Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (New Directions in Anthro Writing)
Handler, an anthropologist, analyzes the rise and decline of the Quebec Independence party (Parti Quebecois), including its victory in the 1976 provincial election and the failure of its 1980 independence referendum. He attributes the party's failure to a seemingly inevitable drift from traditional culture that the provincial government was not able to stop. He argues that the nationalist movement's mistake was its attempt to maintain within fixed epistemological boundaries a distinct, homogeneous culture. A major problem involved the impact of English on the French language. Contributing to the problem was a decline in the French Canadian birthrate and the tendency of immigrant minorities to want to learn English rather than French. An interesting philosophical approach. Recommended for informed readers and social scientists interested in hermeneutics. David Steiniche, Missouri Western State Coll., St. JosephCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.