Search results for ""university of british columbia press""

In the 1960s, Canadians could step through time to eighteenth-century trading posts or nineteenth-century pioneer towns. These living history museums promised authentic reconstructions of the past but, as Time Travel shows, they revealed more about mid-twentieth-century interests and perceptions of history than they reflected historical fact.An appetite for commercial tourism led to the rise of living history museums. They became important components of economic growth, especially as part of government policy to promote regional economic diversity and employment. Alan Gordon explores how these museums were shaped by post-war pressures, personality conflicts, funding challenges, and the need to balance education and entertainment. Ultimately, the rise of the living history museum is linked to the struggle to establish a pan-Canadian identity in the context of multiculturalism, competing anglophone and francophone nationalisms, First Nations resistance, and the growth of the state.

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Fragile Settlements compares the processes by which colonial authority was asserted over Indigenous people in south-west Australia and prairie Canada from the 1830s to the early twentieth century. At the start of this period, there was an explosion of settler migration across the British Empire. In a humanitarian response to the unprecedented demand for land, Britain’s Colonial Office moved to protect Indigenous peoples by making them subjects under British law. This book highlights the parallels and divergences between these connected British frontiers by examining how colonial actors and institutions interpreted and applied the principle of law in their interaction with Indigenous peoples on the ground. Fragile Settlements questions the finality of settler colonization and contributes to ongoing debates around jurisdiction, sovereignty, and the prospect of genuine Indigenous-settler reconciliation in Canada and Australia.

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This vibrant new collection edited by Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone explores the central role of museums as memory keepers and makers.The idea of historical consciousness – how our conception of the past informs our sense of the present and of the future – is of growing importance for cultural institutions in North America. Using case studies and observations that emerge from a Canadian context, Museums and the Past considers how the modern museum fosters public perceptions of history.Contributors focus on the relationship between historical consciousness and museum practice and reflect on the challenges of transforming museums into dynamic civic labs and meaningful places of memory and learning. The result is an engaging range of perspectives on the contemporary museum’s pedagogical and ethical responsibilities.

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From its origins as a project to rescue Chinese prostitutes and slave girls from a life of supposed depravity the Chinese Rescue Home became a feature of the moral and racial landscape of Victoria – a place where the Methodist Women’s Missionary Society attempted to reform Chinese and Japanese girls and women, in part by teaching them domestic skills meant to ease their integration into Western society. Between 1886 and 1923, over four hundred Chinese and Japanese women sheltered in the home. Yet, despite the significance of this iconic institution, little has been written on its history. From Slave Girls to Salvation draws on a rich collection of archival materials to uncover the organizational hierarchies, as well as the religious and racial tropes, which permeated the home. In doing so, it expands our understanding of the complex interplay of gender, race, and class in BC during this time period.

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From Katy Perry training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global box-office mastery of the US military-supported Transformers franchise, to the explosion of war games such as Call of Duty, it’s clear that the US security state is a dominant force in media culture. But is the ubiquity of cultural products that glorify the security state a new phenomenon? Or have Uncle Sam and Hollywood been friends for a long time? Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire’s culture industry – a nexus between the US’s security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Building on and extending Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees interrogates the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.

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Eye-catching headlines such as “Sixty people charged in child-porn crackdown” explode in the media with alarming frequency, giving the impression that our communities are awash with perverts. But what exactly do we know about these crimes and those who commit them? Who produces child cyberpornography? Who distributes it? Who consumes it? And is there a link between viewing and abuse?Seeking answers to these questions, Francis Fortin and Patrice Corriveau infiltrated child-porn user groups and compared their findings to scholarship on the subject. Who Is Bob_34? breaks down popular perceptions by opening a window on a clandestine world populated by a spectrum of cyberpedophiles, ranging from occasional image collectors to sex abusers who lure and assault children. Contrary to popular perceptions, the typical cyberpedophile is in his mid-thirties and grew up using the Internet. He often believes his actions are justifiable and takes pride in collecting and sharing child porn.This timely book reveals that this contemporary phenomenon is much more complicated than the media and commissioned reports suggest.

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Adultery scandals involving politicians. Dating websites for married women and men. Raids of polygamous communities. Reality shows about polyamorists. It seems that non-monogamy is everywhere: in popular culture, in the news, and before the courts.In Fraught Intimacies, Nathan Rambukkana examines how polygamy, adultery, and polyamory are represented in the public sphere and the effect this is having on intimate relationships and aspects of contemporary Western society.As this book demonstrates, although monogamy is considered and presented as the norm in Western society, many kinds of sexual and romantic relationships exist within its borders. Rambukkana’s intricate analysis reveals how some forms of non-monogamy are tacitly accepted, even glamourized, while others are vilified and reviled. By questioning what this says about intimacy, power, and privilege, this book offers an innovative framework for understanding the status of non-monogamy in Western society.

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Unwanted Warriors uncovers the history of Canada’s first casualties of the Great War – men who tried to enlist but were deemed “unfit for service” by medical examiners. Condemned as shirkers for not being in uniform, rejected volunteers faced severe ostracism. Nagging guilt, coupled with self-doubt about their social and physical worth, led many of these men to divorce themselves from society ... or worse.Nic Clarke draws on the service files of 3,400 rejected volunteers to examine the deleterious effects that socially constructed norms of health and fitness had on individual men and Canadian society. He considers the mechanics of the military medical examination, the psychical and psychological characteristics that the authorities believed made a fighting man, and how evaluations changed as the war dragged on. He also brings to light the experiences of those who deliberately claimed disability to avoid service – a minority within the large population of rejected volunteers who felt denigrated, if not emasculated, by their exclusion from duty.

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Few moments in Canadian history are as intriguing as the political battle between Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the “Gang of Eight” provincial premiers who opposed his plans to “patriate” Canada’s constitution from Britain. This volume revisits these constitutional negotiations, including the personalities, visions, and political struggles that shaped the resulting constitutional agreement. Offering fresh perspectives on the politics of this key moment in Canadian history, it focuses on the players behind the patriation process, including First Nations and feminist activists, who helped shape Canada’s new constitution. Patriation and Its Consequences also explores the long shadow of patriation, including the alienation of Quebec, the character of Canadian federalism, Indigenous constitutionalism and Aboriginal treaty rights, and the struggle to ensure gender equality rights in Canada.

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Since 9/11, the wars on terror, economic crises, climate change, and humanitarian emergencies have forced decision makers to institute new measures to maintain security. Foreign policy analysts tend to view these decisions as being divorced from ethics, but Unsettled Balance shows that arguments about rights, obligations, norms, and values have played a profound role in Canadian foreign policy and international relations since the 1990s.The contributors to this volume examine a range of topics – from funding for climate change adaptation to the militarization of humanitarian aid – to collectively explore three key questions. What is the meaning of “ethics” and “security,” and how are they linked? To what extent have considerations of ethics and security changed in the twenty-first century? And what are the implications of a shifting historical context for Canada’s international relations? Their conclusions are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only how Canada responds to global challenges but also why it responds the way it does.

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Magazine articles, news items, and self-improvement books tell us that our daily food choices – whether we opt for steak or vegetarian, a TV dinner or a sit-down meal – serve as bold statements about who we are as individuals. Acquired Tastes makes the case that our food habits say more about where we come from and who we would like to be.This intimate portrait of eating habits and attitudes towards food in over one hundred Canadian families in both rural and urban settings reveals that our food choices never solely reflect personal tastes. Age, gender, social class, ethnicity, health concerns, food availability, and political and moral concerns shape the meanings that families attach to food and their self-identities. They also influence how its members respond to social discourses on health, beauty, and the environment, a finding that has profound implications for public health campaigns.

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Non-lethal weapons take many forms – from rubber bullets to electroshock and long-range acoustic devices – which their proponents argue are ethical, legal, and humane. Social scientists, historians, legal scholars, and activists have long challenged the use of non-lethal weapons in policing and war. Until now, little scholarly attention has been paid to the social, historical, and legal relations that animate the concept of non-lethality, nor is there a comprehensive account of how the concept has achieved social and political acceptance. Disarming Intervention tells the story of how the concept of non-lethality emerged in a series of nineteenth-century legal codes that governed the conduct of international hostilities, and how it continued to legitimate US-led armed conflicts as ethical, legal, and humane throughout the twentieth century. Seantel Anaïs unpacks these issues by tracing the social, historical, and legal legitimization of non-lethality in the United States and in armed interventions abroad. Disarming Intervention shows in detail how it came to be that an idea forever changed the relationship between contemporary weapons of armed conflict and war’s constitutive objective to produce irreversible injury and death.

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For decades, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as the devastating nature of asbestos-related deaths became common knowledge, the industry suffered terminal decline. A Town Called Asbestos looks at how the people of Asbestos, Quebec, worked and lived alongside the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community’s survival, they developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos’s proud history and reveals the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today.

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Chemicals found in homes, schools, and workplaces are having devastating consequences on human health and the environment. Our Chemical Selves examines the gender dynamics associated with these everyday toxic exposures. Written by leading researchers in science, law, and public policy, the chapters in Our Chemical Selves reveal that while exposures to chemicals are pervasive and widespread, people from low-income, racialized, and Indigenous communities face a far greater risk of exposure. At the same time, the risks associated with these exposures (and the burdens of managing them) rest disproportionately on the shoulders of women. This collection hones in on the “political economy of pollution” by critically examining the system that manufactures the chemicals and the social, political, and gender relations that enable harmful chemicals to continue being produced and consumed. It also demonstrates the urgent need to revise existing approaches to the regulation of toxics, including Canada’s current Chemicals Management Plan.

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Territorial pluralism is a form of political autonomy designed to accommodate national, ethnic, or linguistic differences within a state. It has the potential to provide for the peaceful, democratic, and just management of difference. But given traditional concerns about state sovereignty, nation-building, and unity, how realistic is it to expect that a state’s authorities will agree to recognize and empower distinct substate communities?Territorial Pluralism answers this question by examining a wide variety of cases, including developing and industrialized states and democratic and authoritarian regimes. Drawing on examples of both success and failure, contributors analyze specific cases to understand the kinds of institutions that emerge in response to demands for territorial pluralism, as well as their political effects. With identity conflicts continuing to have a major impact on politics around the globe, they argue that territorial pluralism remains a legitimate and effective means for managing difference in multinational states.

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A shift in US bank policy. A demonstration in Greece. A tsunami in Japan. In recent times, these kinds of events have had profound effects on the economic well-being of Canadians. In such a heavily globalized environment, it may seem that only large corporations with access to transnational resources can operate successfully, but Co-operative Canada demonstrates that this is not the case.Despite economic pressures following the 2008 recession, co-operatives in Canada are thriving. In fact, there are approximately nine thousand co-ops across the nation with a combined membership of about 18 million members – more than half the population of Canada.Drawing on the results of a large research project that examined co-operatives in communities from coast to coast to coast, Co-operative Canada reveals how Canadians are using the co-operative model to collectively respond to the forces of globalization through local, community-owned enterprises. It does this through specific examples that vividly describe the pragmatic realities of the communities these co-ops serve.

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Numerous books explore the “how to” of qualitative research, but few discuss what it means to actually engage in it, particularly when researchers adopt alternative methods to shed light on the experiences of marginalized populations.In Demarginalizing Voices, scholars share personal stories about their research with marginalized populations, including Aboriginal peoples, sex workers, the dead and the dying, women and men in prison, women and men released from prison, and the homeless and the hospitalized. In the process, they answer questions of relevance to anyone engaged in qualitative research: What can scholars expect when their research requires them to establish human connections and relationships with their subjects? What role do ethics review boards and institutions play when researchers explore new, often less accepted methods? How do researchers reconcile academic life and its expectations with their activism? These powerful accounts from the cutting-edge of qualitative research not only create a space in academia that centres marginalized voices, they open up the field to new debates and discussion.

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Debating how Canada compares, both regionally and in relation to other countries, is a national pastime. This book examines how political scientists apply diverse comparative strategies to better understand Canadian political life.Using a variety of methods, the contributors use comparison to examine topics as diverse as Indigenous rights, Canadian voting behaviour, activist movements, climate policy, and immigrant retention. While the theoretical perspectives and kinds of questions asked vary greatly, as a whole they demonstrate how the “art of comparing” is an important strategy for understanding Canadian identity politics, political mobilization, political institutions, and public policy.Ultimately, this book establishes how adopting a more systematic comparative outlook is essential – not only to revitalize the study of Canadian politics but also to achieve a more nuanced understanding of Canada as a whole.

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Changes in technology and media consumption are transforming the way people communicate about politics. Are they also changing the way politicians communicate to the public? Political Communication in Canada examines the way political parties, politicians, interest groups, the media, and citizens are using new tactics, tools, and channels to disseminate information, and also investigates the implications of these changes. Drawing on recent examples, contributors review such things as the branding of the New Democratic Party, how Stephen Harper’s image is managed, and politicians’ use of Twitter. They also discuss the evolving role of political journalism, including media coverage of politics and how Canadians use the Internet for political discussions. In an era when political communication – from political marketing to citizen journalism – is of vital importance to the workings of government, this timely volume provides insight into the future of Canadian democracy.

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The islands of Haida Gwaii contain some of the last remaining tracts of intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world. Aggressive logging over the past century, however, has threatened not only the unique biodiversity and habitat values, but also the cultural values of the Haida people who have relied on these forests for millennia. Islands’ Spirit Rising examines the long-term conflict over the islands’ ancient forests and recent events that unfolded in the context of collaborative land-use planning. In response to threats posed by a century of logging, a local indigenous-environmental-community movement built enough momentum to challenge the multinational forest industry and the political structures enabling it. This book traces the evolution of this dynamic force, from the early days of Haida resistance to the modern context of alliances, legal battles, and evolving forms of governance.

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The political concept of recognition has introduced new ways of thinking about the relationship between minorities and justice in plural societies. But is a politics informed by recognition valuable to minorities today?Contributors to this volume examine the successes and failures of struggles for recognition and self-determination in relation to claims of religious groups, cultural minorities, and indigenous peoples on territories associated with Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, India, New Zealand, and Australia. The chapters look at cultural recognition in the context of public policy about intellectual and physical property, membership practices, and independence movements, while probing debates about toleration, democratic citizenship, and colonialism.Together the contributions point to a distinctive set of challenges posed by a politics of recognition and self-determination to peoples seeking emancipation from unjust relations.

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The Allies claimed victory at the end of the Second World War, but the United States’ invention of the atomic bomb and its replication by the Soviet Union posed new dangers for all nations. In Peace Prepared examines what Canada’s Cold War Army did to prepare for war – and why and how it did it.Although a Third World War never happened, army officers supported by a large civilian defence workforce of scientists, engineers, and designers responded aggressively to the challenges presented by the possibility of nuclear attack. Through innovation and adaptation, they developed a collaborative and systematic approach to problem solving that not only played a significant role in the evolution of Canada’s national force but also shaped how armies in the Western Alliance related to one another during the Cold War and beyond.

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In 1846, a group of women came together to form what would become one of nineteenth-century Hamilton’s most important social welfare institutions. Through the Ladies Benevolent Society and Hamilton Orphan Asylum, they managed and administered a charitable visiting society, orphan asylum, and aged women’s home.At this time, in other parts of the Western world, the public sphere and women’s exclusion from it were reshaping political and gender relations. Although charitable women in Hamilton managed essential social services in the community, and although these efforts were publicly financed, their work was still defined as “private.”In Private Women and the Public Good, Carmen J. Nielson explores the history of this pioneering charity and demonstrates that despite its notable political significance, women’s charitable work failed to challenge the staunch division of private and public spheres.

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In the late 1990s, planning authorities in the Vietnamese capital ofHanoi pushed the imaginary line between city and country severalkilometres westward, engulfing dozens of rural settlements. As statepolicies forced rapid urbanization, villagers whose families had farmedthe land for generations saw rice fields levelled, irrigation canalsfilled, and large avenues flanked by residential towers, big-boxstores, and office buildings spring up. Danielle Labbé considers acentury of change to the settlement of Hoa Muc – a community thatunderwent a rapid transition from rural village to urban neighbourhood.Through extensive research in the community, Labbé studies not only thechanging lives of villagers, but also the state regulations andterritorialization projects that drove these changes on the outskirtsof Hanoi, and the early urban changes in the decades that preceded thereforms and continue to influence the area’s urbanization.Despite the new buildings, the end of farming activities, and thearrival of a large new population, the former villagers still considerHoa Muc their homeland. The compelling story of this single village isboth a portrait of a population that has endured despite drasticupheavals and a new analytical window onto Vietnam’s ongoingurban transition.

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As Julia Harrison’s first summer living in Ontario approached, she became aware of the culture of the cottage. While friends and family talked of nothing but languid afternoons on the dock and bartered for as many lakeside days as possible, Harrison marveled at the less attractive components of cottage life: the clogged highways en route and the unrelenting investment of money and labour that the idyllic escapes demanded.Curious about the rich and passionate meaning these places seemed to hold, Harrison studied cottagers in the Haliburton region over the course of seven years. Thoughtfully and engagingly written, A Timeless Place considers the cottage family as a place where memories are treasured, national identity is celebrated, spiritual balance is restored, and even a few dark secrets are kept.

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In the summer of 1993, activists set up a peace camp blocking a logging road into an extensive area of temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound that was slated for clear-cutting. Twenty-odd years later, Clayoquot holds a prominent place in environmental discourse, yet it is not generally associated with feminist or eco/feminist movements.The Changing Nature of Eco/Feminism argues that Clayoquot offers a potent site for examining a whole range of feminist issues. Through a careful study of eco/feminist activism against clear-cut logging practices in British Columbia, the book explores how a transnational eco/feminist practice insisted on an account of logging situated in histories of colonialism, holding the Canadian state to account for its deforestation practices. Moore demonstrates that the sheer vitality of eco/feminist politics at the Peace Camp in the summer of 1993 confounded dominant narratives of contemporary feminism and has re-imagined eco/feminist politics for new times.

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As China rose to its position of global superpower, Chinese groups in the West watched with anticipation and trepidation. For members of China’s diasporic community, the rise of China created ripples of change, influencing communities, culture, and communication, and even challenging the very concept of diaspora. Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China examines how artists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals from the Chinese diaspora responded to China’s ascendancy by representing it to global audiences with a new-found vitality and self-assurance. The chapters, often personal in nature, cover locations as varied as Australia, North America, and Tibet. And yet, the focus of each is the nexus between the political and economic rise of China and the cultural products this period produced, a place where new ideas of nation, identity, and diaspora were forged.

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In 1951, Canada sent troops to western Europe to support its NATO allies. The brigade helped Canada establish its international status. In private, however, Canadian officials and military leaders expressed grave doubts about NATO’s strategies and operational plans. Despite these reservations, they sent military families overseas and implemented personnel policies that permanently changed the distribution of the defence budget and the character of the Canadian Army.By exposing the hidden agendas that pushed NATO’s members in different directions even as they presented a united front, this original account of the evolution of the Canadian Army – from a small training cadre to a truly national force – offers a new perspective on military policy and diplomacy in the Cold War era.

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Situated within the area stretching from Georgian Bay in the north to Lake Simcoe in the east, the Wendat Confederacy flourished for two hundred years. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, Wendat society was under attack. Disease and warfare plagued the people, culminating in a series of Iroquois assaults that led to their ultimate dispersal.Yet the Wendat did not disappear, as many historians have maintained. In Dispersed but Not Destroyed, Kathryn Magee Labelle examines the creation of a Wendat diaspora in the wake of the Iroquois attacks. In the latter half of the century, Wendat leaders continued to appear at councils, trade negotiations, and diplomatic ventures, relying on established customs of accountability and consensus. Women also continued to assert their authority during this time, guiding their communities toward paths of cultural continuity and accommodation. Turning the story of Wendat conquest on its head, this book demonstrates the resiliency of the Wendat people and writes a new chapter in North American history.

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The global health crisis has been debated in political arenas, written about in best-selling manifestos, and exposed in Oscar-nominated documentaries. Yet, despite all the media attention, there are few studies that look seriously at its underlying cause – the rise of the industrial diet.The Industrial Diet chronicles the long-term developments that transformed food into edible commodities that far too often fail to nourish us. Tracing the industrial diet’s history from its roots in the nineteenth century through to present-day globalism, Anthony Winson looks at the role of technology, population growth, and political and economic factors in the constitution and transformation of mass dietary regimes and provides new evidence linking broad-based dietary changes with negative health effects. With its focus on the degradation of food and the emergent struggle for healthful eating, this book encourages us to reflect on the state of our food environments and create realistic and innovative strategies that can lead to a healthier future.

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As the key component in aluminum production, bauxite became one of the most important minerals of the last one hundred years. But its effects on people and economies varied broadly – for some it meant jobs, progress, or a political advantage over rival nations but for many others, it meant exploitation, pollution, or the destruction of a way of life. Aluminum Ore explores the often overlooked history of bauxite in the twentieth century, and in doing so examines the forces that shaped the time, from the mineral’s strategic development in the First World War and throughout the Cold War, to its role in the globalization of markets, as companies from the northern hemisphere vied for the resources of the south.In this wide-ranging collection, scholars from around the world consider multiple international perspectives on this history – from Guinea to Nazi Germany to Jamaica – all while examining the central place of one commodity in a time of change.

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Canada enjoys a reputation as a peaceable kingdom and a refuge frommilitarism.Yet Canadians during the Vietnam War era met American warresisters not with open arms but with political obstacles and publicresistance, and the border remained closed to what were then called“draft dodgers” and “deserters.” Between 1965 and 1973, a small but active cadre of Canadian antiwargroups and peace activists launched campaigns to open the border.Jessica Squires tells their story, often in their own words. Interviewsand government documents reveal that although these groups ultimatelymet with success – in the process shaping Canadian identity andCanada’s relationship with the United States – they had toovercome state surveillance and resistance from police, politicians,and bureaucrats. Building Sanctuary not only brings to light overlookedlinks between the anti-draft movement and Canadian immigration policy– it challenges cherished notions about Canadian identity andCanada in the 1960s.

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In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a wave of state-sponsored“national fitness” programs swept Britain and its formersettler colonies, laying the foundations for the twentiethcentury’s obsession with fitness. In Strong, Beautiful andModern, Charlotte Macdonald shows how governments encouragedcitizens to be healthier and more active and thereby reinforced thecultural ties of the Empire. Alongside these state-sponsored effortswas a growing emphasis from business, the medical establishment, andpopular culture on the importance of having “a betterbody.” At a time when government concern over public healthissues such as obesity is once again on the rise, Macdonald offersvaluable lessons as to why the first national fitness drive wasultimately a failure. Drawing on extensive research, Strong,Beautiful and Modern is a lively investigation into the way peopleand their governments think about health and well-being, and howhistorical views have shaped our modern life.

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Sporting Gender is the first book to explore the rise to fame of female athletes in China during its national crisis of 1931-45 brought on by the Japanese invasion. By re-mapping lives and careers of these athletes, administrators, and film actors within a wartime context, Gao shows how they coped with the conflicting demands of nationalist causes, unwanted male attention, and modern fame. Addressing themes of state control, media influence, fashion, and changing gender roles, she argues that the athletic female form helped to create a new ideal of modern womanhood in China at a time when women’s emancipation and national needs went hand in hand. This book brings vividly to life the histories of these athletes and demonstrates how intertwined they were with the aims of the state and the needs of society.

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Despite being dubbed “the world’s oldest profession,” prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it is often criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized across the socio-political spectrum by everyone from politicians to journalists to women’s groups.In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya M. Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced, balanced, and realistic view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices – including researchers, feminists, academics, and advocates, as well as sex workers of differing ages, genders, and sectors – to engage in a dialogue that challenges the dominant narratives surrounding the sex industry and advances the idea that sex work is in fact work. Presenting a variety of opinions and perspectives on such diverse topics as social stigma, police violence, labour organizing, anti-prostitution feminism, human trafficking, and harm reduction, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book.

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In China, both opium and alcohol were used for centuries in the pursuit of health and leisure while simultaneously linked to personal and social decline. The impact of these substances is undeniable, and the role they have played in Chinese social, cultural, and economic history is extremely complex.In Intoxicating Manchuria, Norman Smith reveals how warlord rule, Japanese occupation, and political conflict affected local intoxicant industries. These industries flourished throughout the early twentieth century, even as a vigorous anti-intoxicant movement raged. Through the lens of popular Chinese media depictions of alcohol and opium, Smith analyzes how intoxicants and addiction were understood in this society, the role the Japanese occupation of Manchuria played in their portrayal, and the efforts made to reduce opium and alcohol consumption. This is the first English-language book-length study to focus on alcohol use in modern China and the first dealing with intoxicant restrictions in the region.

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On 2 May 2011, Canadians watched as the Stephen Harper Conservatives won their first majority government. Jack Layton led the NDP to its best performance in history, and Michael Ignatieff and the federal Liberals had their worst showing to date. For most casual observers, this election marked a major shift in Canadian politics. In reality, the country’s political landscape and national party system had been changing for quite some time.Parties, Elections, and the Future of Canadian Politics offers the first comprehensive account of political change in Canada over the past two decades. It explores developments in the political landscape from both historical and contemporary perspectives and speculates on the future of the national party system. By documenting how parties and voters responded to new challenges between 1993 and 2011, this volume enhances our understanding of one of the most tumultuous periods in Canadian political history.

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On 2 May 2011, Canadians watched as the Stephen Harper Conservatives won their first majority government. Jack Layton led the NDP to its best performance in history, and Michael Ignatieff and the federal Liberals had their worst showing to date. For most casual observers, this election marked a major shift in Canadian politics. In reality, the country’s political landscape and national party system had been changing for quite some time.Parties, Elections, and the Future of Canadian Politics offers the first comprehensive account of political change in Canada over the past two decades. It explores developments in the political landscape from both historical and contemporary perspectives and speculates on the future of the national party system. By documenting how parties and voters responded to new challenges between 1993 and 2011, this volume enhances our understanding of one of the most tumultuous periods in Canadian political history.

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First signed in 1886, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is still the cornerstone of international copyright law. At the centre of The Struggle for Canadian Copyright is Canada’s experience with the Berne Convention. Set against the backdrop of Canada’s development from a British colony into a so-called middle power, this book reveals the deep roots of conflict in the international copyright system that continue to divide “developed” and developing countries. Canada’s signing of the convention can be viewed in the context of a former British colony’s efforts to find a place on the world stage. Throughout the past century, Canada’s copyright policy has been used to project an image of the country as a good global citizen. In this groundbreaking book, Sara Bannerman examines Canada’s struggle for copyright sovereignty and explores some of the problems rooted in imperial and international copyright that affect Canadians to this day.

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The rapidly changing nature of life in Canadian rural communities is more than a simple response to economic conditions. People living in rural places are part of a new social agenda characterized by transformation of livelihoods, landscapes, and social relations – these profound changes invite us to reconsider the meanings of community, culture, and citizenship.Social Transformation in Rural Canada presents the work of researchers from a variety of fields who explore the dynamics of social transformation in rural settlements across several regions and sectors of the Canadian landscape. This volume provides a nuanced portrait of how local forms of action, adaptation, identity, and imagination are reshaping aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities in rural Canada. Unlike many previous studies, this work looks at rural communities not simply as places affected by external forces, but as incubators of change and social units with agency and purpose, many of which provide exemplary models for other communities facing challenges of transition.

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Once viewed as an inevitable if unpleasant part of growing up, bullying is now recognized as a serious safety issue – particularly in light of recent teen suicides linked with homophobia in schools.In “Don’t Be So Gay!” Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe, Donn Short considers the effectiveness of anti-harassment policies and safe school legislation. After spending several months interviewing queer youth and their allies in the Toronto area, Short concludes that current legislation and its approach to school safety and homophobia has generally been more responsive than proactive. He suggests that while effective legislation is vital to establishing a safe space for queer students, other influences – including religion, family beliefs, and peer pressure – may be more powerful. Drawing on students’ own experiences and exploring how their understandings and definitions of safety might be translated into policy reform, this book offers a fresh perspective on a hotly debated issue.

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For decades, government, industry, and the mainstream media have extolled the virtues of biotechnology, downplaying its negative side effects and claiming that it can improve everything from our health and diet to our environment and economy.Focusing on agricultural biotechnology, Resistance Is Fertile challenges this dominant rhetoric by offering a critical analysis of the role of capital and the state in the development of this technoscience. Wilhelm Peekhaus analyzes the major issues around which opponents of agricultural biotechnology in Canada are mobilizing resistance – namely, the enclosure of the biological commons and the knowledge commons, which together form the BioCommons. What emerges is an empirically and theoretically informed analysis of topics such as Canada’s regulatory regime, the corporate control of seeds, the intellectual property system, and attempts to construct and control public discussions about agricultural biotechnology.

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Over the course of a century, until the late 1700s, the British Crown, the Iroquois, and other Aboriginal groups of eastern North America developed an alliance and treaty system that came to be known as the Covenant Chain.In An Ethic of Mutual Respect, Bruce Morito offers a philosophical interrogation of the predominant reading of the historical record, overturning assumptions and demonstrating the relevance of the Covenant Chain to the current First Nations--Crown relationship. By examining the forms of expression contained in colonial documents, the Record of Indian Affairs, and related materials, Morito locates the values and moral commitments that underpinned the parties’ strategies for negotiation and reconciliation. What becomes apparent is that these interactions developed an ethic of mutually recognized respect that was coherent and neither culturally nor historically bound. This ethic, Morito argues, remains relevant to current debates over Aboriginal and treaty rights as they pertain to the British Crown tradition. Real change is possible if the focus can be shifted from piecemeal legal and political disputes to the development of an intercultural ethic based on trust, respect, and solidarity.

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When legal scholars or judges approach the subject of sexuality, they are often constrained by existing theoretical frameworks. For instance, queer theorists typically focus on sexual liberty but tend not to consider issues such as sexual violence. Feminist theories focus on violence but often don’t give recognition to the joy of sexuality.To assess the possibility of devising a legal theory of sexuality that can ensure equality without assimilation, diversity without exclusion, and liberty without suffering, Elaine Craig examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to sexuality in cases that range from sexual violence to discrimination based on orientation. Although the Court continues to hold an essentialist understanding of sexuality that renders certain harms invisible, its feminist-inspired approach to sexual violence recognizes the socially constructed nature of sexuality and produces legal reasoning that promotes sexual integrity as a common interest.Blending feminist theory with the inclusiveness of queer theory, Craig advances an iconoclastic approach to law and sexuality that has the power to transform both theory and practice.

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In the early 1900s, the Qing dynasty implemented a nationwide schoolsystem as part of a series of institutional reforms to shore up itspower. A School in Every Village recounts how villagersand local state officials in Haicheng County enacted orders toestablish rural primary schools from 1904 to 1931. Although theCommunists, contemporary observers, and more recent scholarship haveall depicted rural society as feudal and backward and the educationalreforms of the early twentieth century a failure, Elizabeth VanderVendraws on untapped archival materials to reveal that villagers capablyintegrated foreign ideas and models into a system that was at oncetraditional and modern, Chinese and Western. Her portrait of educationreform not only challenges received notions about themodernity-tradition binary in Chinese history, it also addresses topicscentral to scholarly debates on modern China, including state making,gender, and the impact of global ideas on local society.

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Despite the popular assumption that wildlife conservation is a recent phenomenon, it emerged over a century and a half ago in an era more closely associated with wildlife depletion than preservation. In Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, Darcy Ingram explores the combination of NGOs, fish and game clubs, and state-administered leases that formed the basis of a unique system of wildlife conservation in North America. However, these early strategies were not as forward-focused as they appear. Ingram traces the emergence of a lease-based regulatory system that blended elite forms of sport and conservation. Applied first to British North America’s prized salmon rivers, this system came to encompass the bulk of Quebec’s hunting and fishing territories. Inspired by a longstanding belief in progress, improvement, and social order based on European as well as North American models, this system effectively privatized Quebec’s fish and game resources, often to the detriment of commercial and subsistence hunters and fishers.

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The exploitation of Latino workers in many industries, fromagriculture and meat packing to textile manufacturing and janitorialservices, is well known. By contrast, pineros -- itinerant workers whoform the backbone of the forest management labour force on federal land-- toil largely in obscurity. Drawing on government papers, media accounts, and interviews withfederal employees and Latino forest workers in Oregon’s RogueValley, Brinda Sarathy investigates how the federal government came tobe one of the single largest employers of Latino labour in the PacificNorthwest. She documents pinero wages, working conditions, and benefitsin comparison to those of white loggers and tree planters, exposingexploitation that, she argues, is the product of an ongoing history ofinstitutionalized racism, fragmented policy, and intra-ethnicexploitation in the West. To overcome this legacy, Sarathy offers anumber of proposals to improve the visibility and working conditions ofpineros and to provide them with a stronger voice in immigration andforestry policy-making.

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Politics on the Canadian Prairies are puzzling. The provinces share a common landscape and history, but they have nurtured three distinct political cultures – Alberta is Canada’s bastion of conservatism, Saskatchewan its cradle of social democracy, and Manitoba its progressive centre. The roots of these cultures run deep, yet their persistence over a century has yet to be explained. Drawing on over eight hundred pieces of campaign literature, Jared Wesley reveals that dominant political parties have used one key device – rhetoric – to foster and carry forward their province’s cultural values or political code. Social Credit and Progressive Conservative leaders in Alberta emphasized freedom, whereas New Democrats in Saskatchewan stressed security. Successful politicians in Manitoba, by contrast, underscored the importance of moderation. Although the content of their campaigns differed, leaders from William Aberhart to Tommy Douglas to Gary Doer have employed distinct codes to ensure their parties’ success and shape their provinces’ political landscapes.

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