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NGOs are as Canadian as hockey, declared a 1988 Parliamentary report. Few institutions epitomize the foundational Canadian myth of international benevolence like the non-governmental organization devoted to development abroad. This book raises important questions about these organizations and their development projects: Just how non-governmental are organizations that get most of their funding from government agencies? What impact do these funding ties have on NGOs' ability to support popular demands for democratic reforms and wealth redistribution? What happens when NGOs support a repressive regime? What happens when NGOs bite the hand that feeds them?
Surveying the field of political history in Canada, one might assume that the politics of the nation have been shaped solely by the Liberal and Conservative parties. Relatively little attention has been paid to the contributions of the CCF and NDP in Canadian politics. This collection remedies this imbalance with a critical examination of the place of social democracy in Canadian history and politics. Bringing together the work of politicians, think tank members, party activists, union members, scholars, students, and social movement actors in important discussions about social democracy delving into an array of topics including municipal, provincial, and national issues, labour relations, feminism, contemporary social movements, war and society, security issues, and the media, Party of Conscience reminds Canadians of the important contributions the CCF and NDP have made to a progressive, compassionate idea of Canada.
Critically assessing meanings of the term "public", this book situates the emergence and expansion of "public services" within market-based forms of production and consumption. It highlights the potential for making public services more progressive within market societies, but underscores their ongoing capture by private interests and emphasises the inherent limits of reform within a "bourgeois public sphere". The author explores opportunities for more expansive forms of non-marketized public services, examining emerging debates on the theory and practice of equitable, participatory and sustainable forms of publicness that go beyond mere ownership. The book then asks how we can build a robust international "pro-public" movement that juggles universal needs with local context. With a focus on essential public services such as water, electricity and health, the text is global in its scope and written for a broad audience. It will be useful for those interested in social and public policy, public services and public administration, political theory, economic geography, social movements, sustainability and development.
Canada and the Third World provides a long overdue introduction to Canada's historical relationship with the Third World.
Established in 1961, the same year as the US Peace Corps, Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) became the first Canadian NGO to undertake development work from a secular stance and in a context of rapid decolonization. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Ruth Compton Brouwer tells the story of a group of young women and men who confronted the complexities of "underdevelopment" in countries such as India and Nigeria and who overcame their initial navet as they sought to fit into their host communities. Later, as returned volunteers, they brought unique skills to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and other development organizations and a new level of global consciousness and cultural diversity to Canadian society.
Against an ever-expanding and diversifying ‘rights talk’, this book re-opens the question of obligation from not only legal but also ethical, sociological and political perspectives. Its premise is that obligation has a primacy ahead of rights, because rights attach to practices and modes of being that are already saturated with obligations. Obligations thus lie at the core not just of law but of community. Yet the distinctive meanings, range and situations of obligation have tended to remain under-theorised in legal scholarship. In response, this book examines the sense in which we are multiply ‘bound beings’, to law and legal institutions, as much as we are to place, community, mem...
In this path-breaking book, Jeb Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power. Over the ensuing two decades, paramilitary violence was largely directed against the poor and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas movement, taking the lives of thousands of Haitians. Sprague seeks to understand how this occurred, and traces connections between paramilitaries and their elite financial ...
The Non-Governmental Development Organisations (NGDOs) have, over the past two decades, entered centre stage in their active participation in the social, political and economic issues affecting both the developing and developed world. This book offers a highly stimulating and concise summary of the NGDO sector by examining their history and metamorphosis; their influence on the social, political and economic landscapes of the ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ governments and societies. The author analyses competing theoretical and conceptual debates not only regarding their contribution to the global social political dynamism but also on the sector’s changing external influence as they try...
The climate crisis is here, and the end of this world—a world built on land theft, resource extraction, and colonial genocide—is on the horizon. In this compelling roadmap to a livable future, Indigenous sovereignty and climate justice go hand in hand. Drawing on their work in Indigenous activism, the labour movement, youth climate campaigns, community-engaged scholarship, and independent journalism, the six authors challenge toothless proposals and false solutions to show that a just transition from fossil fuels cannot succeed without the dismantling of settler capitalism in Canada. Together, they envision a near future where oil and gas stay in the ground; where a caring economy provides social supports for all; where wealth is redistributed from the bloated billionaire class; and where stolen land is rightfully reclaimed under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. Packed with clear-eyed analysis of both short- and long-term strategies for radical social change, The End of This World promises that the next world is within reach and worth fighting for.
There was no Reichstag fire. No storming of the Bastille. No mutiny on the Aurora. Instead, the mediocre have seized power without firing a single shot. They rose to power on the tide of an economy where workers produce assembly-line meals without knowing how to cook at home, give customers instructions over the phone that they themselves don’t understand, or sell books and newspapers that they never read. Canadian intellectual juggernaut Alain Deneault has taken on all kinds of evildoers: mining companies, tax-dodgers, and corporate criminals. Now he takes on the most menacing threat of all: the mediocre.