The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Vol. XV1-2, 1986 La revue canadienne d'enseignement supérieur, Vol. XVI-2, 1986 Book Reviews / Comptes Rendus Higher Education Group, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education The Professoriate-Occupation in Crisis, Toronto Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1985, 390 pp. What new crisis is threatening academia and what must we do to fight this new threat? Unfortunately, in The Professoriate-Occupation in Crisis, a collection of conference papers, we never really find out. We can learn a great deal about some of the problems faced by Canadian academics in areas as diverse as salaries and teaching evaluation but somehow the sense of crisis is lacking. Indeed, in the keynote address, John Daniel points out that professors are doing very well compared with such people as hardrock miners. Later papers give the impression of discussing a diverse group of irritations for the professoriate rather than a crisis. The book fails to present a clear view of where the professoriate is heading. We are presented with analyses of salaries, unionization, Canadianization, early retirement, age structures and other issues of interest to professors concerned about their career prospects but of little interest to a wider audience. Conspicuous by their absence are discussions of the academic consequences of an aging professoriate and a lost generation of scholars. It is a pity that there was not more discussion of the supply and demand for professors. Some of the papers are fascinating. Howard Bowen's summary of a major research project on the American professoriate suggests that the major problem facing universities in the future will be their inability to compete with private employers for the services of the best young scholars. This view contrasts strongly with the legend of Ph.D.s driving taxis. If Bowen is right, most Canadian universities have been basing their faculty planning on incorrect premises. If faculty become a scarce resource many of the issues discussed in other papers will have to be dealt with in a different manner. The conference on which the book is based was intended to provide an opportunity for dialogue between higher education researchers, administrators, and the professoriate itself. Senior administrators are underrepresented while over half of the papers are by professors or graduate students in education, most of whom are associated with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. This imbalance probably does not matter at a conference but it is the major weakness of this work as a book. It is hard to see what market it will serve. The papers are too brief and too research oriented to provide a practitioners guide to problem solving in such areas as manpower flexibility. For education researchers this collection of 23 papers is rather diverse. Although the papers are grouped into three types, foundation studies, process studies and policy studies, the range of topics within 104 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus each group is too great to permit this collection to serve as adequate debate on issues such as women in the professoriate. The need to draw papers from scholars close to Toronto rules out discussion of experience outside Canada which might serve as a guide or a warning for Canadians, for example, discussions on early retirement schemes in other jurisdictions. The individual papers in this work are scholarly and up to date but the work remains a collection of papers without a clear theme. Unfortunately, tables and illustrations are grouped at the end of individual papers rather than integrated with the text. Some illustrations, particularly those in Trish McAdie's paper on salary trends, have been reduced so much that they are almost unreadable. Overall this is a useful sourcebook on current research on the professoriate but it is unlikely to do much to convince the public that the professoriate faces a crisis. Anthony Blackbourn Nippising University College Kenneth R. Jones, Sociology of Adult Education Publishing Company, 1984, pp. ix + 159. Aldershot, England: Gower The stated purpose of this book is "to apply the 'new sociology' to adult education, particularly in the setting of development." While a laudable goal, the final product fails to provide an adequate account of the "new sociology", offers precious little in the way of an analysis of adult education, and contains virtually no sustained discussion of development issues. As for a combination of these three foci in a thoughtful, articulate manner, the book provides few passages of any systematic insight. Jones begins by correctly noting that very little has been written, from a sociological perspective, on the topic of adult education. In particular, he wants to rectify this by using new directions in the sociology of education field to examine recent trends in the area of adult education. Even more specifically he hopes to produce "a less stultified perspective" on "adult education in the Third World". Problems begin immediately, in this book the "new sociology", which so enamours Jones, encompasses a bewildering array of people and ideas. The first three-quarters of the book is an attempt to outline these new directions. As best I understand his position, Jones maintains that functionalist forms of sociology have been replaced by "ethnomethodology, social actionism, and social imperativism" (p. 6). Ethnomethodology was a fad of the 1970s, and while it had an important impact in sociology, there are scarcely any staunch adherents remaining: Social actionism was apparently influenced by someone repeatedly called "Schultz", who I can only presume was really Alfred Schultz, but of little more am I certain. Social imperativism, like social actionism, are not standard fare in sociological discourse, and Jones fails to provide anything approaching even rudimentary definitions for these neologisms. Jones is also obviously unaware of the growing force of neo-functionalism in both Europe and North America (e.g.,