ANTH 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Day, Idle No More
8 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ANTH 1120
November 27, 2017
Ethnography: the House of Difference by Eva Mackey
Nationalism as a worldview and collective identity
Review:
● Nationalism - the relationship between nation and identity
● Common practice of constructing “others”; the other is often to be assumed as
outside of the nation-state (we are not american)
● Other can be inside the nation state; indigenous are the internal other
● Immigration - the movement of people across national borders
○ Ideas of who belongs and who doesn’t
○ Often constructed in terms of racial identities
● Educational Institutions
○ Trained to think of yourself as a Canadian
○ Train people to be workers of the national economy
● How media constructs a national identity
● Mackey’s benevolent Mountie myth
○ How Canadians tolerance of difference is framed through multiculturalism
○ Ideology of pluralism, to take on hyphenated cultures
○ Living together as cultural mosaic
○ MC is actually constructing the idea of a core white-anglo middle class
Canadians who get to manage this difference
○ A study of whiteness
● How are different people arranged in the storytelling in the story of Canada
Mackey, Chapter 4, Becoming Indigenous: Cultural difference, land, and narratives of
nationhood”
● Chapter based on her fieldwork, located in museums and art galleries
● For anthropologists, going to museums and plays can benefit their fieldwork.
○ Going to this museum and seeing the story about Canada, pay attention to
the way the story is put together.
○ How a certain group of people think we should learn a past
○ What we should think about Canadian National Identity
○ These are all symbolic actions helping to develop or circulate myths
○ Working as metaphors
○ Symbolic actions is an avenue to discover worldviews
○ Who’s included/excluded
○ Similar messages of Canadian National Identity
● Exploring 3 official ‘pedagogies of pluralism’: the Canadian Museum of Civilization
(recently renamed the Museum of Canadian History), a play and an exhibit at the
National Gallery of Art.
● Mackey finds similar images and messages about Canadian national identity: despite
inclusive appearances, this is really the story of settler nationhood, a story which only
recognizes limited and unthreatening forms of difference
Document Summary
Ethnography: the house of difference by eva mackey. Nationalism - the relationship between nation and identity. Common practice of constructing others ; the other is often to be assumed as outside of the nation-state (we are not american) Other can be inside the nation state; indigenous are the internal other. Immigration - the movement of people across national borders. Ideas of who belongs and who doesn"t. Often constructed in terms of racial identities. Trained to think of yourself as a canadian. Train people to be workers of the national economy. How canadians tolerance of difference is framed through multiculturalism. Ideology of pluralism, to take on hyphenated cultures. Mc is actually constructing the idea of a core white-anglo middle class. How are different people arranged in the storytelling in the story of canada. Mackey, chapter 4, becoming indigenous: cultural difference, land, and narratives of nationhood . Chapter based on her fieldwork, located in museums and art galleries.
