Coexistence in the Post-muliticulturalist Times: To/From the Space of Rebirth of Indigenous-Non Indigenous Relationships in Contemporary Canada
Author: Takeo Suzuki, sayuki.tko11@gmail.com
Department: Sociology
University: Kyoto University, Japan
Supervisor: Motoji Matsuda
Year of completion: 2021
Language of dissertation: Japanese
Keywords:
multiculturalism
, Indigenous peoples
, Canada
, resurgence
Areas of Research:
Theory
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
, Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations
Abstract
The basic research question of this dissertation is: how can different peoples divided by established opposing categories live together in the same social space? In order to respond to this broad question, I did mainly two works.
First work is the thorough reexamination of multiculturalism (Part 1 of the dissertation). By “multiculturalism”, I do not mean the narrow policy frame of it, but a much broader field of research formed around the concept. In this broader field, approaches to multicultural, multiracial and multiethnic coexistence have not been only the policy-oriented and liberalist ones, but there have been other lines of studies such as “critical multiculturalism” and “everyday multiculturalism”. Those studies have focused on the “multicultural question” (S. Hall) of everyday life around the world, and from the findings of the everyday experiences of coexistence or negotiations of cultural difference, they critiqued mainstream (from-above) thinking on multicultural situations. Based on my survey of intellectual history of multiculturalism, I discovered eemarginalized studies that are often forgotten with the so-called “crisis”, “failure”, and even “death” of official multicultural policies, and revalued their potential at this critical time when various differences are more and more treated as dangerous things and at the same time important social movements such as Idle No More and Black Lives Matter are questioning again the sociopolitical importance of difference and racialized/gendered/sexualized inequalities.
Second work is more region-specific but intimately related with the first, that is, research on the relation between multicultural politics and Indigenous movements and contemporary Indigenous-settler relationships in Canada (Part 2). This part is based on my research in Toronto (Mar-August 2018) and Vancouver (September 2019 - March 2020) as an international research student. My research is mainly literature survey, but I also interviewed some important scholars of contemporary Canadian multicultural/Indigenous studies and participated in an internationally famous Indigenous anti-pipeline land defending movement taking place in the north-west area of British Columbia (Chapter 5 is the output of this participant observation). This second part of my work links the first broad theoretical part to grounded findings and together they showed a renewed critical response to the multicultural question in contemporary so-called “post-multiculturalist” times.
