REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational State: Canada West, 1836-1871 by Phillip McCann / 269 Marta Danylewycz, Taking the Veil: An Alternative to Marriage, Motherhood, and Spinsterhood in Quebec, 1840-1920 by Chad Gaffield / 271 Bruce S. Elliott. Irish Migrants in the Canadas: A New Approach by J.I. Little / 272 Lynne Bowen, Tliree Dollar Dreams by William J. Burrill / 275 Conseil des travailleuses et travailleurs du Montréal métropolitain, Cent ans de solidarité. Histoire du CTM1886-1986 by André E. LeBlanc / 276 Claudette Lacelle, Urban Domestic Servants in 19th-century Canada/Les domestiques en milieu urbain Canadian au XIXe siècle by Bettina Bradbury / 278 William Eklund. Builders of Canada: History of the Finnish Organization in Canada, 1911-1971 by J. Donald Wilson / 280 Gilbert Van&sse, Histoire de la Fédération des travailleurs du papier et de la forêt (CSN). Tome 1 (1907-1958) by Camille Legendre / 282 Thomas P. Socknat, Witness Against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900-1945 by Robert Malcolmson / 286 Sandra Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life ofF.R. Scott by Michael Gauvreau /288 Norman Penner, Canadian Communism: The Stalin Years and Beyond by David Akers /290 Centre populaire de documentation de Montréal, Le choc du passée. Les années trente et les sans-travail Bibliograpliie sélective annotée by Jocelyn Saint-Pierre / 292 Cyril W. Strong, My Life as a Newfoundland Union Organizer: The Memoirs of Cyril W. Strong, 1912-1987 by Eric W. Sager / 296 Wallace Clement, The Struggle to Organise: Resistance in Canada's Fishery by Anthony Davis/297 Constance P. deRoche and John E. deRoche, eds., "Rock in a Stream:"Living with the Political Economy of Underdevelopment in Cape Breton by K.R. Bittermann /300 James Iain Gow, Histoire de l'administration publique québécois 1867-1970 by Paul Dauphinais / 302 Donald M. We]\s,Empty Promises: Quality of Working Life Programmes and the Labour Movement by Gary A. Lewis / 304 James W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work. Alienation and the Labour Process by Carl J. Cuneo/306 4 John Richards and Don Kerr, eds., Canada, what's left? by Laurie E Adkin/309 Larry Pratt, ed, Socialism and Democracy in Alberta: Essays in Honour of Grant Nodey by Barry Ferguson / 311 J. Paul Grayson, Corporate Strategy and Plant Closures: The S.K.F. Experience by Jim Silver/313 Arthur Francis,Aw Technology at Work by Guy Fréchet / 315 Angus McLaren and Arlene Tigar McLaren, The Bedroom and the State: The Changing Practices and Politics of Contraception and Abortion in Canada, 1880-1980 by Christine Overall/317 Gary Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire: Sexuality in Canada by Steven Maynard /319 Pat Armstrong, Labour Pains - Women's Work in Crisis by Céline Saint-Pierre / 321 Heather Jon Maroney and Meg Luxton, eds., Feminism and Political Economy: Women's Work, Women's Struggles by Ester Reiter / 324 Nancy Adamson, Linda Briskin and Margaret McV\w\,Feminist Organizing for Change: The Contemporary Women's Movement in Canada by Karen Dubinsky / 326 Patrick Joyce, éd., The Historical Meanings of Work by EJ. Hundert /328 Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 by James Pritchard /330 John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America 1769-1782 by Nicholes Rogers/332 Herbert G. Gutman and Donald H. Bells, eds., The New England Working Class and the New Labour History by Paul G. Faler / 333 Laurence Shore, Southern Capitalists: The Ideological Leadership of an Elite, 1832-1885 by Harold D. Woodman / 335 Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development Union, Party and State, 1875-1920 by Robert Wiebe / 337 Louise Carroll Wade, Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century by Peter G. Goheen / 339 Shelton Stromquist,/4 Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labour Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America by Paul Craven / 340 Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Period by Melvyn Dubofsky / 341 Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds by Anita Clair Fellman/343 Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals: the Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1960s by Paul Buhle / 345 Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left by Bryan D. Palmer / 348 Ellen Israel Rosen, Bitter Choices: Blue-Collar Women in and out of Work by Michael Goldfield/350 K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labour Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 by J.M. Neeson /353 Richard Price, Labour in British Society by Donna T. Andrew / 355 5 Angela John, éd., Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England 1800-1918 by Mariana Valverde / 356 David Howell,/! Lost Life: Three Studies in Socialism and Nationalism by James Naylor /358 Logje Barrow, Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebians 1850-1910 by Ramsay Cook / 361 Jerry White, The Worst Street in North London: Campbell Bunk, Islington, Between the Wars by Patricia E Malcolmson / 362 Marjorie Nicholson, The TUC Overseas: The Roots of Policy by Martin Petter / 363 W. Hamish Fraser, Conflict and Class: Scottish Workers 1700-1838 by T.C. Smout / 365 Donald Harman Akenson, Small Differences: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815-1922: An International Perspective by David W. Miller / 366 Gay L. Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village by Liana Vardi / 368 Catharina Lis, Social Change and the Labouring Poor: Antwerp 1770-1860 by Janet L. Polasky/370 Hans Speier, German White-Collar Workers and the Rise ofHider by Geoff Eley / 371 Donald Howard Bell, Sesto San Giovanni: Workers, Culture, and Politics in an Italian Town, 1880-1922 by Luisa Passerini / 374 Adrian Shubert, The Road to Revolution in Spain: The Coal Miners of Asturias 1860-1934 by Donald Reid/ 376 Robert Edelman, Proletarian Peasants: The Revolution of1905 in Russia's Southwest by Christine Johanson / 378 Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine by R.E. Johnson/379 Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in aie USSR, 1931-1941 by Moshe Lewin/381 Moshe Semyonov, and Noah Lewin-Epstein, Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water: Noncitizen Arabs in the Israeli Labor Market by R.T. Naylor / 384 Ronald P. Dore, Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in the Japanese Economy, 1970-80 by Solomon G. Levine / 385 Hill Gates, Chinese Working Class Lives: Getting By in Taiwan by C.G. Watson / 387 Otto Jacobi, Bob Jessop, HansKastendiendiek, and Marino Regjni, eds.,Economic Crisis, Trade Unions and the State by Warren Magnusson / 388 Colin Barker, éd., Revolutionary Rehearsals by James Petras / 390 REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Bruce Curtis, Building the Educational cial control thesis. He shows, in myriad State: Canada West, 1836-1871 (London, detail, the local opposition to different Ontario: Althouse Press 1988). aspects of the emerging centralised struc­ ture, an opposition that was sometimes BRUCE CURTIS HAS EMERGED, during the confused and backward-looking but 1980's, as one of the leading practitioners which modified the type of schooling in Canada of the "new" history of educa­ proposed and the conditions under which tion. In a series of exciting and provoca­ it was given. tive articles he has taken the discipline The book is divided into two parts; beyond the descriptive and narrative his­ the first and shorter section covers educa­ tories of schools and theorists and toward tional reform, mainly the Education Acts the complexities of the interaction of of the fourteen years between 1836 and education with the social and political 1850. Though Curtis has some perceptive development of nineteenth-century insights into the relationship between Canada. More recently, Curtis has con­ state building and educational reform, cerned himself with the role of education particularly his contention that "self- in the formation of the state. In this book, government as individual self-discipline, however, as the title indicates, he is inter­ and self-government as representative ested in the making of the "educational democracy were seen as both sides of the state," concentrating on a "class and same coin," and his analysis of the func­ gendered" understanding of the construc­ tion of "common Christianity" as a means tion of a system of state schooling, the of building a set of behavioural traits of a emergence of the techniques and prac­ moral-regulatory nature, his summaries tices intrinsic to mass education, and the of the numerous Education Acts of the management of the opposition which its period brings these chapters nearer to development provoked. Educational sys­ traditional administrative narrative then tems, Curtis emphasises, are forged in the he probably intended. fire of political struggle — between clas­ In the second section Curtis makes ses, between central bureaucracies and good use of his main source of material, local interests, and between social groups the collection of correspondence in the holding different conceptions of the na­ Educational Office for Canada West in ture and purposes of education. the Ontario Provincial Archives, to chart Though Curtis concentrates on the ef­ public reaction to almost every education­ forts of the ruling elite — personified al activity in the region during the middle largely by Egerton Ryerson — to con­ years of the nineteenth century. This sec­ struct social identities in the pupils which tion is divided into five chapters which would be favourable to existing and examine "pedagogical space," atten­ developing property relations and politi­ dance, teacher training, the curriculum, cal authority ("anchoring the conditions and punishment. Curtis is able to show of political governance in the selves of the that almost every innovation, whether in­ governed"), he avoids the trap of the so- troduced by central or local authority, was Table of Contents for Reviews is on pp.