Review of The Community in Canada: Rural and Urban Edited by Satadal Dasgupta

摘要

This book surveys studies of rural, small town, and urban community in Canada. The first third of the book, written by Dasgupta, provides definitions and perspectives of community. The remainder of the book contains a selection of studies of communities in Canada, mostly sociological and mostly from the 1960s and 1970s. Dasgupta begins with Hillery's 1955 classification of ninety-four definitions of community, noting that all but three of these definitions involve "a group of people in 'social interaction.’” Theories and perspectives on community are organized into five categories: ecological, ethnographic, social system, social or interactional, and conflict approaches. The author examines theoretical approaches developed by social scientists, but more Canadian approaches and materials could have been introduced. For example, in the discussion of settlement patterns, Dasgupta makes no mention of the Canadian Frontiers of Settlement studies of Carl Dawson and associates in the 1930s.