Multicultural Nationalism: Civilizing Difference, Constituting Community(Law and Society)

Canadian citizenship has long been characterized in opposition to that of our southern neighbour as a "mosaic" instead of a "melting pot." Acceptance of minority ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, and linguistic groups has largely been seen as key to our sense of what it means to be Canadian. Such multiplicity, however, has given rise to ongoing debates over equality, diversity, identity, and unity. This groundbreaking work interrogates and expands the accepted modes of thinking through Canadian citizenship. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial theorists, Gerald Kernerman undertakes a discourse analysis of Canadian constitutional and policy documents, public speeches, and media texts. He examines and critiques what he sees as the two major competing understandings of how Canada ought to manage its diversity, both of which seek to define an overarching notion of Canadian unity: on the one hand, the argument for differentiated citizenship, or "difference," and on the other, the case for universal and undifferentiated citizenship, or "equality." Positing that each of these positions ends at the same impasse in their preoccupation with the challenges diversity represents for cohesion and stability, Kernerman proposes an alternative - a post-nationalist multiculturalism that does not attempt to ask, or answer, the thorny "unity" question. An important contribution to the critical literature on Canadian politics, citizenship, and multiculturalism, Multicultural Nationalism will appeal to political scientists and philosophers, as well as those with an interest in critical race theory, liberal multiculturalism, and law and society.

Table of Contents:
1) Introduction: The Bind That Ties 2) Confounding Debates 3) Just Nationalism? Individual versus Collective Rights 4) Decoding Deep Diversity 5) Nationalism Disentangled: The New Treason of theIntellectuals 6) The Arithmetic of Canadian Citizenship 7) Misrepresenting the Canadian Conversation 8) Civil Eyes: Seeing "Difference Blind" 9) There's No Place Like Home Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Gerald Kernerman is assistant professor of politicalscience at York University and co-editor, with Philip Resnick, ofInsiders & Outsiders: Alan Cairns and the Reshaping of CanadianCitizenship.

Review :
What this analysis reveals is that when these debates become entangled with the question of Canadian unity, which they invariably have been, they become constrained by dichotomous thinking, produce political paralysis, and generate exclusion ... Of particular interest to constitutional and administration lawyers will be the discussion surrounding the constitutional deliberations at Meech Lake and Charlottetown, as well as the treatment of philosophical and political nature of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. - Martin Z.P. Oszynski (Saskatchewan Law Review, 2006, vol. 69) Kernerman's book is a good survey of the identity-citizenship-nationalism debates in Canada. Pithy summaries of the major theories and concepts informing the debates make this a useful introduction to the issues involved. The issues he addresses – of governing difference, of regulating divisiveness, of "creating" unity – are now central to the political cultures of many nations. As a reviewer from India, where the "unity in diversity" paradigm has been our governing political slogan even during the era of minoritarian, linguistic, and ethnic nationalisms and fragmentation, I appreciate Kernerman's attempts to chart a way between difference and unity, and between diversity and national integration. - Pramod K. Nayar, Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India (Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. XXXVIII, no. 1)