National conference Victoria 2008
February 29-March 2, 2008
University of Victoria
Co-organizers: Avigail Eisenberg (UVIC Political Science), Jeremy Webber (UVIC Law) and Glen Coultard (PhD candidate, UVIC, Political Science
Please contact Pat Skidmore (demcon@uvic.ca) for more information.
Politics today takes place through the medium of ‘recognition’. Indeed, for the last 25 years, the politics of recognition has been a primary framework by which politics in diverse societies is understood. Recognition in this context refers to the ways in which political and legal institutions mediate relations between different groups by translating, and characterizing the substance of one group’s demands, interests, perspectives, character or identity in a manner that another group can understand or ‘recognize’. A couple of dimensions of recognition are especially important. First, recognition focuses our attention on the ways in which groups are not only dependent on each other but partly constituted by how they are recognized by another. Second, recognition tends to be distorted and potentially damaging when powerful groups attempt to recognize less powerful ones. Even as powerful groups attempt to amend their historical wrongs, they choose how they do so in a manner that can fall well short of recognizing the groups they have wronged as equals.
In addition to exploring at a theoretical level what is or should be meant by recognition, considering how recognition relates to self-determination, and exploring challenges associated with recognition in practice, we expect the workshop to draw intensely upon empirical cases of recognition, especially current developments in institutions and practices that mediate the struggles between indigenous peoples and political institutions. How are current trends in the development of national or international legal capacities for indigenous people changing how they are recognized either by settler states or by the international community? What impact are struggles of recognition having on indigenous communities? What principles should guide recognition in this context? We also want to consider whether the very concept of recognition is or should be varied in its application depending on the context (e.g. indigenous peoples as opposed to cultural minorities produced by immigration).
This workshop will bring together researchers from the MCRI project on Ethnicity and Democratic Governance (http://www.queensu.ca/edg/index_e.html, the MCRI on Indigenous Peoples and Governance (http://www.pag-ipg.com/en/index.htm) and Consortium on Democratic Constitutionalism (http://www.law.uvic.ca/demcon/) at UVIC. Because it is jointly sponsored and because we want to promote an intense interaction where the conversation is likely to progress over the course of the conference, we know that we will have to make some choices about speakers. But we are anxious to know if you are currently working on something central to the topic and would be keen to present. You should also know that we are planning to use at least three means to expand the circle of participants beyond the number of slots in the program: a) a one-day pre-conference for graduate students; b) a discussion forum for papers, including both papers to be presented and papers that are acutely relevant but that cannot be accommodated given our constraints of space; and c) the possibility of drawing on papers additional to those presented in the publication to result from the conference.
We hope you can come! Please do book these dates in your calendar, let your graduate students know about this workshop, and please let us know if you are keen to present. We expect to have an intensely stimulating session as always.
The discussion paper is now available on the website. It can be downloaded by clicking the following link: http://www.law.uvic.ca/demcon/2008/Spring2008_program.htm
Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘Politics of Recognition’ in Canada - Glen S. Coulthard
