Benedict Anderson

Notes from north of 49ºN

José’s post from late November, Exploding Empires, got me thinking about Canada’s postcolonial experience.  While the remnants of the British empire linger with political structures {including the viceregal Governor General} and the Queen on the money, before 1663 most of Canada was a part of New France.  If the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and the siege of Québec City went differently, it would have been interesting to see the trajectory of Canada, if New France stayed under French control or if there was a long protracted war with Britain.  That’s neither here nor there, but the reality is that Canada does have the legacy of being a part of the British empire, while arguably subjugating the First Nations and francophone Québec, which I’ll come back to later.

So, in 1867, Canada became a Dominion in the British Commonwealth with its own Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald {who is on the $10 bill}. This was a trend with its “white settler” colonies. In 1931, The Statute of Westminster made the Canadian Parliament independent of British control and Canada ceased being a colony.  Nevertheless, there were and are ties to Britain. In fact, during WWII, many of the archives for Canada were destroyed in the Battle of Britain, which were housed in London, England, not Ottawa.

The relationship between Canada and Britain has shaped Canada’s character.  The obvious way to characterize the relationship is one of parent and child, but how to characterize it further? Canada as the abused Cinderella? Benign neglect? For decades, the British sought to assert imperial authority and reduce the influence of popular control of the government, which was viewed as a precursor to the American revolution [1]. Once British control began to wane, the rapid industrialization of the United States resulted in a dominant cultural and economic power at Canada’s doorstep.  Many argue that Canada traded one hegemon for another. Many Canadian writers, including Margaret Atwood, saw this pattern and sought to “decolonize” Canada, but what exactly does that entail?  What does a decolonized Canada look like? Is a strong national identity required?

The simmering legacy of the ghost of an old colonialism, i.e., New France, along with First Nations and immigrant communities, serve to further complicate matters by generating tensions from within.   Québec, a province with about 23.9% of the population where 40% of its residents support some form of sovereignty for Québec.  Urbanist Jane Jacobs around 1979-80 even went as far to say::

“Montréal cannot afford to behave like other Canadian regional cities without doing great damage to the economic well-being of the Québécois. It must instead become a creative economic centre in its own right… Yet there is probably no chance of this happening if Québec remains a province.” [2]

Despite hundreds of years passing since the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, there is definitely a strong francophone cultural identity in Québec and a resurgence of separatist politics enabled by the Quiet Revolution/Révolution Tranquille of the 1960s.

Add to the mix, globalization and the resultant Appaduraian flows of financial capital, human migration, media, ideologies [3, 4], and brands [5].

I feel all of these four factors::

  1. Historical trajectory of British colonialism
  2. Proximity to US cultural {media} and economic forces
  3. The subjugation of francophone culture under a trajectory of British colonialism
  4. Current state of globalization with flows of people, media, capital, ideologies and brands

serve to strongly decentre the very concept of Canada and Canadian identity, i.e., Canada as an “imagined community” in the Benedict Anderson sense [6]. Extending Anderson’s ideas about print capitalism being critical in defining the concept of nation, I would argue that Canadian identity is being undermined because of the dominance of US media, particularly film, television, and Internet content. I’ve argued for increased funding of the CBC and I feel it can and should play a role in defining nation.  This post isn’t meant to be an accusation or to sound an alarm, but open up a dialogue about the future trajectory of Canada.

If Canadian identity is indeed decentred, doesn’t this imply a fuzziness in people’s meaning systems regarding Canada and does this fuzziness lead to less resistance of hegemonic forces?  Does any of this even matter?  Aren’t these just market forces in action?  Antonio Gramsci says hegemony requires acquiescence [7], but as global consumers, aren’t we all willing to submit to hegemony if it strikes our fancy?  Sweet, glorious hegemony. Hasn’t China proven that global consumers are willing to purchase in ways that are detrimental to their own economies?

I think national identity matters, as does resistance to hegemonic forces.  Identity matters, as a shared sense of communitas and comradeship should guide policy and everyday actions. Citizens should derive meaning from the institution and social construction of nation. Resistance to hegemony matters, as this allows for culture to remain dynamic by allowing its redefinition, rather than continually self-replicating in the same fashion in the style created by the powers that be, i.e., the corporation and the state.

My next blog post will extend these ideas to Canadian politics.

Twitterversion:: Thoughts about “postcolonial” Canada given its relationships with Britain, USA, & Quebec. Interplay b/t media & identity. http://url.ie/4q9t @Prof_K

Song:: Weakerthans-“One Great City”

References

[1] Smith, Simon (1998). British Imperialism 1750-1970. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052159930X.

[2] Philpot, R. (2006) “She Stayed Creative Until the End: The Rich Life of Jane Jacobs” counterpunch.org, retrieved 21 January 2010, from http://www.counterpunch.org/philpot04262006.html

[3] Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large. Cambridge, MA: University of Minnesota Press.

[4] Appadurai, A. (1990) “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” Retrieved 21 January 2010,  http://www.intcul.tohoku.ac.jp/~holden/MediatedSociety/Readings/2003_04/Appadurai.html

[5] Sherry, J.F. (1998) ‘The Soul of the Company Store: Nike Town Chicago and the Emplaced Brandscape’, in J.F. Sherry (ed.) ServiceScapes: The Concept of Place in Contemporary Markets, pp. 305–36. Chicago: NTC Business Books.

[6] Anderson, Benedict (1983) Imagined Communities. Verso. http://books.google.com/books?id=4mmoZFtCpuoC&dq=benedict+anderson+imagined+communities&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=cZ9YS–eFcLO8QaZq-jKAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[7] Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Lawrence and Wishart.

Cover of Douglas Coupland's Souvenirs of Canada

Notes from North of 49ºN

I’ve been thinking more and more about the concept of nation, of late.  In summers past, the 4th. of July, Independence Day in the United States, meant being in northern California and perhaps heading to Point Reyes and seeing the tug-of-war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach.  The past three years, I have observed Canada Day, celebrating when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec, and Ontario became a federation, a dominion with ties to the UK.  Two adjacent countries, which appear to have similarities, but have key differences.  Population is one differentiator. At confederation in 1867, the US population was around over 10 times that of Canada, 38,558,371 to 3,625,000 {1870}.  The twentieth century would see the rise of American dominance, not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of media and culture.

American culture is readily evident in Canada.  On television and in major cities like Toronto, with the prevalence of brands like Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, and Subway.  A quick scan of the TV listings shows how popular US television content is in anglophone Canada.  Canada is aware of this and requires broadcasters to show Canadian content {Can con}.  The CBC, the Canadian national public broadcaster, is a flagship network of the nation, where, through its mandate, the network’s goal is to be a cultural touchstone for the nation.  I’ve blogged about the future of the CBC television on this post:: Will Globalization Kill or Make the CBC Relevant Again?, which touches on how the CBC is struggling to remain viable and relevant in the shadow of big media players in the United States and fending off challengers within Canada.  Unlike the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster, which is funded through household television licences, the CBC gets funding from the government, but also is subject to market forces through selling ad time, both sources being historically uneven.

The question I have is whether the role of a national broadcaster is even important.  I don’t see the United States as having the equivalent of the CBC, let alone the BBC.  PBS and NPR are, in my opinion, a loose confederation of programming, as opposed to a network with a strong identity, let alone an entity fostering a conceptualization of the United States as a culture or a nation.

The ideas of Arjun Appadurai and Benedict Anderson come to mind.  Appadurai speaks of globalization in terms of flows.  Flows of finance, ideologies, technologies, people and media, each with the suffix scapes.  Mediascapes have two components::

  1. The flows of capacity to produce and disseminate electronic information
  2. The images of the world created by these media

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities discusses nation as an abstract entity, where meaning is shared within and the mass media address its citizens as a public.

Borders are often permeable under globalization and Canada has seen flows of media flood across its southern border, but what has this done to Canadians’ notion of nation?  Can Canadian content policy and the CBC help to reinforce the imagined community of Canada?  Does nation even matter?  Is Canada to Canadians “our home and disparate land,” as stated in today’s Vancouver Sun?  What about shared Canadian experiences such as Hinterland’s Who’s Who::

I think we need to remember that the context here is capitalism.  Media is flowing, media full of American meanings and ideals, as entertainment content to generate revenues.  In light of this onslaught, I think it is important for Canada to preserve its identity by creating content that increases Canadian cultural knowledge and awareness.  Why?  Without a national identity, i.e., an imagined community of Canada, meaning becomes increasingly derived from imagined communities of brands.  If our Diderot unities reduce to the constellation of brands we surround ourselves with, can we be citizens or are we just consumers?

I think nation does and should matter.  In Benedict Anderson’s words, nation::

“…is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the inequality of that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep. horizontal kinship.”–p.7

I feel that the CBC should be a symbol of Canadian community, one that communicates and is interactive with all electronic media.  I see it as a part of the cultural infrastructure and one of the few entities that can actively bridge the country’s east-west divide, but I’m an idealist.

Song:: Dreamer – Jenn Grant {Halifax, NS}

Video::

Video Extra:: jPod clips of “Cowboy” aired on CBC, Winter 2008.

Twitterversion:: #Canada, national identity, & #Media. Globalization blurs borders, but does #nation matter? #Appadurai #BenedictAnderson http://url.ie/1xu6 @Prof_K