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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Nancy Christie. Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada. Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 2000. Pp. xiv, 459. Cloth $65.00, paper $27.50.
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We have, until now, lacked a detailed, inclusive, "national" history of the Canadian welfare state that paid specific attention to its gender, class, and race imperatives. This book is consequently inaugural in its breadth and scope, providing the first detailed analysis of its formation during the critical years between 1900 and 1945. Moreover, as Nancy Christie explains, "this is as much a history of the ideology and social structures that gave rise to various welfare entitlements as it is a study of government legislation and administration," framed within "a deliberately cultural approach" (pp. 4, 7). The ideologies consist principally of those underpinning notions of female dependency, the work ethic, the male breadwinner family, and the "umpire" or "watchman" state; the social structures are those sustained by gender and class, with particular emphasis on the former, as the book's title suggests. |
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