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The University of Calgary Press publishes peer-reviewed scholarly work that makes a difference. We disseminate research that makes us think, that moves the conversation forward. Our books explore a sense of place in western Canada, the relevance of history in our lives, and our impact on the world around us.
As a scholarly publisher, we feel a responsibility to ensure that the research of our authors is accessible to its widest possible audience. We therefore embrace open-access publishing and strive to make as many of our publications as possible available as open-access files that are free to anyone who wishes to download them.
Our open-access titles are also published in traditional book format and are available for purchase through bookstores and on-line retailers.
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Item Open Access Grey Matters: a guide to collaborative research with seniors(University of Calgary Press, 2010) Marlett, Nancy; Emes, ClaudiaThis study marks a major step in making collaboration between seniors, academic researchers, and community researchers a reality. Many aging adults are motivated to undertake research projects in later life or even return to university after retirement. Grey Matters is the result of a pilot project developed to study the effectiveness of collaborative research involving seniors. Because the project was such a success, the authors were encouraged to make their model available both to seniors interested in undertaking their own research and to those hoping to involve seniors in collaborative research. This guide provides a helpful framework for making the most of research projects by and with seniors, including sections on such techniques as narrative interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Grey Matters is the inaugural Open Access book from the University of Calgary Press.Item Open Access Shrines in Africa: history, politics, and society(University of Calgary Press, 2009)In the African context, shrines are cultural signposts that help one understand and read the ethnic, territorial, and social lay of the land. The contributions gathered here by Allan Charles Dawson demonstrate how African shrines help to define ethnic boundaries, shape group identity, and symbolically articulate a society's connection with the land it occupies. Shrines are physical manifestations of a group's claim to a particular piece of land and are thus markers of identity - they represent, both figuratively and literally, a community's 'roots' in the land it works and lives on. The shrine is representative of a connection with the land at the cosmological and supernatural level and, in terms of a community's or ethnic group's claim to cultivable territory, serves as a reminder to outsiders of ownership. Shrines in Africa explores how African shrines, in all their variable and diverse forms, are more than just spiritual vessels or points of worship - they are powerful symbols of ethnic solidarity, group cohesion, and knowledge about the landscape. Moreover, in ways subtle and nuanced, shrines represent ideas about legitimacy and authenticity in the context of the post-colonial African state.Item Open Access The land has changed: history, society and gender in colonial Eastern Nigeria(University of Calgary Press, 2010) Korieh, Chima J.A century ago, agriculture was the dominant economic sector in much of Africa. By the 1990s, however, African farmers had declining incomes and were worse off, on average, than those who did not farm. Colonial policies, subsequent 'top-down' statism, and globalization are usually cited as primary causes of this long-term decline. In this unprecedented study of the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria, Chima Korieh points the way to a more complex and inclusive approach to this issue. Using agricultural change as a lens through which to view socio-economic and cultural change, political struggle, and colonial hegemony, Korieh shows that regional dynamics and local responses also played vital roles in this era of transformation. British attempts to modernize the densely populated Igbo region were focused largely on intensive production of palm oil as a cash crop for export and on the assumption of male dominance within a conventional western hierarchy. This colonial agenda, however, collided with a traditional culture in which females played important social and political roles and male status was closely tied to yam cultivation. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources, including oral interviews, newspapers, private journals, and especially letters of petition from local farmers and traders, Korieh puts the reader in direct contact with ordinary people, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through the era. As such, The Land Has Changed reveals colonial interactions as negotiated encounters between officials and natives and challenges simplistic notions of a hegemonic colonial state and a compliant native population.Item Open Access Reinventing African Chieftaincy in the Age of AIDS, Gender, Governance, and Development(University of Calgary Press, 2011)This collection of essays examines the relatively new, and frequently overlooked, political phenomenon in post-colonial Africa of chieftaincy "re-inventing" itself. The traditional authority of chiefs has been one of Africa's missing voices who are now bringing new resources to the challenges that AIDS, gender, governance, and development pose to the peoples of Africa. Reinventing African Chieftaincy in the Age of AIDS, Gender, Governance, and Development presents new research in Ghana, Botswana, and South Africa, providing the broadest geographic African coverage on the topic of African chieftaincy. The nineteen authors, many of them emerging scholars from Africa, are all members of the Traditional Authority Applied Research Network (TAARN). Their essays give critical insight into the transformation processes of chieftaincy from the end of the colonial/apartheid periods to the present. They also examine the realities of male and female traditional leaders in reinventing their legitimacy and their political offices in the age of great social and political unrest, health issues and governance and development challenges.Item Open Access A century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011(University of Calgary Press, 2011)When Canada created a Dominion Parks Branch in 1911, it became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to managing its national parks. Over the past century this agency, now Parks Canada, has been at the centre of important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood and relationships between Canada's diverse ecosystems and its communities. Today, Parks Canada manages over forty parks and reserves totalling over 200,000 square kilometres and featuring a dazzling variety of landscapes, and is recognized as a global leader in the environmental challenges of protected places. Its history is a rich repository of experience, of lessons learned - critical for making informed decisions about how to sustain the environmental and social health of our national parks.Item Open Access Always an Adventure: An Autobiography(University of Calgary Press, 2011) Dempsey, Hugh A.Hugh Dempsey has for decades been one of Alberta's most prolific and influential public historians. Author of more than twenty books, he has also been "in on the ground floor" of the development of many key Alberta institutions, including the Indian Association of Alberta, the Historical Society of Alberta, and most importantly, the Glenbow Museum. Now, in his own words, he recounts his interesting and varied careers as journalist, government publicity writer, popular historian, archivist and museum administrator, speaker, and lecturer. Beginning with a compelling account of his childhood in Edmonton in the 1930s - when his family was for a time on relief during the Depression - and his 1940s teenage escapades hitchhiking across the continent, Dempsey's narrative moves into the frenetic world of post-war urban journalism. A fateful chance assignment as a reporter for the Edmonton Bulletin in February 1950 led to his involvement with the fledgling Indian Association of Alberta, its secretary John Laurie, president James Gladstone, and Gladstone's daughter Pauline, whom Dempsey would eventually marry. This in turn led to a strong interest in First Nations culture and biography through which Dempsey was able to combine oral history with scholarly records to produce historical writing with a broad popular appeal. During the 1950s, Dempsey helped design early provincial historical recognition programs and began his lifelong involvement with the Historical Society of Alberta. In 1956 he joined the Glenbow Foundation (later Glenbow Museum), where for the next thirty-five years he would play a crucial part in its growth and reputation for excellence, designing and managing the Glenbow Archives and eventually serving as Acting Director of the Museum before retiring in 1991. Written with the trademark Hugh Dempsey eye for detail and lively anecdote, this memoir will be essential and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in western and First Nations history and the growth of key Alberta cultural institutions.Item Open Access In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1909–2009(University of Calgary Press, 2011)Canada's role as world power and its sense of itself in the global landscape has been largely shaped and defined over the past 100 years by the changing policies and personalities in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). This engaging and provocative book brings together fifteen of the country's leading historians and political scientists to discuss a century of Canada's national interests and DFAIT's role in defining and pursuing them. Accomplished and influential analysts such as Jack Granatstein, Norman Hillmer, and Nelson Michaud, are joined by rising stars like Whitney Lackenbauer, Adam Chapnick, and Tammy Nemeth in commenting on the history and future implications of Canada's foreign policy. In the National Interest gives fresh insight into the Canada First concept in the 1920s, the North American security issues in the 1930s, Canada's vision for the United Nations, early security warnings in the Arctic, the rise of the international francophone community, conflicting continental visions over energy, and Canada/U.S. policy discussions. The impact of politicians and senior bureaucrats such as O.D. Skelton, Lester B. Pearson, Marcel Cadieux, Jules Leger, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney are set against issues such as national defence, popular opinion, human rights, and energy production. In the National Interest also provides a platform for discussion about Canada's future role on the international stage. With its unique combination of administrative and policy history, In the National Interest is in a field of its own.Item Open Access The African diaspora in Canada: negotiating identity and belonging(University of Calgary Press, 2005)What does it mean to be African-Canadian? The African Diaspora in Canada addresses the conceptual difficulties and political contestations surrounding the term “African-Canadian.” In the midst of this fraught terrain, it focuses on first-generation, black continental Africans who have immigrated in the past four decades. In highlighting their experiences, this book addresses the empirical, conceptual, and methodological gaps that homogenize all black people and their experiences. Rooted in the specific experiences of continental Africans in Canada, this book examines the social constructions of African-Canadians, their experiences within the political and education systems, and with the labour market. It explores the forms of cooperation and tension that characterize African-Canadian communities, and how multiple transnational spaces are negotiated and occupied. The book also explores the circumstances of children, as they try to define their identities vis-à-vis their parents and the larger Canadian society.Item Open Access Health Care: A Community Concern? Developments in the Organization of Canadian Health Services(University of Calgary Press, 1997) Crichton, Anne; Robertson, Ann; Gordon, Christine; Farrant, WendyDeveloped within the context of the expansion of the Canadian welfare state in the years following the Great Depression, the present organization of Canadian health care delivery is now in serious need of reform. This book documents the causes and effects of changes made in this century to Canada's health care policy. Particular emphasis is placed on the decades following 1940, the years in which Canada moved away from an individualistic entrepreneurial medical care system, first toward a collectivist biomedical model and then to a social model for health care.Item Open Access Happyland: a history of the “dirty thirties” in Saskatchewan, 1914-1937(University of Calgary Press, 2011) McManus, Curtis R."Dirty Thirties" is the sobriquet commonly applied to the agricultural crisis in the drylands of southern Saskatchewan in Canada that coincided with the Great Depression, and it is generally assumed that prior to this period healthier, normal conditions prevailed. In Happyland, Curtis McManus contends that the "Dirty Thirties" actually began much earlier and were connected only peripherally to the Depression itself. McManus has mined the rarely consulted records of Rural Municipalities in Saskatchewan, as well as government documents, ministerial correspondence, local community histories, newspapers, and publications of relevant government departments, to tell a story of a quarter-century of stubborn persistence but also of absurdity, despair, social dislocation, moral corrosion, and inconsistent and often inept government policy. Thanks to McManuss rare and welcome blend of sound scholarship and living breathing prose, it is a gripping and evocative story as well.Item Open Access Biocultural diversity and indigenous ways of knowing : human ecology in the Arctic(University of Calgary Press, 2009) Kassam, Karim-Aly S.Dramatic challenges face human civilization everywhere. Relations between human beings and their environment are in peril, with mounting threats to both biological diversity of life on earth and cultural diversity of human communities. The peoples of the Circumpolar Arctic are at the forefront of these challenges and lead the way in seeking meaningful responses. In Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Karim-Aly Kassam positions the Arctic and sub-Arctic as a homeland rather than simply as a frontier for resource exploitation. Kassam aims to empirically and theoretically illustrate the synthesis between the cultural and the biological, using human ecology as a conceptual and analytical lens. Drawing on research carried out in partnership with indigenous northern communities, three case studies illustrate that subsistence hunting and gathering are not relics of an earlier era but rather remain essential to both cultural diversity and to human survival. This book deals with contemporary issues such as climate change, indigenous knowledge, and the impact of natural resource extraction. It is a narrative of community-based research, in the service of the communities for the benefit of the communities. It provides resource-based industry, policy makers, and students with an alternative way of engaging indigenous communities and transforming our perspective on conservation of ecological and cultural diversity.Item Open Access New directions in African education: challenges and possibilities(University of Calgary Press, 2008)It has been said that education in post-colonial Africa is in a state of crisis. Policies and practices from Eurocentric colonial regimes have carried over, intertwining with challenges inherent in the new political and economic climate. Leaders have done little to remedy the malfunctioning education system, and even where attempts have been made, they have overwhelmingly been shaped by commercial and capitalist interests. In New Directions in African Education, Nombuso Dlamini has gathered essays from continental African scholars who, before pursuing graduate studies in North America, had first-hand experience with the education system in post-colonial Africa. Their cross-cultural perspective has provided a unique opportunity to critically examine education in the African context and to present possible courses of action to reinvent its future. These authors are in search of a new model for African education - a model that embraces indigenous knowledge, helps cultivate a greater sense of pride in people of African descent, and, most importantly, serves local needs.Item Open Access Promoters, planters, and pioneers: the course and context of Belgian settlement in Western Canada(University of Calgary Press, 2011) Jaenen, Cornelius J.In this comprehensive study of Belgian settlement in western Canada, Cornelius Jaenen shows that Belgian immigration was unique in its character and brought with it significant benefits out of proportion to its comparatively small numbers. Canadas first Immigration Act (1869) included Belgium among the "preferred countries" from which immigrants should be sought, but unlike many other European countries, Belgium did not encourage its nationals to emigrate to relieve economic, demographic, and social crises, and Belgian officials took a strong interest in their emigrants, monitoring the conditions of settlement and, where fraud was discovered, intervening diplomatically and paying for repatriation. The result was a resourceful body of settlers adaptable to both anglophone and francophone communities and adept at promotion and raising of capital. The first wave of immigration, beginning in the 1880s, consisted mainly of farmers to southern Manitoba and miners to Vancouver Island. A second wave after 1896, facilitated by a direct steamship link to Antwerp, brought more miners, as well as orchard planters to the Okanagan, sugar beet farmers to Alberta, and dairymen to Manitoba. World War I was followed by a further wave of agriculturally oriented settlement, and World War II by a mainly urban and skill-oriented cohort. In all cases, Belgians differed from the larger immigrant groups in that they were not recruited by important immigration societies and did not settle in ethnic blocs. There is probably no one better equipped than Cornelius Jaenen to write the history of the Belgians in western Canada. An eminent historian and the son of Flemish and Walloon Belgian immigrants himself, Professor Jaenen has gleaned, from Belgian and Canadian archival sources and from local, community, and family histories, a story rich in detail and context that will be invaluable to Canadians of Belgian origin as well as scholars and students of western Canadian ethnic and immigration studies.Item Open Access Grassroots governance?: chiefs in Africa and the Afro-Caribbean(University of Calgary Press, 2003)Traditional leadership is a factor that has long been overlooked in evaluations of rural local government in much of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. Grassroots Governance?, an interdisciplinary and intercontinental collection, addresses this gap in African scholarship and brings new perspectives on the integration, or reconciliation, of traditional leadership with democratic systems of local government. Articles from the fields of political science, law, postcolonial studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and policy and administrative studies establish a baseline for best practice in Africa and the Afro-Caribbean while taking into account the importance of traditional leadership to the culture of local governance. Case studies are drawn from Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, and Commonwealth countries in West, East, and Southern Africa, as well as Jamaica.Item Open Access The Politics of Access: University Education and Nation-Building in Nigeria, 1948–2000(University of Calgary Press, 2011) Anyanwu, Ogechi EmmanuelAccess to university education in Africa was inadequate during the colonial period. With independence, various African countries moved away from the elitist colonial education system by embarking on programs designed to provide education to all, regardless of class, ethnicity, or creed. Nowhere in Africa has the question of access to university education reached such a crescendo of concern and posed such as challenge to the polity as in Nigeria. In illuminating the history of massification of university education in Nigeria, Anyanwu makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the challenges of nation-building in multi-ethnic and religious societies in Africa and demonstrates that the intractable issues in Africa's university education system - such as academic quality, relevance, funding, and unemployment - flow from the creation and adoption of the massification system. Through analysis of exceptionally rich data obtained from the Carnegie Corporation in New York, and from Nigeria’s national archives, author Ogechi Anyanwu demonstrates how the pursuit of mass university education not only decolonized the elitist British education system but also ultimately reshaped modern Nigeria. More importantly, he argues that the impact of these policies cannot be fully understood withoutlooking closely at the intersection of domestic and external politics dictating the direction of higher education development as a vehicle for nation-building in Nigeria’s pluralistic society. Although numerous studies have been made of Nigeria’s higher education development in particular, and that of Africa in general, no work has placed the pursuit of mass university education at the centre of that country’s postcolonial higher education reform or discussed it as a policy-driven and need-driven phenomenon. In The Politics of Access, Anyanwu undertakes a historical analysis of the diachronic impact of Nigeria’s domestic socioeconomic, political, and ethno-religious forces, as well as external interests, on the country’s policy initiatives, shifts, and outcomes of mass higher education policies.Item Open Access Hearts and minds: Canadian romance at the dawn of the modern era, 1900-1930(University of Calgary Press, 2011) Azoulay, DanWhat was romance like for Canadians a century ago? What qualities did marriageable men and women look for in prospective mates? How did they find suitable partners in difficult circumstances such as frontier isolation and parental disapproval, and, when they did, how did courtship proceed in the immediate post-Victorian era, when traditional romantic ideals and etiquette were colliding with the modern realities faced by ordinary people? Searching for answers, Dan Azoulay has turned to a variety of primary sources, in particular letters to the "correspondence columns" of two leading periodicals of the era, Montreals Family Herald and Weekly Star, and Winnipeg's Western Home Monthly. Examining over 20,000 such letters, Azoulay has produced the first full-length study of Canadian romance in the years 1900 to 1930, a period that witnessed dramatic changes, including massive immigration, rapid urbanization and industrialization, western settlement, a world war that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of young Canadians, and a virtual revolution in morals and manners. Hearts and Minds explores four key aspects of romance for these years: what average Canadians sought in a marriage partner; the specific rules they were expected to follow and in most cases did follow in their romantic quest; the many hardships they endured along the way; and how the defining event of that era - the Great War - affected such things. To explore these issues, Azoulay distils and analyzes evidence not only from letters of correspondents - featuring often poignant excerpts that bring the era to life for us - but also from contemporary general etiquette manuals, scholarly studies of courtship in this period, and, for the war years, a selection of soldiers letters, memoirs, and diaries. The result is an unforgettable and groundbreaking portrait of ordinary people grappling with romantic ideals and reality, trials and uncertainty, triumph and heartbreak, in a rapidly changing world.Item Open Access After appropriation: explorations in intercultural philosophy and religion(University of Calgary Press, 2011)While there have been a number of specialized books in the field of comparative philosophy, and many in the field of comparative religion, there are few scholars who can address both disciplines. Furthermore, when these disciplines are virtually mutually exclusive, as in Western academia, a full appreciation of non-Western approaches to either religion or philosophy is not easily attained, and distortions, such as appropriation, often occur. Within the last ten years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of a number of Western scholars to try to address these deficiencies. A unique workshop held at the University of Calgary in 2007 marked the beginning of an interdisciplinary project to bring together scholars from both fields for discussion on a regular basis. After Appropriation consists of thirteen essays stemming from the workshop, each of which addresses an issue or illustrates a problem in the interdisciplinary field of comparative religion and philosophy as it is presently conceived. Many misappropriations and exclusions have arisen from the Western tendency to reduce and manipulate the ideas and values of non-Western religions and philosophies to fit within Western concepts and categories. How might comparative philosophy and religion change if the concepts and categories of non-Western philosophies and religions were taken as primary? This book explores this question through analytic and phenomenological Western approaches, infused with fresh strategies and modalities derived from or inspired by non-Western traditions. In a world of increasing pluralism and continuing globalization, there is a growing need to elevate discussion of these issues to a more sophisticated level. A truly groundbreaking collection, After Appropriation inaugurates an entirely new integrative discipline of comparative religion and philosophy, and the exceptional calibre and wide spectrum of the book's scholarship will stimulate and propel further interest in this pivotal and fruitful direction.Item Open Access Cover and uncover: Eric Cameron(University of Calgary Press, 2011)Eric Cameron is a major contemporary Canadian artist. Born in 1935 in Leicester, England, he arrived in Canada in the 1970s and has taught at the University of Guelph, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and at the University of Calgary. Over the years Cameron has also continued to work in his primary medium, painting, but moved from traditional figuration to a highly conceptual practice with both his process paintings and his "thick" paintings. He has also expanded into video and has written a great deal about his work. His inspired teaching and unusual art have been recognized with major awards, including the Victor Lynch-Staunton Award (1993), the Gershorn Iskowitz Prize (1994), and the Governor General's Award (2004). Despite Cameron's prominence, much of the writing about him is by the artist himself. Cover and Uncover makes a major contribution to the field as it explores Eric Cameron's art and philosophy. The book is composed of four essays, each covering a different aspect of Cameron's art, starting with Peggy Gale's analysis of his writing, then turning to Ann Davis's consideration of his process paintings and his philosophy, moving to Diana Nemiroff's review of his videos, and concluding with Thierry de Duve's observations on his Thick Paintings and his blind rejection of chance. The essays, though written independently, resonate with each other so that the reader comes away with a full picture of a complex artist, his life, his thought, his art production, and how these elements inform each other and have evolved through time. The expert commentary here, richly illustrated with Cameron's works in multiple media, provides a vital and long overdue critical lens through which to view this important artist.Item Open Access Revisioning Europe: the films of John Berger and Alain Tanner(University of Calgary Press, 2011) White, JerryRevisioning Europe is among the few existing English-language discussions of the films made by British novelist John Berger and Swiss film director Alain Tanner. It brings to light a political cinema that was unsentimental about the possibilities of revolutionary struggle and unsparing in its critique of the European left, and at the same time optimistic about the ability of radicalism - and radical art - to transform the world. Jerry White argues that Berger and Tanners work is preoccupied with ideas that were both central to the Enlightenment and at the same time characteristically Swiss. Translations of previously unpublished essays by both John Berger and Alain Tanner are included as appendices.Item Open Access The Clever Body(University of Calgary Press, 2006) Csepregi, GaborIn Western civilization, we have come to regard the body as an instrument or a machine that responds to external challenges but does not have a life or creativity of its own. Thanks to some of its inherent capabilities, however, the living body can act in a highly intelligent and creative manner. All of us have noticed from time to time that our body can move naturally, without any conscious effort; it can adapt to new situational demands and propose unexpected solutions. While skiing or rock climbing or sailing, we may have abandoned ourselves to our bodily timing and responsiveness, our acute feeling for new solutions. In The Clever Body, Gabor Csepregi describes in detail the nature and scope of these innate abilities sensibility, spontaneity, mimetic faculty, sense of rhythm, memory, and imagination and reflects on their significance in human life.