A Response to Hier and Walby's Article: Competing Analytical Paradigms in the Sociological Study of Racism in Canada‪.‬

Hier and Walby's 2006 article "Competing Analytical Paradigms," published in the last issue of this journal (vol. 38, no. 1), presents a provocative analysis in which two different paradigms used in the study of racism in Canada are identified. I feel compelled to respond to this piece, as I was the first author cited as an example of the paradigm of cultural recognition, which privileges the subjective experiences of human beings. On the whole, the article is interesting and brings attention to what is indeed an important issue in the study of racism in Canada. However, as some important points relevant to the analysis are missing, I feel it is an incomplete examination of this admittedly complex subject. In the first instance, I do not dispute the existence of the two paradigms identified by Hier and Walby, but I would draw some different conclusions based on the research that defines them. These paradigms, which follow the work of Fraser (2003), are the folk paradigms of cultural recognition that identify patterns of inequality as a function of culture and "social patterns of representation." This differs from the redistribution paradigm, which focusses on the unequal social redistribution of the resources of society. When applied to the study of racism, Hier and Walby suggest that the redistribution model "measures the influence of skin colour or other markers of ethno-racial categorization in relation to other social indicators on degrees of social integration ..." (90). Whereas ethnicity/race is only one of a variety of variables that influence integration, the cultural recognition model identifies them as the dominant, or primary, influence.