Search results for ""Fernwood Publishing Co Ltd""

Inequality, discrimination and oppression make us sick. Collective caring will go further in making us healthy than wellness lifestyles the rich are getting richer, the rest of us are getting sick.

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John Alexander MacNeil is back with another astonishing adventure. The ninety-year-old still lives alone on the blessed isle of Cape Breton. He still sometimes makes tea for his wife, who died decades ago. He accepts his lonely life, ignoring the world changing around him. But one night, he feels his heart stop. After willing himself back to life with sheer stubbornness, John Alex finds Death himself sitting at his kitchen table, perplexed and intrigued by his victim's recovery. What follows is a tale on the edge of reality, full of love, doubt and the inexplicable details of an extraordinary life. Keeping what wits he has about him, John Alex needs to muster all the wisdom and courage he has to protect those around him from the dangers of an ever-changing world and the grim reaper he has come to know.In his 103rd book, acclaimed author of The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil takes the reader through another beautiful adventure about time and love. Lesley Choyce tackles topics like dementia, elder sexuality and assisted dying with humour and grace.John Alexander MacNeil is back with another astonishing adventure. The ninety-year-old still lives alone on the blessed isle of Cape Breton. He still sometimes makes tea for his wife, who died decades ago. He accepts his lonely life, ignoring the world changing around him. But one night, he feels his heart stop. After willing himself back to life with sheer stubbornness, John Alex finds Death himself sitting at his kitchen table, perplexed and intrigued by his victim's recovery. What follows is a tale on the edge of reality, full of love, doubt and the inexplicable details of an extraordinary life. Keeping what wits he has about him, John Alex needs to muster all the wisdom and courage he has to protect those around him from the dangers of an ever-changing world and the grim reaper he has come to know.In his 103rd book, acclaimed author of The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil takes the reader through another beautiful adventure about time and love. Lesley Choyce tackles topics like dementia, elder sexuality and assisted dying with humour and grace.

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Scoundrels and Shirkers examines the deep relationship between capitalism and poverty in England since the 12th century. It exposes the dynamics of capitalism, from its origins in the long transition from feudalism to its current crisis under neoliberal capitalism, in producing poverty.The book, unique in the historical breadth of its focus, shows conclusively that poverty is an inevitable consequence of capitalism. In the search for profits and control of society's economic surplus, capitalism expands, adapts and innovates, producing not only commodities and wealth but also, and necessarily, poverty.With the partial but important exception of the 1945–51 period, and to a lesser extent the time between 1906 and 1914, there has never been a serious attempt to solve poverty. Efforts have always been to manage and control the poor to prevent them from starving or rebelling; to punish and blame them for being poor; and to force them into poverty-level jobs. Any real solution would require the logic of capitalism to be deeply disrupted. While possible in theory, such a change will require massive social movements.

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After a hunting trip one fall, a family in the far reaches of so-called Canada's north return to nothing but an empty space where their home once stood. Finding themselves suddenly homeless, they have no choice but to assimilate into settler-colonial society in a mining town that has encroached on their freedom.An intergenerational coming-of-age novel, This House Is Not a Home follows K????, a Dene man who grew up entirely on the land before being taken to residential school. When he finally returns home, he struggles to connect with his family: his younger brother whom he has never met, his mother because he has lost his language, and an absent father whose disappearance he is too afraid to question.The third book from acclaimed Dene, Cree and Metis writer Katłįà, This House Is Not a Home is a fictional story based on true events. Visceral and embodied, heartbreaking and spirited, this book presents a clear trajectory of how settlers dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their land - and how Indigenous communities, with dignity and resilience, continue to live and honour their culture, values, inherent knowledge systems, and Indigenous rights towards re-establishing sovereignty. Fierce and unflinching, this story is a call for land back.

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This fourth edition of Building a Better World offers a comprehensive introductory overview of Canada's labour movement. The book explores why workers form unions; assesses their organization and democratic potential; examines issues related to collective bargaining, grievances and strike activity; charts the historical development of labour unions; and describes the gains unions have achieved for their members and all working people. This new and expanded edition also analyzes the challenges facing today's labour movement as a result of COVID-19 and the strategies being developed to overcome them.

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This first critical history of a street gang in a Canadian city is a result of a four-year collaboration between a university professor (Ted Rutland) and the leader of les Bélangers (Maxime Aurélien). Out to Defend Ourselves tells the story of Montreal's first Haitian street gang, les Bélangers. It traces how the gang emerged from a group of Haitian friends, the children of migrants from Haiti in the 1970s. It documents the forms of racial violence they experienced and their battles against them. It also documents the everyday lives of the gang members, the petty crime some members engaged in to make ends meet, and how the police actions against the gang changed its nature and function – making it, finally, a more criminally oriented and violent formation. It is a story about a gang, but it is also a story of young Haitians making their lives in 1970s and 80s Montreal and a story about Montreal in a period of great change.

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Ruby used to be a fiery, sexy, musical genius. But when she got pregnant as a teenager in the 90s, her life took a turn into banality. Now a middle-aged Indo-Canadian woman, she feels unseen and unheard by her white husband and struggles to communicate with her mixed-race daughter. When she discovers her husband cheating, she embarks on a quest to unearth exciting secrets from her past. To find what she needs, she drives straight into B.C.'s raging wildfires, accompanied only by the fantastical stories her mother used to tell about their ancient Moghul ancestry - a dancer named Rubina who lived in the concubine quarters of the great Red Fort. This book is at once historical fiction and political romance, deftly navigating themes of mixed-race relationships, climate change, motherhood, body shame, death and the passage of time.

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Prisons don't work, but prisoners do. Prisons are often critiqued as unjust, but we hear little about the daily labour of incarcerated workers - what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and under which conditions. Unions protect workers fighting for better pay and against discrimination and occupational health and safety concerns, but prisoners are denied this protection despite being the lowest paid workers with the least choice in what they do - the most vulnerable among the working class. Starting from the perspective that work during imprisonment is not "rehabilitative," this book examines the reasons why people should care about prison labour and how prisoners have struggled to organize for labour power in the past. Unionizing incarcerated workers is critical for both the labour movement and struggles for prison justice, this book argues, to negotiate changes to working conditions as well as the power dynamics within prisons themselves.

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Farah's ready to move out of her parent's house. It takes an hour to get to campus, and she has no freedom to be herself. Maiheen and Mostafa, first-generation Iranian immigrants in Toronto, find their younger daughter's "Canadian" ways disappointing and embarrassing, and they wonder why Farah can't be like her older sister Farzana - though Farah knows things about Farzana that her parents don't. They begrudgingly agree to let Farah move, and she begins to explore her exciting new life as an independent university student. But when Farah gets assaulted on campus, everything changes. This beautiful coming-of-age story will be familiar to every immigrant in the diaspora who has struggled to find a way between cultures, every youth who has rebelled against their parents and every woman who has faced the world alone.

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Power and Resistance debunks the dominant neoliberal, hyper-individualist approach to society's problems that sees poverty as a result of laziness, environmental crises as a result of market demands for products that pollute, and Indigenous Peoples' struggles as a result of not assimilating. We argue that it is social inequality and oppression that are the underlying causes of social problems. In a society like ours, powerful groups make choices that benefit them and force those choices onto others, creating life problems for others and society as a whole. The powerful also have influence over what is and is not called a "social problem." Solving social problems requires changing the structures of inequality and oppression. For example, industrial corporate agriculture has created huge profits for a few gigantic food corporations but left much of the world hungry. But farmers and their allies are pushing back through agroecology - an agriculture based on local, small-scale, ecologically sustainable farming that brings eaters and growers closer to one another. The seventh edition of Power and Resistance includes new chapters on anti-Black racism in schools, Indigenous people and mental health, food security and sovereignty, and work in the gig economy.

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The history of abortion decriminalization and critical advocacy efforts to improve access in Canada deserve to be better known. Ordinary people persevered to make Canada the most progressive country in the world with respect to abortion care. But while abortion access is poorly understood, so too are the persistent threats to reproductive justice in this country: sexual violence, gun violence, homophobia and transphobia, criminalization of sex work, reproductive oppression of Indigenous women and girls, privatization of fertility health services, and the racism and colonialism of policing and the prison system. This beautifully illustrated book tells the empowering true stories behind the struggles for reproductive justice in Canada, celebrating past wins and revealing how prison abolitionism is key to the path forward.

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Framed within the common goal of advancing trade justice and South-North solidarity, The Fair Trade Handbook presents a broad interpretation of fair trade and a wide-ranging dialogue between different viewpoints. Canadian researchers in particular have advanced a transformative vision of fair trade, rooted in the cooperative movement and arguing for a more central role for Southern farmers and workers. Contributors to this book question the limits of fair trade against the broader structures of the capitalist, colonialist, racist, and patriarchal global economy.The debates and discussions are set within a critical development studies and critical political economy framework. However, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, as it translates the key issues for a popular audience.Includes the graphic story 'a lively bean that brightens lives'!, by Bill Barrett and Curt Shoultz

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In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to re-establish the labour movement's political capacity to exert collective power in ways that foster greater opportunity and equality for working-class people has taken on a greater sense of urgency. Understanding the strategic political possibilities and challenges facing the Canadian labour movement at this important moment in history is the central concern of this second edition of Rethinking the Politics of Labour in Canada.With new and revised essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this edited collection assesses the past, present and uncertain future of Canadian labour politics in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bringing together the traditional electoral-based aspects of labour politics with analyses of newer and rediscovered forms of working-class organization and social movement-influenced strategies, which have become increasingly important in the Canadian labour movement, this book seeks to take stock of these new forms of labour politics, understand their emergence and assess their potential impact on the future of labour in Canada.

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Why is it so difficult to advocate for Palestine in Canada and what can we learn from the movement's successes? This account of Palestine solidarity activism in Canada grapples with these questions through a wide-ranging exploration of the movement's different actors, approaches and fields of engagement, along with its connections to different national and transnational struggles against racism, imperialism and colonialism. Led by a coalition of students, labour unions, church groups, left wing activists, progressive presses, human rights organizations, academic associations and Palestinian and Jewish community groups, Palestinesolidarity activism is on the rise in Canada and Canadians are more aware of the issues than ever before. Palestine solidarity activists are also under siege as never before. The movement advocating for Palestinian rights is forced to contend with relentless political condemnation, media blackouts, administrative roadblocks, coordinated smear campaigns, individual threats, legal intimidation and institutional silencing. Through this book and the experiences of the contributing authors in it, many seasoned veterans of the movement, Advocating for Palestine in Canada offers an indispensable and often first-hand view into the complex social and historical forces at work in one of our era's most urgent debates, and one which could determine the course of what it means to be Canadian going forward.

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While "Arabs" now attract considerable attention – from media, the state, and sociological studies – their history in Canada remains little known. Identifying as Arab in Canada begins to rectify this invisibilization by exploring the migration from Machrek (the Middle East) to Canada from the late 19th century through the 1970s. Houda Asal breathes life into this migratory history and the people who made the journey, and examines the public, collective existence they created in Canada in order to understand both the identity Arabs have constructed for themselves here, and the identity that has been constructed for them by the Canadian state.Using archival research, media analysis, laws and statistics, and a series of interviews, Asal offers a thorough examination of the institutions these migrants and their descendants built, and the various ways they expressed their identity and organized their religious, social and political lives. Identifying as Arab in Canada offers an impressively researched, but accessibly written, much-needed glimpse into the long history of the Arab population in Canada.

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In this updated edition of The Politics of Restorative Justice, Andrew Woolford and Amanda Nelund reconsider restorative justice and its politics and ask how restorative justice might work better to provide transformative justice. To achieve a transformative justice, Woolford and Neulund argue, restorative justice must be concerned with class-based, gendered, racialized and other injustices. This second edition expands on how intersecting socio-politcal contexts — gendered, racialized, settler colonial, hetero-normative and others — contour the practice and potential of restorative justice. In addition to updated examples and data, this edition discusses the embodied and emotional politics of restorative justice, transformative restorative justice and other-than-human actors/ecological justice.

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Though interpersonal violence is widely studied, much less has been done to understand structural violence, the often-invisible patterns of inequality that reproduce social relations of exclusion and marginalization through ideologies, policies, stigmas, and discourses attendant to gender, race, class, and other markers of social identity. Structural violence normalizes experiences like poverty, ableism, sexual harassment, racism, and colonialism, and erases their social and political origins. The legal structures that provide impunity for those who exploit youth are also part of structural violence's machinery.Working with Indigenous, queer, immigrant and homeless youth across Canada, this five-year Youth-based Participatory Action Research project used art to explore the many ways that structural violence harms youth, destroying hope, optimism, a sense of belonging and a connection to civil society. However, recognizing that youth are not merely victims, Everyday Violence in the Lives of Youth also examines the various ways youth respond to and resist this violence to preserve their dignity, well-being and inclusion in society.

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In “There’s Something In The Water”, Ingrid R. G. Waldron examines the legacy of environmental racism and its health impacts in Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, using Nova Scotia as a case study, and the grassroots resistance activities by Indigenous and Black communities against the pollution and poisoning of their communities. Using settler colonialism as the overarching theory, Waldron unpacks how environmental racism operates as a mechanism of erasure enabled by the intersecting dynamics of white supremacy, power, state-sanctioned racial violence, neoliberalism and racial capitalism in white settler societies. By and large, the environmental justice narrative in Nova Scotia fails to make race explicit, obscuring it within discussions on class, and this type of strategic inadvertence mutes the specificity of Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian experiences with racism and environmental hazards in Nova Scotia. By redefining the parameters of critique around the environmental justice narrative and movement in Nova Scotia and Canada, Waldron opens a space for a more critical dialogue on how environmental racism manifests itself within this intersectional context. Waldron also illustrates the ways in which the effects of environmental racism are compounded by other forms of oppression to further dehumanize and harm communities already dealing with pre-existing vulnerabilities, such as long-standing social and economic inequality. Finally, Waldron documents the long history of struggle, resistance, and mobilizing in Indigenous and Black communities to address environmental racism.

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This is the story of how a young northern girl picked herself up out of the rough and polished herself off like the diamond that she is in the land of the midnight sun.Northern Wildflower is the beautifully written and powerful memoir of Catherine Lafferty. With startling honesty and a distinct voice, Lafferty tells her story of being a Dene woman growing up in Canada's North and her struggles with intergenerational trauma, discrimination, poverty, addiction, love, and loss. Focusing on the importance of family ties, education, spiritualism, cultural identity, health, happiness, and the courage to speak the truth, Lafferty's words bring cultural awareness and relativity to Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike, giving insight into the real issues many Indigenous women face and dispelling misconceptions about what life in the North is like.

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“`You’re not a human being, you’re a number, a product, an asset as long as you can perform. If you can’t perform, then you’re a liability and they’ll drop you.’” Professional athletes suffer tremendous damage to their bodies over the course of their careers. Some literally lose years from their lives because of their injuries. Why do athletes sacrifice themselves? Is it the price of being a professional? Is it all for the fans, or the money? What’s clear is that the physical and emotional tolls of being a professional athlete may not be worthwhile. In Game Misconduct, Nathan Kalman-Lamb takes us into the world of professional hockey players to illustrate how money, consumerism and fandom contribute to the life-altering injuries of professional athletes. Unlike many critical takes on professional sports, Kalman-Lamb illustrates how the harm suffered by the athlete is a necessary part of what makes professional sport a desirable commodity for the consuming fan. In an economic system — capitalism — that deprives people of meaning because of its inherent drive to turn everyone into individuals and everything into commodities, sports fandom produces a feeling of community. But there is a cost to producing this meaning and community, and it is paid through the sacrifice of the athlete’s body. Drawing on extensive interviews with fans and former professional hockey players, Kalman-Lamb reveals the troubling dynamics and dangerous costs associated with the world of professional and semi-professional sport.

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Sola is confused the first time she sees Judith, a fair skinned woman with dreadlocks dancing to reggae music. Meeting her gaze, Judith thinks Sola is judging her for appropriating Black culture. A few days later, up against an interlocking fence, Judith kisses Sola. Onlookers hurl stones and racial and gay slurs. Thus begins the complicated friendship between Judith and Sola who live in between the land they were born, the Caribbean, and the land where they presently live, North America. Winner of the 2016 Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature and the 2015 Atlantic Writer’s Competition, Big Island, Small is a story of intimacy and friendship between two Caribbean/Canadian women with similar, yet vastly different, backgrounds who must dismantle their assumptions and biases around race, class, gender and sexuality in order to make amends with violent pasts, release shame, find joy and reconnect with themselves and each other.

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In From The Inside Looking Out, Auger, Tedford-Litle and Wallace-Allen seek to overcome the "us" and "them" dichotomy that characterizes much of the literature on aging. By asking older people to talk about their experiences and treating this information as valuable, the authors have presented a tool that can be used to begin such a process.This second edition documents the lived experiences of older persons obtained from a series of focus group discussions and interviews across Nova Scotia. Individuals compare their realities of growing old with the often-theoretical assumptions of gerontologists and specialists who claim knowledge of the aging experience. In this field of study, there are few instances where the voices of older persons are heard, other than as consumers of various programs and services. Furthermore, the voices of Indigenous and African-Canadians are typically unheard. Topics covered include health care, life satisfaction, death and dying, end of life decisions, cultural differences in the aging process, spirituality and religion, ageism and discrimination, and the critique of the many stereotypes of growing older.

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The Inuit have experienced colonization and the resulting disregard for the societal systems, beliefs and support structures foundational to Inuit culture for generations. While much research has articulated the impacts of colonization and recognized that Indigenous cultures and worldviews are central to the well-being of Indigenous peoples and communities, little work has been done to preserve Inuit culture. Unfortunately, most people have a very limited understanding of Inuit culture, and often apply only a few trappings of culture - past practices, artifacts and catchwords -to projects to justify cultural relevance.Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit - meaning all the extensive knowledge and experience passed from generation to generation - is a collection of contributions by well- known and respected Inuit Elders. The book functions as a way of preserving important knowledge and tradition, contextualizing that knowledge within Canada's colonial legacy and providing an Inuit perspective on how we relate to each other, to other living beings and the environment.

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Here is a contemporary Mi'kmaq legend of the life of a great man, who becomes chief, the embodiment of Mi'kmaq values of humility, courage, honour, service and sacrifice of personal gain for the sake of others. He lived a long and storied life, hundreds of years ago, before the arrival of the European scouts and, later, their warships. He was a renowned warrior but, more so, a peacemaker. His people followed him to the point of devotion, yet he was uncannily modest, even embarrassed by his own achievements. He suffered great loss, yet his understanding of his place, his role in a great society, a greater natural world and an inestimable metaphysical world, guided him through his pain.Mi'kmaq readers may recognize these time-honoured themes based on traditional tales passing values generation to generation. Others will gain a new appreciation for what was lost under colonialism and the attempted genocide of this vibrant, sophisticated and successful culture and society.With We Were Not the Savages, Daniel Paul changed the way the world understood the history of Eastern Canada and the fully developed civilization that existed before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers, and the nature of the subsequent violent attack on that culture. With Chief Lightning Bolt, Paul shows us exactly what was lost, the beauty of the Mi'kma'ki that once existed, the culture that survived and is only now beginning to recover.

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In Working for the Common Good, Madelyn Holmes details the political policy work of eight social democratic Canadian women and highlights their largely unrecognized struggles and accomplishments.Throughout their political careers, Agnes Macphail, Thérèse Casgrain, Grace MacInnis, Pauline Jewett, Margaret Mitchell, Lynn McDonald, Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough worked towards curing society's economic and social ills. They raised their voices for world peace from the 1920s to the 2000s. They were incensed about economic inequality in Canadian society and advocated for policies to reduce poverty. They fought for social justice for Indigenous peoples, Japanese-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, Muslim-Canadians and the imprisoned. The profiles in this book illustrate the many ways these politicians embraced the cause of gender equality and served as role models for generations of Canadian women.

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Winner of the 2017 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Non-Fiction!Jen Powley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at fifteen. By thirty-five, she had lost the use of her arms and legs.Just Jen is a powerful memoir that tells the story of Powley's life at the time of her diagnosis, and the infinite, irrevocable ways it has changed since. Powley's writing pulls no punches. She is lively, bold and unapologetic, answering questions people are often afraid to ask about living with a progressive disease. And yet, these snapshots from Powley's life are not tinged with anger or despair. Just Jen is a powerful, uplifting and unforgettable work by an author who has laid her life - and her body - bare in order to survive.

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What do local conflicts about land rights tell us about Indigenous-settler relations and the challenges and possibilities of decolonization? In Unsettled Expectations, Eva Mackey draws on ethnographic case studies about land rights conflicts in Canada and the U.S. to argue that critical analysis of present-day disputes over land, belonging and sovereignty will help us understand how colonization is reproduced today and how to challenge it. Employing theoretical approaches from Indigenous and settler colonial studies, and in the context of critical historical and legal analysis, Mackey urges us to rethink the assumptions of settler certainty that underpin current conflicts between settlers and Indigenous peoples and reveals settler privilege to be a doomed fantasy of entitlement.Finally, Mackey draws on case studies of Indigenous-settler alliances to show how embracing difficult uncertainty can be an integral part of undoing settler privilege and a step toward decolonization.

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Multiculturalism is regarded as a key feature of Canada's national identity. Yet despite an increasingly diverse population, racialized Canadians are systematically excluded from full participation in society through personal and structural forms of racism and discrimination.Race and Anti-Racism in Canada provides readers with a critical examination of how racism permeates Canadian society and articulates the complex ways to bring about equity and inclusion both individual and systemically.

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Most social research texts are written from an empiricist/positivist perspective, emphasizing the scientific method and the value of objectivity in research. While acknowledging that certain aspects of the scientific method should be preserved, Adje van de Sande and Karen Schwartz argue that social research should not and cannot be value-free. Researchers committed to social justice and social change need to support that commitment. This new edition of Research for Social Justice examines how the structural inequality perspective and anti-oppressive principles — which view the problems experienced by people as rooted in the social, political and economic structures of society — provide this support. Also included in this edition are updated and revised examples of research, a substantially revised chapter on Indigenous approaches to research, a chapter-by- chapter description of developing student projects in a research course and examples of student-led, community-based research projects.

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Rooted in thousands of pages of Access to Information documents and dozens of interviews carried out throughout Latin America, Blood of Extraction examines the increasing presence of Canadian mining companies in Latin America and the environmental and human rights abuses that have occurred as a result. By following the money, Gordon and Webber illustrate the myriad ways Canadian-based multinational corporations, backed by the Canadian state, have developed extensive economic interests in Latin America over the last two decades at the expense of Latin American people and the environment.Latin American communities affected by Canadian resource extraction are now organized into hundreds of opposition movements, from Mexico to Argentina, and the authors illustrate the strategies used by the Canadian state to silence this resistance and advance corporate interests.

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Animal rights is an important social justice movement, and the animal rights movement presents ethical and political challenges to deeply rooted structures of violence and exploitation, challenging ideologies of capitalism and speciesism. Corporate interests that form the animal industrial complex understand the animal rights movement as a threat to their profits and have mobilized to undermine it. Informed by both critical animal studies and critical terrorism studies, John Sorenson analyzes ecoterrorism as a social construction. He examines how corporations that profit from animal exploitation fund and produce propaganda to portray the compassionate goals and nonviolent practices of animal activists as outlandish, anti-human campaigns that operate by violent means not only to destroy Western civilization but also to create actual genocide. The idea of concern for others is itself a dangerous one, and capitalism works by keeping people focused on individual interests and discouraging compassion and commitment to others. Driven by powerful and wealthy industries founded upon the exploitation of nonhuman animals and the extraction of natural resources, the discourse of ecoterrorism is a useful mechanism to repress criticism of the institutionalized violence and cruelty of these industries as well as their destructive impact on the environment, their major contribution to global warming and ecological disaster, and their negative impacts on human health. Further, by deliberately constructing an image of activists as dangerous and violent terrorists, these corporations and their representatives in government have created a widespread climate of fear that is very useful in legitimizing calls for more policing and more repressive legislation, such as Bill C-51 in Canada.

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“The life, work and activism of Rocky Jones are central to African-Canadian history and the civil rights movement in Canada. Canadians lost a great soul, with the recent death of Rocky Jones, but his autobiography – co-written by James Walker, a close friend of Rocky Jones and one of our foremost writers about Black history in Canada – is a wonderful gift to the entire country. Revolutionary will soon be required reading for any person who seeks to understand the civil rights movement in Canada.”– Lawrence Hill“A must read, a manual for all freedom fighters, and a testament to Rocky Jones' and Black power and resilience.”- Afua Cooper“Any telling of human rights and social equity in Canada would be incomplete without reference to "revolutionary" Rocky Jones' truth-telling about his life captured in this compelling exemplary autobiography. This insightful account is not only about life as an African Nova Scotian, but also about the community, law, politics.”- Carl JamesBorn and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia, Burnley "Rocky" Jones is one of Canada's most important figures of social justice. Often referred to as Canada's Stokely Carmichael, Jones was tirelessly dedicated to student movements, peace activism, Black Power, anti-racism, women's liberation and human rights reform. He was a leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, brought the Black Panthers to Canada, taught at Dalhousie and founded his own law firm.This autobiography tells the story of Jones's inimitable life and his accomplishments.But it also does more. It illuminates the Black experience in Nova Scotia, it explains the evolving nature of race relations and human rights in recent Canadian history, and it reveals the origins of the "remedial" approach to racial equality that is now practised by activists and governments.Finally, the story of Rocky Jones is a reminder that human rights are not a gift, but a prize that must be fought for.

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Poverty in Canada s inner cities is deep, complex, racialized and often intergenerational. In this collection of essays published over the past decade, Jim Silver argues that urban poverty today includes not only low incomes, but in all too many cases also poor housing, poor health, low educational achievement, high levels of neighbourhood violence, racism, colonialism and social exclusion. As a result many poor people experience low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and may blame themselves, which is reinforced by the dominant blame-the-victim discourse about poverty. Silver argues that today s urban poverty is qualitatively different than the urban poverty of forty years ago, and that there are no quick, easy or one-dimensional solutions. In Solving Poverty, Jim Silver, a veteran scholar actively engaged in anti-poverty efforts in Winnipeg s inner city for decades, offers an on-the-ground analysis of this form of poverty. Silver focuses particularly on the urban Aboriginal experience, and describes a variety of creative and effective urban Aboriginal community development initiatives, as well as other anti-poverty initiatives that have been successful in Winnipeg s inner city. In the concluding chapter Silver offers a comprehensive, pan-Canadian strategy to dramatically reduce the incidence of urban poverty in Canada."

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This edited collection uses a critical theory perspective and draws on expertise from a range of contemporary policy and practice areas. Contributors include people with disabilities, family members, researchers, academics and practitioners. This book is an ideal text for students of social work, human services, child and youth care and disability studies. Chapters include first-person accounts from persons with disabilities, perspectives of families and historical perspectives, as well as a critical exploration of demographics, human rights issues, disability legislation and policy in Canada, theoretical approaches to disability, intersectionality and disability, Aboriginal people and disability, mental health disability, principles of anti-ableist practice, advocacy and strategies for change. This book offers as a fresh Canadian perspective on disAbility from a critical lens, challenging and inspiring students and practitioners alike to think outside the box and to examine their own attitudes and values toward disAbility, ensuring that they do not inadvertently impose ableist and oppressive practices on one of Canada s most marginalized populations."

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Doing Respectful Research is situated within a critical, feminist postmodern framework and addresses the complexities of conducting respectful qualitative research with human participants. Three themes overlap and inform chapter discussions: developing a critical reflexivity, understanding the distance dynamic and engaging in respectful research praxis. The text illustrates how power, privilege and passion influence decisions about what gets researched, who is positioned as researcher or participant and how data are collected, analyzed and ultimately represented in public ways. Tilley explores the intersecting elements of the research process, which include deciding on a research focus and articulating research questions; choosing an appropriate research site and participants; collecting, analyzing and representing data; and making decisions about the dissemination and publication of findings. She emphasizes the dilemmas researchers experience when faced with issues of respectful representation of data, participants and research contexts. Unique to the book are the comprehensive discussions of the advisement process and the student-advisor relationship and Tilley s use of her doctoral research to carefully illustrate elements of the research process. Each chapter ends with an annotated bibliography of relevant research connected to concepts addressed in the chapter. Tilley offers a comprehensive consideration of research ethics, including guidance for the completion of institutional requirements for review of research involving human participants and an exploration of the complicated ethical issues that emerge during the research process. Doing Respectful Research is written for student researchers, individuals who teach and advise students, instructors of qualitative research courses in social sciences, health and education, and community members interested in qualitative methods and conducting research."

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In The Vigilant Eye, Greg Marquis combines the narrative and chronological approach of traditional institutional history with the critical approaches of social history, legal history and criminology. The book begins with the English and Irish roots of nineteenth-century British North American policing and traces the development of the three models of law enforcement that would shape the future: the local rural constable, the municipal police department and the paramilitary territorial constabulary. Marquis examines the development of provincial police services, whose expansion coincided with the rise of mass automobile ownership and controversies over alcohol prohibition and control, and their eventual absorption into the RCMP. In terms of political policing, the vigilant eye has monitored, harassed and disrupted various social and political movements ranging from Fenians to communists, to Quebec separatists and environmentalists. Marquis argues that the style of community policing in vogue during the 1970s and 1980s lacked confidence and had a limited impact. Canada s simplistic crime-fighting model undermines genuine reform, including curbs on the use of deadly force on citizens, and justifies the increased militarization of policing. Marquis argues that it is time for citizens to turn their vigilant eye towards police and policing in their own communities."

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In 2009, the New Brunswick provincial government leased over a million hectares of land to Texas-based Southwestern Energy for the purposes of natural gas extraction. For years, tens of thousands of New Brunswickers signed petitions, wrote letters, demonstrated and sought legal recourse against the deal and the threat of hydraulic fracturing it brought with it but the province responded only with diminished regulations and increased police presence. In the spring of 2013, Elsipogtog First Nation, the largest Indigenous community in New Brunswick, became the focal point of this resistance. Emboldened to its potential to make political change, and accompanied by unexpected settler and Indigenous allies, Elsipogtog First Nation employed new tactics in the effort to expel Southwestern Energy. And after months of blockades, which resulted in the destruction of company property and numerous arrests, the protestors were finally successful in forcing the gas giant to leave the province. Written by journalist Miles Howe, who was embedded in the community from the beginning of the 2013 struggle, Debriefing Elsipogtog offers a riveting, firsthand, on-the-ground and behind-the-scenes account of this story. Through an examination of the political forces and motivations that led to one-seventh of New Brunswick being leased to the Texas-based company, the diminishment of regulatory oversight and a compromised Indigenous consultation process, Howe explores not only how people allied to build this movement but also how the state intervened to undermine resistance and willfully ignored inherent treaty rights and responsibilities. The success of this grassroots movement in turning back the fifth-largest natural gas extraction company in North America is truly a testament to the power people hold when they join together to oppose capitalist exploitation and environmental destruction. "

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This well-received criminology textbook, now in its third edition, argues that crime must be understood as both a social and a political phenomenon. Using this lens, Marginality and Condemnation contends that what is defined as criminal, how we respond to crime and why individuals behave in anti-social ways are often the result of individual and systemic social inequalities and disparities in power. Beginning with an overview of criminological discourse, mainstream approaches and new directions in criminological theory, the book is then divided into sections, based on key social inequalities of class, gender, race and age, each of which begins with an outline of the general issues for understanding crime and an introduction that guides readers through the empirical chapters that follow. The studies provide insights into general issues in criminology, ranging from the historical and current nature of crime and criminal justice to the various responses to criminality. Readers are encouraged and challenged to understand crime and justice through concrete analyses rather than abstract argumentation. In addition to a new introductory chapter that confronts how we define crime, measure crime, and understand and use criminology in this millennium, the third edition provides new chapters examining crime in relation to the environment, terrorism, masculinity, children and youth, and Aboriginal gangs and the legacy of colonialism. "

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When Canadian icon and original Canadian People s Poet Milton Acorn was passed over for the Governor General s Award for his 1969 collection I ve Tasted My Blood, several of his peers, including Margaret Atwood, Pat Lane and Mordecai Richler, established the People s Poetry Award, which they presented to Milton at a ceremony at Grossman s Tavern in Toronto in 1970. When I ve Tasted My Blood was re-issued in 1978 by Steel Rail Publishing, Milton wrote corrections and edits for the new edition on a copy of the original book. Milton Acorn: The People s Poet reproduces that copy of I ve Tasted My Blood with Milton s handwritten notes. It also includes never-before-published photographs of Milton taken by Kent Nason, a studio recording of Milton reading many of his poems, and a 1971 documentary film about Milton Acorn made by Kent Martin and Errol Sharpe. Though Milton Acorn died in 1986 at a young age, the prolific poet, writer and playwright is still remembered as one of Canada s greatest poets. This one-of-a-kind multi-media collectors item and memorial is a must have for everyone who counts themselves a fan of the original Canadian People s Poet."

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Following the 2007 - 08 global financial crisis, Western nations engaged a variety of measures that departed quite dramatically from conventional neoliberal wisdom. However, these policies were quickly succeeded by what we now call "austerity" measures. This collection engages with the question: Is there something new in this era of austerity, or should this be understood as a continuation and intensification of earlier forms of neoliberalism? Finally, Jim Stanford's afterword probes to the heart of the question of why austerity in the first place.

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In Colonized Classrooms, Sheila Cote-Meek discusses how Aboriginal students confront narratives of colonial violence in the postsecondary classroom, while they are, at the same time, living and experiencing colonial violence on a daily basis. Basing her analysis on interviews with Aboriginal students, Cote-Meek deftly illustrates how colonization and its violence are not a distant experience, but one that is being negotiated every day in universities and colleges across Canada. Cote-Meek traces how education for Aboriginal peoples has been, and continues to be, part of the colonial regime, which is marked by violence, abuses and poverty, and the ways this violence is experienced particularly by Aboriginal students and professors in universities. Drawing upon personal experience and qualitative research, the book essentially explores two questions: how do Aboriginal students confront curriculum on colonial history that is marked by violence? And what pedagogies might be useful in postsecondary classrooms for students that have suffered from colonial violence?

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From the Foreword: I am inclined to think that when Creator lowered Lynn to Mother Earth it was for her to complete this difficult task of bravery. Indeed we can all learn from her, as she has fulfilled her responsibility. - Heather Majaury In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Treaty at Niagara, The Truth that Wampum Tells offers readers a first-ever insider analysis of the contemporary land claims and self-government process in Canada. Incorporating an analysis of traditional symbolic literacy known as wampum diplomacy, Lynn Gehl argues that despite Canada's constitutional beginnings, first codified in the 1763 Royal Proclamation and ratified during the 1764 Treaty at Niagara, Canada continues to deny the Algonquin Anishinaabeg their right to land and resources, their right to live as a sovereign nation and consequently their ability to live mino-pimadiziwin (the good life). Gehl moves beyond Western scholarly approaches rooted in historical archives, academic literature and the interview method. She also moves beyond discussions of Indigenous methodologies, offering an analysis through Debwewin Journey: a wholistic Anishinaabeg way of knowing that incorporates both mind knowledge and heart knowledge and that produces one's debwewin (personal truth).

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Since 2001 and the beginning of the “War on Terror,” Canadian culture has undergone a profound militarization. Moving away from previous myths of national identity centred on notions of multiculturalism and peacekeeping, Canada is increasingly being defined through a new patriotism based on military and policing actions around the world. In this book, A.L. McCready explains how this cultural transformation took place by examining a range of Canadian cultural case studies, from the supposedly grassroots “Support Our Troops” campaigns to films and CBC programs. McCready shows how a combination of cultural shifts and explicit government actions have worked to silence internal debate and criticism and to transform Canadians’ understanding of their country and its role in the world. McCready also shows how today’s patriotic militarism is part of a much broader socio-economic transformation of Canadian society towards a more neo-conservative and free-market oriented paradigm and how Canada’s militarized nationalism emerges from and is continuous with the nation’s racial and colonial history.

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If This Is Freedom continues the story of struggle for Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. In the black settlement of Birchtown, times are especially hard for the former slaves. They face the difficulties of a hardscrabble existence and continued discrimination from their white counterparts.Like many desperate Birchtowners, Sarah Redmond has signed an indenture agreement, a work contract meant to protect her rights and ensure a living wage. Sarah’s employers, the Blyes, do not honour the agreement, and Sarah and her family are all but shattered when Sarah takes a wrong step – one she will come to regret as it sets off a chain of unusual events that put her under further pressure. With her faith in the settlement running dry and the Birchtowners abandoning the settlement, Sarah is perplexed and soon faces the taxing option of whether to hold on to the only real life she has ever known or let go.At once a stand-alone story and a companion to Gloria Ann Wesley’s previous novel, Chasing Freedom, this story about moral courage and the enduring strength of dreams shares history with us in a way that is both honest and emotional.

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The stories within Everything Is So Political explore the intersection between politics and the contemporary short story. From the overt to the subtle, this collection tackles a broad range of topics and themes, from women’s rights and Aboriginal culture to environmentalism, terrorism and totalitarianism. This is one of the few Canadian anthologies that focuses on political fiction, and it does so in a very powerful and artful way, flying in the face of readers, writers and critics alike who claim that writing with a political agenda occurs at the expense of literary quality.Consisting of twenty short stories, this collection is proof that it is increasingly difficult, even impossible, for fiction not to be political. But make no mistake, the stories in this anthology are stories first: stories that are meant to be read, shared and enjoyed, but stories that will make you see things differently and question the world around you.

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The crucible of North American neo-liberal transformation is heating up, but its outcome is far from clear. Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pan-continental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico and the United States used free trade agreements to consolidate their agendas and organize themselves continentally.The failure of traditional labour responses to stop the continental offensive being waged by big business has led workers and unions to explore new strategies of struggle and organization, pointing to the beginnings of a continental labour movement across North America. The battle for the future of North America has begun.

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