Images of homelessness in Ottawa: implications for local politics

The empirical foci of this paper are a content and discourse analysis of four years (1994 to 1997) of media reporting on ‘homelessness’ in The Ottawa Citizen, the premier, English language daily newspaper in the region. Examining these reports in juxtaposition with governmental and community‐based reports from the same period has provided useful insights into how public opinion might be influenced to regard antihomeless laws as more or less legitimate. This paper's approach was influenced by certain regulation theorists who argue that an examination of key discourses has the potential to enhance understanding about how economic, political and social restructuring is taking place, as well to shed light on how to intervene effectively at a variety of geographic scales in shaping its key elements. The results of the media analysis suggest that very particular messages are emphasized vis‐à‐vis “the homeless”: the ‘stubborn’ unchanging nature of the problem, and the difficulties that housed citizens have in helping these passive, isolated, overwhelmingly white, male, substance abusers and contained (in the downtown) ‘others’. They generally neglect or dismiss stories that might expose the demographic and geographic diversity of those who currently are homeless, and their complex and difficult past histories. When hints of such complexities are mentioned, they come with subtle messages about the deserving individuals who might be redeemed, in contrast to the hapless majority. Cette recherche présente une analyse du contenu des articles sur les personnes sans‐abri, publiés entre 1994 et 1997 dans le quotidien anglais le plus important dans la région d'Ottawa le “Ottawa Citizen”. L‘étude de ces articles ainsi que les rapports gouvernementaux et communautaires durant la même période soulèvent des idées intéressantes autour de l'impact que le discours public peut avoir sur l'acceptation de lois discriminatoires contre les personnes qui sont sans‐abri. Le présent travail est influencé par certains théoriciens de la régulation qui proclament que l'analyse des discours clés dans la société peut potentiellement améliorer notre compréhension de la restructuration économique, politique et sociale et clarifier la manière d'intervenir efficacement pour l'influencer. Les résultats de l'analyse des articles médiatiques suggèrent que des messages particuliers sont communiqués au sujet des personnes qui sont sansabri: c.‐à‐d. la nature invariable du problème et les difficultés vécues par les citoyens logés, à savoir comment aider cette population qui est présentée comme passive, isolée, à prédominance blanche, qui souffre de toxicomanie et qui réside dans le centre‐ville. Généralement, les médias négligent l'information qui expose la grande diversité démographique et géographique des gens qui sont sans‐abri ainsi que leurs histoires de vie personnelles difficiles et complexes. Quand ils mentionnent ces complexités, elles sont accompagnées de messages subtiles suggérant que seulement une minorité de l'ensemble des personnes sans abri méritent notre aide.     

Sir John Coxe Hippisley: That ‘Busy Man’ in the Cause of Catholic Emancipation

The late 18th and early 19th centuries represent a critical time for the emergence of modernity in western political life. Of particular interest is the confluence at that time of increased religious toleration with political reform. Research for an earlier study, Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century (Westport, 2002), led to an examination of Sir John Coxe Hippisley, MP (1747–1825). In many ways, his political career is an exemplar of the broader conflicts of contemporary English political life writ small. Set between 1790 and 1818, Hippisley's parliamentary career is fascinating, for while he was an active and precocious supporter of catholic emancipation, he represented Sudbury in Suffolk, a borough with a high proportion of protestant dissenters. His constituents found Hippisley's enthusiasm for catholic emancipation repugnant, but not so much so that they could not be convinced to continue to vote for him if the price was right. Consequently a constant and expensive wooing of his constituents marked his parliamentary career. On a national level, Hippisley's constant and public pursuit of catholic emancipation, coupled with his equally avid quest for preferment, led to a series of quixotic contradictions in his political behaviour. Hippisley and his political adventures thus represent a crucial development stage in the movement for religious freedom in England and the west, as well as providing an illuminating case study on the dynamics of local politics in the time leading up to the first great age of reform.     

Anthropology and the New Museology

Efforts are expanding to make museums responsive to broader audiences, and to incorporate a more multi-voiced approach to representation. Anthropologists and museum professionals point to initiatives in museums to broaden their research and outreach, but there is work still to be done. Whether we focus on theory or methodology, the new museology represents a particularly anthropological approach to museum work, emphasizing collaboration between museums and communities, and the recognition of the rights of peoples to be included in and consulted about the presentation and preservation of their heritage.     

Patriot Graves: American national identity and the Civil War dead

The Civil War was America’s defining conflict, the war that made the nation and the fulcrum for the development of American national identity in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet the role that the Civil War dead played in this process has only begun to be explored. Although the monuments raised to honor the dead, along with the battlefields on which they fought, attract considerable interest, the cemeteries constructed to inter them have been integrated into the landscape – literal and figurative – of the American nation so fully that the need they answered, the manner of their development, the form they took, and their longer‐term symbolic message has been relatively neglected. Yet the Civil War dead were a crucial – indeed, the crucial – component in the construction of American national identity. Although scholars interpret American attitudes toward the Civil War dead within the context of the mourning rituals of the antebellum era, the war required, and produced, a different approach to death, for which antebellum precedent had ill‐prepared Americans. Removed from its antebellum religious and societal framework, death in the Civil War acquired a new and more potent national meaning that not only validated American nationalism through warfare, but anticipated the response to fallen soldiers in future European conflicts.     

SAME/DIFFERENCE? TOWARD A SAPPHIC/NONBINARY SEXUALITY OF HISTORY

What is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its “same-sex” logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. My book argues that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century representations of the sapphic became a flash point for European cultures grappling with questions of power and governance, desire and duty, mobility and difference in an age of colonialism, racial capitalism, revolution, and reaction. In figuring the sapphic exclusively through notions of sameness, however, The Sexuality of History does not do justice to trans and nonbinary figures both historical and fictional. Is there a place among sapphic subjects for these figures, and, if so, with what implications? I argue here for a both/and approach that requires recoding certain figures as nonbinary while still insisting on their efficacy as signs of the sapphic. This recoding encourages a more nuanced exploration of the cultural work performed by sapphic representations and a more expansive conception of what I have called a sapphic episteme. Such revisionist thinking may be useful at a time of social and theoretical tensions at the intersections of “lesbian” and “trans.”     

ASSIMILATION THROUGH DOMESTIC TRANSFORMATION: SASKATCHEWAN'S MASONIC SCHOLARSHIP PROJECT, 1922–23*

The Masonic Scholarship Project reflected a growing post-World War I commitment to the assimilation of Canada's central and eastern European immigrants. By placing ‘Anglo-Saxon’ teachers in non-English schools, the project sought to extend Canadian influences into Saskatchewan's isolated immigrant blocs. The project's designers had a profound understanding of the way in which social order is embedded in the domestic environment and focused much of their attention on ensuring that the domestic realm was conducive to change. This paper examines the efforts made to transform the woman's role in the home and in the community. These efforts centred on providing the immigrants with an example of ‘suitable’ behaviour and values. The teachers were encouraged to visit all of the homes in their districts, and to use the school for community-focused events such as picnics, sewing circles, and literary societies. The transformation of the domestic realm was viewed as a critical step in immigrant assimilation. Le Projet Bousier Maconnique exprimait un engagement croissant après la Première Guerre Mondiale pour assimiler les immigrants canadiens de L'Europe centrale et de l'est. En mettant les professeurs ‘Anglo-Saxon’ dans des écoles á population non-anglo-saxonne le projet tendait á augmenter l'influence canadienne dans les quartiers isolés de la Saskatchewan. Les animateurs du projet avaient une vaste compréhension de la facon dont l'ordre social était intégré dans la cellule familiale et ils ont concentré leurs efforts afin de s'assurer qu'il conduisait au changement. Ce document s'intéresse aux efforts faits pour transformer le rôle de la femme au foyer et dans la communauté. Ces efforts étaient dirigés afin de donner aux immigrants un exemple ‘convenable’ de conduite et de valeurs. Les professeurs étaient invités á visiter tous les foyers de leur district et á se servir des écoles pour les évènements communautaires tels que les pique-niques, les ateliers de couture et les centres littéraires. La transformation de la cellule familiale était percue comme une étape cruciale á l'assimilation des immigrants.     

Social capital, environmental health and collective action: a Hamilton, Ontario case study

This article explores the relationships among environmental health, social capital and collective action in the industrial city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Survey results from 512 households are used to document intra-urban variation in levels of social capital (defined as norms, networks and trust) and collective action in the context of environmental health issues, and specifically air quality. Despite real differences between areas in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, little variation in either social capital or collective action by area was observed. Further, while social networks and community involvement were significant predictors of collective action, indicators of norms and trust were not. Hence, the conception of social capital as a unitary construct that produces place-specific benefits is not reflected in the example explored here.