Canada is not one nation, but three: English Canada, Quebec, and First Nations. Yet as a country Canada is very successful, in part because it maintains national diversity through bilingualism, multiculturalism, and federalism. Alongside this contemporary openness Canada also has its own history to contend with; with a legacy of broken treaties and residential schools for its Indigenous peoples, making reconciliation between Canada and First Nations an ongoing journey, not a destination. Drawing on history, politics, and literature, this Very Short Introduction starts at the end of the last ice age, when the melting of the ice sheets opened the northern half of North America to Indigenous peoples, and covers up to today's anthropogenic climate change, and Canada's climate politics. Donald Wright emphasizes Canada's complexity and diversity as well as its different identities and its commitment to rights, and explores its historical relationship to Great Britain, and its ongoing relationship with the United States. Finally, he examines Canada's northern realities and its northern identities. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Has multiculturalism failed? Is it time to move on? What is the alternative? Ali Rattansi explores the issues, from national identity and social cohesion to cultural fragmentation and 'political correctness'. Providing a balanced assessment of the truth and falsity of the charges against multiculturalism, he explores new ideas for the future.

A remarkable statesman and one of the world’s longest-detained political prisoners (1964-90), Nelson Mandela has become an exemplary figure of anti-racist struggle and democracy, a moral giant. This fascinating and uncompromising biographical study paints a complex portrait of Mandela that goes beyond hagiography: it examines his quality of character, his theatrical flair, his maverick ability to absorb transnational influences, his steely survival skills, his postmodern ease with media image, and his ethical legacy.

This book, framed through the notion of double consciousness, brings postcolonial constructs to sociopolitical and pedagogical studies of youth that have yet to find serious traction in education. Significantly, this book contributes to a growing interest among educational and curriculum scholars in engaging the pedagogical role of literature in the theorization of an inclusive curriculum. Therefore, this study not only recognizes the potential of immigrant literature in provoking critical conversation on changes young people undergo in diaspora, but also explores how the curriculum is informed by the diasporic condition itself as demonstrated by this negotiation of foreignness between the student and selected texts.

Today's globalization debates pit neoliberals, who favour even deeper integration into the global economy, against neo-mercantilists, who call for a relatively selective approach to globalization and the return to more interventionist industrial policies. Both sides claim to have the facts on their side. Inspired by the work of economists Ha-Joon Chang and Dani Rodrik, editors Andrew Smith and Dimitry Anastakis bring together essays from both historians and economists in this collection to test claims that wealth comes from either protectionism or free trade. With empirical research that spans more than a century of Canadian history, Smart Globalization demonstrates that Canada's success stemmed neither from complete openness to globalization or policies of isolation and self-sufficiency.

The book aims to explain the factors that brought about a high degree of similarity between American and Canadian foreign and security policies during the Afghanistan intervention. Specifically, it seeks to explain why, despite their different positions in the international distribution of power, the United States and Canada embraced similar counterinsurgency (COIN) strategies from 2005/2006 to 2011. During this time, the United States and Canada fought against insurgent groups, sought to maintain stabilized areas by mentoring Afghan forces, and invested in infrastructure and governance. These goals, which corresponded to the ‘clear,’ ‘hold,’ and ‘build’ COIN components, entailed sending troops and civilian officials to a war zone and committing financial resources.

Cultural Writing. Published through Muske, whose purpose is to research, recover, document and conserve the world's ethnomusicological heritage and to disseminate it across a wide audience, the papers in MUSIC AND RITUAL "were first prepared for a panel...at the 2005 annual conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology....At the conference, it seemed timely to return to how performance informs, illustrates and interpenetrates ritual, without setting a clear, narrow, agenda in our call for papers...[These papers] explore questions raised by the performance of music and movement, and their interrelationships, in artistic practice beyond the European art and popular music canons"--from the Introduction by Keith Howard.

Canada was a small country in 1867, but within twenty years its claims to sovereignty spanned the continent. With Confederation came the vaunting ambition to create an empire from sea to sea. How did Canada lay claim to so much land so quickly? Land and the Liberal Project examines the tactics deployed by Canadian officialdom from the first articulation of expansionism in 1857 to the consolidation of authority following the 1885 North-West Resistance. Éléna Choquette contends that although the dominion purported to absorb Indigenous lands through constitutionalism, administration, and law, it often resorted to force in the face of Indigenous resistance. She investigates the liberal concept that underpinned land appropriation and legitimized violence: Indigenous territory and people were to be “improved,” the former by agrarian capitalism, the latter by enforced schooling. By rethinking this tainted approach to nation making, Choquette’s clear-eyed exposé of the Canadian expansionist project offers new ways to understand colonization.

Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Class Representations in Margaret Laurence’s Writings is a study on Canada, Canadian literature and Margaret Laurence’s works in particular, thus addressing various kinds of readership. This book avoids the danger of limiting the approach to solely focusing attention on Canada by presenting a thorough analysis of various literary genres, allowing the book to be of interest to all literature lovers. Furthermore, the book explores the parallelism between life and fiction, emphasising Laurence’s biographic and realist elements and their influence on the writer’s fictional writing, revealing real and imaginary worlds which would appeal to anybody’s literary needs. This major contribution to the already existent criticism of Margaret Laurence’s works lies in the analysis of her work as an entity, balancing both terms of the common binary oppositions: fiction versus non-fiction, Africa versus Canada, white versus Black or Metis. In spite of critical comments which might be raised, Andreea Topor-Constantin comments on how the voice of the marginal makes itself heard throughout the author’s books, underlying Laurence’s emphasis on characterisation and her genuine concern for people. This book covers all aspects of Laurence’s life and fiction: from the African to the writer’s Canadian background, from adults’ to children’s literature, from novels to short stories, from essays to letters, in order to challenge readers’ perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender and class.

Migration and the impact that immigrants have on Canada is and always has been central to a robust understanding of Canadian identity. However, despite claims that “the world needs more Canada,” Canadians, their governments, and scholars pay much less attention to the estimated 3 million Canadian expatriates who live elsewhere. The Construction of Canadian Identity from Abroad features Canadian scholars who live and work outside Canada (or have recently returned to Canada) and who write and think deeply about identity construction. What happens when that Canadian is a scholar whose teaching, research and scholarship, professional development, and/or community engagement focuses directly on Canada? How does being abroad affect how we interpret Canada? In short, in what ways does “externality” affect how Canadian expat scholars intellectually approach, construct, and identify with Canada? This engaging volume is ideal for university students, scholars, government officials, and the general public.