual and manual occupations, the former being ordered according to their more or less professional character and the latter according to skills. Logically, one would have expected Canadian statisticians to follow the same path: but the “professional” model never took root in Canada. When census officials here developed a classification of occupations, they did not attempt to create a unilinear scheme of large homogeneous classes using occupation as privileged criterion; following the definitions of classical political economy, they rather set upon themselves to measure the extent of the division of labour. This article seeks to explain the peculiarity of the Canadian case by relating it to three conjoined factors: first, the highly centralized character of Canada's statistical system; second, the important role played by nascent Canadian political economy as the intellectual milieu of statisticians; finally, the fact that the Canadian economy was characterized at that time by the persistence of an important correlation between industry and occupation.