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MACHO, OR MACHISMO
The public display of characteristically (and usually exaggerated) masculine behaviour.

MACRO-PERSPECTIVE
The perspective, or the form of analysis, which focuses on the structure of society and provides a way of seeing society as a unified whole. In this perspective minimal attention is given to the individual or the subjectivity of actors - the structures of society are thought to be primary and responsible for shaping the individual.

MAFIA
Originally used to identify a specific Sicilian crime group, is now commonly used to identify any ethnic or regionally based crime organization.

MAGIC
The performance of routines, usually in a fixed or rigid manner, designed to influence the future, persuade the ‘gods’ or shape fate. The ball player who believes that wearing the same sweater or eating the same meal before a game will determine whether the teams wins or not is performing magic.

MAJORITY
In sociology this term does not refer to a numerical majority. Rather, it refers to that group(s) which has power. In South Africa, the Blacks were the majority numerically, but a minority in terms of power. All this of course began to change with the inclusion of Blacks in the electoral process and the election of Nelson Mandela.

MALTHUSIAN CRISIS
Refers to the ideas of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who argued that while populations grow exponentially the rate of increase in the food supply is much less. This creates a natural limit on populations and produces miserable conditions for society and inevitable mass starvation, unless of course individuals practice birth control. Malthus didn't advocate contraceptives, rather he advocated reducing sexual intercourse. See: DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION / EXPONENTIAL GROWTH / .

MAN IN THE HOUSE RULE
A regulation of most Canadian provinces, declaring that a woman who lives with a man can not receive welfare in her own right. The assumption being that she must be dependent on the man.

MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION
Traditionally, manufacturing enterprises had been owned and controlled by individuals or families. In the mid 19th century however, joint-stock companies began to emerge and over time increasing numbers of investors held a share of ownership and received a portion of the profits. These companies no longer had a single owner and managers emerged to control business operations. It was assumed that this new breed of salaried workers would transform the workplace: values other than profit would enter into business calculations and there would be greater harmony between workers and executives. Since most managers have become large stock holders (and thus owners) the significance of the managerial revolution has been called into question.

MANIFEST DESTINY
A belief found among the early American colonies that held it to be the destiny of the colonies to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and as far south as the Rio Grande river. In the early 19th century this belief was behind the decision to reclaim the territories of Texas , Oregon and California. Bring the country into conflict with England and Mexico. Canadian politicians were concerned that this belief also held that the American state should eventually occupy the territories to the north and much Canadian policy can be seen as an attempt to cut off American territorial and market expansion. See: CONTINENTALISM / .

MARKET ECONOMY
An economy in which goods and services are freely exchanged without obstruction or regulation and where decisions about production and consumption are made by many separate individuals each seeking satisfaction of specific needs and desires. Sometimes used interchangeably with ‘capitalist economy’, but this is an error since a cooperatively based economy could also be operated on market principles. See: INVISIBLE HAND OF THE MARKET / .

MARKETING BOARDS
Used frequently within Canada, bodies which attempt to regulate the marketplace so as to soften the harmful activities of a free market. For example, the Canadian Wheat Board (the 33rd largest firm in Canada and the fifth largest exporter) requires that Canadian grains be sold to the Board at a set price and the Board then sells the grain on the international market. Similarly marketing boards may regulate the number of commercial producers of eggs or chickens. These activities are thought to provide a stable market for products, guarantee the producer a reasonable return, limit foreign control of commercial activity and prevent major fluctuations in supply and prices. In recent years there has been growing pressure within Canada, as well as from international producers, to remove marketing boards and let the production of goods and their prices be set by the free market.

MARSH REPORT
Published in 1943 the Report on Social Security for Canada was written by Leonard Marsh and resulted from his work as research adviser on the federal government Committee on Post-War Reconstruction. Although the Marsh report was largely ignored it does provide the intellectual foundation for much of the welfare state which was developed over the next 25 years. Marsh was born in London, England and emigrated to Canada in 1930. After the war he taught at the University of British Columbia. The Marsh report can be compared to the Beveridge Report in Britain.

MARSHALL INQUIRY
A Royal Commission of Inquiry initiated in September of 1987 to investigate the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Donald Marshall Jr. for the 1971 death of Sandy Seale in Sydney Nova Scotia. Marshall, a Micmac, spent 11 years in prison before he was found to be innocent.

MARXISM
The body of philosophical, political, economic and sociological ideas associated with Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his life-long collaborator Frederick Engels (1820-1895). The term is also used more generally to refer to work in the social sciences and humanities that employs key ideas and concepts from Marx and Engels' original writings. The core of Marxist ideas is the claim that each historical period has a distinct mode of production that rests upon particular forces - or technological organization - of production and distinct ways of organizing social relationships between people in the economy. This mode of production then exerts the primary influence in shaping social relations within the society in general as well as its politics, law and intellectual ideas. See: HISTORICAL MATERIALISM / ALIENATION / BASE (OR INFRASTRUCTURE) / CLASS / COMMUNISM / CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM / LABOUR THEORY OF VALUE / MIDDLE CLASS / POLARIZATION OF CLASSES / SUPERSTRUCTURE / MODE OF PRODUCTION / .

MARXIST FEMINISM
A form of feminism which believes that women's oppression is a symptom of a more fundamental form of oppression. Women are not oppressed by men or by sexism, but by capitalism itself. If all women are to be liberated, capitalism must be replaced with socialism. In Frederick Engels' (1820-1895) writing, women's oppression originated with the development of private property and of regulated family and marital relationships. Men's control of economic resources develops with settled society and the development of separate spheres of life for the two sexes. In capitalist societies, women become segregated into the domestic sphere and men into the outer world of paid work. Economic and social inequality between the sexes is increased and women's' subordination in marriage, the family and in society in general is intensified. Engels assumed that socialist revolution, through which the means of production would become common property, would result in the development of equal access to paid work for both men and women and the consequent disappearance of gendered inequality between the sexes. See: LIBERAL FEMINISM / RADICAL FEMINISM / .

MASCULINE FEMALE
By mixing the notions of gender and sex this term identifies those of the female sex who demonstrate features of the masculine gender.

MASCULINIZATION
A term central to the critique of traditional academic discussions of the female offender and of popular depictions of female criminality. The term refers to the attribution of male characteristics to women in an attempt to understand their behaviour rather than locating women's behaviour in female experience or structural location. Freda Alder, for example, argued in 1975 that the women's liberation movement would lead to an increase in female crime because liberation would make women more like men.

MASS CULTURE
A set of cultural values and ideas that arise from common exposure of a population to the same cultural activities, communications media, music and art, etc. Mass culture becomes possible only with modern communications and electronic media. A mass culture is transmitted to individuals, rather than arising from people's daily interactions, and therefore lacks the distinctive content of cultures rooted in community and region. Mass culture tends to reproduce the liberal value of individualism and to foster a view of the citizen as consumer. See: POPULAR CULTURE / MASS SOCIETY / ..

MASS MEDIA
Sociologically speaking in modern times the ‘community’ has been replaced by a ‘mass’, a set of autonomous and disconnected individuals, with little sense of community. The mass media then is that media (radio, television, newspapers, etc) which are targeted at the mass rather than at specific groups or communities.

MASS SOCIETY
Refers to a society with a mass culture and large-scale, impersonal, social institutions. Even the most complex and modern societies have lively primary group social relationships, so the concept can be thought of as an ‘ideal type’, since it does not exist in empirical reality. It is intended to draw attention to the way in which life in complex societies, with great specialization and rationalized institutions, can become too anonymous and impersonal and fail to support adequate bonds between the individual and the community. The concept reflects the same concern in sociology - loss of community - that Tonnies expressed in his idea of Gesellschaft. See: MASS CULTURE / .

MASSEY REPORT
Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada, was chairman of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (1951). This report recommended the creation of the Canada Council and federal government spending on university education, a provincial responsibility. The Commission was an early expression of the need for Canadians to strengthen their cultural institutions in order to avoid being dominated by American cultural influences. See: GORDON REPORT / .

MASTER STATUS
A status that overrides all others in perceived importance. Whatever other personal or social qualities the individual possesses they are judged primarily by this one attribute. Criminal is an example of a master status that determines the community's identification of an individual. A master status can also arise from other achieved or ascribed roles.

MATRIARCHY
A society or family in which women possess most of the power and authority. While there is some dispute among social scientists, there is no clear evidence of matriarchal societies existing in the world in either the past or the present. Individual families, however, have frequently exhibited matriarchal structure with women clearly possessing dominant authority and control. The term must be distinguished from matrilineal which refers to the system of tracing descent through the blood lines of women and which exists in a number of world societies. See: MATRILINEAL SOCIETIES / .

MATRILINEAL SOCIETIES
Societies in which descent is traced through mothers rather than through fathers. In such societies property is often passed from mothers to daughters and the custom of matrilocal residence may be practiced. In such systems, the descendants of men are their sister's children and not their own, who belong to their mother's matrilineage. Matrilineage is sometimes associated with polyandry or group marriage where women have a variety of sexual partners and lines of male descent are uncertain. See: PATRILINEAL DESCENT / BILINEAL DESCENT / .

MATRILOCAL RESIDENCE
The custom or practice of a new husband moving to his wife's village or household after marriage. Tends to be found among matrilineal societies. See; patrilocal residence.

MATURATIONAL REFORM
The observation that involvement in crime tends to decrease as people age. A visit to any prison confirms this as would the tracking of 10 year olds crime involvements as they go through adolescence and into adulthood.

MCCARTHYISM
Joseph McCarthy was elected Senator for Wisconsin and rose to public attention when in a 1950 speech he claimed to have in his hand the names of 205 individuals who were active members of the communist party, many within government itself. From this point on he campaigned against communists and others described as subversive to American interests. In 1953 he became chair of the Senate's permanent committee of investigation and turned the committee's attention to the pursuit of communists and subversives (including homosexuals). Although in control of this committee for a short time many people were named, many reputations damaged and public expression of dissent was silenced for a decade.

MCJOB
A low paying, low status job usually performed on a part-time basis and having no career potential. In the past, these jobs were usually the first work experiences of new entrants to the labour market , but economic changes are now thought to have made them a long term destination for growing numbers of workers. See: GENERATION X / .

MCWORLD
A concept developed by Benjamin Barber (1995) to describe the new globalized world where nation states have little power and citizenship has become meaningless as a cornerstone of democracy. This new world is ruled by corporations (multinational corporations or in Barber's terms antinational corporations) which see everyone simply as consumers. In this new world citizens can no longer effectively use democracy to enhance or protect social values because this would interfere with the marketplace. The assumption is that the actions of countless consumers will best satisfy the social needs of communities. See: consumer culture; multinational;

ME
A concept of George Herbert Mead (1863-1921) referring to the aspect of personal identity or self that is aware of and has internalized the expectations of others. The ‘me’ is guided and shaped by the culture of an individual's society or group, which is internalized and acts to direct and control behaviour. In social interaction, each individual's behaviour is shaped by the interaction of their socially shaped ‘me’ and their more spontaneous and ego-focused ‘I’. See: I / .

MEAN
A measure of central tendency for data at the interval or ratio level of measurement, commonly called an average. Determined by summing the values or scores in a distribution and dividing by the number of values or scores. See: MEDIAN / MODE / .

MEANS TEST
A policy for the provision of social assistance or services which determines access by considering whether the applicant has the means to provide the service from their own resources. Legal aid in most provinces, for example, is means tested; legal aid is provided without charge to those unable to pay while others pay part or all of the cost of the service. A policy of universality is opposed to this and is one in which all citizen have a right to assistance or service without charge. In the past, for example, the ‘baby bonus’ was offered to all mothers of children. Similarly, health care is now offered to all citizens without charge regardless of their income. There is a growing tendency towards means tests, however. Old age income support is now ‘clawed back’ from seniors with incomes over a certain amount, for example, and in the future will only be given to those with income below a set amount. See: UNIVERSALITY / .

MEASURE OF CRIME
All science at one point or another must deal with measurement. One can think of measuring the weight of a friend, measuring the height of all three year olds, etc. The question is: what tool or method to use in the measurement? In the above examples it seems obvious; use a bathroom scale or perhaps a medical scale, or use a tape measure. It is much more difficult to decide how to measure crime. Do we rely on police records, do we find the number of people incarcerated, or do we use a victimization questionnaire ? Whatever the tool or measurement one uses it must be asked: Is this measurement reliable? Is it valid?

MECHANICAL SOLIDARITY
A term used by Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) to refer to a state of community bonding or interdependency which rests on a similarity of beliefs and values, shared activities, and ties of kinship and cooperation. See: ORGANIC SOLIDARITY / IDEAL TYPE / .

MEDIAN
A measure of central tendency for data at the interval or ratio levels of measurement. When a set of values or scores are arranged in ascending order that value which divides the sequence in half; half of the values or scores are greater than the median and half are less than the median. A median is frequently superior to a mean as a measure of central tendency when there are some scores or values which are significantly higher than all others in the distribution. The median gives these high scores the same emphasis as all other scores while a mean gives them much greater weight or emphasis. See: MEAN / MODE / .

MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Also known as the ‘middle ages’ this term was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to the period of European history between the decline and fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance: approximately 500 to 1500.

MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
A central idea of communications theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) who demonstrated that each media (print, speech, television) is connected with a different pattern or arrangement among the senses and thus results in a different awareness or perception. Although the literal message of a radio report of a disaster and the television coverage of the same event may be identical, the event will be perceived differently and take on different meaning because the two media arrange the senses differently. In this sense the medium (the singular for the word media) is the message; this message is often more important than the literal message.

MEECH LAKE ACCORD
An agreement by the Prime Minister of Canada and the ten provincial premiers, signed June 3, 1987, to amend the Constitution of Canada to provide for: explicit recognition of Quebec as a ‘distinct society’; increased provincial power over immigration; limitation of federal government spending power; recognition of Quebec's right to veto further Constitutional change; provincial participation over appointments of Supreme Court of Canada judges. The Accord required assent from Parliament and all ten provincial legislatures, but did not receive final ratification in either Newfoundland or Manitoba before the June 23, 1990 deadline. Principal components of the Accord were later included in the Charlottetown Agreement (August 28, 1992), a further attempt to amend the Constitution of Canada, which was defeated in a national referendum.

MEMBER
A central term in ethnomethodological theory and replaces terms like ‘status position’ or ‘role’ in structural theories. From a structural perspective an individual actor is examined according to their structural characteristics (gender, age, ethnicity, class) and is assumed to behave in accordance with these structural characteristics. The subjectivity of the actor is insignificant. Ethnomethodology on the other hand, attempts to highlight the subjectivity of the individual actor and thus needs to identify the person in a way that acknowledges their knowledge, competence, engagement, commitment, or ability to make sense. The term ‘member’ accomplishes this. Ethnomethodology also refers to membership categories (things like teacher, mother, employee) and identifies membership categorization devices and rules of application (things like the economy rule and the consistency rule) as a form of ethnomethodological analysis.

MENS REA
Criminal intent. An act must be blameworthy. It must be done with criminal intent or be an act of gross negligence or recklessness. Canadian courts have traditionally favoured an objective definition of mens rea using the test of what a reasonable person would have thought and done in the situation. Recently a more subjective view has been adopted. See: BEAVER DECISION / .

MERCANTILISM
An economic theory that preceded the modern concept of a market economy regulated by the forces of supply and demand. Mercantilist ideas were quite varied but a common theme is the importance to any nation of maintaining a favorable balance of international trade, ideally leading to net inflows of precious metals. To attain this end it was appropriate for the state to intervene in the market place by vigorous economic regulation backed by state authority. Among classic mercantilist policies were laws requiring colonial territories to trade only with the imperial power, imposition of monopolies in merchant shipping and trading rights and the establishment of physical quotas to manage and regulate trade. In Canada's early history, trading monopolies of both French and English origin - like the famous Hudson's Bay Company - were an expression of mercantilist policies and they played a central role in the exploration and economic development of Canada.

MERITOCRACY
Rule by those chosen on the principle of merit. The principle of merit is consistent with liberal theory and assumes equality of opportunity and occupational advancement based on achievement rather than ascription. Emile Durkheim's notion of the ‘spontaneous division of labour’ and the argument of Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) on the function of inequality both depend on the belief that in a liberal society people will be rewarded on the basis of talent or merit and that the more talented and thus meritorious will come to occupy the more important positions in society. See: AUTOCRACY / PLUTOCRACY / DEMOCRACY / .

META-ANALYSIS
There has been so much research on specific topics (i.e., the effectiveness of corrections, the effects of divorce on children) that it is possible to do analyses of a collection of research results - this is meta-analysis.

METANARRATIVE
A story, narrative or theory which claims to be above the ordinary or local accounts of social life. Postmodernists claim that the majority of the writings of Marx, Durkheim, Weber are offered as metanarratives, presented as capturing universal properties of social life and thus superior to local or more grounded stories. Postmodernist social theorists argue for a return to the local, the rejection of grand theory and a privileged position for science and its narratives, and an acknowledgment of the inherently political nature of all narratives.

METHOD
Is the tool or instrument one uses to measure crime (or height). One method might be to go to the police department and go through all of their files. Another might be to use the data provided by the Centre for Justice Statistics, and yet another might be to design a questionnaire to be given to people asking if they have ever committed a crime or been a victim of a crime. The method one might use to measure weight is to step on the bathroom scale. There are obviously other methods for measuring weight. There are many methods for measuring crime.

METHODOLOGICAL HOLISM
An orientation in research and analysis where the aim is to understand the phenomenon under investigation in its totality as unique and apart from its component parts, rather than to seek to fragment it into known or familiar components. The key idea, in essence, is that the whole differs from the sum of the parts not only in quantity but in quality.

METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM
The belief that all sociological explanations can be reduced to characteristics of individuals who make up the society. This position is also known as ‘psychologism’: explaining social phenomenon in terms of the psychological dispositions of members of society. This is a rejection of macro-structuralists working in the tradition of Emile Durkheim or Karl Marx who assumed that the characteristics of individuals need not be considered. They argued that social facts (society) had an existence of their own and that it was these which sociologists were interested in. See: PSYCHOLOGISM / .

METHODOLOGY
The study or critique of methods. There are many philosophical issues around the use of a particular method or about positivism or measurement itself.

METIS
Refers to people who have a mixed biological and cultural ancestry. These were usually mixtures of French and Indian or British/Scottish and Indian. Originally the term referred to the French-Indian people who settled in the Red River area of Manitoba, a group who saw themselves as having a distinct cultural and political position in society and their history is important in understanding Canada. This group is now represented by the Metis National Council. The Native Council of Canada acknowledges other people of mixed ancestry as being Metis. See: RED RIVER REBELLION / .

METROPOLIS-HINTERLAND THEORY
A theory of social and economic development that examines how economically advanced societies, through trade and colonialism, distort and retard the economic development of less developed societies and regions. A metropolis is identified as the centre of political and economic power, as having a more advanced labour market, more skilled and educated workers, an abundance of value-added production, higher standard of living, etc. A hinterland would be less able to withstand the political and economic interference of the metropolis, would have an abundance of resource extraction industries, fewer skilled and educated workers, a lower standard of living and in many ways would emulate the culture of the metropolis. For more than a century Ontario, or even more narrowly the Toronto region, was seen as the metropolis to a vast Canadian hinterland and the United States has been seen as the metropolis for a Canadian hinterland. See: DEPENDENT DEVELOPMENT / WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY / .

MICRO-PERSPECTIVE
A perspective, or form of analysis, which focuses on the individual and their subjectivity, rather than focusing on the structures of society thought to be external and constraining on the individual. This perspective is found in symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, labeling theory, interpretive theory.

MIDDLE CLASS
There have been several different approaches to defining this term. (1) In Karl Marx's (1818-1883) analysis of class, the middle class is the ‘petite bourgeoisie’ who are in small scale independent business or craft or who have special skills that provide an income outside the wage system of employed labour. Marx assumed that this class would diminish in number as capitalist enterprises developed, consolidated into larger units and eliminated small-scale competition. (2)The term can also be used statistically to define a group of individuals who occupy an intermediate position in a society's income strata: for example those who earn between 66% and 133% of a society's average family incomes. These are attempts to define the ‘middle class’ objectively, by some standard of measurement, but a more subjective view is possible: the middle class are those individuals who orient themselves to the values and expectations they consider normative for average members of their society. This approach is useful for understanding why most Canadians irrespective of occupation, wealth or income identify themselves as middle class.

MIDDLE-CLASS MEASURING ROD
A phrase suggesting that children and young people from the lower class often find themselves in situations in which they are measured against middle-class standards. The school, for example, rests on the middle-class values of reading and writing and the teachers are primarily middle-class. Lower-class children often realize they are never going to ‘measure up’ so anticipate failure, become frustrated, or drop out of school. They may also begin to move towards other marginal students in the school and become engaged in deviant or criminal activity.

MILLENNIUM
Literally, a period of one thousand years or a thousandth anniversary. In Christian tradition the Millennium refers to the one thousands years of peace that will accompany the second coming of Christ. Christ's coming is portended by growing strife and conflict (an apocalyptic vision). Millenarianism, refers to the belief in the doctrine of the Millennium (the coming of Christ). These ideas have come together to suggest that the end of a thousand years will be associated with social breakdown, despair and turmoil and will be followed by new energy and confidence. The non-religious beliefs of Millenarianism have been associated with the end of one hundred year periods (the end of the 18th century or the 19th century).

MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Associated with Parliamentary systems of government, this is the convention that a minister is answerable to Parliament for the conduct and actions of his or her ministry's personnel. Originally, the responsibility was quite strictly imposed on a minister and resignation might be demanded even where the minister did not have, and could not reasonably have been expected to have, knowledge of improper or negligent acts or omissions by officials. In recent times, this idea has been abandoned and it is rare for a minister to accept responsibility and resign.

MINORITY GROUP
A group distinguished by being on the margins of power, status or the allocation of resources within the society. ‘Visible minority’ refer to those racial or ethnic groups in a society which are marginal from the power and economic structure of society, not to those which are few in number. In South Africa, Blacks are the statistical majority but were for countless decades a social minority. Women can also be identified as a social minority group.

MISCEGENATION
Sexual intercourse between individuals of differing racial groups. At various times and places (including the American south and South Africa under apartheid) there have been laws prohibiting both sexual intercourse and marriage between racially mixed couples. The Supreme Court of the United States struck down miscegenation laws in 1967.

MISOGYNY
The hatred of women.

MOBILITY, SOCIAL
The movement of an individual or group from one class or social status to another. Usually, the point of reference is an individual's class or status of social origin and social mobility occurs when later class or status positions differ from those of origin. Social mobility would be high where individuals have equal opportunity to achieve new statuses and low where there are inequalities of opportunity and processes of status ascription. See: DEMAND MOBILITY / OPEN CLASS IDEOLOGY / .

MODE
A measure of central tendency useful for data at any level of measurement. The most frequently occurring number in a set of scores or values. In a series of numbers there is frequently more than one mode. Other measures of central tendency are the median and the mean. See: MEAN / MEDIAN / .

MODE OF PRODUCTION
The dominant form of social and technical organization of economic production in a society. Historically a variety of modes of production can be distinguished based on both technology and the structure of social relationships. Historical modes of production include hunter-gatherer with very simple technology and common ownership; ancient, with more advanced technology and slavery; feudal, with simple technology and landowning lords and bonded serfs; and capitalist with sophisticated technology, private ownership of capital and a wage system. See: STATE CAPITALISM / .

MODELING
A form of learning that occurs as a result of watching and imitating others.

MODERNIZATION THEORY
A theory of social and economic development, following functionalist or consensus assumptions, that societies need to have harmony among their component parts. This assumptions leads to the belief that modern economies (capitalist) demand special characteristics in their culture and the structure of social relationships. For example, family systems are assumed to change towards a narrow conjugal form, and away from extended structure, in order to accommodate the individualism and occupational flexibility that is demanded by a modern complex economy undergoing continual transformation.

MONARCHY, CONSTITUTIONAL
A system of government in which the head of state is an individual usually acquiring the position by hereditary descent. In earlier times in history, monarchs were often absolute in their effective power and were unconstrained by either legal or political limitations. Britain's system of monarchy, from which Canada's is derived, has been subjected to formal constitutional limitation since the Magna Carta issued in 1215 by King John of England. The Magna Carta was demanded from the King by England's landowning aristocracy who wanted definite and permanent legal limitations on royal power. Over the centuries, England's monarchical system became gradually transformed to the modern constitutional structure where the monarch possesses only formal legal power that must, by political convention, be exercised only with the advice and agreement of the monarch's ministers. These ministers are chosen by a Prime Minister who the monarch appoints but who, by political convention must be the party leader whose party commmands majority support, or the most support, in the elected House of Commons. The convention that the monarch will act only with the advice and consent of the Prime Minister and the cabinet makes monarchy compatible with a system of parliamentary democracy. Canada's monarchy is similarly structured. The Governor General represents the Queen (or King) in Canada, possesses the formal legal powers of the monarch but by political convention exercises them subject to the advice of the Prime Minister and other federal ministers. Since 1926, the autonomy of Canada from Britain has been recognized by the requirement that the Governor General of Canada be appointed by the monarch only on the advice of the Prime Minister of Canada. The system of monarchy contrasts with republics, where the head of state is an individual either directly elected by the people (eg: the United States, France, Mexico) or appointed by an elected state parliament (eg: Germany, Israel).

MONETARISM
An economic theory advocating that governments use interest rates and control of the supply of money for the purpose of economic regulation. This is in contrast to Keynsian economics which advocates taxation and budgetary (‘fiscal’) policy . Use of monetary instruments for economic regulation is said to provide a lever to influence macro-economic cycles in the economy, while avoiding bureaucratic regulation or distortions of market forces. Monetarism has become the dominant framework of theory in both academic economics and public policy. It is closely associated with neo-conservatism, a version of liberalism that stresses free markets and individualism rather than the ‘welfare state’ vision that had become dominant in most western societies. There is controversy over the role of monetarist policies in the current deficit problems of most of the worlds' largest economies. See: FISCAL CRISIS / KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS / .

MONETARY POLICY
The use of monetary levers - interest rates, money supply, foreign exchange rate - by governments to achieve some control over the performance of the economy. See: FISCAL POLICY / .

MONOPOLY
A situation in which one company has gained control of the market for a particular good or service. This is in direct conflict with the values of liberalism which emphasize competition among numerous producers.

MONOZYGOTIC TWINS
Commonly known as "identical twins" they are from a single egg that has divided after fertilization to create two embryos, consequently they share exactly the same genetic material and are of the same sex. Monozygotic twins who have been separated in earliest infancy and raised apart have provided a classic research situation for social scientists because their genetic identity, yet different social experience, makes it possible to disentangle the separate effects of heredity and social environment.

MONTREAL MASSACRE
On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine entered the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and killed 14 women students before taking his own life. This event has been a rallying point for women's groups who see the killings as reflective of generalized devaluation and violence against women in society. December 6 has become a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

MORAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Refers generally to theories of individual psychology that investigate how moral reasoning emerges and develops as the individual matures.

MORAL ECONOMY
The central characteristic of economic activity in a tribal society. Rather than economic exchanges being motivated by self-interest, greed or profit, exchanges are driven by moral obligations created by kinship relations, gift giving, and rituals. A hunter or food gatherer may by obliged to give much of the food to a network of relations, thus accounting for the distribution of food within the community. It was the final collapse of economic exchange as moral obligation that Karl Marx (1818-1883) bemoaned when he described the ‘cash nexus’ that has become the central medium and motivator of exchange in a capitalist society. See: GIFT, THE / POTLATCH / .

MORAL ENTREPRENEURS
To be in the business of persuading the society to make policy from particular moral viewpoints. In symbolic interactionism (or labeling theory) social policy is not seen as the implementation of a shared consensus about what is best. Rather the society is viewed as consisting of a plurality of understandings of what is best. In order for social policy to arise, some individual or group has to initiate a social movement whose task is to articulate a definition of a social problem such that a desired social policy is consistent with this definition of the problem. These individual or groups are referred to as moral entrepreneurs. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), the pro-life movement, the gun lobby, anti-pornography groups, Emily Murphy, and the anti-tobacco lobby would all be examples of moral entrepreneurs.

MORAL PANIC
Suggests a panic or overreaction to forms of deviance or wrong doing believed to be threats to the moral order. Moral panics are usually fanned by the media and led by community leaders or groups intent on changing laws or practices. Sociologists are less interested in the validity of the claims made during moral panics than they are with the dynamics of social change and the organizational strategies of moral entrepreneurs. Moral panics gather converts because they touch on people's fears and because they also use specific events or problems as symbols of what many feel to represent ‘all that is wrong with the nation’. The moral panic over youth violence, for example, presents this violence as a symbol of all that is wrong with Canada - it is claimed that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has undermined authority; the family has fallen apart; immigration has brought many disreputable groups into the country; governments and their agents have become self-serving and out of touch with the reality of social life; economic transformation has marginalized and demoralized young people.

MORAL RHETORIC
In the study of crime this is the set of claims and assertions that deviants make to normalize and rationalize deviant behaviour. Individuals, businesses and public institutions may be blamed for unfairness, exploitation or some moral or biological failing thus justifying them as targets of crime. The moral rhetoric of a group is an important component of socialization into a deviant identity.

MOTIVATED OFFENDERS
To be motivated is to be ready to engage in a particular experience or action. You may have been motivated to attend college by your upbringing or by a particular role model. Others are motivated to offend perhaps because they have a drug dependency, are poor, lack self-control, or any number of other reasons. It is argued that something has to happen to turn this motivation into action. Perhaps you had to get a scholarship or the offender has to see a car with the keys in it.

MULTICULTURALISM
A term having two distinct but related meanings. On the one hand it refers to a condition of cultural pluralism and the attitudes of tolerance which make this possible. On the other hand it refers to a set of federal government policies designed to ‘assist all Canadian cultural groups ... to grow and contribute to Canada’ as well as to assist members of all cultural groups ‘to overcome cultural barriers to full participation in Canadian society’. While there is little debate about the first of these meanings there is great debate about the implications of the second.

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION
A company which has operations in more than one nation. The development of these corporations has challenged the belief of liberal ideology that economic power can be counterbalanced by political power. As corporations have less dependence on a national market and can adopt practices which minimize the effect of national policies they move outside the reach of any political system.

MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS
A form of quantitative analysis which examines three or more variables at the same time, in order to understand the relationships among them. The simplest form of this analysis is one in which the researcher, interested in the relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable (eg: gender and political attitudes), introduces an extraneous variable (eg: age) to ensure that a correlation between the two main variables is not spurious. Presented in tabular form this analysis divides the age variable into its constituent values (eg: young and old) and then subdivides each of these values into the values of female and male. Having done this it is possible to determine whether there is a correlation, among young people, between the variables of gender and political attitudes. Other forms of multivariate analysis are examined in methodology texts under the heading of the elaboration model, and here one finds conditional variables, intervening variables, extraneous variables.

MUNDANE REASONING
See commonsense reasoning.

MURDOCH CASE
A very controversial decision by the Supreme Court of Canada (1975) in deciding the property entitlement of a farm wife upon her divorce. Mrs. Murdoch claimed an equal share of the family property and produced evidence that she had contributed money to the down-payment on the farm, had carried out farm work and housework for more than 25 years and had been actively involved in running and administering farm business. The Supreme Court decided that Mrs. Murdoch's work had been no more than typical for a farm wife and did not establish any special entitlement to a share in the farm itself. In so deciding the court upheld traditional views of the property rights of women - for a wife to own property it must be bought in her name or she must make a direct contribution to its purchase. While the court agreed that Mrs. Murdoch was entitled to an equal share of the farmhouse and the land on which it was immediately situated, they ruled that this entitlement did not extend to the farmland and equipment. The resulting controversy, led by Canadian women's groups, resulted in an overhaul of statute law, first in Ontario and then in other provinces, to redefine ‘family assets’ - property divisible between the partners- to include all property used by the partners to the marriage during the course of their relationship.

MUTUAL CONVERSION
A phrase suggesting that conversion to deviance (and perhaps to other lifestyles) is not a solitary activity but is achieved interactively. Someone might encourage you and in accepting and perhaps by redefining or justifying the activity you further convert the first person.

MYSTIFICATION
The process of masking or covering up central aspects of society or of social relationships. Conflict or critical theorists are interested in the ways in which forms of social domination based on sex, class or colonialism are camouflaged so that these social structures, and the state which assists in their reproduction, are seen as legitimate. Mystification allows for domination that is not based on evident coercion or force, but is maintained by a wide variety of social institutions and cultural values. See: LEGITIMATION CRISES / HEGEMONY / .

MYTH
Often used incorrectly to refer to a claim considered to be untrue. More correctly myth refers to a narrative account or story which contains the collective wisdom of a society and articulates beliefs concerning key aspects of individual identity or collective life. All societies, for example, have myths about the origin of human life, some have myths about their origin as a society, others have myths about the shaping of national identity or the evolution of love. Social scientists are interested in the role these myths play in society and what they might say about the nature of the human mind.

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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
The online version of this dictionary is a product of
Athabasca University and
ICAAP

*This social science dictionary has 1000
entries covering the disciplines of sociology, criminology, political
science and women's study with a commitment to Canadian examples and
events and names