National Identity In Canada And Cosmopolitan Community

This book attempts to explore and develop the concept of "national unity" in Canada, as a diverse society of many peoples. A cosmopolitan conception of society in Canada is utilized to develop this theme. This conception will be, in part, discussed in the context of the issue of "multiculturalism".

A critical exploration of Canada's political history as well as overall cultural and societal development. These areas have by and large been covered-up by the education system, from schools and universities, and the corporate mass-media in Canada, toward the consolidation of social control by the Establishment.The book provides an overall critical overall of a pattern of institutionalized racism in Canada, under the auspices on reactionary elites, who have undermined the fruition of Canada as a synergistic multicultural and cosmopolitan national community.

Mapping the contradictions and ambiguities in the cultural politics of Canadian identity, The House of Difference opens up new understandings of the operations of tolerance and Western liberalism in a supposedly post-colonial era. Combining an analysis of the construction of national identity in both past and present-day public culture, with interviews with white Canadians, The House of Difference explores how ideas of racial and cultural difference are articulated in colonial and national projects, and in the subjectivities of people who consider themselves mainstream, or simply Canadian-Canadians.

Canadians take pride in being good citizens of the world, yet our failure to meet commitments on the global stage raises questions. Do Canadians need to transcend national loyalties to become full global citizens? Is the very idea of rooted cosmopolitanism simply a myth that encourages complacency about Canada’s place in the world? In this volume, leading scholars assess both in theory and practice the concept of rooted cosmopolitanism, using Canada as a test case. They show that local identities such as patriotism and Quebec nationalism can, but need not, conflict with cosmopolitan principles. Local ties enable and impede Canada’s global responsibilities in areas such as multiculturalism, climate change, immigration and refugee policy, and humanitarian intervention. By examining how Canada has negotiated its relations to “the world” both within and beyond its own borders, Rooted Cosmopolitanism evaluates the possibility of reconciling local ties and nationalism with commitments to human rights, global justice, and international law.

A Border Within addresses the question of English Canadian identity by exploring whether a plurality of discourses can lead to other than a fragmented society. Ian Angus examines the relationship between globalizing social movements and the particularities of identity politics by extending the theories on identity of Harold Innis and George Grant, two seminal figures in Canadian political philosophy, to develop a philosophy applicable to the contemporary social issues of multiculturalism and environmentalism.

The Other Quiet Revolution traces the under-examined cultural transformation woven through key developments in the formation of Canadian nationhood, from the 1946 Citizenship Act and the 1956 Suez crisis to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-70) and the adoption of the federal multiculturalism policy in 1971. Jos� Igartua analyzes editorial opinion, political rhetoric, history textbooks, and public opinion polls to show how Canada's self-conception as a British country dissolved as struggles with bilingualism and biculturalism, as well as Quebec's constitutional demands, helped to fashion new representations of national identity in English-speaking Canada based on the civic principle of equality.

Through readings of literature, canonical history texts, studies of museum displays and media analysis, this work explores the historical formation of myths of Canadian national identity and then how these myths were challenged (and affirmed during the 1990 standoff at Oka. It draws upon history, literary criticism, anthropology, studies in nationalism and ethnicity and post-colonial theory.