Culture and Social Change

Simon Dalby is a research associate at the Centre for International
Studies at Simon Fraser University.

The political Left has been in turmoil since the early 1980s, when the
new Right gained political power in many Western states and set about
rewriting the political mandate of the welfare state. Accompanying these
political changes has been the use of new social movements—feminism,
environmentalism, and the social-justice and human-rights
movements—that have simultaneously challenged the political priorities
of the “old Left” and extended political demands for extended
democratization and the operation of identity politics.

Canada has not been immune to these developments, and this book tackles
them with respect to Ontario and Quebec. The editors introduce the
essays—most written by activist academics—with an attempt to provide
an overview of contemporary culture and politics in Canada, one to which
at least some poststructuralists will take exception. The rest of the
volume is divided into two parts. The early chapters deal with political
theory questions, looking both at the political legacy of Marxism and
anarchism and their potentials for rebuilding a progressive politics. A
number of chapters also investigate the role of trade unions in
contemporary Canadian politics. The second half of the book deals
explicitly with the role of social movements in fights over neighborhood
politics and environmental issues. It also discusses the role of the
interchurch coalitions of the 1980s and the new role for churches in
social justice struggles.

The diversity of the topics in this volume reflects the multiplicity of
political struggles in Canada in the 1990s. It also makes putting a
coherent book on these topics together an editorial challenge. This book
could easily be criticized for being unfocused and diffuse, but the
editors are probably correct to let the chapters speak for themselves,
and despite their harsh comments on poststructuralism, they wisely
resist temptation to attempt to tie things together in a concluding
summary.