Power and Resistance: Critical Thinking About Canadian Social Issues

Franзois Boudreau is a professor of sociology at Laurentian University
in Sudbury.

Power and Resistance could be used to introduce first-year university
students to critical thinking and important social problems. The quality
of the individual articles, however, ranges widely. In one of the
collection’s strongest papers, Jane Ursel shows how the interests of
women and the state can sometimes coincide (as in the fight against
family violence), as well as how dogmatic thinking can delay social
change. There are also perceptive articles on the construction of sexual
problems (Kinsman) and Native people (Waldram). The less successful
articles tend to be mired in secondary preoccupations, statistics, or
language that is overly technical. An article on mass-mediated culture
inaccurately equates modernity with capitalism.

Finally, the book contains many typographical errors, and the
bibliography, although very inclusive, would have been more useful had
it been organized by theme instead of alphabetically.