Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings ed. by Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn, Robert Menzies (review)

136 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 One has the impression that Conrad and Hiller could write a much larger volume, and effortlessly provide more depth on many topics; it would be welcome. The book is part of a six-volume series, The Illustrated History of Canada, and it contains well over 150 illustrations. Many are beautiful colour reproductions of paintings, and some choices, such as those by Alex Colville and David Blackwood, are inspired. The range in other illustrative material is wide, including pungent political cartoons and photographs of distinctive scenes, such as a small boy in Labrador standing between two prize cod which dwarf him. This is an excellent book, and if the rest of the series matches its standard, Oxford University Press can be proud. (IAN ROSS ROBERTSON) Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn, and Robert Menzies, editors. Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings Broadview Press. 429. $32.95 >Citizenship studies= is a new banner for scholarship that is (or wants to be) interdisciplinary, and that tries to integrate theoretical developments into empirical research. One of the risks haunting attempts to construct fields of inquiry that go against the grain of disciplinary boundaries and challenge the theory vs. research, general vs. particular split is over-inclusiveness. In the 1980s and 1990s, many scholars gave their work a veneer of sophistication by simply inserting a few references to >masculinity,= >tropes,= and >social imaginary= in work that was conceived and carried out with traditional tools. Today, historical and contemporary research arising out of old social-control concerns is sometimes retro-fitted with references to >citizenship.= And the anthology under review has its share of such articles. The fact that a concept is fashionable, however, does not mean that it lacks analytical bite. The editors promise a great deal: >The historical inquiries comprising this book, therefore, seek to contextualize current citizenship debates by charting the genealogy of the citizen, and of relations of citizenship in which he/she have been immersed, back to these volatile times B back to the formative years of the Canadian state.= While this goal would have been better served if at least one of the noted theorists of citizenship that Canada has given the world (Charles Taylor, James Tully, Will Kymlicka, Engin Isin) had been asked to provide an epilogue, the best contributions in the book do deliver on the promise made in the editors= introduction. And one political theorist, Janine Brodie, contributes a very xxxxxx humanities 137 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 interesting essay outlining the varieties of Canadian citizenship that have been set out, since Confederation, in successive speeches from the throne B showing, among other things, that historical research does not always need to rely on that holy grail of social historians, the archives. The denunciation of capitalism uttered from the throne during the Depression is very revealing about our neo-liberal present, in which capitalism has been naturalized to an extent unprecedented in Canadian history. From the point of view of theory, the most interesting essays are those that turn aside from the coercive forms of exclusion already documented at length in existing historical work and pay attention instead to documenting more sophisticated practices of governance. Unlike overt racism, many of the liberal practices by which groups are included and yet marginalized are specifically Canadian. Shirley Tillotson=s article on the development of paid workers= holidays and state-funded recreation, Lorna McLean=s article on Frontier College, Jennifer Stephen=s study of the category of the unemployed in Ontario, and Sean Purdy=s study of housing reform and nation formation are examples of a historiography that is left and feminist but goes beyond documenting outrageous practices. In turning our attention to the features of Canadian state formation that exclude and marginalize but in a liberal rather than in a coercive manner, paying close attention to the sophisticated legal machinery developed for the governance of aboriginal peoples will be very fruitful for everyone, no matter what our empirical focus. Claude Denis=s >Indigenous Citizenship and History in Canada: Between Denial and Imposition= has a fascinating analysis of the ways...