To Know Our Many Selves: Changing Across Time and Space

Book Description:

To Know Our Many Selves profiles the history of Canadian studies, which began as early as the 1840s with the Study of Canada. Dirk Hoerder discusses this comprehensive examination of culture by highlighting its unique interdisciplinary approach, which included both sociological and political angles. In later years, as the study of other ethnicities was added to the cultural story of Canada, a solid foundaton was formed for the nation’s master narrative.

Against this background Hoerder focuses on why Canadian studies may be used as a sound model for the study of other societies in a frame of transcultural societal studies.

Dirk Hoerder is professor of history at Arizona State University, Tempe.

From the publisher

This book was originally published in 2005 as Volume 13 of “Beiträge zur Kanadistik. Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien [in deutschsprachigen Ländern]” by Wißner-Verlag, Augsburg. Permission of the publisher for this revised edition is gratefully acknowledged.
Changes to the AU Press edition comprise a few minor additions
and edits, and changes per Canadian and North American publishing conventions in spelling, punctuation, and editorial style. Please see the Bibliographic Notes for some further explanations.

Contents
Bibliographic Notes — x
Preface — xiii
Acknowledgements — xvii
Introduction — 1
1. traditions and practices: from colonial and
area to cultural or societal studies — 6
Area Studies: Its long history as Colonial and Country Studies·· — 9
From the social psychology of lesser others to the quest for
··self-knowledge — 15
I. Framing Research on Canada: Burdens and Achievements of the Past — 20
2. the atlantic world: creating societies in imperial hinterlands — 21
“Discovery” and the production of knowledge·· — 21
Imperial interests and intellectual changes in the
··hegemonic Atlantic World — 28
Canadian specifics: Regions, boundaries, incomplete
··nation-state — 32
3. canada’s peoples: inclusions & exclusions — 37
First Peoples: Teachers, equals, subalterns·· — 38
Second Peoples: Interactions, solitudes, hegemonic pieces
··of the mosaic — 43
Early African and Asian Canadians: Presences and exclusions·· — 52
Immigrant Ethnics of European backgrounds: Subalterns
··creating societies — 56
Discourses about belonging and sentiments of citizenship·· — 59
Creating social spaces in everyday lives·· — 62
III. The Study of Canada: The Social Sciences, the Arts, New Media, 1920s–1950s — 154
8. data-based studies of society: political economy, history, sociology — 158
Canadian universities and U.S. foundations, 1920s–50s·· — 161
From social reform to sociology: The city and the West·· — 164
Political economy: Staples, markets, consumption, and
··cultural change — 174
Political history and political science: Institutions, revolt
··of the West, Cold War — 181
As yet marginal: Immigrants in scholarship·· — 191
Twice marginalized: “Indians” and folk and the emergence
··of anthropology and ethnohistory — 200
9. discourse-based reflections about society: where were the humanities? — 205
One, two, many literatures—or none?·· — 208
Images large and small: The nationalization of the arts·· — 221
Communication as a resource and as a tool of power:
··From common people’s telecommunication to global communication theory — 226
New nationwide media: Whose investments, power,
··and contents? — 232
Gendered cultural elites: Nationalists, reformers, radicals·· — 239
The study of Canada: Problems and perspectives at the turn
··to the sixties — 243
IV. The Third Phase: Multipiple DiDiscourses about Interlinked Societies — 246
10. decolonization: the changes of the 1960s — 248
Nationalizing the material and the cultural: The Marsh and ··Massey recommendations — 251
The centennial’s new climate of opinion·· — 258
A different centennial: The weight of the past in the socialization ··of new generations — 264
Academia: From decolonization to recolonization?·· — 267
.........And more