The Modest Triumph of the Cultural Mosaic

[bibliogramma]

Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism, Michael Adams

In the interests of full disclosure, I must begin my comments with the observation that this book was written by my boss. It's his fifth book, and like his previous ones, it is based on research that the company he founded, Environics Research Group, has conducted into social values going back decades in Canada and the U.S. Each year in Canada, and every four years in the U.S, we poll a representative sample of peple to determine their values about all sorts of social issues. We have reseach partners in other countries who do the same kind of reseach in other countries around the world, and we all share this informaition, building up a database of global trends in social values and attitudes.

I'm not going to talk about the research in detail, because it is proprietary, but we track how much people agree or disagree with statements like "The father should be the master in the home" - one of the questions that Adams likes to use in his public speaking engagements and see how the percentages who agree or disagree change over time.

This particular book analyses some of that research, and some other research we have done over the years tracking issues associated with immigration, multi-culturalism, and a major study done earlier this year with two samples - one of Canadians in general and one of Canadian Muslims.

I think I'll leave the summary of this research up to the author himself. Here's an excerpt from the book that was printed earlier this fall in The Toronto Star, and the short version is that the research shows that, despite all the headlines about immigrant backlash and accommodation crises, we're not doing all that badly at this learning to live with each other despire our differences thing, and the odds are that we'll continue to manage to muddle along in our modest Canadian way. And that we will find every way possible to politely brag about it.

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Addendum

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Oh, and just to clarify, my comment about politely bragging was intended to be quietly sarcastic.

We as a country/people spend far too much time trying not too look as though we're bragging about not being quite as bad as the Americans are at some things, rather than picking up our bootstraps and trying to do as well as the Europeans or other countries are. And just because I think in this case we are managing to do some things with respect to multi-culturalism and immigration better than some other countries, I certainly don't think we're doing anywhere near as well as we could and should.