Off the Shelf

The ACSUS conference wrapped up on Sunday November 18 th and it was a success. Not only was the Portal for North America launched to a captive audience, but the panels were thoughtful and provocative.

On the first day, Thursday, I attended a conference panel on 'Securing Citizenship'. Of particular interest to me were the first two papers. One was about refugees, asylum seekers and war-resistors. Davina Bhandhar of Trent University raised the issue of the contemporary war-resistors as it applies to the war on terror. When a war-resistor seeks asylum in Canada for instance, usually the first comment or question that is raised is "well why did you join the army in the first place, was it not your choice?" This to me was most intriguing as she continued to question whether or not the choice is truly voluntary. Many people in the United States join the armed forces because of the social situation in which they find themselves. Therefore, it provides them a job opportunity and funding for post-secondary education. So, one could argue that social limitations make one choose the armed forces. So is it really voluntary??

In the second paper, Simone Browne, from the University of Texas focused on the border control regime and argued that the proposed system of biometric cards will be used as an alibi for racial purging because it is a formal way to place immigrants into risk categories. This was a very interesting argument given the current debates on border security.

The panel on Friday was about 'Human Security and Canadian Foreign Policy'. Grant Dawson of Carleton University had just released his book ‘Here is Hell': The Canadian Military's Experience Stabilizing Somalia in 1992-93. What caught my attention were the similarities in regards to the problem with military involvement in local culture. One of the major problems with the Somalia case was the hostility towards the Canadian Forces. As Dawson argued, much of this had to do with the lack of knowledge when it came to cultural norms and values. Currently, this hostility can be seen in the Afghanistani and Iraqi populations. The main problem I think is the lack of awareness of the local population's values and norms. Therefore you get a military force that goes into a country without the training needed to be able to properly cope with different cultural norms. To the locals, this may look like a foreign military force trying to impose their norms and values upon them. This in turn causes a backlash and continued hostility.

Finally, the panel on Saturday entitled 'Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era' had a paper by Lana Wylie of McMaster University on Cuban biotechnology. She argued that Cuban biomedical services are sophisticated and warrant more collaboration with Canadian medical services. Cuba has some of the highest indicators when it comes to health and their doctors are well trained and are stationed all over the world to provide medical services. Of course the issue of patents was raised especially because of the U.S. embargo and American pharmaceuticals. Wylie responded by stating that during her research she found that many Canadian companies would still be willing to collaborate with Cuban scientists despite the "U.S. headache".

So, overall the conference was motivating and thought-provoking. It is always exciting to have academics come together from different parts of North America and beyond and exchange ideas.