Week 1–6 Course Notes: Geography of Canada, Grounded Normativity, and Border/Housing Politics

Key terms and concepts from the lecture notes, with concise definitions to aid study.

Grounded Normativity

A framework for living in relation to other people and non-human life that is profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, and nonexploitative, rooted in Indigenous knowledge and local relationships with land.

Relationality

The idea that social and ecological meaning arises from relationships among people, land, and non-human beings, shaping perception and action.

Situatedness

The notion that our lived experiences in a specific place shape how we see, interpret, and respond to the world.

Reflexivity

Self-awareness of one’s positionality and how language, culture, and power shape knowledge and interpretation.

Land-based organizing

Activism anchored in land, capable of cross-cultural collaboration, not reducible to identity politics.

Terra nullius

The legal notion that land was empty or unoccupied, justifying settler claims to sovereignty.

Colonial neutrality

Romanticized or depoliticized view of expansion and colonization that ignores Indigenous dispossession.

Bloody Falls

Hearne’s story used to illustrate colonial narratives of Indigenous savagery and the construction of settler legitimacy.

Place-based ethics

Reciprocal, non-extractive ethics between land and its people, emphasizing responsibilities to land and community.

Reconciliatory land reforms

Land reforms framed around reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous knowledge vs settler systems

Indigenous knowledge and political frameworks emerge from local land relationships, contrasting with settler claims of neutrality and universality.

Land myths

Narratives that empty the land of Indigenous presence to make space for settler settlement (terra nullius and related ideas).

Land-based knowledge

Knowledge derived from living with, learning from, and observing the land.

Doctrine of Discovery

Papal bulls declaring Christian exploration and conquest could claim non-Christian lands for European powers.

Papal bulls

Religious decrees used historically to justify empire-building and territorial claims.

Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC)

A fur-trading company central to Canadian nation-building and the dispossession/negotiation with Indigenous peoples.

Rupert’s Land

Massive territory granted to HBC in 1670, later transferred to Canada and forming much of modern Canada.

Selkirk Treaty

Treaty agreements with Indigenous peoples west of the Great Lakes that facilitated settlement and investment.

Douglas Treaty

Early treaties with Indigenous nations in the Pacific Northwest that enabled colonial settlement.

Private Property (Bhandar)

Concepts of ownership historically produced through colonial and racial articulations, linking ownership to cultivation and improvement.

Franchise Colonialism

Extraction of resources and labor from colonized lands to benefit the imperial center, without permanent settler settlement.

Anticipatory Geographies

Narratives that prefigure Indigenous absence and normalize settler presence.

Accummulation by dispossession

David Harvey’s concept describing how capitalist accumulation relies on dispossessing people of land and resources.

Extractivism

A worldview where land and resources are treated as commodities to be exploited, often justifying dispossession.

Geographical Imagination

Ways of imagining and representing space that shape political and ethical judgments (e.g., us vs them).

Occidental Orient/Orientalism

Edward Said’s concept: how Western representations construct the East and justify control; part of colonial knowledge production.

Settler Colonialism as structure

An enduring system that makes and unmakes spaces through laws, institutions, and practices that privilege settler sovereignty.

Tourism of expansion: territory as property

Understanding land as property to be claimed and exploited under settler capitalism.

Land as property vs Indigenous dispossession

Contrasting frameworks where land is a commodity for settlers versus a living relation for Indigenous peoples.

Enlightenment Locke influence on land

Locke’s ideas of appropriation and cultivation as progress, leading to private property and expansion.

Blood diamonds

Exploitative mining of diamond resources that harms Indigenous and local communities while benefiting others.

Imperial Nostalgia

Nostalgia for empire; exhibitions like National War Memorial reinforce white settler histories.

Monuments

Conceptions in space that mediate ideology and memory; changing meanings over time.

Monument and Memory ( Davidson quote)

Memory and nationalism co-construct each other; monuments shape Canadianness.

Storytelling (Wynter)

Humans as a storytelling species; narratives imprint colonial metanarratives and can drive transformation.

THICK description

A detailed, layered description of social life to illuminate context and meaning.

Speak White

Michèle Lalonde’s poem critiquing language hierarchies and multiculturalism in 1960s Montreal.

Multiculturalism Act (1988)

Policy officially recognizing and encouraging cultural expression and accommodation; critiqued for not addressing structural racism.

The Quiet Revolution

1960s Quebec reforms modernizing state role in society, education, and economy.

Thobani critique of multiculturalism

Scholar who argues multiculturalism often fails to address structural racism and sexism.

Sanctuary City

Municipal policy limiting local enforcement of federal immigration laws and ensuring access to basic services for non-citizens.

Right to the City

Concept that urban spaces belong to all residents, including migrants and non-citizens, with rights to housing and participation.

Urban citizenship

Belonging and rights in the city beyond formal citizenship; re-scaling sovereignty to the municipal level.

Regularization

Pathway to legal status for undocumented migrants; amnesty-like reform.

Elastic Borders

Borders that are stretched or tightened to regulate mobility; externalized and internalized controls.

Shiprider Program

Shared jurisdiction between Canadian and U.S. border enforcement agencies at sea.

Third Safe Country Agreement

Policy designating a country as safe for asylum seekers to apply for refugee status there.

Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP)

Program bringing in low-wage workers on temporary visas; often lacks a clear path to citizenship and can create precarity.

Deterritorialization/Reterritorialization

Processes that loosen or re-anchor the geographic reach of borders and governance.

Internalization/Externalization of borders

Internal controls on movement within a country vs external controls at international borders.

Preclearance

Border processing before departure to a destination to facilitate movement.

Kafala system

Sponsorship-based migrant worker system that can constrain mobility and rights.

Migrant Dreams (documentary)

Film depicting migrant workers in Leamington, Ontario and the precarity of low-wage labor.

Domestic Scheme (historical)

Mid-20th-century program drawing migrant labor to Canada.

Financialization of housing

Housing treated as a financial asset owned by investors, shaping price dynamics and access.

National Housing Strategy

Policy framework aimed at addressing housing affordability and supply.

Housing affordability metrics (30% vs 60%)

Debates about what share of income should be spent on housing; rising pressures shift from 30% to 60% benchmarks.

Urban governance tensions (municipal vs national)

Conflicts over sanctuary policies, rights, and housing within city and national policy frames.

Carney housing plan

Policy proposals advocating increased housing supply (e.g., prefab units) and financing to improve affordability.