About ‘More Resources’

Here you can find external resources related to, or expanding on, the material presented in this chapter. Currently included are links to websites, links to online video clips, and suggested readings that you can find in your school or local library. If you would like access to the password-protected video library that accompanies the text, your professor can give you the username, password, and URL needed (and if your professor is not sure how to access the video library, he or she can contact an Oxford University Press sales representative for details).

Website links

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)

Canadian Culture

Canadian Heritage

Council of Canadians

The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (2008-2009)

Multimedia links

TVO ‘Your Voice’ host Cheryl Jackson sits with a panel of five kids aged 9-12 to discuss their experience school, including the impacts of parents, teachers, and friends:

http://tvoparents.tvo.org/video/165953/kids-school-and-life

NOVA documentary on Genie, a feral child:

Readings: Socialization and Culture

Albanese, P. (2009). Children in Canada Today. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

This book is part of a series of works on important sociological topics with specific emphases on Canadian issues. Albanese explores themes of childhood socialization, such as socializing agents and their impacts, changes in social policy, and the relation of socialization to social problems.

Denzin, N.K. (2009). Childhood Socialization (2nd ed.). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Using a symbolic interactionist approach, Denzin explores how the lives of North American children are shaped by interactions with others. He is particularly interested in how language is used to develop children’s self-concepts and relationships and how children develop as meaning-seeking individuals. Additionally, he demonstrates the importance of children’s games and play in teaching them culturally appropriate social behaviour and relationship skills.

Ferguson, W., & Ferguson, I. (2007). How to Be a Canadian. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd.

In this very humourous book, Ferguson explores what it means to be Canadian. The book contains a quiz to test the reader’s level of Canadian-ness and then goes on to explain, in jest, how and why Canadians do the many things we do. While the book is not an academic book and is strictly located in the humour genre, there are some very clear notions presented about what it means to be Canadian, for example writing a book that makes fun of ourselves for the enjoyment of ourselves and others.

McRobbie, A. (2009). The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

This book provides an intersection of feminism and culture, laying out an interdisciplinary theory of gender power used to analyze social and cultural phenomena in women’s lives today. McRobbie interrogates the assumption that women and girls today have achieved equality with men and can do and be anything they wish. Using a global and neoliberal backdrop for her discussion, she exposes the myths that underlie a discourse of empowerment, freedom, and choice. This book provides a sobering wake-up to the ways that popular culture continues to reinforce gender roles in ways that reproduce women’s continued subordination and oppression.

Wilson, B. (2006). Fight, Flight, or Chill: Subcultures, Youth, and Rave into the Twenty-First Century. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens University Press.

In an in-depth ethnography of youth rave culture in Canada, Wilson explores the complexities of a globalized youth culture and the myriad ways in which rave youth engage with a Western culture that is individualistic, highly technological, and consumerist. Wilson discusses how rave youth subvert these cultural themes in ways that politicize and empower them to resist the alienation of contemporary culture and create new forms of community.