The End of National Sociological Traditions? The Fates of Sociology in English Canada and French Quebec in a Globalized Field of Science

Abstract

Many have denounced the heralded coming of age of a universal sociology as corresponding largely to the hegemony of one scholarly tradition: that of Western Europe and the United States. Canada has been an important scene upon which this debate has unfolded. In this country, the lament that the internationalization of sociology has been, unwittingly, another name for its Americanization has a long history. The mounting challenge posed by globalization and the progressive evolution of social sciences toward a more unified and normalized (in the Kuhnian sense) scientific field have recently fuelled worries and alarms. Is Canadian sociology developing in relative isolation or, to the contrary, is it increasingly engaging on the international academic scene? Based on two sets of quantitative data, concerned respectively with doctoral education and citation practices, this article revisits the question of the internationalization of Canadian sociology by looking at three sectors which are usually identified as essential to the indigenization of disciplines: doctoral training of the professoriat (who conducts the research), objects of study (on what topics are scholars working), and theoretical approaches (how do scholars proceed in their research). By returning to the three basic questions of who, what, and how from a quantitative perspective, this article provides a general understanding of the internationalizing trends that are affecting the discipline.