Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:24:36.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Problems and First Experiments of Social Research in Quebec

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Jean-Charles Falardeau
Jean-Charles Falardeau*
Affiliation:
Laval University
Get access

Extract

Let it be clear at the outset that the title of this paper should not be interpreted too broadly. The Quebec dealt with here is not the whole province but the region and the city of Quebec. So far as social research is concerned, no general account will be given of the numerous investigations and studies, more or less related to what is specifically meant by social research, which have been carried on by French-Canadian scholars during the last few decades. I refer particularly to the valuable contribution made in recent years by the economists and human geographers of L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales of Montreal to research work in Canada, notably in the highly interesting series of studies on Notre Milieu, published within the last three years under the directorship of M. Esdras Minville. The more immediate concern of this paper is to discuss the origin and the first experiments of one institution, which in my opinion represents something specifically new in the province, the Department of Social Research of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Laval University.

At the School of Social Sciences of Laval University in Quebec, which last December became officially an autonomous and full-fledged Faculty of the University, a Department of Social Research was founded in the autumn of 1943. Its staff consisted of a few full-time professors and its general aim was to carry on social-research projects and studies of significance to the French-Canadian milieu. The Department was favoured from conception to birth and during its infancy by the fruitful guidance of an expert and great friend, Dr. Everett C. Hughes of the University of Chicago, formerly of McGill University. Professor Hughes came to Quebec in September, 1943, to help shape the new institution as well as to outline the first general projects to be undertaken. During the past year, additional valuable assistance was given us by Dr. C. A. Dawson of McGill University, Dr. Carl C. Taylor of the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Léon Gérin, the venerable French-Canadian sociological pioneer, and a few other individuals.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 1944 , pp. 365 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1944

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Montreal, Editions de l'Action canadienne-française, 1938, 218 pp.

2 “L'Habitant de Saint-Justin, Contribution à la géographie sociale du Canada” (Mémoires de la Société royale du Canada, vol. IV, 1898, sec. I, pp. 139–216)Google Scholar; revised and completed twice in “La Famille canadienne-française sur la rive nord du lac Saint-Pierre” (Revue trimestrielle canadienne, vol. XX, 06, 1934, pp. 113–30)Google Scholar, then in “La Paroisse canadienne-française sur la rive nord du lac Saint-Pierre” (Revue trimestrielle canadienne, vol. XX, 09, 1934).Google Scholar

3 Mémoires de la Société royale du Canada, 1908, vol. II, sec. 1, pp. 25–65.Google Scholar

4 “La Famille canadienne-française, sa force, ses faiblesses” (Le Paysan de Saint-Irénée, hier et aujourd'hui) (Revue trimestrielle canadienne, vol. XVIII, 03, 1932, pp. 35–63).Google Scholar

5 Programme de recherches societies pour le Québec (Cahiers de l'Ecole des Sciences Sociales, Editions du “Cap Diamant,” Québec, vol. 11(4), 1943, 41 pp.).Google Scholar

6 Rural Life Studies: Monograph Series on the Culture of Contemporary Communities (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Washington, 1941–1943).Google Scholar

7 Miner, Horace, Saint-Denis: A French-Canadian Parish (Chicago, 1937).Google Scholar

8 Park, Robert E. et al., The City (Chicago, 1925).Google Scholar

9 Hughes, Everett C., French Canada in Transition (Chicago, 1943).Google Scholar