POLI 410 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Imagined Community, Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship, Visible Minority
15 Jun 2018
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POLI410 Liberal Party and Canadian Values Lecture Notes
Sunny ways speech and renewed relevance in 2015 election
• Background: Manitoba school question
o Language question, language rights
o If provinces were anglos or francophones were in the minority
if they still had a right to schooling in their own lang
o At this time, huge crackdown on linguistic minorities under
Macdonald’s conservative party
o Laurier says I have a position, how dare people say I don’t
have a position, but position is that we should debate it and
should investigate it – jabs at the conservative party for
shutting down debate and not investigating the problem
• Recurring themes: advocating for sunny ways approach,, uses fable
of the sun and the wind
o Idea that minorities have the right to repeal the majority
gov’t, dominant forms of party
o He’s making the arg that it’s in the const of confederation, the
British confed
o Idea behind the charter in the 80s, behind liberal party’s
development of the court challenges
▪ Court challenges – in 2008, harper shut down this
project immediately → area where conservatives and
liberals have diverged
• Laurier sees role of gov’t to conduct investigation of discrimination,
then perhaps to act
o Duty on part of gov’t to take minority rights into consideration
o Says minority rights can be kept without encroaching on
rights of the majority – common liberal thought, liberals a bit
optimistic about this
Liberals and sunny ways
• JT echoes this
• Fairness, statesmanlike behavior, enlarging horizons, evolution of
liberal progress
• Says we must not stoke passion or prejudice like the conservatives
do, must listen, unlike the conservatives
• Do we think sunny ways is rhetoric, or actually a value the lib party
has adopted?
National and collective identity
• What is a collective/national identity?
• “Imagined communities” (Benedict Anderson)
o he famously talked about this
o thought about national identity as involving a community that
claims some kind of autonomy, sovereignty, has a boundary,
find more resources at oneclass.com
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distinguishes itself from other community, and recognizes a
limited number of people as members – here we can think of
norms and laws around citizenship
o link between the idea of this imagined community and values
o through a particular national identity that particular values
are expressed and reproduced, and are often bundled
together – often compared to other identities
▪ so we think of the canadian national identity and how it
often implies an American one
o there’s also a pretty universal set of values that are promoted
by western democracies – policies connected to those differ,
but you see both dems and reps, liberals and conservatives,
talking about freedom and equality, though means diff things
based on left-right spectrum
• connected to the articulation of values
o directly and indirectly
o ways that liberal dominance on values, or perceived
dominance, has come into play
o women’s movement does this, quebec does this, even other
provinces might engage in slightly diff conceptions of
nationhood, but generally involves 4 elements:
▪ 1. Generates strategic resources, pushes resources in
diff direction based on interests – we’ll look specifically
at multiculturalism and how the lib party has committed
a lot of resources and policy to this value
▪ 2. Defines some claims as meaningful and others as
less relevant – will come up a lot with the conservative
power, paints itself in opposition to the liberal party by
saying they talk about all these things that don’t
matter, it’s the economy that doesn’t matter
▪ 3. Locates one community in relationship to its allies
and opponents
Harper vs. Trudeau’s positioning of Canada visa
vis the rest of the world – re harper,
retrenchment from international arena, whereas
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Poli410 liberal party and canadian values lecture notes. Generates strategic resources, pushes resources in diff direction based on interests we"ll look specifically at multiculturalism and how the lib party has committed a lot of resources and policy to this value: 2. Locates one community in relationship to its allies and opponents. Harper vs. trudeau"s positioning of canada visa vis the rest of the world re harper, retrenchment from international arena, whereas trudeau paints canada as a peacekeeping nation as opposed to war nation: 4. What is multiculturalism: has been used in 3 ways, 1. Refers to a society characterized by ethnic or cultural heterogeneity: 2. Set of policies implemented by pt"s gov"t in 70s and then taken up by many provinces. Do we buy that multi and inter are essentially promoting same values: does it overlook aboriginal cultures, for a while quebec chose its immigrants, chose based on people from countries where they already spoke french like.
