John Porter (sociologist) - Legacy

Legacy

Porter's analysis is essentially functionalist. While some aspects were inspired by Marxist thinking, he was at pains to present a non-Marxian approach. The nature of the Canadian capitalist class led Porter to develop his model. Notably, it was against his work that scholars in the 1970s began to develop a more contemporary, cultural and Marxist idea of class that defined it not in terms of occupational rank but in terms of power relationships. Indeed, if there is one area of Porter’s work which intellectuals are most critical of it is his overly functionalist definition of class and power that closes down other avenues of critical thought: as Pat Armstrong writes, “by conceptualizing class in this manner, Porter left out of the theory many of the ways power is used to ensure male dominance in class relations and how those relations shift over time, often through struggle.”

He noted that this class in the 1950s was a tightly knit group of wealthy, prodominently Anglo-Saxon men, centred in Montreal and Toronto. This group controlled Canada's financial, industrial and political spheres. While there appeared to be one elite, Porter found that there were actually several elite groups, comprising economic, political, labour, and ideological realms. His work thus echoes and expands on United States sociologist C. Wright Mills' study of power elites in the United States.

In 1965, the year The Vertical Mosaic was published, sociology, as a discipline, had virtually no academic or mainstream currency: nationwide there were only 115 university based sociologists. There was no national sociology textbook, the closest thing being a volume, compiled by Porter, which featured a loose collection of Canadian Sociology readings. Further, while contemporary Canadian sociology is marked by its breadth of topics and questions – class, power, race, education, ability, work, gender – and, frankly, a commitment to a left-leaning politic, none of this was true in 1965. The publication of The Vertical Mosaic did, thus, three things: first, it established sociology as a legitimate discipline in the Canadian context; second, it pioneered a macrosociological approach that put class at the centre of its analysis and, third, it constituted an initial offering in the emergent field of inequality studies and diversity studies. Indeed, Rick Helmes-Hayes argues that the book set the tone, parameters of debate and questions for the next fifteen years in sociology.

The Vertical Mosaic led to the adoption of the term cultural mosaic by Canadian government agencies such as Statistics Canada, but Porter himself was an opponent of Canada's multiculturalism policy.

Porter, along with Peter Pineo, developed the Pineo-Porter index of socioeconomic status.

To honour Porter's importance in developing sociology in Canada, the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association initiated an annual award called the Porter award.

Shortly before his death in 1979, he put together ten of his most significant essays in The Measure of Canadian Society: Education, Equality, and Opportunity. He died in Ottawa later that year, due to a heart attack.