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A Note on "Region" in Writing the History of Atlantic Canada
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Mckay, Ian |
| Copyright Year | 2000 |
| Abstract | THESE REMARKS ABOUT THE CONCEPT of region are intended to be neither polemical nor definitive. They pose questions to which I do not pretend to have ready answers. They are inconclusive. All that I am convinced of is that there should be new places to talk about, and new discussions focusing on, such questions. And I should start off from being up-front about the Gramscian assumptions that have shaped my outlook, my own ambiguous identity as a scholar (but not a resident) of this region, and my own involvement in some of the positions on “region” I intend to probe. The preliminary programme of this conference suggests the tremendous vitality and diversity of scholarship in Atlantic Canada.1 This is a conference that reflects its day. A rough tabulation, based on the preliminary programme, suggests that of the 42 papers destined for this conference, no fewer than 15 directly reflect the emergence of gender as a category of analysis and of women as important subjects in history. A further six probe minority identities, those of race and ethnicity (four) and those of religion (two). A further ten look at economic history, most with a particular focus on local communities; and a further eight might loosely be described as studies in local state-formation and official culture. One cannot judge in advance how any of these themes will be developed at our workshop, but it seems possible to say that this is emphatically a 1990s agenda, placing emphasis on gender, ethnicity and community, rather than on, say, such 1970s and early-1980s topics as regional underdevelopment, class conflict and the position of the Atlantic Provinces within Confederation. We will be hearing a lot about Nova Scotia (19 papers), something about Newfoundland and Labrador (seven), New Brunswick (four) and Prince Edward Island (two); only four papers locate themselves within “Atlantic Canada”, and only one within the “Maritimes”. This is a pluralistic, perhaps even diffuse, set of topics; the old narratives of nation-building, the coalesence of regional grievance, the development of underdevelopment and the making of working-class consciousness all recede, and new stories of identities and ideals are now on the agenda. There is evidence here of a certain skepticism about the models, master narratives, grand theories and universal assumptions that appeared to structure earlier work, in this region as elsewhere. Contrary perhaps to your expectations, and contrary to the positions taken by numerous of my labour-history and neo-Marxist friends and relations, I am not here to argue that either this topical heterogeneity or this skepticism towards the older narrative frameworks are mistakes. Rather, I see them both as “moments” in the |
| Starting Page | 89 |
| Ending Page | 89 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 29 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/Acadiensis/article/download/10784/11556 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
