Rethinking the Great White North: Race, Nature, and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada

Ahead of Publication Published by University of British Columbia Press 2011

Rethinking the Great White North

Race, Nature, and the Historical Geographies of Whiteness in Canada

Edited by: Andrew Baldwin , Laura Cameron and Audrey Kobayashi

Overview

About this book

A path-breaking exploration of racism in Canada and its deep-rooted ties to notions of nature and the North.

Canadian national identity is bound to the idea of a Great White North. Images of snow, wilderness, and emptiness seem innocent, yet this path-breaking volume shows they contain the seeds of contemporary racism.

Rethinking the Great White North moves the idea of whiteness to the centre of debates about Canadian history, geography, and identity. Informed by critical race theory and the insight that racism is geographical as well as historical and cultural, the contributors trace how notions of race, whiteness, and nature helped shape Canada's identity as a white country in travel writing and treaty making; scientific research and park planning; and within small towns, cities, and tourist centres. These nuanced explorations of diverse historical geographies of nature not only revisit the past: they offer a new vocabulary for contemporary debates on Canada's role in the North and the nature of multiculturalism.

Author / Editor information

Andrew Baldwin is a lecturer in human geography at Durham University. Laura Cameron is an associate professor of geography at Queen's University and Canada Research Chair in Historical Geographies of Nature. Audrey Kobayashi is a professor of geography and Queen's Research Chair at Queen's University.

Contributors: Luis L.M. Aguiar, Kay Anderson, Stephen Bocking, Emilie Cameron, Jessica Dempsey, Brian Egan, Bruce Erickson, Kevin Gould, Roger Keil, Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Claire Major, Tina I.L. Marten, Tyler McCreary, Richard Milligan, Sherene H. Razack, Catriona Sandilands, Juanita Sundberg, and Jocelyn Thorpe.

Reviews

Renee Hulan, Department of English, Saint Mary?s University:
Rethinking the Great White North is a provocative, timely, and far-reaching volume. At a time when the Canadian government is interested in the North as a territory to be claimed and exploited, militarizing northern regions in the name of national sovereignty and security, here is a book that seeks to tell a different story.

Bruno Cornellier, Centre for Globalization and Cultural Studies, University of Manitoba:
Innovative...the book is also particularly stimulating in its attempt to read urban geographies against and/or as part of Canada's constitutive interaction with "nature."

Shannon Stunden Bower, University of Alberta:
Is the issue race or whiteness? Nature or wilderness? The best papers in this collection engage the tensions between key concepts, offering not only theoretically engaged analyses of the Canadian situation but also seeking to advance conceptual understanding of race or whiteness and nature or wilderness.

Topics

Language: English
Publisher: University of British Columbia Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 356
Illustrations
- Other: 3 b&w photos, 2 maps

eBook

Planned Publication: September 21, 2011
ISBN: 9780774820158