Contemporary Inequalities And Social Justice In Canada

"This edited collection discusses the changing contours of inequality and social justice in contemporary Canada. The book contains 12 essays written by leading scholars in the field and includes chapters on the welfare state, social activism, economic inequality, the labour market, racial justice, LGBT rights, and colonialism."--

Social Inequality in Canada is a collection of twenty-eight articles that cover all of the major aspects of social inequality. The text covers two broad components: objective or structural conditions of social inequality (power, poverty and wealth, occupations, and educational attainment, in particular) and ideologies that help support these differences. Readers who would prefer a more egalitarian society than currently exists in Canada will find reasons for both optimism and pessimism in the research presented here. The studies in this collection demonstrate that some types of inequality are generally becoming more marked over time, while others have considerably diminished, and still more that show little change in recent decades.

This engaging edited collection highlights key discussions around educational inequity and related structures and sub-structures. Featuring a diverse array of contributors, Social Justice Education in Canada balances important knowledge, learning practices, and possibilities emanating from and embedded in anti-racist and anti-oppressive education with instructive, grounding examples. The text confronts the idea of social justice as an abstract concept, discussing suggestions for rethinking educational systems and making changes that will benefit the learning lives of all students. With the aim to critically expand the emerging and increasingly active debates in this important area of educational and social development, this volume strives to collectively deepen our understanding and appreciation for critical social justice education. Organized into 14 chapters and featuring an epilogue written by Dr. Edward Shizha, the book critically deals with contemporary topical issues in education, including readings on cultural, racial, religious, Indigenous, language, socio-economic, citizenship, disability/ableism, and immigrant/refugee status realities and their interwoven learning and teaching intersections. This text is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students of education across Canada. FEATURES: - Designed to spark discussions and debates, each chapter closes with discussion questions to encourage critical reflection - Contributors move beyond the theoretical with actionable, practical applications for critical social justice that can be utilized by educators and teacher educators - Intersecting topical diversity is at the forefront of this volume, which features contributors from different backgrounds and communities critically engaging with issues pertinent to social justice and equity in education

This collection of twenty-three carefully selected readings focuses on the ways in which inequality grows where issues of gender, race, and class collide. Written by Canadian experts in their respective fields, this text examines inequality in the family, education, health, justice, labour,and global spheres.

In Inequality in Canada Eric Sager considers one of the defining – but hardest to define – ideas of our era and traces its different meanings and contexts across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sager shows how the idea of inequality arose in the long evolution in Britain and the United States from classical economics to the emerging welfare economics of the twentieth century. Within this transatlantic frame, inequality took a distinct form in Canada: different iterations of the idea appear in Protestant critiques of wealth, labour movements, farmer-progressive politics, the social gospel, social Catholicism in Quebec, English-Canadian political economy, and political and intellectual justifications of the social security state. A tradition of idealist thought persisted in the twentieth century, sustaining the idea of inequality despite deep silences among Canadian economists. Sager argues that inequality goes beyond the distribution of income and wealth: it is the idea that there are wide gaps between rich and poor, that the gaps are both an economic problem and a social injustice, and that when inequality appears, it is as a problem that can be either eliminated or reduced. It is precisely because inequality appears in different contexts, and because it changes, Sager reasons, that we can begin to perceive the contours and cleavages of inequality in our time. In our century, a political solution to inequality may rest on the recovery of an ethical ideal and egalitarian politics that have long preoccupied the history of Canadian thought.

Social Inequality in Canada brings a comparative perspective to the question of the uniqueness of Canadian society. Do Canadians believe they can succeed on the basis of their own abilities? And how do they compare with Americans, Germans, Italians, Australians and Russians? There is much debate as to how Canadians differ from or resemble citizens of other countries, particularly the United States.

Is Canada becoming a more polarized society? Or is it a kind-hearted nation that takes care of its disadvantaged? This volume closely examines these differing views through a careful analysis of the causes, trends, and dimensions of inequality to provide an overall assessment of the state of inequality in Canada. Contributors include economists, sociologists, philosophers, and political scientists, and the discussion ranges from frameworks for thinking about inequality, to original analyses using Canadian data, to assessments of significant policy issues, methodologies, and research directions. What emerges is the most detailed picture of inequality in Canada to date and, disturbingly, one that shows signs of us becoming a less just society. An invaluable source of information for policy makers, researchers, and students from a broad variety of disciplines, Dimensions of Inequality in Canada will also appeal to readers interested or involved in public debates over inequality.

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has had a major impact on social life and, in turn, research in the social sciences. Emerging from the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state, neoliberalism describes a social transformation that has impacted relationships between citizens and the state, consumers and the market, and individuals and groups. Neoliberal Contentions offers original essays that explore neoliberalism in its various guises. It includes chapters on economic policy and restructuring, resource extraction, multiculturalism and equality, migration and citizenship, health reform, housing policy, and 2SLGBTQ communities. Drawing on the work of influential Canadian political economist Janine Brodie, the contributors use Brodie’s scholarship as a springboard for their own distinct analyses of pressing political and social issues. Acknowledging neoliberalism’s crises, failures, and contradictions, this collection contends with neoliberalism by "diagnosing the present," situating the phenomenon within a broader historical and political-economic context and observing instances in which neoliberal rationality is reinforced as well as resisted.