Recent transformations within modern economies have often been discussed under the
concept of “restructuring”. However this term, despite its widespread use in sociology, has
little explanatory power. What is needed instead is a consideration of how restructuring has
taken place. Three major theoretical positions which attempt to provide this understanding are
Marxist monopoly captialism, post-fordism and post-industrialism.
Each of these paradigms provides a different understanding of the nature and operation
of contemporary capitalist formations. My purpose in this thesis is to determine which of these
different viewpoints is most applicable to the Canadian situation. I will do so through an
examination of changes in the self-employed sector of the Canadian economy since 1960.
The self-employed sector, besides being of intrinsic interest because of its recent
attention by politicians and the popular media, is an important testing ground for the relative
validity of the above theories in the Canadian context. Each framework is consistent with a set
of well-defined and contrasting predictions about what should happen to the overall size of the
self-employed sector, as well as expectations about the direction of ascriptive inequality, both
within the sector and in the larger society.
Using time series regression procedures, declines and increases in the size of the
entrepreneurial sector over the last thirty or so years are documented. In addition, the
importance of increases in the sector is examined by modelling the effect of unemployment on
self-employment. Predictions about ascriptive inequalities are tested through an investigation
of earnings functions within the self-employed and employed populations.
The results of these analyses suggest that a post-fordist understanding of the
contemporary Canadian economy is most appropriate. Self-employment has clearly increased
since 1960, and ascriptive inequalities, particularly by gender, have persisted throughout much
ofthe latter half of this period. The implication of this is that in order to understand the larger
processes shaping our economy, as well as the nature of work beyond self-employment, we are
most likely to find answers in discussions about post-fordism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/7175 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Arai, Alfred Bruce |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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