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- Title
Canada and the United States--A Comparative View.
- Authors
Lipset, Seymour Martin
- Abstract
The 23 independent states plus the assorted colonies and autonomous commonwealths of North and South America provide a magnificent laboratory for comparative analysis, of which relatively few social scientists have taken advantage. The obvious advantage for such an analysis of common cultural and linguistic origin among twenty of these societies, the Latin-American republics and Puerto Rico, has not encouraged many systematic efforts to account for their differences. The Caribbean nations offer the diversity of being former colonies of six foreign powers and the similarity of having preponderantly Negro populations of slave descent, providing an interesting and as yet relatively untapped arena for comparative research. English-speaking Canada and the U.S. have long presented unused opportunities to analyses the variations in institutional arrangements in highly similar cultural contexts. As an illustration of the value of such comparative analysis within the Americas, the author deals briefly with the two northernmost nations. There is little question that a comprehensive analysis of institutional patterns and groups in the U.S. and Canada would be enormously fruitful for sociologists. These two nations share a British legacy, frontier areas, immigrants of comparable origin from the same historic epoch, and comparable ecological conditions. Both have attained a high level of economic development and stable democratic political institutions.
- Subjects
CANADA; UNITED States; COLONIES; COMPARATIVE studies; AFRICAN Americans; COMPARATIVE sociology
- Publication
Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology, 1964, Vol 1, Issue 4, p173
- ISSN
0008-4948
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1755-618x.1964.tb00371.x