Rethinking the Canadian Archipelago:
Research Trajectories in Region, Identity, and Diversity in Canada
Dr. Andrew Nurse
Department of History and Canadian Studies
63D York St.
Mount Allison University
Sackville, NB
E4L 1G9
Regionalism occupies a prominent position in both scholarship about and public discourse on Canadian diversity. It is a perennial Canadian concern, the focus of extensive political, historical, and political-economic analysis. Scholarship on regionalism in Canada has also changed markedly over the last generation. The historical focus on regions as relatively homogenous entities has been in part replaced by a more nuanced scholarship focusing on diversity within regions. The result is a dualistic approach to regionalist scholarship.[1] A deep and rich scholarship on diversity and difference within regions has been created along side a similarly rich scholarship on diversity between regions within Canada. Intersections of identity within regions, their meanings, and implications, however, remain unclear and frequently unspecified. How have Canadian studies of regionalism addressed issues of diversity within regions? Do different identity “markers”[2] intersect differently in different regions of Canada? Does region constitute an identity unto itself, sufficient for political or policy mobilization? How do regional cultures develop and change over time? What affect does immigration have on regionalism? The objective of this paper is to examine these questions with specific reference to current scholarship on regionalism in Canada.
This paper examines the ways in which Canadian scholars have examined the intersections of identity on a regional level in Canada. It begins by first examining current analytic frameworks used to understand identities, including regionalism, in Canada. Next, it examines general frameworks of regional analysis in Canadian scholarship, paying particular attention to how Canadian scholars have conceptualized it. Following this, this paper examines current scholarship on Canadian regionalism, focusing on the key interpretive frameworks that have been used to study regional identity and its development. Here, this paper will work with the specific foci as they emerge from existing scholarship rather than imposing its own heuristic framework on existing studies. The goal of this review will be to look at the ways in which region as an identity within Canada intersects -- or, equally importantly, does not intersect -- with other identity markers. Finally, this paper will conclude by exploring the implications of current scholarship from both the perspectives of potential further research and its particular policy implications. The primary argument that this paper seeks to make is that regional identity in Canada must be seen as part of an on-going historical process that fashions and refashions identities through a diverse series of means. This paper will contend that the representation of regional identities is neither a politically, nor culturally neutral process. Instead of mirroring established identities constructed around an already existing social basis, the representation of regional identities emerges out of distinct but specific political economic and cultural processes that both implicitly and explicitly code the meaning of region.
The implicit and explicit coding of regional identities is an important, but often neglected consideration. As Ian McKay has noted in his studies of regional identity in Atlantic Canada,[3] the character and organization of regional identities can work to include or exclude different social groups because of the way these identities are structured. Said differently, a regional identity can be represented in ways that make it open or closed, inclusive or exclusive, to different groups of people. At times, this coding might be explicit. For example, the inclusion of Scottish ethnic heritages in Atlantic Canadian culture is a matter of what might be called overt coding.[4] Implicit codlings can be harder to detect. A regional identity, for example, that does not explicitly exclude non-white people may still do so because of the way in which this identity is publicly represented and structured. Considerations of the intersections of identity relating to Canadian regionalism need to assess the implications of both these levels of coding because they affect the ways in which regionalism, regional identity, and regional belonging occur. Because of the importance of this matter, this paper will examine both implicit and explicit coding of regional identity to explore the ways in which they intersected with a range of other identity markers.[5]
I. Questions of Identity
Identity, Michael Beheils has recently remarked, is a “hot” academic issue, infusing discourse in a wide range of disciplines over a broad array of public policy matters.[6] In part, current concerns about identity reflect a more long-standing concern related to defining the unique national characteristics that supposedly underscore and legitimize Canada’s separate national existence in North America.[7] In part, current Canadian scholarly literature on identity is also animated by international theoretical trends -- particularly the development of post structural theory -- which have reconceptualized the character and nature of identity,[8] and deeply problematized older conceptions of identity as a relatively stable, structured, or embedded element of human experience.[9] And, in part, Canadian concerns with identity are rooted in the changing demographic and socio-economic dimensions of late-modern Canada. In particular, identity has emerged as a key policy concern in Canada as Canadians grapple with the meanings, political implications, and public policy implications of diversity within the polity.[10]
Of particular concern in this regard is the functioning of multiculturalism. As a policy, multiculturalism aims to recognize and respect diversity at the same time that it works to aid the integration of new Canadians into the matrix of Canadian life and culture.[11] While the policy of multiculturalism remains controversial in the Canadian context,[12] its overall objectives -- integration and social fairness -- are not. Considerations of identity are fundamental to the attainment of these goals. Recent efforts to re-conceptualize Canadian political life, in fact, focus extensively on what might be called the “politics of recognition”[13] as a key to any successful policy engagement with diversity.
Current studies of identity in Canada accept this premise, but exactly how identity is conceptualized remains a matter of considerable debate. Critical discourse on multiculturalism, for example, suggests that its mode of recognizing identity does a remarkable disservice to the depth and complexity of human character.[14] Recognition of identity under Canadian multiculturalism, it has been argued, produces not recognition but constructed caricatures; stereotypes of complex and evolving personal, ethnic, and national identities frozen in time for popular display. Whether or not this is the case is debatable.[15] What is clear is that identities are more complex that the word “recognition” might at first indicate. Current research on identity[16] indicates that identity is a fluid, dynamic, and dialogical phenomenon, constructed and reconstructed through processes of interaction between self and other. Positive conceptions of self are necessary for mental health.[17] Negative conceptions of self -- created by institutional discrimination, racism, sexism, unemployment, or a range of other factors -- can contribute to social and political withdraw, isolation, anger, despair or a range of other responses.[18] On a social level, negative conceptions of identity can also serve to fracture the body politic and prompt withdraw from public and political discourse.[19]
Identity is, then, an important but far from simple matter. Western research in psychology and social science has long recognized that common sense conceptions of singular identities (i.e., singular conceptions of self) do not reflect the actual complexity and multiplicity of identity formation. Research in developmental psychology, for example, posited stages of identity formation through which individuals supposedly passed;[20] while socialist analysis focused on the ways in which material determinants structured conceptions of self, identity, and political praxis. Current research on identity extends these earlier conceptions to look at the ways in which different social processes interact and intersect to affect processes of identity formation, sense of self, social treatment, social location, one’s relationship to state and civil society, and a range of other dynamics.[21] In other words, identity is not simply a developmental process; nor a matter of social construction that can be reduced to a singular overarching dynamic. Instead, it must be seen more as a matrix of different -- potentially intersecting; potentially interacting -- processes that encompass a range of features, including: region, gender, ethnicity, social location, ability, sexual orientation, age, and religious affiliation, among others.[22] In discussing identity it is also important to remain attuned to the agency of the individual or group involved. Identities are not simply “made” by social processes (even intersecting ones)[23] but are also self creations. In other words, individuals or groups only very rarely lack all agency.[24] Instead, they interact with social, cultural, and political economic processes to shape identity (both individual and social) in a dialectical fashion.
This process can be remarkably complicated because it involves more than one set of identities. Current research in Canada, for example, focuses on social class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and a range of other identity “markers” and suggests that identity is both complexly layered and situational.[25] What this means is that identity can be shifting and different depending on the context in which a person finds themselves. Identities do not simply involve a singular subject position, but potentially several. At certain “moments” these identities may intersection with each other or a particular person’s identity may involve the integration of a variety of factors. In other instances, one identity marker -- or, a particular aspect of a person’s identity -- may (by virtue of necessity, circumstance, or desire) take precedence over others. The complexity of identity, then, can be both real and abstract. As a matter of day-to-day life, a particular identity may serve to structure lived experience in a way that elides or displaces others, dislocating what might be a fascinating complexity and forcing individuals into a particular situation in which a monological identity takes primacy.
In the Canadian context region is another important consideration that needs to be assessed in considerations of identity. Indeed, for much of Canadian history, region and regional identity were viewed as key identity markers.[26] Today, regionalism is studied intensely in disciplines ranging from political economy to political science to geography to history. It receives wide media commentary as well.[27] Like identity, “region” is a complicated and historically evolving concept. It is an evolving framework of identity, self-conception, and understanding on both a national and individual level. Exactly how region interacts and intersects with other identity markers is not completely clear, but it seems evident that different conceptions of region and regional identity can encompass diversity in different ways. What this may mean is that some regional identities permit a greater degree of flexibility in incorporation of diversity than others.
This point needs to be born in mind because difference (regardless of the form it takes) is not simply difference. As anti-racist theorists have pointed out,[28] identity differences exist on two levels. First, there is a range of differences that Himani Bannerji calls “cultural diversities”, by which she means differences that are simply that: differences. They may constitute key elements of any particular person’s sense of self, but they do not significantly affect the ways in which that person lives. Second, there are differences that “encode” and are “structured through power relations”. These forms of relations involve power and can create situations of manifest oppression.[29] What this means is that identity differences cannot be assessed within a single overarching heuristic framework. It is important to explore the lived experience of identity difference, how it is made, and its implications if one is to understand the ways in which different identity markers “play out” in really existing situations.
Regionalism is clearly an important identity marker within Canada[30] and there can be little doubt that regional variations in employment, ethnic relations, access to state services, the organization of the state, and demographic patterns constitute an important context of life in different parts of Canada. Yet, following anti-racist theories, we need to see the operation of regional identities on more than one level. In one way, regional identity may seem to correspond to anti-racist conception of “cultural differences”. The fact that a person may be from Atlantic Canada may be a matter of pride for that person,[31] but if that Atlantic Canadian is a white, anglophone, Christian, the degree to which they will suffer from discrimination if moving to another region of Canada may not be appreciable at all. On the other hand, within the region, stereotypes and ideals of what constitutes an “Atlantic Canadian” may appreciably affect the ways in which visible minorities, say, are treated and the degree to which they are integrated into regional culture.
What makes this point particularly salient for a consideration of regionalism and regional identity in Canada is that exactly what constitutes a region (on which an identity is supposedly based) is far from clear. The word “region” is often used loosely in Canadian public discourse to refer to formal political divisions -- provinces or groups of provinces -- within the country.[32] Yet, it is also clear that regional identities involve a great deal more than simply matters of political consideration.[33] Geography and specific environmental images are often associated with particular regions,[34] but it is also clear that the commonly understood regions of Canada correspond at best poorly to the parameters of Canadian physical geography.[35] As an element of common discourse, then, the word region is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is in common use; on the other its exact meaning is difficult to specify. The lack of a precise geographical or political definition of region is precisely why an investigation of different forms of coding regional identity becomes important. Region, regional identities, and regional cultures are, in other words, not simple self-evident “facts” and for this reason an understanding of the coding of region is important because this coding animates what is overwise a vague, ill-defined phenomenon.
II. Frameworks: Region, Identity, and Political Economy
Significant scholarly work on regionalism began a generation ago.[36] In the late-1960s and early-1970s, scholars attuned to diversity began to question the “national” focus of research into the dynamics of the Canadian experience. This was particularly true for historical scholarship that had worked with a “national” narrative as its guiding framework and sought to explain the origins, growth, and consolidation of an almost holistic Canadian “nation”.[37] Considerations of region were not absent from this narrative but they occupied a minor and problematic position. Where regionalism was considered, it was presented in one of two ways: (i) as a problem that needed to be overcome as part of the development of the Canadian nation or (ii) in a stereotyped way suggesting homogenous regional cultures.[38]