Daniel Salée

Identities in conflict: The Aboriginal question and the politics of recognition in Quebec

Abstract The will to have ones own particular identity universally acknowledged and respected is now one of the most significant determinants of the sociopolitical dynamic of contemporary modern societies. However, the actual recognition of difference is more often than not an unsatisfactory and disappointing experience for many of the groups and communities striving for that recognition. The recent experience of Canadian Aboriginal peoples is a case in point. This article looks at the struggle of Aboriginal nations for recognition in one particular region of Canada, the province of Quebec. Indeed, Quebec offers a revealing case‐study of the peculiarities of the politics of recognition. For over three decades now, the French‐speaking majority of Quebec has striven to assert its ethnocultural distinctiveness and laid claims to a special status within the Canadian political and constitutional framework. Today, both Quebecers and Aboriginals are recognition seekers within the Canadian polity. As a result, t...

Social Relations and Exercise of State Power in Lower Canada (1791-1840): Elements for an Analysis

While current political science has dealt at length with the nature, function, role and machinery of the contemporary Canadian state, it has remained strangely silent about the states history. Yet, in many respects, state power as exercised today continues practices that date to the nineteenth and even the eighteenth centuries. Tendencies of the modern Canadian state toward centralization and interventionism were already evident before 1867.