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- Title
Leadership, Governance, and the Politics of Identity in Canada.
- Authors
Jedwab, Jack
- Abstract
Community governance and leadership are vital to the process of identity formation. Group vitality is often closely tied to the depth and variety of community institutions. Historically, the institutions of Canada's ethnnocultural communities were religiously based. A decline in clerical leadership resulted in ethnocultural organizations evolving away from appointing leaders and moved toward electing them. These efforts at democratizing ethnocultural governance were further motivated by heightened government support of communal organizations and the desire for greater accountability. During the 1990s a substantial reduction in federal assistance to national ethnocultural organizations resulted in a weakening of many of these bodies. In that decade a societal devaluation of ethnic identification combined with communal needs becoming more local in nature rendered ethnocultural community organizations less relevant on the national level. Recently, ethnocultural organizations have been accused of 'ethnicizing' public debate by practicing identity politics while at the same time marginalizing their members by presumably limiting their opportunities for participation in the mainstream. This contradiction underlying much of the current criticism of the legitimacy and actions of ethnocultural leadership stems from a problem with standards used to conduct evaluations. There is a need to establish proper criteria to assess the representative character and effectiveness of ethnocultural governance and leadership.
- Subjects
CANADA; COMMUNITY leadership; GROUP identity
- Publication
Canadian Ethnic Studies, 2001, Vol 33, Issue 3, p4
- ISSN
0008-3496
- Publication type
Article