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Foreign policy is typically understood as the prerogative of a unified state, and although attention has recently been paid to the role of provinces, there has been little exploration of the foreign policy role played by Nunavut, Canada’s newest territory ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the study and practice of Canadian public diplomacy. This paper critically engages the traditional understanding of public diplomacy, according to which it is understood as being about the management of Canada’s external relations through a range of strategies designed to cultivate a favourable impression of ‘brand Canada’ abroad. This exclusively external orientation of public diplomacy has been challenged in the recent literature, generally on the grounds that within the context of globalization, the line between foreign and domestic policy has become increasingly blurred, and ‘international’ issues typically have a domestic component or impact â€" not the least of which involves, in the Canadian context, large diasporic communities which are increasingly seen as having a potential impact on the determination of Canada’s international priorities. This remains wedded to an understanding of Canada’s engagement with the world as reflecting certain Canadian values and traditions. This is certainly a claim commonly made by observers and practitioners of Canadian foreign policy, and is consistent with the view that Canadians will support particular policies abroad to the extent that they are seen to reflect our collective self-image. However, the argument developed in this paper is that the articulation of these very values and traditions as the guiding principles of Canadian foreign policy operates performatively to create what is said to be merely reflected. Public diplomacy is thus understood in this context as a strategy whereby the Canadian government not only presents ‘brand Canada’ to the world, but also creates ‘brand Canada’ at home. In other words, public diplomacy in Canada operates as a vehicle for that familiar driver of Canadian foreign policy, national unity. It is often suggested that Canadian foreign policy is in fact intended ultimately to serve the agenda of national unity; what is interesting to consider in light of the argument developed in this paper is the extent to which public diplomacy is about the creation of national unity around a particular image of Canada with the purpose of serving Canada’s foreign policy agenda. This possibility is developed with reference to the 2003 Dialogue on Foreign Policy, the FAC-sponsored Canadian International Policy e-Discussions, and the Canadian Heritage ‘Celebrate Canada!’ campaign. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Myths' can be understood in part as the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves; however, more than simple rehearsals, myths operate performatively - that is, rather than describing objectively apprehendible identies, myths work toconsitute the very identities to which they refer, and which they claim only to represent.This paper explores the performative function of the mythological assertion that Canada is a northern nation. Treating this identity not as an objective fact, this paper considers the way in the "the north" has been variously imagined, and considers the politics which are enabled through the production of Canada as anorthern/Arctic nation. With specific reference to Canadian foreign and security policy, this paper interrogates way in which the idea of Canada as a northern nation has played out in the context of a range of debates with a 'Northern dimension,'including those about sovereignty, environmental stewardship, and human security for northern peoples. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is explicitly concerned with broad questions of international relations theory, and advances the argument that international relations theory is an identity practice. I develop this argument with reference to the production of Muslim identities in colonial Bengal. Notwithstanding the potential of this empirical case to shed light on some of the most enduring problems facing South Asia - not the least of which is communal conflict between Hindus and Muslims - international relations theory has positioned this case as a marginal site. However, I argue that this case can tell us a great deal about the world which we have made. It offers a position from which to consider ways in which identities are discursively produced, but it does so from a different ('unauthorised') place, a particular ('trivial'), local ('unimportant') place, from which it is possible to explore how, in Cynthia Enloe's words, the 'artifices of international politics are constructed.' I argue that it is only by disciplinary IR's terms that the production of identities in a colonial context has no relevance; as a marginalised group in a colonised political space, the ways in which the Bengal Muslims understood themselves cannot be separated from the ability of the powerful to constitute 'Others,' as Rob Walker has put it, as 'subjects subject to subjection.' ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the various discourses which have been deployed in the post-September 11 context, and the ways in which the ‘war on terror’ has been produced. It will focus particularly on the extent to which religion has figured in these discourses/practices, not only in the attempt to understand/produce the combatants in this ‘war on terror,’ but also, and more particularly, in the framing of America’s response to terror, and its current intervention in Iraq, as somehow sanctioned by God. In this context, the constitution of America as a ‘blessed’ nation on a ‘moral crusade’ to combat ‘evil’ draws on a discourse of religion which recasts the lines of inclusion and exclusion not only within America, but globally. In addition to exploring the materialised effects of this discourse for real people, this paper also considers the question of how issues of morality will be reconciled with conventional discourses of international relations from which such issues had been explicitly expelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]