The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada

Development Programs and Democracy, 1964-1979

Will Langford

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780228003977
• eBook ISBN:
  9780228004745
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of the Cold War and an international decolonization movement, development advocates believed that poverty could be ended, at home and abroad. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores the relationship between poverty, democracy, and development during this remarkable period. Will Langford analyzes three Canadian development programs that unfolded on local, regional, and international scales. He reveals the interconnections of anti-poverty activism carried out by the Company of Young Canadians among Métis in northern Alberta and francophones in Montreal, by the Cape Breton Development Corporation, and by Canadian University Service Overseas in Tanzania. In dialogue with the New Left, liberal reformers committed to development programs they believed would empower the poor to confront their own poverty and thereby foster a more meaningful democracy. However, democracy and development proved to be fundamentally contested, and development programs stopped short of amending capitalist social relations and the inequalities they engendered. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores how Canadians engaged in informal and formal politics in the course of their everyday lives, locally and transnationally. Langford provides an enduring record of otherwise fleeting anti-poverty programs and their effects: the lived activism and opinions of development workers and ordinary people.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 “So That Community Can Better Help Itself”: The Company of Young Canadians and Community Development in Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta, 1966-76
• 2 “Something’s Going to Have to Change around Here”: The Company of Young Canadians, Community Development, and Indigenous Politics in Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta, 1966-76
• 3 “Un petit pouvoir”: The Compagnie des jeunes Canadiens, Animation Sociale, and Citizens’ Committees in Little Burgundy, Montreal, 1967-74
• 4 “Une démocratie quotidienne”: The Compagnie des jeunes Canadiens, Animation Sociale, and Workers’ Activism in Saint-Henri, Montreal, 1967-74
• 5 “Industrial Prospecting”: The Cape Breton Development Corporation, Regional Development, and Industry, 1967-71
• 6 “A Special Kind of Place”: The Cape Breton Development Corporation, Regional Development, and Entrepreneurship, 1972-77
• 7 “Positively Identified with the Direction of the Country”: Canadian University Service Overseas, Development Assistance, and Liberal Internationalism in Tanzania, 1964-79
• 8 “The Liberation of Peoples”: Canadian University Service Overseas and Left-Leaning International Development Assistance in Tanzania, 1972-79
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index