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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics



L21(b) - Dialogue, Contestation, Dissent, and the Conditions of Possibility for Change

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Daniel Sherwin (University of Toronto)

Consultations with Indigenous Peoples of Canada: Argument Constituencies as an Impediment to Epistemic Success: Oxana Pimenova (University of Saskatchewan)
Abstract: The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project (TM) is a case study of the Crown’s epistemic failure to consult with Indigenous Peoples. In this case, the structural power differentials supplanted epistemological equity with an argumentative equilibrium where the Crown produced arguments in a consent-seeking manner without reflecting upon the Indigenous arguments. To prove this argumentative nature of reasoning, I introduce a category of argument constituencies (ACs) associated with a set of stable arguments employed by arguers within the current context of interactions to confirm choices already made. Two hypotheses structure my research. H1: Argumentative reasoning creates ACs impeding arguers from changing their arguments. Through the content analysis of documents produced by the Crown as a dominant actor, I reveal a lack of responsiveness to the Indigenous arguments, which were used as a springboard to produce the Crown’s counter-arguments. I outline the sequence of events and use process tracing to demonstrate causal linkages between consent-seeking (argumentative) reasoning and unwillingness to introduce changes to the TM. H2: Deliberative reasoning breaks ACs making arguers to change their arguments. Residing in the idea of seeking dissent, deliberative reasoning triggers a positive feedback loop prompting the Crown to re-examine its arguments. I apply the counterfactual analysis and draw a hypothetical sequence of events where dissent-seeking (deliberative) reasoning leads to embracing Indigenous epistemologies by reflecting upon Indigenous arguments. I elaborate on a positive feedback loop as a chain of steps (evaluation – reflection – production) and prove its utility as a public policy tool for bringing responsiveness into interactions.


Cooptation and Resistance: Activism, Deliberative Systems, and Systemic Racism: Anna Drake (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: With an emphasis on mutual justification, substantive inclusion, and mechanisms to combat coercive power, deliberative democracy strives to be a fair and inclusive method of democratic engagement that treats people as political equals. Evidence of successful, inclusive deliberations in deeply-divided contexts and the recent move to a macro-deliberative “systems” approach that praises activism for its positive contributions reinforce these claims. However, despite deliberative democracy’s considerable attention to power, there are very few sustained discussions of oppression and even fewer of systemic racism in the literature. I draw from work on oppression and anti-oppression to examine the limitations of addressing marginalization via “redistributing voice,” whether via expansive modes of communication in deliberative mini-publics or by looking to activist contributions in the broader deliberative system. I focus on the language deliberative democratic theorists use to talk about exclusion, highlighting the tendency to focus on cultural inclusion rather than explicitly acknowledging race (Hooker 2009). I also look at the way deliberative democrats approach public space. Whereas deliberative democrats view activism as a way to strengthen the inclusive capacity of deliberative democracy and pursue more just outcomes they do so without acknowledging systemic racism. Anti-black racism restricts access to public space, shapes understandings of legitimate and illegitimate expressions of power (anger, emotion, types of protest), and underpins the entire deliberative system. Without acknowledging the foundational white privilege of the deliberative system and developing a sustained analysis of oppression into analyses of power, activism, and coercion, deliberative democracy cannot live up to its promise.


Undermining the Democratic Process: The Illiberal Canadian Government Suppression of Palestinian Development Aid Projects: Jeremy Wildeman (University of Bath)
Abstract: Countless Canadians have for decades been trying to provide support to indigenous Palestinians living under settler colonial occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. However, they have often faced strong resistance from pro-Israel advocates and elites in Canada, including their own government. This paper looks at the government suppression of Canadian development sector organisations running Palestinian aid projects 2001 to 2012, including from the perspective of the people running them. Based on document analysis, policy analysis and original semi-structured interviews with coordinators running aid projects, it describes how their work was almost universally undermined by the Canadian government. Tactics uncovered include appointing ardent pro-Israel advocates to an organisation’s management, defunding specific projects, defunding entire organisations, launching questionable audits, spurious allegations of terrorism and the forced closure of organisations. This oppression was particularly overt under the Harper Conservative government, but had a basis in earlier Liberal governments. This interference provides an understanding for the fear that exists surrounding Palestinian aid work in Canada and the process by which Canadian aid to Palestinians is rendered ineffective. The paper further suggests that while these tactics were first honed against Palestinian solidarity work, they were then used against other progressive groups, undermining civil society and democracy in Canada. That is because Israel and Palestine exist on the frontline of competing forces of liberalism and illiberalism in Canada, and historical colonialist tendencies, where in this specific struggle illiberalism is predominant and the idea of Palestine rights sits on the nexus of ‘Confronting Political Divides’.


Finding the Political in Response to Hate: Matt James (University of Victoria)
Abstract: This paper analyzes community and institutional responses to acts of racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic/transphobic, misogynist, and other forms of hate. Its research base is a list of roughly 100 responses, culled from mainstream Canadian and United States print media, with some supplementary accounts from English-language reporting on Germany and Sweden. Taking its cue from Bronwyn Leebaw’s point that transitional justice responses to evil in the contemporary neoliberal era tend to oscillate between the equally depoliticizing poles of law (e.g. criminal trials) and therapy (e.g. discourses of reconciliation and healing), I distinguish between retributive, therapeutic, and political responses to hate. By political, I mean responses that prioritize collective deliberation over policy solutions targeting the sources and causes of hate or responses that prioritize mobilized confrontation against such sources and causes. This account tracks two classic distinctions: the deliberative-versus-agonistic democracy divide and the contrasting takes on the political of Bernard Crick and Carl Schmitt. The paper’s preliminary findings are threefold. First, many retributive and therapeutic responses have important political elements, suggesting that the urgent contemporary need to respond to hate is creating opportunities for politics in unlikely places. Second, we can sharpen and clarify our understanding of the importance of the political when we think about the concept in relation to hate. Finally, the most problematic responses to hate come from institutions and representatives whose preoccupations with matters of reputation and branding aim, however unwittingly, to pre-empt politics in both its deliberative and




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