95 Reviews - Recensions marxiste, au freudisme et à Févolutionisme. Ces trois grands courants de la pensée moderne répondent mieux à la quête de l'homme pour une certaine libération. Il va sans dire que Rocher retient du marxisme une philosophie de l'homme nouveau plutôt que la perspective davantage axée sur les classes sociales et la lutte des classes. Pour lui, l'humanisme marxiste, la psychanalyse et même l'évolutionisme ont tous mis l'accent sur la libération de l'humanité souffrante. Par rapport à ce diagnostic sévère pour l'église, Rocher ne croit pas que le phénomène d'incroyance soit profond. Au contraire, c'est le retard de l'église à s'adapter qui aurait conduit des gens à reporter leur croyance sur l'homme et l'histoire. Un sociologue qui se cherche Selon Guy Rocher, le sociologue ne saurait donc se distinguer du citoyen, de l'éducateur ou du croyant qu'il est. Historiquement au Québec, nous dira Rocher, les sciences sociales n'ont jamais été vraiment séparées d'une certaine philosophie morale. Cela tient beaucoup, selon lui, à notre tradition catholique. De la sociologie critique, il tirera trois leçons. Premièrement, le rapport entre la sociologie et les valeurs est relatif, puisque la sociologie est accusée tour à tour d'encourager la révolution ou de préserver l'ordre social. Deuxièmement, la sociologie critique aurait d'autant plus de valeur si elle était critique de ses propres à priori. Troisièmement, enfin, le rapport de la sociologie et des valeurs ne pourra pas vraiment être éclairci dans la mesure où, l'histoire se faisant, les valeurs et la science évoluent. Les lecteurs avertis des problèmes épistémologiques ne trouveront pas dans ce dernier chapitre des réponses à cette question qu'ils connaissent bien, celle du relativisme. Mais, pour Rocher, le sociologue n'est pas un scientifique comme les autres. Il est aussi un agent de changement social. Il se doit de participer à l'évolution de sa société. Au risque de confondre sa contribution morale et sa contribution scientifique. Jules Duchastel Université du Québec à Montréal Association of Commonwealth Universities, Commonwealth London, 1976, four volumes. 2467 pp. Universities Yearbook 1976, The first Commonwealth Universities Yearbook was issued in 1914 and covered fifty universities in the space of 600 small pages. This edition of the Yearbook covers some 240 universities in the space of something over 2400 large pages. The expansion of higher education in most Commonwealth countries, particularly over the past couple of decades, has indeed provided the Yearbook editors with something of an on-going logistic headache: that is, how to get more and more information on more and more universities between two hard covers without, at the same time, creating a tome which is t o o unwieldy to handle with convenience. Between 1958 and 1970, the solution to this problem was sought by producing successively larger page sizes in order, in the editors' 96 Reviews - Recensions words, to produce 'temporary slimnesses'. Finally, however, they have admitted defeat, and divided the Yearbook into four soft-cover volumes sold together as a package. The result is not as handsome as the traditional hard-cover version, but is is certainly much more serviceable. Other than this change in format, the Yearbook contains the familiar information on all Commonwealth universities and their faculties updated to 1975. It contains also eight national introductions to the post-secondary sectors of those Commonwealth countries which boast more than three or four universities, each introduction being written by a 'leading academic personality' in the nation concerned (Professor Robin Harris is the Canadian LAP), as well as an appendix containing seven essays devoted to descriptions of national patterns of secondary education and university admissions. At least, the term 'essay' is used by the Yearbook editors to describe these latter contributions, although they are, in actuality, mainly terse statements on university admissions processes and practices with little additional critical or analytical input. The Yearbook has always been a nice volume to browse through in moments of idleness or ennui. Thus, this reviewer has often used its index of faculty names and affiliations in order to determine the scholastic fates of friends with whom he was at graduate school in England and Australia. Again, in the midst of a harsh Canadian winter, the temptation to ascertain whether or not one's academic discipline is being taught at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji is one which the Yearbook can readily satisfy. However, such casual usages of the Yearbook cast no shadows over its undoubted merit as a vehicle which permits easy access to great quantities of otherwise relatively inaccessible factual information on the universities of the Commonwealth. Furthermore, although the national introductions are not all equally informative or perceptive, they do act as generally useful guides to fairly recent major academic developments (that is, developments up to 1975) in the more populous Commonwealth countries. Uncommon though it would undoubtedly be for anyone but a reviewer to read through all the national introductions at a couple of sittings, the effort which such a task entails is not without its rewards. In particular, it reveals certain similarities of issues and problems which are confronting the universities of many Commonwealth countries, most particularly in the areas of financing and government control. Thus, the overwhelming financial dependence of the universities of almost all Commonwealth countries on their respective governments is manifestly clear. So too, especially in the more economically advanced nations, is the retreat from the major expansion of the post-secondary sector during the 1960's to the 'slow growth' or 'no growth' period of tight financial budgets in the early and mid-1970's. Thus, to take a few examples, — in Britain, the national reviewer devotes the first two paragraphs of his introduction to a description of the downward revisions of previous optimistic targets for future full-time enrolments in higher education, and to the expected difficulties which would follow from the halving of university building funds between 1975-76 and 1976-77. In New Zealand, the national reviewer notes that university affairs in that country in 1975 were 'being debated with the prospect of relatively static income from which to meet costs over which the universities have little control'. Similarly, the Australian reviewer could observe that, at the time of writing, the pressures of inflation and the need for reductions in the rate of growth of public spending made it far from clear that the Australian government would be 97 Reviews - Recensions willing to provide the sums requested for capital and recurrent expenditures through 1976-78 by the Australian Universities Commission. Finally, for Canada, Professor Harris notes that the most pressing problems facing the Canadian universities has shifted between 1960 and the mid-1970's f r o m those which were 'without an exception the consequence of inadequate financial support' to the pressing issue of institutional autonomy. Nonetheless, as many of the reviewers are quick to recognise, the issue of institutional autonomy and the desire of public authorities to 'rationalise' public spending on higher education are closely intertwined. If such are some of the similar kinds of issues facing universities in many Commonwealth countries, then some of the major differences in the national reviewers' foci of concern are no less evident. For example, the decision of the Australian federal government, taken in 1974, to assume full responsibility for the recurrent and capital costs of higher education (a decision so far removed from trends in the demarcation of governmental financial responsibilities for higher education in this country as to make it appear almost other-wordly) is a major concern of the Australian reviewer. Again, whilst universities in many Commonwealth countries have faced a variety of internal problems, the comments of the reviewer from India on the sad state of many colleges in his country — ill-equipped institutions, subjected to acts of extreme violence and destruction by protesting students, and displaying a 'great deal of poor quality teaching by teachers who have no calling to teach and no inclination for scholarship' — has almost a nightmarish quality. However, in expressing the hope that Mrs. Gandhi's state of emergency, declared in 1975, would lead to a durable improvement in student discipline, the Indian reviewer reveals oen of the unavoidable limitations of an essentially topical reference work which has lost some of its topicality as a result of the lapse of a couple of years between the writing of the national introductions and the sunmission of the finished product for review. Thus, we are now aware of the disastrous political consequences for Mrs. Gandhi of her declared state of emergency. Similarly, recent severe financial cutbacks in public support for higher education in Australia have made reality of the forebodings of the Australian reviewer which were referred to in the previous paragraph. If the British Commonwealth should ever go into receivership, then the same fate would presumably befall the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook. However, to this point in time, the problem imposed by national defections from the Commonwealth has been dealt with by the Yearbook editors in a true spirit of British compromise — witness the existence of a substantial appendix containing full information on universities situated in the Irish Republic and South Africa in their capacities as 'former member universities of the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth' (though it is interesting to note here that Britain's refusal to recognise Southern Rhodesia's current breakway status is reflected by the continuing membership of the University of Rhodesia in the ACU). It is a pity though, that not all such compromises between tradition and changing times to be found in the Yearbook are equally felicitious. Indeed, one of the less happy examples is to be found in the introductory guide wherein the reader is informed that the names of married women faculty members listed in the Yearbook are usually preceded by the word 'Mrs.', but that, on the other hand, the word 'Miss' is omitted except where the woman's first name is likely to be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers. Well, now all Yearbook readers will still know which women professors are married, b u t , not which are 98 Reviews - Recensions single, divorced, widowed or of uncertain status. Somehow, this does not seem to me to be quite the preferred state of affairs that the proponents of the word 'Ms.' have had in mind. Robert M.Pike Queen's University Gabriel Gagnon et Luc Martin, Québec 1960-80, La crise du développement, Hurtubise HMH, Montréal, 1973. Montréal, Il n'est jamais simple de recenser un recueil de textes et ce pour plusieurs raisons. D'une part, les textes choisis sont "d'âge social" différent, en ce sens que généralement vieillis au moment où des professeurs décident de les publier en recueil, ils ne le sont cependant pas tous de façon égale. C'est le cas par exemple ici de t o u t ce qui touche le Bureau d'Aménagement de l'est du Québec, le manifeste de la Revue Cité Libre "pour une politique fonctionnelle", de même que l'animation sociale, qui m'apparaissent beaucoup plus vieillis que ce qui concerne l'autogestion, la croissance économique du Québec, les conseils économiques régionaux et les manifestes des centrales syndicales et patronales québécoises. Du moins étaitce ainsi au moment où les auteurs de ce recueil ont lancé leur bouquin en début d'année 1974. Ce qui n'est cependant peut-être plus le cas aujourd'hui au lendemain du 15 novembre 1976 pour certains d'entre eux. Je veux dire que les interrogations soulevées à l'occasion et à cause de la période dite de la Révolution tranquille du Québec (1962-1965) ont de bonnes chances de se renouveler aujourd'hui, une large partie des équipes politiques de ce temps étant revenues en place, quoique généralement dans des fonctions techniquement différentes. Mais ne reculons pas trop vers l'avant; si j'écris cette recension au printemps 1977, les auteurs du recueil ont pour leur part produit leur oeuvre à l'automne 1973 et il ne serait guère adéquat de les relire aujourd'hui à la lumière de ce qu'ils n'osaient sûrement pas prédire il y a trois ans à peine. Je me sers de cette borne alors encore inconnue par eux, uniquement dans le but de souligner en quoi des textes, même colligés avec soin en recueil, sont toujours datés et situés socialement et prennent plus ou moins d'ampleur, non seulement par leur contenu propre, mais souvent par le contexte dans lequel et pour lequel ils sont produits. C'est la première difficulté de cette recension. La seconde tient dans le fait que l'on peut toujours reprocher à des auteurs de recueil d'avoir introduit ou de n'avoir pas introduit tel texte en particulier. C'est le cas par exemple ici des publications critiques de la CEQ qui ont fait suite à la présentation de son "Premier plan" sur l'action éducative politique et qui m'apparaissent beaucoup plus pertinentes comme analyse de classe du système scolaire québécois, que celle alors disponible aux auteurs du recueil. En serrant de près cette seconde remarque, on pourrait sans doute en dire autant de textes extraits de la Revue Parti-Pris, du texte de Claude Lemelin sur la décennie économique 70, des deux textes portant sur le mouvement coopératif, de même que celui du C.A.P. Saint-Jacques concernant l'organisation politique des travailleurs. Dans chacun des cas, il me semble que l'on pourrait y substituer des analyses plus récentes ou venant d'autres organismes, qui traitent de la même question et