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Organizing to oppose an omnibus budget bill threatening First Nations in Canada, the Idle No More (INM) movement is embedded in a legacy of Indigenous resistance to colonialism and environmental degradation. INM activists challenged Western nature perceptions to advocate for the protection of nature through the lens of First and Indigenous Peoples’ traditions and cultures. We build upon existing Indigenous Environmental Justice movement, framing, and Rights of Nature (RoN) literature to understand the role of the RoN social movement frame and Anti-Capitalist Ecologist Discourse as orienting frameworks for INM movement mobilization. We explore the emergence period of INM, analysing the first 6 months of posts and comments on the movement’s Facebook page. We argue that INM activists employed an RoN frame to establish central claims and appeal to a range of potential supporters connecting the local and the global through broad Anti-Capitalist Ecologist Discourse narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Efforts to advance environmental justice are often halting and uneven. How can we identify the longer-term significance of protests that seem to have failed? In this article, we turn to work on environmental injustice to examine the consequences of environmental justice movements over time and across space. We draw on the scholarship of Rob Nixon on 'slow violence': rather than the spectacular, visceral, and immediate violence of war, he argues that environmental degradation is a violence that operates in cumulative, slow-moving, accretive, and multi-causal ways. Borrowing – and flipping – Nixon's conceptualization, we suggest that a parallel process of 'slow justice' is taking place. As with environmental damage, mobilization for environmental justice can have consequences that are dispersed in time and place, occur in non-linear forms, and operate at multiple scales. To track the pathways through which slow justice emerges, we develop a three-part typology of social movement connectivity. Using the categories of people, projects, and processes, we identify the geographically and temporally distanced social, material, and governance legacies of moments of resistance. Through a case study of mobilization against fossil fuel infrastructure in the Mackenzie Valley in northern Canada in the 1970s, we use the typology to trace how this moment of mobilization shaped other efforts of environmental justice organizing, including for campaigns in different regions and on different issue-areas. We argue that slow justice can reframe how we understand the outcomes of social mobilization projects, making visible the often obscure, indirect, and long-term accrued benefits of environmental justice work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically examines the ways in which anti- and pro-abortion rights actors utilize human rights frames with varying success in getting them repeated by the news media in the different legal terrains of the Republic of Ireland and Canada. Given the results of a content analysis of 1,100 news articles on abortion from six newspapers spanning five years (2009-2014) during periods of relative policy stability in these two countries, this article suggests that social movement actors who feel their voices have been ignored in their domestic contexts may find human rights frames helpful in attracting news media attention. This finding has implications for the way in which international human rights language can be harnessed by diverse actors and employed domestically in battles over women's rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Canadian suffrage movement followed its own distinct pathway to full voting rights for women, it was deeply influenced by British ideas which were transplanted, translated and reinterpreted to fit Canadian social conditions. The Canadian media assumed WSPU speaking tours were most significant, and these did generate publicity for the Canadian movement. However, British influences were far more diverse. The transfer of ideas associated with British labourism, the flow of British immigrants to Canada, and the influence of British and Commonwealth organizations in the interwar years were also important influences on the Canadian movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role and influence of women’s groups and larger national women’s social movements during two different constitutional moments: the lead-up to the finalisation of the 1982 patriation of the Canadian Constitution and the lead-up to the 1998 Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland. We argue that while women were successful in ensuring women’s participation and consideration of women’s issues in these constitutional negotiations, those accomplishments did not lead to a significant increase of women’s representation in formal politics. In both the Canadian government-sponsored National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the political party, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, women’s descriptive representation in formal politics did not improve dramatically as a result of women’s participation in either constitutional process which suggests the need for guarantees of greater representation, such as what women’s electoral quotas would constitute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A convergence of post-9/11 security governance practices and a dependence on extractive economies has resulted in changes to the way Canadian policing agencies classify environmental movements. We detail how the category of ‘critical infrastructure protection’ (CIP) now enables surveillance of environmentalists under the banner of national security. We examine the growth of CIP as a security category, its changing character from the Cold War to the present, and the role of threat entrepreneurs. We demonstrate that CIP networks have institutionalized collaborations between national security agencies and energy corporations, creating a petro-security apparatus that aims to suppress dissent. We conclude with reflections on what surveillance regimes driven by the petro-security apparatus mean for debates about national security and social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Canada, the Raging Grannies are renowned for appearing, invited or not, in spaces not typically open to older women, with outrageous ‘Granny’ costumes and satirical songs. A movement of predominantly non-Indigenous, settler women, the Raging Grannies regularly work in diverse activist coalitions in pursuit of social and environmental justice; many are seeking to ally themselves with contemporary Indigenous movements. However, while analyses have so far focused on their highly visible and iconic activist strategies, their solidarity-building efforts remain under-examined. Based on focus groups, interviews, and participant observation carried out in 2014–2015, this paper probeswhyandhowRaging Grannies are building alliances with Indigenous movements in Canada. What emerges is an important tension. While many view their irreverent and theatrical strategies as quintessential to their ‘Granny Activism,’ such tactics were unanimously deemed inappropriate for engaging with Indigenous movements. Underpinned by reflections on their own settler histories, feelings of outrage at ongoing and state-sanctioned colonial practices, fears of inadvertently reproducing colonial relations, and a sense of interconnected futures with Canada’s First Peoples, they sought different, less-visible ways of practicing their solidarities. Many chose to attend rallies dressed in their everyday clothes, provide resources to Indigenous-led protests, invite Indigenous activists to speak at their gatherings, and work through their churches to redress past harm. Their solidarity efforts incorporated small acts, often pivoting around individual members’ personal connections. This article thus depicts the Raging Grannies as more diverse in their practices than typically recognized. It also addresses an important gap in scholarship on older women’s roles in solidarity movements. Finally, it extends existing scholarship on solidarity-building, suggesting that how solidarity is understood cannot be disconnected from how it is practiced, and thus demonstrating how solidarity can be relational, performative, and contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with scholar Jeff Diamanti is presented. He addresses the 2015 electoral victory of Alberta's New Democratic Party (NDP) in relation to environmental issues. The political significance of Alberta's fossil fuel industries is addressed. He discusses the links between the Alberta NDP and social movements. The ownership of fossil fuel resources is mentioned in relation to ecosocialism. Plans for an energy transition are noted.

The indigenous-led movement Idle No More leapt into public view during the winter of 2012–2013, bringing round-dance flash-mobs and blockades to communities across Canada and internationally, becoming a symbol of twenty-first century indigenous resistance. This profile examines the first two months of the movement by analysing the structure of social networks being mobilized, by breaking down the Facebook architecture and interface into its various elements, and by examining how these influence diffusion and its constituent sub-processes. It argues that the combination of dense clusters and weak ties in indigenous social networks leveraged the way Facebook facilitated the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Applying a constitutive rhetorical framework to public speeches and letters circulated transnationally from 1859–1866 by the leadership of the revolutionary Irish nationalist Fenian movement, this essay argues that constitutive rhetorical theory’s assumed ideological effects must be modified to account for the transnational rhetorical practices of movements like the Fenians. The essay first traces how Fenian identification practices seek to fix the entire diaspora as the “Irish people” and Ireland as the true homeland. It then examines how the movement transcodes its constitutive rhetoric to better fit the separate national constraints operating in the United States and Ireland, and how these strategies hamper the organization’s ability to sustain the unity required for success. While the constituted Irish Revolutionary remained in each national context, their strategies for fulfilling the constitutive narrative had splintered, helping to doom the cause. The Fenian case demonstrates the need to render constitutive rhetorical theory in more dialogic terms, especially for transnational audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Faring poorly by international standards, out-of-home childcare in Canada is often described as ‘in crisis’. This study addresses how national childcare movement actors, who are overwhelmingly women, have discursively constructed their collective identity during two contrasting political climates. Data comprise publically available media releases produced in 2005 and 2008 by the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC), a national grassroots childcare social movement organization. Guided by Fairclough's overarching framework for critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Koller's approach to analysing collective identity through CDA, the discursive mechanisms of CCAAC movement actors have employed in relation to their collective identity construction are identified and explored. Finally, whether or not these mechanisms may have been strategic is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Global North, there has been increasing analysis of the ways that alternative food initiatives (AFIs) are developing viable, place-based solutions that challenge the corporate-led industrial food system; however, there has been little study of the interrelationships among them. In an effort to better understand the possibilities for food system transformation, this paper builds on existing studies to investigate the increasing collaborations among AFIs occurring through provincial food networks in Canada. I pay particular attention to the attempts to foster and maintain these networks by exploring the history of collaboration since the late 1970s and the development of provincial networking organizations (PNOs) as central to this process. Contrary to assumptions that AFIs act in isolation, I demonstrate that they are part of actual and existing mobilizations through robust social movement networks. Together, these collaborative efforts may be illustrative of a new wave in food activism that is represented by the emergence of a multi-scaled and cross-sectoral ‘food movement’ – a network of networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Emerging forms of social mobilisation are explored, using food initiatives in Canada as an example. Food networks are particularly interesting as a case study: they have holistic goals that include both environmental and social concerns, the number and scope of food initiatives have rapidly increased, and there has recently been a high level of public engagement around food issues. Networks among alternative food initiatives (AFIs) are investigated using a survey and in-depth interviews. Food movement networks exhibit some elements of collective identity, but network members have diverse goals, projects, and tactics that do not always align into a coherent political program. Social network theory and the analytic of complex assemblages are employed to help understand these results. Understanding how these food networks function provides insight not just into food networks, but also more generally into the study and practice of social mobilisation around environmental issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of post-nationalism have declined considerably among citizenship scholars in recent decades, and have been largely ignored by social movement scholars in favour of more trans-national approaches. Using a case analysis of a migrant rights movement in Canada as evidence of a ‘post-national ethics in practice’, in this article I argue for a re-consideration of the usefulness of post-nationalism within current scholarship on precarious immigration status. Taking into account both the limitations and opportunities afforded by a post-national ethical framework, I examine how the movement uses a human rights framing in distinct ways to mobilize constituents, garner mainstream media attention, and effect changes to policy at the national and local level. My findings suggest that the use of human rights frames for these movements offers both risks and rewards; however, the benefits may outweigh the risks in cases in which the quality of exposure within mainstream narratives is enough to disrupt, even if momentarily, the pervasiveness of normative nationalism, opening up new spaces for reconfiguring citizenship at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A sociopolitical movement with strong American roots has been making inroads to Canada, as well as other major jurisdictions around the globe. The Sovereign Citizen movement supports a number of unusual beliefs that may be mistaken for psychotic symptomatology. These individuals present with many features which may appear psychotic in nature, including bizarre and paranoid beliefs as well as unusual speech and behavior. Despite this compelling psychotic mimicry, it is the authors’ opinion that the majority are not truly psychotic. Timely recognition and accurate assessment of Sovereign Citizen patients is crucial in order to minimize harm in the form of unnecessary treatment and hospitalization, as well as delays in court proceedings incurred by questions such as whether they are Unfit to Stand Trial. This paper provides a descriptive profile of distinguishing features which may be observed when assessing a Sovereign Citizen patient, with an emphasis on clinical presentation, diagnostic challenges, and management-related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on analysis of government records obtained using Access to Information Act (ATIA) requests, we examine policing and surveillance projects developed in preparation for three mega-events that recently took place in Canada – the 2010 Winter Olympics, the G8/G20 meetings and a scheduled (but cancelled) North American Leaders Summit. Based on an investigation of ‘Threat Assessment’ reports produced between 2005 and 2010 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), we discuss transformations within Canada's anti-terror intelligence networks including the establishment of Integrated Security Units (ISUs) and the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) which resemble intelligence ‘fusion centers’ in the United States. These organisations became the knowledge-producing hubs for the classification and categorisation of national security threats. Examining shifts in ISU and ITAC Threat Assessments, we demonstrate how knowledge construction practices in security intelligence networks produce new categories of threat. Specifically, we focus on the newly constructed notion of ‘multi issue extremism’ (MIEs). Exploring the deployment of MIEs as a category of national security threat, we show how intelligence agencies have blurred the categories of terrorism, extremism and activism into an aggregate threat matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Illegal immigration in Canada is characterized mainly by non-status immigrants who legally enter Canada and stay after their legal status expires and by failed refugee claimants. For these persons, immigration status or its absence plays an important role in determining the degree of access to Canadian health care. This article situates the clinical setting as a site of contention and negotiation of citizenship and care in social networks as well as pragmatic and discursive strategies. Drawing on the case of a patient who faced imminent deportation and became suicidal, in this article I depict how psychiatrists and other health practitioners embrace 'bearing witness' as an ethical practice, which intersects the medical and legal spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the government of Canada's close relationship with the biotechnology industry, critical social movement organisations have had a significant impact on the adoption of genetically modified organisms in that country. Two cases of products rejected after widespread resistance - recombinant bovine growth hormone (1999) and herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready (RR) Wheat (2004) - are revisited. Informed by empirical research that brings to light new factors shaping the RR wheat outcome in particular, two theoretical arguments are advanced. First, in response to those critics of a neo-Gramscian framing of hegemony who see it as overly deterministic, these cases highlight just how deeply alliances with hegemonic ambitions may be forced to compromise. Second, these cases demonstrate that any study of civil society must still pay close attention to institutional and material 'relations of force' when seeking to explain the impact of social movements on environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how policing, security, and intelligence agencies have networked with private agents in a campaign targeting Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) in Canada. SHAC is a network of autonomous groups that coordinate an international campaign to disrupt the animal testing corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. Unlike in the USA and the UK, where SHAC groups have been targeted by a series of extraordinary legislative initiatives that are coordinated at a national level, the campaign directed at SHAC-Canada has its root in the work of private detectives. Drawing from the results of Access to Information Act requests and interviews with SHAC members, we discuss how the preliminary surveillance conducted by private detectives facilitated a multi-scalar policing effort that includes a network of municipal, provincial, national, and international police-intelligence agencies. To enrich existing typologies of social movement repression, we emphasize the role that private security plays in monitoring activists and in providing information to public police. Our research suggests that public and private agencies involved in regulation of SHAC are networked through surveillance, engaging in information sharing that casts a wider net of suppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of social movements in the policy process and, in particular, the ways in which movements interact with, access, and deploy expert knowledge. In the technocratic model, citizens are conceptualized as undifferentiated, rather than considered in terms of distinctive identities or interests. Their inclusion in policy-making is viewed as a technical problem to be 'solved' through forms of citizen engagement, rather than viewing citizens as active agents in the mobilization of distinctive knowledges. Citizens, we argue, are more than the undifferentiated lump that appears in the technocratic model under the guise of citizen engagement. Drawing on a case study of autism activism in Canada and the US, we demonstrate the range of ways in which civil society actors both deploy and contest expert knowledge in the policy process, and discuss the implications for how we conceptualize knowledge mobilization in policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the youth activist cultures in urban Canada. It indicates the pressures faced by young activists which have been contributed by liberalism and neoliberalism. It explores the role of class and race in shaping contemporary youth activism, citing the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Sarah Thornton and Julie Bettie. It discusses the rituals of style as well as their relationship to consumption and identity. The author also indicates the symbolic elements of the subcultures of youth activists.

The article focuses on the political, social, and literary circumstances that conditioned the literature produced and, in turn, contributed to understandings and valuations of literature during the period 1965-1980. It is stated that the era is uniquely important to Canadian literature because widespread changes in political understandings of national and female identities contextualized the appreciation of literature published during this time. Identity politics in this era was made up of two dominant social movements--Canadian nationalism and second-wave feminism--that prompted Canadians and women to think of themselves differently.

Like many Commonwealth countries, Canada and the United Kingdom have faced challenges to their territorial integrity from assertive minority nationalist movements, especially in Québec and Scotland. Successive governments have faced the task of identifying strategies to accommodate these nations within the territorial framework of the existing state. The accommodation of national minorities is a central task of territorial management within multinational states, and essential to the state's survival. This article draws upon Hirschman's analysis of exit, voice and loyalty, as well as Taylor's emphasis upon the importance of recognition, to identify the contrasting accommodation strategies evident in Canada and the UK. It concludes by suggesting that successful territorial accommodation will depend upon the employment of strategies that provide for recognition of the status of national minorities as well as the expression of their distinctive voice within the multinational state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the nature of ecofeminism and its actions for the protection of forests in Western U.S. and Canada. The continued increase of forest protection movements are organized mainly by women. It must also be emphasized that local environmental struggles always take place in a global context, which always include the historical movements and intrigues of capitalism, the physical and cultural variability of the ecological region. A feminist perspective is relevant to understanding the global environmental crisis. Ecofeminism contains a constructive, prefigurative vision that attempts to transform existing power relations both intra and trans-human in ecologically sound and socially just actions.

The concept of ‘emergent ties’ is often used to refer to the role of social networks in activating social movements. Yet pre-existing network ties were usually not a factor in initiating decisions of 50,000 draft-age American youth to migrate to Canada during the American Vietnam War. These youth often learned about the possibility of migrating to Canada through the news media and a widely distributed draft resistance manual. Once in Canada, they often became involved in networks that directed and sustained their movement activity. This suggests that the emergence and persistence of activism may often be distinct. This paper argues that a transformation process that leads to activism is often a life stage specific process, usually in late adolescence or early adulthood, whose explanation requires detailed attention to everyday behavioral activity; while the evolution and persistence of activism is often a life course persistent process that covers a longer period and involves the influence of more generically structured network ties. These patterns are demonstrated in a fuzzy set analysis (FSA) of early and longer term political activism in the lives of Americans who migrated to Toronto during the Vietnam War. We find that for both men and women, helping others was a necessary experience in transforming the resistance involved in this migration into collectively organized anti-war activism, and that a longer term tendency of the women who migrated to Canada to remain more involved than men in social movements is a product of their continuing contacts with the persons involved in their earlier activism. The results of our research underline the importance of distinguishing life stage specific and life course persistent processes in the study of social movements, and more generally that the study of social movements and the life course have much to contribute to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares series of political protest events in Bolivia and Canada using the “Flashpoints model” as the framework of comparison. It provides a detailed account of events leading up to the ouster by popular protest of Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October of 2003. The article situates the events of 2003 by reference to specific features of Bolivia's positioning in the global system; notably the effects of International Monetary Fund policies, international drug prohibition, and the consequences of economic liberalization for management of the country's assets. It also pays special attention to the affects of police development aid on the Bolivian police system. A summary narrative about a series of anti-globalization protests in Canada, based on existing academic accounts, is provided as the basis for comparative analysis. The comparison is used to test an hypothesis that currently holds sway in the literature concerning public order policing that suggests a trend away from “escalated force” towards “negotiated management”. While the evidence regarding the policing of political protest in Bolivia and Canada does not reveal a conspicuous convergence in policing tactics for crowd control between the two countries, the plausibility of this hypothesis is severely tested in each case. The evidence reviewed here suggests the opposite and is revealing of the undemocratic character of policing in the emerging global system. The article ends by calling for more comparative research on this topic, especially in non-OECD countries and places that are more peripheral to the global system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To resuscitate means to revive or make go on. This paper is an exploration of my first six months at a Canadian university as a doctoral student. Through a chronological narrative, I explore my experiences through the governing relations of the academy as a way to provoke dialogue about the role of feminist researcher in the institution. By comparing feminine subjectivity of the ‘woman returner’ (Hughes, 2002) through the character in a feminist science fiction novel the challenges of the academy find resonance and meaning in a reinvention of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research into social movement framing activity has been based on qualitative case-study analysis of specific movements. These analyses are limited in that are they unable to systematically track any long-term relationships that might exist among a variety of social movement framing strategies. A series of hypotheses were developed that deal with the frequency and prevalence of environmental activists framing tactics over time, Which include the frame alignment processes of transformation and amplification, as well as core framing activities of diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. A quantitative content analysis of news media stories about the protection of temperate rainforests in British Columbia, Canada, over a seven-year period was conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings show that amplification frames are more prevalent than transformation frames, and diagnostic frames are more prevalent than prognostic or motivational frames. In the discussion, several areas for future quantitative research into social movement framing are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a particular expression of social activism by older Canadian women to consider its implications for later life learning. 'Older women', despite their heterogeneity, have tended to be pathologized as a part of the 'problem' of ageing and languishing welfare societies—i.e., stereotyped as passive recipients of welfare and healthcare services. Yet, they can also be seen as part of the 'answer' to the challenges societies like Canada face. Given the combination of a greying population and the growing tide of citizens' participatory democracy, it is timely and important to shed light on older women's social activism. Based on document analysis and fieldwork with the Raging Grannies in Canada, this qualitative case study examines the influence of activism on women's later life learning and development from an interdisciplinary perspective including adult development, critical gerontology, women's studies and psychodrama. Analysis focuses on the Grannies' motivations, the strategies they employ in their activities and the process of learning and changes they say they undergo. Themes emerging from document analysis, interviews and participant observation of 15 Grannies in Ontario are divided into three categories: (1) 'Raging Grannies' as a self-defined social role; (2) the Grannies' dual-layered mask strategies; and (3) their collective identity and sense of empowerment. These do much to explain the successes of Raging Grannies' activism as a social movement, which fosters older women's creative energy, critical awareness and self-assurance despite their physical and psychological problems in later life. Implications of the Raging Grannies' movement help us reconsider current trends in later life learning, which tend overlook the needs and abilities of women in the third age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends previous research on age-group vitality around the Pacific Rim by examining the perceptions of urban and rural respondents from Turkey, Canada and the nation of Georgia towards young, middle-aged, and older adults. As in prior research, middle-aged targets were accorded the highest vitality, and a new agevitality profile was associated with Georgian rural informants. Some urban-rural differences in vitality ratings emerged, and Canadians rated the vitality of older people highest. Across the three countries, Georgian respondents rated young vitality the highest and older adult vitality the lowest. The findings are discussed in terms of dimensions of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the findings of outcome and process evaluations of a value-based approach to smoking prevention. The program was conducted with a community of immigrants from Latin America living in Canada. The approach is based on participatory community planning, sensitivity to cultural diversity, and on a comprehensive philosophy of health. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to assess outcomes and processes. Quantitative measures indicate that when compared to a control group, program children, ages 8 to 14, engaged in more community activism and showed a decrease in intentions to smoke; however, no difference was found in knowledge regarding tobacco use. The qualitative evaluation indicated that parents, children, and staff were highly satisfied with the impact of the program as well as with the processes employed to deliver it. Implications for improving the program and a value-based model for program development and evaluation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the writing of social history in English Canada from 1970 to 1984. Canadian social history has similarities with other English-language social history. It is a product of the social movements of the 1960s which has come to fruition in the 1970s and 1980s. The popularity of women's movement activists from the outset contributed a class analysis to majority of the early women's studies work in Canada and gave hegemonic position to the emerging marxist-feminist dialogue. One of the major contributions of recent working-class history has been the restoration of Eastern Canada to national consideration.

This article focuses on feminism in Canada. Since the latter 1980s, Canadian women's movement, like other western feminist movements, has been provoked, troubled, and invigorated by politics of difference. Issues surrounding racism, and racial ethnocultural diversity, have sparked an unprecedented level and ferocity of debate, and pushed feminists to engage in at least the beginning stages of reconceptualisation of Canadian women's experiences. Efforts to address the concerns of Aboriginal women, immigrant women and women of colour have also led to reforms within feminist organisational structures and politics. The development of an anti-racist politics has been uneven across Canadian feminist organisations, reflecting such factors as the greater concentration of racial minority and recent immigrant women within larger cities, and the specificity of regional and local politics. Organisationally, the political and personal networks that are recruiting grounds for feminist activists reinforce the racial exclusivity of the Canadian women's movement.

The article presents an analysis of the birth and growth of the Caisses Populaires. Contrary to tradition, however, this analysis will not adopt the perspective of social movements, with the usual concepts of norms and values, ideologies, strain and mobilization. It will instead be based on the theory of formal organizations. It has become commonplace to say that Quebec is the territorial basis of a distinct society within Canada; this French-Canadian society is of course closely interrelated to other components of the country, but its special character is displayed in a number of domains and institutions, political, economic, religious and others. The Caisses Populaires came out of the economic crisis of 1929 in a better financial shape than the Chartered Banks, not so much because of any innovative financial policies adopted during the crisis, but because of local cycles of money, and the financial help from Quebec's Archbishop which reestablished the confidence of members in their credit cooperatives. The cooperative formula adopted by the Caisses Populaires would not have generated important assets without the impressive increase of savings brought about by the Second World War. The Caisses were better able to take advantage of this opportunity from the Chartered Banks because of their long-term commitment to the small savings-small loans business.