Petitions from Peripheries of Empire: Louisiana and Québec

As stress on water resources increases from growing human demands and a changing climate, recognition of the need to develop effective strategies for water governance is expanding. Consequently, it is timely to consider the legacy of effective instances of water policy innovation that have been highly influential in water resource management in Canada. We present two historical examples of policy transfer – that is, when policy employed in one jurisdiction is adapted for use in another. The first is the late nineteenth-century adoption of water allocation law in the North-West Territories that was a noteworthy departure from how water had been allocated in eastern Canada. The second is the twentieth-century introduction of conservation authorities in Ontario as regional watershed-based management entities. These examples illustrate how, in an era of expert-driven natural resources management, notions of governance were adapted from Australia and the United States. They also reveal how the biophysically-based policy context of water influences which policy transfer mechanisms are appropriate for lesson-learning. We conclude that the potential for policy transfer and lesson-learning to shorten the policy innovation timeline must be viewed as a critical response to urgent and evolving demands on water.     

Five Decades of Canadian and Québec Content in French Textbooks in the United States

This study investigates the evolution of Canadian and Québec content in a sample of 65 first-year university French textbooks in the United States from the 1960s through 2010. Overall indicators of Canadian and Québec contexts and cultural notes were tabulated for each decade in addition to particular content such as Canadian history, Québec identity, and Canadian French language. The chronological analysis challenges the popular notion that teachers and textbooks authors are inherently uninterested in Canada. Instead, the analysis finds Canadian and Québec content increasing over the five-decade period reaching an all-time high point in the most recent decade. Results are explained by dynamic Québec-based factors of language politics and foreign relations initiatives rather than static US-based attitudes toward Canadian French. The analysis offers optimism for the role of Canadian and Québec Studies as a source of content for the teaching of French in the United States.     

Work intensifications,injuries and legal exclusions for paid domestic workers in Montréal,Québec

There is increasing research on the intensification of work in the post-1980s time period. The focus on flexibility in management practices has resulted in more tasks being offloaded onto workers who must then adjust their time-use to accommodate the greater workload. Studies of work intensification are not new to manufacturing production and there is increasing attention to unpaid domestic labour and service sectors. One industry, however, that has been neglected by these studies is paid domestic work where employers are individuals or families. Drawing on the traditions of feminist political economy and geography, I argue that the socio-spatial specificity of paid domestic work contributes an emphasis on workplace injury and labour law exclusion to intensification of work paradigms. Based on qualitative interviews conducted in Montréal, Québec from 2013 to 2015, I show how paid domestic workers intertwine narratives about work intensification and workplace injury yet remain excluded from the Act respecting occupational health and safety and the Workers’ Compensation Act in Québec. Migrant women caregivers are disproportionately impacted by these exclusions and I show how the Filipino Women’s Organization in Québec (PINAY) is at the forefront of challenging these exclusions. In conclusion, I propose an approach that combines feminist geography and political economy to consider how time-squeezes impacting individual or household employers may be intensifying the workloads of their paid domestic workers and how labour law structurally excludes workers along the social dimensions of gender, race and citizenship.     

Cultural development: a new policy paradigm in the cultural policies of the 1970s in Québec

The common expression of ‘cultural development’ appears in many cultural policy statements without it necessarily arousing questions about its precise meaning. Indeed, we usually spontaneously associate ‘cultural development’ to any governmental intervention that aims at stimulating cultural vitality. However, if we look more closely at the origin of this concept, we soon discover that its appearance on the eve of May 68, in France, corresponds to the rise of new concerns in cultural policy matters and to a radical redefinition of the state’s role in this domain. Still enjoying a strong influence, France’s political transformations were closely followed by some Quebecois politicians and socially engaged intellectuals who were participating, at that time, in the formulation of a new political vision in cultural matters in Québec in the 1960s and 1970s. The objective of this paper is thus to retrace the origin of the idea of cultural development and follow its evolution in Québec.     

The fertility of the Inuit of Northern Québec: A half‐century of fluctuations

The fertility of the Inuit of Northern Québec went through many changes during the last fifty years. We observe, at first, a decline during the thirties followed by a recovery, in the early forties, stopped momentarily between 1946 and 1956. The fertility reached a summit around 1961 to drop sharply afterwards. In spite of this important decrease, the fertility of the Inuit remains much higher than the generations replacement level.

We will try to relate these fluctuations in the Northern Québec Inuit fertility to the various events that influenced the recent history of this population such as starvations, epidemics, settling process, health improvements and socio‐economic changes.     

Has Québec Become a Northern Mexico? Public Opinion and America's “Long War”

In contrast with Mexico, a consistent pattern of anti-Americanism has never been present in Québec, but there has been an ostensible upsurge in anti-American sentiment recently. This article asks whether Québec has become a “northern Mexico” with respect to societal attitudes displayed toward the United States. To answer this, we first explore the argument that Mexico is effectively an axiomatically anti-American land. We then examine public opinion in Québec, with a view to contrasting it with Mexican views, especially on the all-important question of the use of force in international politics. We argue that Quebeckers show themselves to be more supportive than Mexicans of the idea that the “international community” in certain instances does have both a right and a duty to intervene in the domestic affairs of states.     

Can national cultural policy approaches be used for sub‐national comparisons? An analysis of the Québec and Ontario experiences in Canada

There has been relatively little comparative research undertaken on sub‐national cultural policy. This article aims to contribute to the development of sub‐national comparative studies by assessing the utility of national cultural policy approaches for comparative research at the sub‐national level in Canada. Drawing on studies of national cultural policy, the authors develop three main approaches to cultural policy and administration – the French, British and hybrid approaches – and explore their applicability to the origin and evolution of cultural policy and administration in the Canadian provinces of Québec and Ontario. This exploratory research suggests there is room for optimism in drawing on national‐level experiences to undertake sub‐national comparative cultural policy research, particularly for comparisons over broad time periods. The study also suggests that it will be important in subsequent research to further elaborate the models for present‐day comparative analysis and to refine and adapt them to reflect specificities at the provincial level of analysis.     

Opération Amérique: Québec’s Soft Power Applied to French Language Teaching in the United States

ABSTRACT

Opération Amérique refers to the coordinated efforts of René Lévesque’s Parti Québécois government beginning late 1970s to promote Québec’s interests in the United States. The general goals and strategies of Opération Amérique suggest that it presents a case of soft power. However, the specific actions implemented as well as their effects have barely been explored. An analysis of original documents pertaining to Opération Amérique indicates that specific groups in the United States—namely, French professors—were targeted with the hope that they would improve perceptions of Québec in the United States. An examination of French textbooks used in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s shows an increase in Canada/Québec content, which may reflect the influence of Opération Amérique on French teaching practices.     

Long-term trends in health status and determinants of health among the off-reserve Indigenous population in Canada, 1991–2012

The Indigenous population in Canada totals approximately 1.6 million individuals, representing about 5% of the total population. The off-reserve Indigenous population represents the fastest growing segment of the Indigenous population, with over 50% living in urban settings. Despite the size of the off-reserve population, research on the health of Indigenous peoples tends to remain focused on reserve-based populations. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of health and social determinants of health among off-reserve Indigenous peoples in Canada. Using data from the 1991 and 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Surveys this paper examines changes in health status and the social determinants of health over a 20-year time span. Results show a decline in health care use and self-reported health status in the period between 1991 and 2012. The results may be related to urbanization, aging, and increased prevalence of some chronic conditions. The findings may also be tied to barriers to achieving adequate off-reserve health care—jurisdictional disputes, disjointed program coverage, systemic racism, and a lack of equity-oriented health services. There remains a pressing need for Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments, researchers, and policymakers to build new relationships that bridge these gaps in health and access to timely care.     

Knives for the Slaughter – Notes on the Reform and Governance of Indigenous Reindeer Slaughter in Norway

Abstract

Drawing on historical records and ethnographic fieldwork, the present article examines the history of the so-called curved knife, or krumkniv, as a window on the governance and regulation of indigenous Sámi reindeer slaughter in Norway. Originally developed by scientific activists in the 1920s, in the context of a series of experimental field trials held at a farmstead in Røros, the knives were designed to combine efficiency and ease of use with the elimination of visible animal pain, thus bringing indigenous slaughter in line with the shifting aesthetic and moral concerns of the time. The innovation was highly successful, and the knives rapidly adopted as essential tools of the herding trade – to the point where today, most users disregard their origins. Moving forward to the early 21st century, the situation had shifted almost entirely: animal welfare activists now decried the same knives as a barbaric anachronism, while herders defended them as part of their cultural heritage. Historical narratives of moral progress articulated with other discourses to produce a homogeneous present moment of the state, a moment that threatened to exclude herders from participation in the ongoing nation-building project – constituting them instead as objects of intervention and reform, targeting the successes of previous reform. Herders, meanwhile, challenged such negative constructions by defining the knife as an indigenous tradition, invoking the international commitments of the state to preserve their cultural heritage. Comparing these two historical moments, the article draws out how the technical minutiae of slaughtering practice could operate both as an instrument of social engineering, and as an arena within which complex, large-scale issues – to do with matters such as social inclusion and participation, the value of history, the function and obligations of the state – could be settled, contested and redrawn.     

Measuring Inuit Health from Ungava to Nunavik via Nouveau Québec: Episodes in the History of Researcher–Subject Relations

ABSTRACT

Inuit have been the subject of research attention since the earliest encounters with Europeans. Using the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics this article explores the history of researcher–research subject relations produced through health knowledge in the region now known as Nunavik. This history is organized in three time periods: The first is the “Ungava” era and is explored in the observations of members of the Hudson Bay Expedition and subsequent mapping efforts. The second “Nouveau Québec” era begins in 1912 when the current borders of Québec were established and lasts until 1975. After a period of indifference, research interest grows rapidly in the post-war period with a focus of social adaptation and culture change. The third era begins in 1975 with the signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This marks the beginning of Inuit political development within an Inuit-controlled regional governance structure. The conceptualization of three different health surveys during this period shows an emerging complexity in how Inuit health is imagined. An upcoming fourth survey which marks the first time the study of Inuit physical, social, and community health will be initiated by an Inuit-led health authority.     

On the legitimacy of cultural policies: analysing Québec’s cultural policy with the Economies of Worth

This paper explores the question of the legitimation of cultural policies by examining the case of the Canadian French-speaking province, Québec, where the consensus over the legitimacy and the purpose of a cultural policy was not easily reached. To understand the evolution of the justifications for state intervention in this field, we have analysed three major policy statements issued by the government of Québec as well as the criticisms levelled at the moment of their publication using the analytic framework the Economies of Worth. Developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist Laurent Thévenot, this framework conceptualises different regimes of justification that can be retraced in cultural policy statements. We explore more particularly the concept of ‘compromise’ which enables us to understand why cultural policies have difficulty achieving consensus. This paper thus aims at assessing the heuristic value of this interpretative device for cultural policy analysis.     

Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim,India

In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation and the ones to follow can flourish in their own territories and on their own terms. We propose youthful decolonial futurity as a prefigurative politics specific to Indigenous youth, who view their activism as integral to creating a future where their communities have more control over decision-making processes and their ancestral territories. What emerges is a consideration of the role of Indigenous youth in building a language and politics of decolonisation against the roles of power brokers, elites, and naysayers.     

Resilience unpacked – framing of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘adaptability’ in long-term flood risk management strategies for London and Rotterdam

Resilience is held as a promising concept to produce a paradigm shift from traditional flood control to an integration of flood risk management and spatial planning. Central ideas to the resilience narrative are that ‘nothing is certain except uncertainty itself’ and ‘adaptability’ is key to ‘governing the unknown’. However, this terminology is far from clear, yet increasingly used, which raises the question how it is made sense of in practice. To answer this question, we examine two long-term flood risk management strategies in the London and Rotterdam region with a policy framing perspective (i.e. the English Thames Estuary 2100 Plan and the Dutch Delta Programme). In both strategies, uncertainties are a key concern, leading to adaptive strategic plans. Reconstructing the framing processes shows that the English adopted a ‘scientific pragmatism’ frame and the Dutch a ‘joint fact-finding’ frame. While this led to different governance approaches, there are also striking parallels. Both cases use established methods such as scenario planning and monitoring to ‘manage’ uncertainties. Similarly to previous turns in flood risk management, the resilience narrative seems to be accommodated in a technical-rational way, resulting in policy strategies that are maintaining the status quo rather than bringing about a paradigm shift.     

Workers, migrants, aliens or citizens? State constructions and discourses of identity among post-war European labour migrants in Britain

In this paper, I address a series of questions about migrant identities, assessing the continuities and contradictions between state discourses and those of migrants themselves. I address these questions through the lens of a largely neglected group of migrants, who were recruited by the British State in the immediately post-war period in response to post-war labour shortages. Whereas the recruitment of considerable numbers of labour migrants from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom from the late 1940s onwards is a well-documented part of the response to post-war labour shortages, earlier schemes to recruit people from refugee camps in Germany are less known. In this paper, I focus on women from Latvia, one of the Baltic states, who provide a particularly interesting insight into questions of identity as they both challenge common distinctions and assumptions in theories of migration—they came as independent single women for example. They are also a hybrid category in the sense they were both refugees and economic migrants with no previous attachments to the UK, unlike the other main groups of economic migrants at the time and earlier—Irish and Caribbean people—and the somewhat later migration from the Indian sub-continent. In this paper I show how these women challenged assumptions built into state policies at the time about assimilation and mothering future Britons through a strong and continuing commitment to the recreation of an imagined Latvian community in exile and the refusal of British identity.     

Post‐conflict Heritage and Tourism in Cambodia: The Burden of Angkor

The World Heritage Site of Angkor is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its 1200‐year history. Since the early 1990s over 20 countries have contributed millions of dollars to help safeguard and restore its temples. As one of Southeast Asia’s premier destinations, Angkor has also seen a 10,000% growth in international tourist arrivals in just over a decade. The challenges arising from the intense convergence of these two paradoxical and unstable agendas—heritage conservation and tourism development—are greatly compounded by Cambodia’s need to recover from war and turmoil. This paper explores the critical trends that have surfaced at Angkor and why the challenges posed by surging tourism have been inadequately addressed. It argues Angkor’s dominant role within Cambodia’s post‐conflict heritage and tourism industries requires closer, more critical attention given recent events in the country. This article is the summary of Winter's book Post‐conflict Heritage, Post‐colonial Tourism (Routledge 2007).     

Designing Constitutions in Britain’s Mid-Nineteenth Century Empire – Indigenous Territorial Government in New Zealand and Retrieving Constitutional Histories

Focusing on the striking instance of colonial New Zealand, this article examines constitutional design for colonies of European settlement, arguing about such design in two key respects. First, this article examines the proposals of so-called ‘colonial reformers’ endeavouring to influence constitutional framing, including how their notions on ‘local self-government’ or ‘municipal government’ were reflected or not, while also illuminating their concepts of how to accommodate indigenous territorial governance and indirect administration of indigenous territories in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Second, recovering traces of these disputes and ways of thought from the archives, and how they were operationalised in grounded constitutional drafting or design, rather than resorting to analysing abstract canonical, high-level texts, such as those of Henry Maine and John Stuart Mill, is ultimately more rewarding for evaluating constitutional emergence and design. It reveals tensions within ‘colonial liberalism’, as characterised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. How putative settler interests informed these metropolitan-Westminster constitutional enactments or not, assessed through cabinet-level discussions, in Colonial Office deliberations on settler agitation, illustrates missteps and failures as well as the particular ways in which diverse features of imperial constitutional design emerged. Examining these points is timely given Linda Colley’s focus on a ‘contagion of constitutions’ in the late eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth centuries.     

Identity and geopolitics in Hergé's Adventures of Tintin

This is a study of identity and geopolitics in Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, a series of adventure comics created from 1929 to 1976. The Tintin comics became increasingly popular throughout the mid-twentieth century, and their creator, Hergé, is still a subject of intrigue in the press and popular publications. Recent work in popular geopolitics has pioneered the use of comics as a new type of source material in critical geography. Hergé's approach to the comics format combines an iconic protagonist with detailed and textured environments that draw upon some of the geopolitical discourses of the twentieth century. Three forms of geopolitical meaning are identified within the Tintin comics: discourses of colonialism, European pre-eminence and anti-Americanism. These overlapping trends amount to different facets of one single discourse, which places European ideologies at the centre of its world-view. This is highlighted by focusing on three geographical spaces of the Tintin series, and by contextualising the life and selected works of Hergé.