Jeremy Webber – författare

Webber begins by showing how different conceptions of culture, language, and nation shaped Canada's constitutional negotiations from 1960 until the referendum of 1992. He then calls for a reconception of the terms of the debate, claiming that the terms now used, often borrowed from quite different societies, have made resolution of the constitutional issues more difficult. He rejects the language of nation and nationalism, and the tendency towards exclusiveness implicit in that language, arguing for a Canadian community founded not on a rigid set of "shared values" but on shared debates and shared engagements through time. Recognizing that Canadians belong simultaneously to the larger community and to other more local communities each generating its own sense of allegiance Webber describes how their relationships are shaped by institutional, linguistic, and cultural factors and notes that these multiple influences produce an asymmetrical structure. He maintains that this structure should be reflected in an assymetrical constitution, and can be accommodated without undermining individual rights. Webber offers both an overview of the constitutional negotiations and a set of reflections on the appropriate relationship between culture, language, and political community in Canada. These reflections, while rooted in the Canadian context, hold lessons for other pluralistic federations, or for nations confronting similar issues of cultural accommodation.

Political communities are defined, and often contested, through stories. Scholars have long recognized that two foundational sets of stories – narratives of contact and narratives of arrival – helped to define settler societies. We are only beginning to understand how ongoing issues of migration and settlement are linked to issues of indigenous-settler contact.Storied Communities disrupts the assumption in many works that indigenous and immigrant identities fall into two separate streams of analysis. The authors do not attempt to build a new master narrative – they instead juxtapose narratives of contact and arrival as they explore key themes: narrative and narrative form, the nature and hazards of storytelling in the political realm, and the institutional and theoretical implications of foundation narratives and storytelling. By bringing to light the links between narratives of contact and narratives of arrival, this volume opens up new ways to imagine, sustain, and transform political communities.

The political concept of recognition has introduced new ways of thinking about the relationship between minorities and justice in plural societies. But is a politics informed by recognition valuable to minorities today?Contributors to this volume examine the successes and failures of struggles for recognition and self-determination in relation to claims of religious groups, cultural minorities, and indigenous peoples on territories associated with Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, India, New Zealand, and Australia. The chapters look at cultural recognition in the context of public policy about intellectual and physical property, membership practices, and independence movements, while probing debates about toleration, democratic citizenship, and colonialism.Together the contributions point to a distinctive set of challenges posed by a politics of recognition and self-determination to peoples seeking emancipation from unjust relations.

The political concept of recognition has introduced new ways of thinking about the relationship between minorities and justice in plural societies. But is a politics informed by recognition valuable to minorities today?Contributors to this volume examine the successes and failures of struggles for recognition and self-determination in relation to claims of religious groups, cultural minorities, and indigenous peoples on territories associated with Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, India, New Zealand, and Australia. The chapters look at cultural recognition in the context of public policy about intellectual and physical property, membership practices, and independence movements, while probing debates about toleration, democratic citizenship, and colonialism.Together the contributions point to a distinctive set of challenges posed by a politics of recognition and self-determination to peoples seeking emancipation from unjust relations.