What cultural appropriation is, how it is deployed in public discourse, and if and when it is harmful.What exactly is cultural appropriation? At one extreme are those commentators who suggest that any borrowing of elements outside of one’s own culture is cultural appropriation, and therefore, always wrong; at the other extreme, are those who argue that the history of human civilization just is cultural exchange, and therefore, never wrong. This book offers...

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent toward...

Multiculturalism has become a political touchstone in many countries around the world. While many of those on the right oppose it, and many of those on the left embrace it, things are not this simple. For those who defend them, multicultural policies are generally seen as key to the fair and successful integration of minorities, many of whom are immigrants, into diverse democratic societies. For those who oppose multiculturalism, who have become part of the so-called "backlash" against mul...

'Globalization' has become one of the defining buzzwords of our time - a term that describes a variety of accelerating economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental processes that are rapidly altering our experience of the world. It is by its nature a dynamic topic - and this Very Short Introduction has been fully updated for 2009, to include developments in global politics, the impact of terrorism, and environmental issues.Presenting globalization in accessible language as...

Canada In Decay is the first scholarly book questioning the undemocratic policy of mass immigration and racial diversification in Canada. The entire Canadian political establishment, the mainstream media and the academics, are all in harmonious unison with the banks and corporations, in promoting two myths to justify mass immigration.The first myth this book demolishes is the claim that immigration into Canada “enriches the country”, by demonstrating that mass immigration is not on...

This book examines key issues surrounding ethnicity and human rights in our country. It asks: How do we account for the persistence of racism in the face of increasing legal protection for human rights? Kallen's classic study reveals the ways in which human rights violations, by way of discrimination on the bases of race and ethnicity, create and sustain the marginalized status of diverse racial and ethnic groups in Canada. Minority rights issues central to the concerns of Canada's three m...

Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all.”-Naomi Klein, author of The Shock DoctrineUndoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights ...

A Space for Race engages in a critical examination of some of the major discourses related to original/settler/immigrant and, particularly, racialized belonging. In the course of this examination, the book explores the various themes of racism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism and the ongoing tensions, challenges, and inconsistencies around race relations embedded within policy and practice in Canada. It traces the history of race relations and ensuing tensions from encounte...

Americas latest war, according to renowned social critic Henry Giroux, is a war on youth. While this may seem counterintuitive in our youth-obsessed culture, Giroux lays bare the grim reality of how our educational, social, and economic institutions continually fail young people. Their systemic failure is the result of what Giroux identifies as “four fundamentalisms”: market deregulation, patriotic and religious fervor, the instrumentalization of education, and the militarization of soci...

Multiculturalism appears to be in terminal crisis. It has been blamed for undermining national identity, diluting social cohesion, creating ethnic ghettos and cultural fragmentation, providing fertile ground for Islamic radicalism, encouraging perverse 'political correctness', and restricting liberal freedoms of expression, amongst other things. The public debate over multiculturalism has polarised opinion amongst the general public, policy makers, and politicians. But how much real eviden...

After decades of extraordinary successes as a multicultural society, new debates are bubbling to the surface in Canada. The contributors to this volume examine the conflict between equality rights, as embedded in the Charter, and multiculturalism as policy and practice, and ask which charter value should trump which and under what circumstances? The opening essay deliberately sharpens the conflict among religion, culture, and equality rights and proposes to shift some of the existing bound...

Home and Native Land takes its vastly important topic and places it under a new, penetrating light–shifting focus from the present grounds of debate onto a more critical terrain.The book’s articles, by some of the foremost critical thinkers and activists on issues of difference, diversity, and Canadian policy, challenge sedimented thinking on the subject of multiculturalism. Not merely “another book” on race relations, national identity, or the post 9-11 security environme...