The Promise and Threat of America in Australian Politics

From early days the United States has had a curious and very entertaining career in Australia as a kind of storehouse of ideas to be raided, a powerfully justifying precedent to be invoked or a dreadful example with which to shame the thoughtless. (Cited in Churchward 1979, p. xxv)     

“Britain's Spiritual Life: How Can It Be Deepened?”: Seebohm Rowntree,Russell Lavers,and the “Crisis of Belief”, ca. 1946–54

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the "national character."     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .     

COMPONENTS OF CHANGE IN THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELDERLY POPULATION IN ONTARIO, 1976–1986

Although the elderly population is increasing rapidly in all parts of Canada, the pattern of change is far from uniform. A number of properties of the aging process are strongly differentiated at the county and township levels, variations which have considerable significance for the design and implementation of social service and health care systems. Using data from the 1976, 1981, and 1986 Censuses for Ontario, components of change in the elderly population are obtained by cohort survival methods. The significance of rapid metropolitan growth of the elderly compared with the slow growth of the rural elderly is highlighted, while intra-county distributional shifts in the elderly population raise important questions for the next decade.
Quoique l'âge de la population augmente rapidement à travers le Canada, ce changement nes'opèrepas de façon uniforme. Certaines caractéristiques du processus de vieillissement sont vraiment differentes à l'échelle des comtés et des municipalités. Ces différences sont d'une grande importance lors de la création etde l'implantation des services-santé et des services sociaux. À l'aide des statistiques de recensement pour les années 1976, 1981, et 1986 pour l'Ontario, les facteurs de changement des populations de personnes âgées sont obtenus au moyen des paramètres de 'survie des groupes.' La signification du taux d'accroissement rapide des personnes â gés en milieu urbain comparé au taux d'accroissement plus lent de ces mêmes personnes en milieu rural est mise en évidence. Les variations de la distribution de cette population d'un comtéà I'autre soulèvent d'importantes interrogations pour la prochaine décade .