Canadian geopolitical culture: Climate change and sustainability

Considering recent formulations of geopolitical culture in combination with concerns that environmental change be included in contemporary geopolitical analysis, this paper examines the implicit geopolitical formulations in recent Canadian federal political discourse both in Stephen Harper's Conservative government and the subsequent Liberal administration. Contrasting earth system science ideas about global transformations with Canadian nationalist rhetoric concerning petroleum production and notions of unlimited resource extraction as parts of national identity sharply highlights the contours of Canadian identity. If sustainability is to be taken seriously, the official nationalist formulation will have to be drastically changed, but as the widespread rejection of the LEAP manifesto suggests, such ideas of a sustainable mode of globalization have yet to substantially influence Canadian political discourse, despite the rhetorical support offered to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change by the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.     

La rivière Romaine en chantier : Transformations contemporaines des territorialités des Innus d'Ekuanitshit

Since 2009, Innu members of the community of Ekuanitshit have faced a major hydroelectric project on the Romaine River, an integral part of the Nitassinan, their ancestral territory. In this paper, we study the project's impacts on the material and ideational relationship the Innu have with the river. We explore the idea that the project transforms the traditional relationship to territory into a more pragmatic one, marked by economic and political interests. Our analysis reveals that the Innu's territorialities, though partly transformed by increased contact—and sometimes conflict—with hegemonic non‐indigenous society, remain anchored in a strong cultural heritage and a deep identification with territory. We argue that these seemingly differentiated conceptualizations, of traditions on the one hand and development on the other, are not incompatible. These conceptualizations comprise dynamic cultural, social, and political territorialities which are thus internal and external, ancestral and contemporary.     

Appreciating difference? A view from Indigenous rivers

While the Saint‐Laurent river is considered to be the cradle of Québécois society, many other great rivers are found across the province—other cradles of civilizations, indigenous to the continent, notably the Chisasibi and the Manicouagan. These rivers played a key role in the Québécois movement of affirmation and modernization in the twentieth century. They are valued by many people in Quebec for their hydroelectric output rather than for their cultural richness and significance for the Eeyou (Cree) and Innu Nations. Since the 1990s, I have been able to study Quebec's historical geography from the standpoint of these rivers thanks to the expertise of Eeyou and Innu knowledge holders. Using the concept of decolonization as a practice, I explore how this has impacted both my work as a geographer and my cultural identity as a Québécois woman.     

Indigenous Bioregionalisms (Love Mother Earth) Relationship,Creation, Ethics,Love

Indigenous Bioregionalisms (Love Mother Earth) are identities, methods, and philosophies defining our relationships between beloved Home Land Place and all Living Beings (written here as Home/Land/Place). Indigenous Bioregionalisms actively creates, maintains, and ensures the continuance and thrive‐ance of all Beings. It proposes a way to understand Indigenous belonging to and with Home/Land/Place—the expansive physical, natural, and SuperNatural source of life, transformance, and regeneration—of every Being.     

Geography's secret powers to save the world

The purpose of this paper, prepared to present at the 2018 joint Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) and International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference, is to suggest three strategies, framed as proposals, that geography and geography education can deploy to “save the world.” The first proposal is to expand explicit instruction in spatial thinking to close gender‐based achievement gaps. The second proposal is to apply research from the learning sciences to develop persuasive geography curricula and instructional materials. The third proposal focuses on ways social media and geospatial technologies can be employed in civic education, an idea termed “spatial citizenship.” The paper suggests a re‐envisioning of geography education with an enhanced focus on teaching for, in, and about a world that fully appreciates difference and acts on that appreciation.     

L'identification des zones calmes et un diagnostic d’équité environnementale à Montréal

Quiet urban areas are places with low noise levels that can help people to support physical and mental wellness. This paper has two objectives: to identify quiet urban areas in Montreal and to check for the presence of environmental inequities in access to such areas for vulnerable groups (children, older people, low‐income individuals, and visible minorities). Using a GIS‐based methodology, 2,282 quiet urban areas were identified in Montreal. The results of a mixed effects logistic regression model analysis showed that there are no major inequities in access to quiet urban areas for the population groups studied. The analysis did, however, revealed substantial spatial disparities in terms of the distribution of quiet urban areas across the boroughs and municipalities examined.     

L’émergence de la grappe industrielle de l'intelligence artificielle (IA) à Montréal

The paper analyses the emergence of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) cluster in Montreal and investigates two questions: (1) What are the different theoretical interpretations related to the emergence of industrial cluster? And (2) What are the factors underlying the emergence of the AI cluster in Montreal and to what extent have local and global factors been decisive in this respect? The AI cluster emerges through a process that brings into play the interaction between the local initial conditions and the birth of a new industry. Moreover, it also involves an interaction between the local and the global, which is supported by interactions with foreign actors located in different parts of the world.     

“Our life is a struggle”: Respectable Gender Norms and Black Resistance to Policing

This paper investigates the role of women in anti‐racist campaigns against policing in post‐2011 England. It argues that imperial discourses about gender norms and respectability have helped to shape how race and crime are constituted in the contemporary period. Women's resistance to police racism has received scholarly attention from black feminists in North America; such attention has been less in Britain, particularly since the 1990s. While influential analyses of policing in Britain have deployed a post‐colonial lens, gender and women's resistance are rarely the primary focus. This paper significantly develops debates on gender, race and policing, by arguing that the colonial roots of race and gender norms are fundamental to conceptualising one of the key findings of the field research which informs this paper: that women lead almost every campaign against a black death in police custody in post‐2011 England. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with activists, ethnographic observations at protests and scholar‐activist participation in campaigns against black deaths in custody, this paper demonstrates how 18^th and 19^th century imperial discourses on respectability and nation do not simply contextualise racialised policing in the contemporary period, but expose the racialised and gendered norms that legitimise racist policing in modern Britain.     

Onward Precarity,Mobility, and Migration among Latin Americans in London

Contributing to debates around the relationships between precarity, mobilities and migration, this paper examines the nature of precarity among onward Latin American (OLA) migrants as they have moved transnationally to multiple destinations from their homelands to southern Europe and onwards to London across different time periods. Drawing on primary research with over 400 OLAs, the discussion highlights how precarity maps onto onward migration trajectories in fractal rather than linear ways. In moving beyond a continuum approach to labour exploitation, the paper develops the concept of “onward precarity” to capture how migrants negotiate intersecting vulnerabilities in holistic spatio‐temporal ways as they move through different structural contexts across the world from origin, through transition to their final destination country over time. These negotiations are underpinned by multiple agentic tactics that revolve around resilience and reworking strategies as onward migrants traverse wider structures of disadvantage in situ and through mobility in different places.