Tracey Adams receives John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award.

May 08, 2019

Tracey Adams, Department of Sociology

Tracey L. Adams, Professor in the Department of Sociology has received the John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award.

Adam’s book Regulating Professions: The Emergence of Professional Self- Regulation in Four Canadian Provinces was named winner by the Canadian Sociological Association.

Published in 2018 by the University of Toronto Press, Regulating Professions examines the historical process resulting in the formation of self-regulating professions.

Adams explores the emergence of self-regulating professions in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia from Confederation to 1940. Adams’s in-depth research reveals the backstory of those occupations deemed worthy to regulate, such as medicine, law, dentistry, and land surveying, and how they were regulated.

Adams evaluates sociological explanations for professionalization and its regulation by analysing their applicability to the Canadian experience and especially the role played by the state. By considering the role of all those involved in creating the professional landscape in Canada, Adams provides a clear picture of the process and illuminates how important this has been in building Canadian institutions and society.

The John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award, originally named the John Porter Memorial Book Prize, was created in 1980 by the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in memory of John Porter for the purpose of recognizing outstanding published scholarly contributions within the "John Porter Tradition" to the advancement of sociological knowledge in Canada. Porter, who died in 1979, was arguably the dominant Canadian sociologist of the post-World War Two period.