Abstracts from recent papers::

Information and Communication Technologies: Bugs in the Generational Ointment?

2001 BUGS: International Sociological Association Conference

The uses and impacts of information and communications technologies (ICTs), are not smooth, linear or fairy-tale like in dusting society with benefits. In development, adoption, uses and impacts, technologies shape, and are shaped by, social relations and social structures. Generational relations and structures are part of the socio-cultural processes by which ICTs become products, symbols, social glue, and social schism. A generational system of relations shapes how technologies shape us, our identities and social structures. Generational relations organize, manage, regulate, and modernize social structure in relation to technologies. But
technologies have their own generational properties: life courses, links to specific age roups/cohorts, and clear cycles that connect or disconnect technologies to belief systems. Generation, in relation to ICTs, typically refers to the life courses of technologies, the development of new generations of products. In everyday use, images of the young male techie
tends to be both gendered and generational. The intricate relation of technologies to generation has yet to be explored sociologically. In this paper, ICTs and generations are unpacked. Bugs are found in the generational ointment of ICTs that are explored in layers:

  • ICTs may reconcile the impossible, contradictions of generation, and of life course;

  • intergenerational transfers from older to younger of credentials and skills may create
    demand for ICT use;


  • ICTs may promote social cohesion among generations;

  • ICTs may ease the transition from a labour/capital to a knowledge-based society;

  • punctuated succession of technologies may lead to uneven relations of generations to technologies, to discontinuous impacts on generations.

Generational Consciousness Of and For Women

Paper prepared for Workshop on Generational Consciousness and Politics, University of
Cambridge, 2000

Relying and building on an analytical framework of gendered generation, the question is posed
of whether there is a greater or lesser interconnected consciousness among generations of
women. Generational consciousness for women may be both thicker and more brittle than it is
for men. Both patriarchy and feminism are examined as the schism and the cement of women's
generational consciousness. As ideals and opportunities for women transform, often as a consequence of women's political movements as well as transforming global situations,
women create future generations of women by self-sacrifice, and yet, share less life experience. Patriarchy and social change act as both wedge and driver among generations of
women.

Women as kin-keepers and as collectors of meanings about generation, even the shared bodily
experience of birthing new generations, are situated and situate themselves in the generational
differently than men. This is most vividly apparent in times of dramatic social change. Traditions
harken to give meaning narratives to lives isolated witho ut generational connections, such as in the early and continuing settlement of Canada by immigrants or refugees, in the reconstruction of the ideals of womanhood at the moments of modernity and of post-modernity,and at junctures where social reforms are focussed on women and families. And at the same time, reinvention of generation, and emergent generational consciousness is occurring in response to the new social challenges.


Born at the Right Time? Gendered Generations and Webs of Entitlement and Responsibility

Revised version of a paper presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Association,
1999

Analyses of social change and challenge in sociologies for women often start with some attention to generation. Yet, generation has been an underconceptualized sociological construct as a structural dimension of stratification, particularly gender stratification, or as a lens through which we see social change. The concept of gendered generation, the ways in which women are positioned and position themselves in political and social struggles and everyday lives in family and work by age and gender together, has been largely untheorized and underexplored.

The focus in this paper is on gendered intergenerational relations which lie at the heart of extensions in life expectancy and rapid social, economic, political and technological changes and permits a new perspective on life course changes, on women's movements, on generational interrelations among women, and on the construction of socially situated entities over time. What is known about gendered intergenerational relations, from data and research, is suprisingly little. Generation and gender have each emerged as social categories and identity signifiers, which shape public debate as well as social cohesion and public policy. This paper, part of a larger project on intergenerational interconnections, brings together existing data and research on gendered intergenerational relations, develops a conceptual framework for analyzing gendered generations, and suggests questions, including new avenues of research, that remain to be asked.


Women's Changing Relations to the State and Citizenship: The Case of Globalizing Western Democracies

A Sociological Census of Democratisation in South Africa, 1999.

The erosion or demise of the welfare state in many western democracies has impacted individual and collective rights of citizenship of women by the loss of investment in distributive and redistributive justice by states, as well as by the diminishment of state funding for women's social action groups. But more important has been women's radically shifting relations to states as the market relations of international capital come to dominate. Within what appears to be homogenization of social relations world-wide with the ascendance of transnational hegemony, instructive differences, emanating from historically distinct relations of women with states, are apparent among Western democracies, differences which have implications for women and citizenship in principle, and the potentialities for women's citizenship rights and opportunities.

Beginning with reflections on democratization, its contradictions and dimensions of the 1990s transformation in Western democracies , particularly its implications for women and citizenship, the main focus of the paper is an examination of women's changing relations to the state. Two previously under-conceptualized vectors of concern frame this analysis: caring (caregiving and care receiving) and intergenerational interlinkages. Specifically, these are considered with respect to the fragility of the organization of care in globalizing democracies, the fundamental transformation in the infrastructure of care, and changes in economic relations in families and of the relations of families and women to the state. The new normativities of imposed responsibilities of citizenship on women are explored.


Reframing Ourselves Through Canadian Research on Families, Aging and Social Policy

The 1996 Bayne Galloway Research Lecture

2 May 1996
Toronto, Ontario

Data and research are mirrors by which we assess ourselves, our policies and our collective identities as Canadians, and yet the means by which research is brought into policy are often hidden, not well understood, or taken for granted. In the 1996 Bayne Galloway Research Lecture, some glimpses of the linkages, interlinkages, and misses between research and policy are shared, glimpses not only from the standpoint of an active researcher in aging and families, but also from the standpoint of a frequent policy advisor, and a data/statistics advisor.


Serial Employment and Skinny Government: Reforming Caring and Sharing Among Generations

A revised version of a paper invited for the Symposium, "Re-Writing Social Policy in an Aging
Canada," Canadian Association of Gerontology, Vancouver, B.C., 27 October 1995.

The challenge of this paper is to reexamine the demographics which underlie the re-write of social policy in an aging Canada, as related to gender, family and generation. Following a brief consideration of Canada's changes and challenges in comparison to those in the United States and selected European countries, the analytical construct, "life cycles of dependencies and responsibilities" is introduced and utilized to examine shifting bases of security among generations (with a focus on six cohorts), and in particular, the implications of possible changes to social policy for the elderly on women, the poor and other disadvantaged elders.


Policy and Data Implications of Current Research/Knowledge on Intergenerational Transfers in Canada

Paper prepared for the panel, "Directions for Policy," Statistics Canada Conference on
Intergenerational Equity in Canada, 20-21 February 1997, Ottawa.

Broadening analyses and partially testing a framework developed in a previous paper by the author, "Intergenerational Transfers, Social Solidarity, and Social Policy: Unanswered Questions and Policy Challenges," forthcoming in Canadian Public Policy/Canadian Journal on Aging (1997), this paper asks the following: 1) Does existing knowledge about intergenerational transfers, both public and private, provide the basis on which effective policy choices can be made? What is missing? What is needed? 2) With an aging society, rapidly shifting labour markets, and shrinking social transfers in Canada as the millennium approaches, is a new generational compact emerging? 3) What are the roles of differing models of intergenerational transfers, indeed of the demographic concept of generation itself, in defining the field of policy options for Canada in the late 1990s?


Did They or Didn't They? Intergenerational Supports in Families Past: A Case Study of Brigus, Newfoundland, 1920-1945

Revised version of a paper prepared for presentation at the International History of the Family
Conference, 15-17 May 1997, Carleton University, Ottawa.

Susan A. McDaniel
and
Robert Lewis

Intergenerational supports are at the heart of social solidarity and social continuity, yet little is known about how they worked in the past and how they changed over time and in different socio-economic contexts. Intergenerational supports are inextricably tied to the economic bases of society, to impositional claims made by growing states, and to the private-public divide and the ideologies underlying it, and to gender and marital definitions and life course strategies. The nature of intergenerational supports has been conceptualized by a series of polarities including traditional/modern, rural/urban, private/public, and familial/collective. In this paper, a conceptual framework develops and interrogates these polarities, and provides the template for analyzing intergenerational supports. Its utility as an historiographic device is tested with the case study of Brigus, Newfoundland, 1920-45, relying on the nominal censuses of Newfoundland, on historical accounts and on interviews with elders. The presumptions of pre Confederation Newfoundland as a traditional, rural society in which intergenerational support was familial and private are challenged.


Canada Reconstructing: The Centrality of Aging, Health and Healthy Aging to the New Social Policy

October 1996

Canada is reconstructing fundamentally as the millennium approaches. Constitutional challenges and possibilities of separation may be less important ultimately to Canadians than the profound recent shifts in the security of Canadians, coupled with the increased unwillingness or incapacity of governments to transfer resources and redistribute wealth. Central to the social reconstructing of Canada are: the demographics, including aging population and changing family size and composition, which have been central to the new social policy, either as a perceived driving force, or as a fear; and the shifting bases of health and health care, from illness-centred to social-centred, from public to private care, including both family care and paid care.

The demographics and health care as a "big ticket" public expense as governments seek to downsize and reduce costs converge in attention to healthy aging.

Drawing on the speaker's research over many years on these topics (for example, Canada's Aging Population, 1986; "Demographic Aging as Paradigm..." Canadian Public Policy, 1987; "Social Policy for an Aging Canada..." (with Gee), Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 1993; Towards Healthy Families, Paper #19, National Forum on Health, 1996), the talk will highlight new research being examined in a forthcoming book, Canada Reconstructing: Shifting Security at the Millennium (HarperCollins), and in several forthcoming articles..

Paper prepared for delivery as a keynote address, Research into Healthy Aging: Challenges in Changing Times, 7-8 November 1996, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.


Intergenerational Transfers, Social Solidarity, and Social Policy: Unanswered Questions and
Policy Challenges

Revised version of a paper invited for the plenary session, Intergenerational Transfers and
Social Tensions, National Conference of the Institute of Public Administration Canada (IPAC),
25-28 August 1996, Victoria, B.C.

Intergenerational Transfers, Social Solidarity and Social Policy: Conceptual and Measurement
Challenges

Intergenerational transfers are the essence of societal continuity, and yet not at all well conceptualized or analyzed. Intergenerational transfers are also at the core of the welfare state and of welfare state restructuring. This paper seeks to do three things: 1) to situate intergenerational transfers in socio-historical and international comparative contexts and in the context of what is known; 2) to identify, typologically, dimensions of the complex nature of intergenerational transfers; and 3) to encourage the collection of more complete and integrated data on intergenerational transfers, which could provide the basis for more informed policy decisions as well as needed analyses.


Serial Employment and Skinny Government: Reforming Caring and Sharing in Canada at the Millennium

Revised version of a paper invited for the Federation of Canadian Demographers Symposium,
"Towards the XXI Century: Emerging Socio-Demographic Trends and Issues in Canada,"
23-25 October, Ottawa


Caring and Sharing: Women, Demographic Change and Shifting State Policies

Paper invited for the Trinational Colloquium, Women in North America at the End of the Century, 14-17 October, Mexico City.
November 1996


Sexual Harassment in Academia: A Hazard to Women's Health

Erica van Roosmalen
Department of Sociology
& Social Anthropology
Dalhousie University
Susan A. McDaniel
Department of Sociology
University of Alberta

December 1996

Please direct correspondence to: Dr. Erica van Roosmalen, Department of Sociology & Social
Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3J5


Reflections on Social Policy & Demography

Remarks invited for the Social Policy Forum Federation of Canadian Demographers'
Symposium: Towards the XXIst Century, Socio-Demographic Trends and Issues. 23-25 October
1995, Ottawa.

Demographic & Socio-Cultural Changes in Canada: Women's Health into the 21st Century


Women's Health Forum, 8-10 August 1996, Ottawa
  • Life expectancy gains
  • Socio-economic fundamentals
  • Public cuts: direct and unexpected effects
  • Demographics of Politics in Canada
  • Foreign-born Canadians
  • Canada's leadership in health data

(Speaking Notes)

It is pleasure to be here at this important and timely bi-national forum on women's health. It is timely, of course, because the time is well beyond to think that men's health issues define women's health, as some medical research seems to have done until very recently. It is also both timely and important because it is finally being widely acknowledged that women's health is crucial to the socio-economic well-being of populations throughout the world, as well as central to the socio-economic changes that are being experienced as the millennium approaches in both Canada and the United States. This was acknowledged at the Beijing Women's Conference (See Johnson & Turnbull, 1995 among others), as well as in various documents produced for the International Year of the Family (See McDaniel (1995), for example), in multiple other international fora and reports (United Nations, 1995, for example), and recently in Canada with the announcement of the five new Centres of Excellence in women's Health Research.


Towards Healthy Families: Policy Challenges

Topic #19, National Forum on Health

March 1996. Paper commissioned by the National Forum of Health.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements/ Note.....1
Executive Summary.....2

Healthy Families and Health Determinants:
Key Conclusions from the Research Literature.....5
Definitional Conundrums and Old Reruns.....6
The Triple Helix Framework for Healthy Families.....11
Genetic Inheritance/Predispositions and Family.....11
Life Chances: Surviving and Thriving.....13
Social Resources and Healthy Families.....16
Social Support: The BIG Effect.....20
Access to Health Through Family.....23
Chains, Effects and Amplification.....24

Policies, Programs, Projects
Lessons on What Works and What Doesn't.....29
Summary of "Success Stories".....32
Lessons from History.....37
Families and Children "at Promise".....38
Family Matters and the Family Matters Program.....42
Brighter Futures and Running in Place.....46
Miracle at Duke and Water.....51
Beyond Health Promotion: Is Family/Community Action Enough?.....54

Policy Implications/Principles to Guide Government Action.....56
Policy Implications.....57
Principles to Guide Government Action.....60
Essential Challenges to Policy in Moving Toward Healthy Families.....62
Specific Targets that Require Policy Action......63

References......75