A Speculative Model of Individual Decision-Making and Resource Management in Response to Change in Intergroup Relations

The author constructs a speculative model of Anglophone response to changing structural relations between French and English in Montreal. She notes that earlier perspectives which predicted conflict, or dealt with attitudes, are unable to explain what seems to be the English-speaking community’s individualistic, non-conflictual response to threat. Based on interviews with English-speaking parents about the choice of schooling for their children (post Bill 101), the concepts of boundary between ethnic categories, of resources and resource management, and of innovation are developed by the author. Her model indicates that boundaries between groups are defined and redefined not only by objective criteria but by individual perception and choice based on resources. The author concludes that the process of changing structural relations between ethnic groups is a process of category change. This change may remain latent at the individual level of choice or response through resource management, or it may broaden to societal recognition and institutionalization of the change.

Master's Thesis

Concordia University

Montreal

1979

[iv]-82p.

en