scholarly journals ‘Walking Wombs’: Making Sense of the Muskoka Initiative and the Emphasis on Motherhood in Canadian Foreign Policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tiessen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Colonial Literature ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
And Child Health

The Muskoka Initiative – or the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Initiative has been a flagship foreign policy strategy of the Harper Conservatives since it was introduced in 2010.  However, the maternal health initiative has been met with a number of key criticisms in relation to its failure to address the sexual and reproductive health needs of women in the Global South2. In this article, I examine these criticisms and expose the prevalent and problematic discourse employed in Canadian policy papers and official government speeches pertaining to the MNCH Initiative. I examine the embodiment of the MNCH and how these references to women’s bodies as “walking wombs” facilitate: the objectification and ‘othering’ of women as mothers and childbearers; a discourse of ‘saving mothers’ in a paternalistic and essentialist language; and the purposeful omission of gender equality. Feminist International Relations (IR) and post-colonial literature, as well as critical/feminist Canadian foreign policy scholarship are employed in this paper to frame these critiques.

The origins of Canada’s feminist foreign policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Chapnick
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
International Community ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
A Minor

In January 2019, a leading Canadian foreign policy blog, OpenCanada.org, declared that “[u]nder the government of Justin Trudeau, Canada has embraced a feminist foreign policy—gradually at first, and with fervor over the past year.” Although critics have debated the policy’s effectiveness, the embrace, if not also the fervor, was indisputable. By 2019, the Trudeau government’s second foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, was proclaiming Canada’s feminist approach to international relations openly and regularly. The international community had also noticed. This article investigates the origins of the new Canadian foreign policy “brand.” It finds that, contrary to popular thinking, the prime minister himself played at most a minor role in the initiation of what became a full-fledged transformation of Canada’s global image.

scholarly journals SKYHAWK, SKYSHIELD, AND THE SOVIETS: REVISITING CANADA'S COLD WAR

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-475
Author(s):  
ASA MCKERCHER ◽  
TIMOTHY ANDREWS SAYLE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractFor the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography of Canada's Cold War international relations, the communist powers are largely missing. Hoping to challenge this limited focus, we frame our article around two Canada–US air defence exercises held in 1959 and 1960. While historians have viewed these exercises within the context of Canada's relationship with the United States, we highlight the wider Cold War framework in which Canadian policy was formed. After all, these exercises occurred during the mini-détente of the late 1950s and the collapse of the Paris summit in May 1960. As we demonstrate, the failure to take full account of the Cold War is a shortcoming of much of the writing on Canadian international relations, and so we offer an example of the need to take seriously Canada's foreign policy toward the communist bloc.

Notable Exceptions? New and Arrested Directions in Canadian Foreign Policy Literature

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Black ◽  
Heather A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
External Influences ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
Theoretical Condition

AbstractThe literature on Canadian Foreign Policy has often been characterized as overly descriptive and theoretically weak. This type of characterization, advanced most recently by Maureen Molot, is no longer wholly accurate. By reviewing several relatively recent contributions and debates in this literature, it is demonstrated that in pockets, the subfield has advanced substantially in theoretical sophistication. Nevertheless, it continues to manifest important gaps and limited cumulation. The article speculates on why this should be so, and on how the theoretical condition of the subfield can be advanced. Approaches which incorporate the interplay of internal and external influences on policy, which borrow from important developments in the wider fields of International Relations and Comparative Politics, and which engage in comparison across issue-areas, countries and time are advocated. Applications drawing on “historical materialist,” regime, and epistemic community literatures are specifically promoted.

scholarly journals Cultural Diplomacy in Canadian Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Tatiana Shchukina
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
Government Of Canada ◽  
Unique Potential ◽  
State Regional

In furthering its foreign policy, Canada, as other countries, uses its reputation, advantage and assets to enhance its national interest, and to strengthen its state-to-state, regional and international relations. Comprising a range of instruments, a country's culture and arts stand out as having the unique potential to enrich its foreign policy. Culture and arts have long played a role in Canada's international relations. Government of Canada should develop and implement a comprehensive cultural diplomacy strategy that establish its objectives within the context of Canada's foreign policy, articulate roles and responsibilities, and identify the budgetary resources necessary for the strategy's realization.

scholarly journals IV SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE “POLITICAL PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS AND GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT”

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-253
Author(s):  
D. Belinska ◽  
V. Burganova ◽  
S. Gordienko ◽  
А. Musienko ◽  
M. Pogrebnyak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Scientific Conference ◽  
Global Development ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Systemic Transformation ◽  
The University ◽  
International Systems

Scientific conference for young teachers and masters who study in the specialty 291 International Relations, Public Communications and Regional Studies, with the participation of the Dean of the Faculty of International Relations, Political Science and Sociology V. V. Glebov, Head of the Department of International Relations O. I. Brusylovska, lectors and guests of the University, took place on May 18, 2021 at the FIRPS ONU named after I. I. Mechnikov. Among the issues considered at the conference were: the analysis of the theory of international relations (Belinska D., Burganova V., Gordienko S., Musienko A., Pogrebnyak M., Shevchenko Y.), foreign policy of the states (Houphouet L., Navasardyan D., Novatska O., Palyonova G., Polyakova E., Zazalitinova V.), systemic transformation of post-communist and post-colonial countries (Prokhorova V., Elkhair A.).

The South in “Global IR”: Worlding Beyond the “Non-West” in the Case of Brazil

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marcus Kristensen
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The South ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Core ◽  
Alternative Intervention ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
International Thought

Abstract As international relations has started to grapple with its geo-cultural parochialism, the focus has been on its “Western-centrism” and on how “non-Western” international relations might be different. This article argues that attempts to deprovincialize “Western” (i.e., Euro-American) international thought do not always revolve around “non-Westernness,” a negation with often cultural-civilizational connotations, but also deploy a North/South worlding that is more bound up with imperial-colonial experience and a “peripheral” concern with economic insertion into the core. Based on interviews with scholars, diplomats, and foreign policy intellectuals in Brazil, the paper explores the different ways “the South” is deployed—as (post)colonial subjectivity, as problematique, as relation, as outside, and as political move—to provide an alternative intervention into the debate on “Global IR.”

The Future of Foreign Policy Analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hill
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
A Site ◽  
Relationship Of

Foreign policy analysis (FPA) occupies a central place in the study of international relations. FPA has produced a substantial amount of scholarship dealing with subjects from the micro and geographically particular to the macro relationship of foreign policy to globalization. It brings together many different subject areas, indeed disciplines, as between international relations and comparative politics or political theory, or history and political science. FPA generates case studies of major world events, and the information that probes behind the surface of things, to make it more possible to hold politicians accountable. Meanwhile, officials themselves are ever more aware that they need assistance, conceptual and empirical, in making sense of how those in other countries conduct themselves and what can feasibly be achieved at the international level. However, each subject under FPA needs to be revitalized through the development of new lines of enquiry and through the struggle with difficult problems. Work is either already under way or should be pursued in eight important areas. These are (i) foreign policy as a site of agency, (ii) foreign policy and state-building, (iii) foreign policy and the domestic, (iv) foreign policy and identity, (v) foreign policy and multilateralism, (vi) foreign policy and power, (vii) foreign policy and transnationalism, and (viii) foreign policy and ethics.

scholarly journals Reflexive Pluralism in IR: Canadian Contributions to Worlding the Global South

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
W R Nadège Compaoré ◽  
Stéphanie Martel ◽  
J Andrew Grant
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Global South ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract Observers of the evolution of international relations (IR) theory often point to an American hegemony in the discipline on a global level. However, more recent analyses show that there has been a systematic and increasing Canadianization of IR scholarship in Canada since the 1990s, facilitated by government policies that fostered the hiring of domestic candidates and the creation of Canadian foreign policy research centers. This process has by no means been a cohesive one, yet it reflects a tendency in Canadian IR to make room for a pluralism in ontological as well as epistemological and methodological terms. This opening up of space for diversity is an important yet underappreciated characteristic of Canadian IR's contribution to the discipline, which has not been seriously examined beyond the study of Canadian foreign policy. This article assesses the impact of Canadian IR scholarship on the development of a “Global IR” through an examination of its contributions to Asia-Pacific and African IR. We argue that despite its heterogeneity, Canadian IR scholarship in both areas is characterized by a common set of elements that, taken together, reflect a distinctly Canadian way of studying and practicing IR in relation to the Global South: pluralism and reflexivism.

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