Heather N. Nicol

Border Culture, the Boundary Between Canada and the United States of America, and the Advancement of Borderlands Theory

In the process of globalization it is border culture that ultimately sustains linkages, assures continuity and maintains prosperity between bounded states. In this essay we explore how border culture works, and how the conceptualization of border culture advances our understanding of how borders work. Our approach is to establish a place for the consideration of culture in the more extensive debates about border theory through a focus on the Canada-U.S. border, and how this border advances our knowledge of border culture and border theory.

Contesting the Arctic: Politics and Imaginaries in the Circumpolar North

As climate change makes the Arctic a region of key political interest, so questions of sovereignty are once more drawing international attention. The promise of new sources of mineral wealth and energy, and of new transportation routes, has seen countries expand their sovereignty claims. Increasingly, interested parties from both within and beyond the region, including states, indigenous groups, corporate organizations, and NGOs and are pursuing their visions for the Arctic. What form of political organization should prevail? Contesting the Arctic provides a map of potential governance options for the Arctic and addresses and evaluates the ways in which Arctic stakeholders throughout the region are seeking to pursue them.

Human security, the Arctic Council and climate change: competition or co-existence?

We argue that the current understanding of the Arctic as a region fraught by increasing tension and competition under conditions of climate change is an incomplete story. It ignores many salient developments in furthering co-operation and human security agendas, and marginalises some of the more complex and interesting developments within the region. Such changes in ‘natural states’ do not, in and of themselves, create geopolitical and political instability. Rather, it is the way in which change is understood as a problem for institutional and international organs that creates conditions for co-operation or competition. In the Arctic today, the balance is tipped in favour of co-operation, but the situation is complex and many actors have vested interests.

The Wall, the Fence, and the Gate: Reflexive Metaphors along the Canada–US Border

The reading of “common legacy” has recently developed as the dominant discourse defining Canada–US relations throughout the 20 th century. It supports the politically expedient perception that the “interconnected” status of the Canada–US border is a historical fact. Yet viewed historically, this is not so clear. Historical narratives tell two equally compelling stories, one of facilitation and cooperation along the Canada–US border, and the other of one of resistance to a “borderless” North America. This paper traces the story of the border from a Canadian perspective. It argues that there is a strong perceptual component and reflexivity in Canada–US relations, even those now brokered through common security arrangements. Such perceptions are linked to national border-building discourses and mobilized through popularized as well as formal geopolitical discourses: that is to say via newspapers, political cartoons as well as formal political texts and agreements. Historically such images and discourses have emphasized the differences, as well as commonalities, along the line. The result has been a significant degree of reflexivity, and this has created a somewhat unique context for North American cooperation.

Canada‐Cuba relations: An ambivalent media and policy

What a difference a decade makes. While in the midto late-1990s the Helms-Burton Act, passed by the US Congress, created a outcry of media protest and support for Cuba in the press, by 2009 media coverage had become increasingly sparse and much more critical of Cuba, raising questions of whether a broad and general change in public sympathies related to Cuba had developed, or whether this was a media phenomenon resulting from greater access to Cuba and a broadening of reportage. Was another mutually reinforcing shift and convergence underway between critical media accounts, parliamentary discussions, and public opinion surrounding Cuba, much as there was in the late-1990s, when both press and Parliamentarians criticized Chrétien’s failed human rights agenda in Cuba? If, today, media coverage of Cuba is becoming more critical, and there are indications that this is the case, to what is Canadian media coverage responding? Canadians have always constructed popular perceptions about Cuba, which, in turn, support broader foreign policy platforms. Wright (2007) documents Canadian media support and the critical role this played in shaping Canadian support for Cuba during the early years of the Cuban Revolution and the Castro administration. Canadian journalists eagerly participated in news casting from the island, while the media romanticized the Revolution. Indeed, the publicity generated in the Canadian press at that time was extremely favourable. There was a strong “Robin Hood” analogy which subsequently played out in the Canadian newspapers and which shaped Canadian support of the Castro regime. Moreover, as Wright (2007: 46-47) indicates, equally caught up in the pro-Castro enthusiasm, and clearly affected by public sentiment, the federal government quickly recognized the new government. While one event did not create the other, they were mutually constitutive. The interaction between public perception and political policies is quite complex. Generally speaking, there may be consonance between popular values (the press) and foreign policy goals, and if these popular or public perceptions and foreign policy elements become convergent, the result can be a popularized geopolitics, which, in turn, reinforces or is incorporated into the status quo in formal policy-making (Dijkink, 1998). Most scholars would suggest, however, that this relationship is not one of direct influence between media coverage and foreign policy, but rather, that it can be mutually reinforcing (or divisive) in terms of the way in which the media responds by framing the events or news, leading to its “spreading activation” (Entman, 2004: 7). While partisan politics is involved, this framing of news goes beyond such politics, and yet, is not independent of it. This means that for Canadians, understanding Canada’s foreign policy position towards Cuba through media accounts has agency, as well as reflects agency, in ways which mere partisanship cannot explain. 103

From Territory to Rights: New Foundations for Conceptualising Indigenous Sovereignty

ABSTRACT Recognising how the concept of sovereignty has been affected by an indigenous and human rights agenda, this article explores the potential outcomes of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in terms of its challenge to Westphalian notions of sovereignty in Canada’s North. It argues that the UNDRIP, adopted by the United Nations in 2007, is now playing a significant role in giving Canada’s Indigenous Peoples a voice in international affairs and for reframing the relationship between state and non-state actors in ways which privilege collective rights rather than territorial imperatives.

Rescaling Borders of Investment: The Arctic Council and the Economic Development Policies

ABSTRACT This paper explores the developments that led to the creation of the Arctic Economic Council (AEC) by the Arctic Council, and its relationship to the larger structures of global investment as represented by the World Economic Forum’s Arctic Investment. It argues that the prioritization of environment, and the construction of a regional “map” based primarily upon environmental cooperation positions development as a lower order problem for regional actors to resolve and leads to a particular positioning of economic activities and networks at the regional scale. What this means for the scale of regional cooperation, especially in light of larger Arctic investment initiatives such as the World Economic Forum’s Arctic Investment Protocol (AIP), will be considered.

Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders and Global Crisis

This edited volume treats borders as sites of detention and division. The manuscript consists of six sections, each containing approximately four chapters. All explore the idea that contemporary sites of detention and division are designed to “manage and oppose” immigration and criminality from different points of view. The common theme is that such sites reflect the resurgence of a global apartheid; an apartheid which enforces inequalities along the lines of race, gender, and ethnicity and which encourages and enforces dispossession.

U.S. Hegemony in the 21st Century: Cuba's Place in the Regionalizing Geopolitics of North America and Caribbean Countries

Abstract This paper is concerned with the implications of U.S. hegemony upon the strategic location of regional geo‐economic and geopolitical borders in North America and its neighbors. In a case study which uses U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba as a measure of the regional influence of American hegemonic pressure, the paper explores the way in which extraterritorial policies like the Helms Burton Act, transnational intergovernmental economic structures like NAFTA, or border accords and agreements like the ‘Third Border,’ both influence and respond to U.S. ‘Cuban policy.’ It raises question such as how, in doing so, do they contribute to the discourse and practice of U.S. hemispheric domination? Or, how can we evaluate the degree to which these foreign policy and transnational agreements, in asserting hegemony, influence the contours of existing ‘regional boundaries’ in North America in the post 9/11 era?