University of Northern British Columbia: Open Journal Systems
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From Sublimity to Ecopornography: Assessing The Bureau of Reclamation Art Collection
Get PDFBeginning in 1968, during a period of growing environmental activism and concern in the United States, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioned paintings from artists willing to depict the “imaginative aspects of the Reclamation Program.” The result was a collection of paintings, drawings and etchings that often worked within the well known traditions of American exceptionalism and which was used to promote the Bureau’s activities. As such it is possible to view the collection not only as an example of the Bureau of Reclamation’s self-promotion and “issues management” public relations style, but also as an example of ecopornography, a concept which is further theorized in the paper
Choice and Content: Media ownership and democratic ideals in Canada
Get PDFThis article explores concerns regarding media ownership in Canada from a “marketplace of ideas” perspective. It assesses evidence indicating whether the ideals associated with this perspective are threatened and proposes steps that seem best suited to achieving those broad ideals. It concludes that regulations limiting ownership levels by single corporations combined with relaxed foreign ownership controls would likely increase the range of choice and diversity of content in the news media. The latter, it also suggests, would allow regulators to more effectively enforce the ownership guidelines already in place for maintaining a vibrant and competitive media market
Seat Imbalance in Provincial Elections Since 1900: A Quantitative Explanation
Get PDFThe focus of this research note is on the causes of imbalanced, if not indeed lopsided, election results that yield dominance within provincial legislatures. Two alternative areas of explanation are assessed here. The first relates to electoral system factors. Certainly, the single member plurality electoral system and its resulting disproportionality is a key part of the argument here. Yet this cannot be the whole story, not least because election results are not so lopsided in every province, nor indeed at the federal level. Thus what also will be assessed in this area are two other, related, aspects of elections: the total size of the assembly and the number of individual constituencies, as well as relevant party system factors
Renewing Health Governance: A Case-Study of Newfoundland and Labrador
Get PDFThere were several new policy reforms and discourses that intersected with the Canadian health public agenda during the 1990s. Despite new circumstances and widespread Pan-Canadian pressure and leadership calling for common health reforms, these transformations across jurisdictions or policy fields were not “inevitable” as often forecast by boosters. Our objective is to better understand the role of local contextual factors (culture, institutions, and interests) and how these have influenced provincial experiences with policy reforms. These contextual factors do not exercise similar degrees of influence upon policy change. Our goal is to explore and evaluate how health care reform evolved in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL)
A Cross-Provincial Comparison of Health Care Reform in Canada: Building Blocks and Some Preliminary Results
Get PDFThis special edition of the Review includes four papers that deal with health care reform in Canada in the 1990-2003 period. The papers are a small sample of some 30 case studies that have been prepared from an ongoing research project entitled Cross-Provincial Comparison of Health Care Reform in Canada (hereafter referred to as either the Cross-Provincial Project or the Project). Among other things, the 30 studies examine the nature and extent of health care reform that occurred during that period and the factors that help to explain why reform did, or did not, occur. The purpose of this introductory paper is three-fold: to provide the rationale and context for the Project; to describe the research methodology used; and to outline some preliminary results. In so doing, it is intended to provide some framework for the remainder of this special edition
Contesting the Nation: Reasonable Accommodation in Rural Quebec
Get PDFIn 2007, the village of Hérouxville attracted a significant amount of media attention after adopting a controversial code of conduct for living in this municipality. This code of conduct, commonly referred to as the Hérouxville Standards, constructed the community’s collective identity in ways that were positioned against several “Others,” including women, children and (most notably) immigrants. The construction of “Us” and “Them” evident in the Standards points to ongoing contestations over the definition of nationhood in Quebec. In particular, the Standards reflect a reassertion of exclusive concepts of the nation. As such, the Standards must be read, not as an isolated case, but as part of a larger debate about national identity, immigration and multiculturalism in Quebec
Leadership Change in a Dominant Party: The Alberta Progressive Conservatives, 2006
Get PDFThe 2006 Alberta Progressive Conservative Party leadership race was notable for the surprising victory of Ed Stelmach and the fact that nearly 150,000 Albertans participated in the process. We argue that the use of an open, plebiscitary vote to select the leader of this governing party was essential to Stelmach’s success, and acted as a mechanism for sustaining Tory dominance. The contest mimicked a general election: By offering three leading candidates with distinctive ideological views, it enlarged and engaged the party membership and reinvigorated the party’s links to civil society. Stelmach’s victory had much to do with his perceived role as the moderate, middle, candidate able to unite the party. To explain this outcome, we explore patterns of support by constituency and the impact of endorsements on the outcome. To paraphrase Duverger, leadership contests in Alberta impress on voters, even non-supporters, that the Tories are a dominant party
Introduction to the Special Issue on Communications, The Media and Policy in Canada
Get PDFThe complexity of the late-modern globalizing order has accelerated the erosion of time and space and has radically undermined the apparent solidities of borders, identities, and the social relations of production. Hybridity, fluidity, risk, and individuated self-reflexivity are among the concepts that social researchers everywhere have grasped in order to anchor their attempts to apprehend the eruptions and disruptions that condition phenomenologies of the present. Among the most affected social theories are those of communications. The informational and communicational order that was taken for granted even a generation ago has been supplanted by a complex of global networks, mobilities, and flows. Media analysis, which is an important subfield of communications, has undergone particular transformation. From Innis to Angus communications theory has been more than a rich product of Canadian scholarship; the lived experience of space and land, nature and technology has conditioned the very possibility of Canadian social theory. In this way, the emerging contributions to scholarship in politics and communications, profiled in this special issue, are able to take us beyond the postmodern claim that “all that is solid melts into air.” While called upon to innovate and re-examine our theoretical frameworks, chosen methodologies, and critical matters of empirical enquiry, we do so on the basis of established research traditions that suggest certain future directions as we attempt to think through media and communications in an increasingly global Canada
Land of Heart's Desire: Inscribing the Australian Landscape
Get PDFEuropean exploration and colonization of Australia was in large part a project of labeling, erasing, and re-labeling the continent’s landscapes, flora, and fauna in order to take possession of the land. In the postcolonial era, the legacy of that project is reflected in conversations about multiculturalism and cultural equality whether in political or literary spheres. This paper explores how two contemporary novels (Aboriginal author Archie Weller's Land of Golden Clouds, and European-Australian Julia Leigh's The Hunter) employ differing representations of ecology and wildlife as a reflection of cultural politics, and how these novels offer different visions of the risks and possibilities of a multicultural Australia. It argues that metaphorical possession of the natural world is as crucial (and as problematic) to narratives of multiculturalism as it was to colonial narratives of discovery and conquest, and that competing political and cultural visions rely upon competing definitions of a natural or native Australian ecology