On Politics

Foreword

Simone Rutherford, Anna Alva — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Repealing the Eighth Amendment: A Historical Institutionalist Discursive Analysis

Anna-Elaine Rempel, Q Roxas, Jenna Hrechka — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

This study analyzes the Republic of Ireland’s successful 2018 referendum to repeal the Eighth Constitutional Amendment restricting access to abortion. Using a historical institutionalist perspective to interpret our findings, we analyze the dominant issues informing Irish public opinion towards abortion over time by conducting a discursive analysis of newspaper publications between 1992 and 2018. Our study concludes that the X Case and the death of Savita Halappanavar constitute critical policy junctures resulting in the development of new moral templates, which in turn shifted popular opinion towards liberalizing abortion, and ultimately led to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Here on We Love Radio: Hip Hop Culture and Black Expressionism in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing

Megan Switzer — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Hip hop is a cultural movement that advocates for the collective strength of marginalized communities amid urban despair. As a ballast of Do the Right Thing, hip hop culture grounds its various characters and events as expressions of the black American consciousness. An essential component of the film which this paper addresses in the context of contemporary justice is the murder of Radio Raheem, an unarmed and innocent black man strangled by police. Taking up the lens of Saussurean linguistics, this article examines the function of hip hop culture throughout the film which radio (both the device and the waves) represents, fighting systemic racism as an agent of black expressionism and collective strength.

Surveillance, Containment, and the Establishment of Indian Reserves in Canada

Emily Hiser — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

Drawing on work done in anti-colonial theory and surveillance studies, this paper aims to examine the realities and implications of historical and ongoing settler colonial surveillance assemblages. I focus on the paradoxical nature of settler state surveillance to argue that surveillance is used as a tool of the colonial project with its goals of erasure and invisibilization of Indigenous people, while at the same time a racialized surveillance functions to render Indigenous people as hyper visible. My aim with this paper is to unsettle the ways in which systems of surveillance, containment, and categorization are often taken for granted or naturalized. I hope to foster critical dialogue and questions to carry these ideas further.

Pathways to Victory: The Creation of Canada’s Emissions Accountability Law (Bill C-12)

Emily Lowan — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

After three decades of international climate action gridlock and domestic target failures, there is an emerging policy focus on the passage of national emissions accountability legislation. Emissions accountability legislation is an attempt to safeguard science-based emissions reductions plans from changing political winds. This article presents a peer-reviewed case study of Bill C-12, Canada's first emissions accountability legislation, passed in June 2021. While Bill C-12 was strengthened through the amendment process, the final legislation remained significantly weaker than the "gold standard" UK Climate Change Act (2008). The author analyzes the interests, institutions, and political context that enabled Bill C-12's passage, tracking the ways in which these forces interacted to both weaken and strengthen the legislation.

The Role of the Canadian Settler-State in Facilitating Flows of Transnational Executive Capital

Lena Price — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 -0800

What does the neoliberalization of extractive and border infrastructures by the Canadian settler-state illuminate about its relationship to transnational extractive capital? To answer this question, I first examine how neoliberalism has shaped border and extractive policies. In the second section, I look at how flows of transnational extractive capital are made flexible by Canadian settler-state policies, while simultaneously securitizing colonial borders against racialized migrants. In the third, I investigate how material and epistemological challenges to extractive infrastructures from Indigenous land defenders and racialized migrants challenge the legitimation by accumulation processes the Canadian settler-state employs. Ultimately, I argue the settler-state selectively securitizes pipeline and border infrastructures to facilitate the flow and accumulation of transnational extractive capital as a means of self-legitimation that relies on normative imaginings of a white Canadian nationhood. Furthermore, these imaginings rely on upholding certain logics of racial capitalism that construct a white Canadian nationhood, such as white supremacy, colonialism, and hetero-patriarchy.