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384 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 contemporary debate. His analysis of this theme throughout the book also serves to underscore his second objective of indicating how the international system has changed during this period. He interprets Canadian stateled interest in the hemisphere as fluctuating: convenient when it coincided with established foreign policy goals or planned high-level visits, less so when it came to sustaining relationships, particularly with the larger South American countries, and held together by increasingly enlightened official development assistance policies. There is no doubt in Stevenson=s mind that the catalyst for more measured commitment and consistency in Canadian policy towards the region came from the conflict in Central America, characterized as ideological by the Americans but as socio-economic by the many NGO groups active throughout the isthmus and their activist networks throughout Canada. Their points of reference became important for the government of Canada, and, coupled with an official disinclination to embrace the Reagan administration=s approach to the hemisphere, led to Canada=s embarking on a series of peace-brokering efforts in Central America, first through the Contadora Group process and then progressively through enhanced diplomatic activity behind the peace plan pushed by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, and finally, Canadian command of United Nations peacekeeping forces that oversaw the demobilization of the Contra forces in Nicaragua and Honduras. Stevenson convincingly argues that the symbiosis between state and non-state actors in policy formulation was mutually beneficial, offering the image that the government was reaching out to concerned groups to enrich its policies while in doing so providing greater local legitimacy for the influence exercised by those active on the ground. In essence, he describes the foundations upon which current Canadian policy in the Americas, and indeed Canada=s strong multilateral approach involving both Summits and the OAS are based. It should be emphasized that Canada is in the vanguard in advocating civil society involvement. He notes omnipresent geopolitical constraints but contrasts regional realpolitik with Canada=s enhanced visibility, particularly in the OAS, and the independent-minded policy stance Canada took on Central America in the 1980s which continues to shape our policy responses today in regional multilateral bodies, where Canadian influence runs high as American attention succumbs to other distractions. Stevenson=s lucid analysis is a must-read for scholars, policy practitioners and those whose interest in the Americas may have been stimulated by current events. In pointing out how traditional foreign policy approaches can change over time, he also convincingly exposes what for many will be a surprising dialectical element: that civil society can have an influence on foreign policy. (PETER M. BOEHM) Kenneth Scambray. The North American Italian Renaissance: Italian Writing in America and Canada Guernica. 130. $15.00 HUMANITIES 385 The North American Italian Renaissance: Italian Writing in America and Canada is, to be sure, a big title for a small book. Such a title promises a great deal, and much of what one might expect from such a title can surely not be included in 130 pages; the author, in fact, informs us of this discrepancy (see below). My intention here is not to discount Kenneth Scambray, a keen reader of texts, but to question the uneven combination of this book vis-àvis its title. There are two other aspects of the title I would mention at the outset. First, the initial definite article B >the= B may readily close out at first glance any possibility that this may or may not be indeed the definitive work on the subject at hand. For an array of reasons, some of which I shall mention below, it is neither definitive nor representative. Second, given the sensitivity to language that is characteristic of Guernica and its publisher/ director, I wonder at the use of the geocultural label >America= as opposed to >United States= B after all, Canada is one of numerous parts of America. In his able introduction, Scambray tells us that the >essays that follow represent a cross-section of the Italian American and Italian Canadian literature written over the past thirty years.= Indeed, many of the works he discusses >form a coherent part of the Italic narrative in North America=; however...

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