Cultural Diversity and Economic Convergence: The Dialectics of Canadian Cultural Policy

Abstract

Through an examination of the Canadian book and magazine sectors and the major international trade agreements to which Canada is a signatory, the paper interrogates the shortcomings of Canadian cultural policy’s attempt at reconciling the realities of global capitalism with the Romantic ideal of non-commodified, non-economic national culture. The discussion highlights the contradictions involved in current policy attempts to protect a uniquely “Canadian culture” in an era of globalisation in which national cultures seem to increasingly disintegrate and give way to mass cultural expression. Moreover, it probes the policy terms for an economised reformulation of Canadian culture, which means a discursive and material, localised and globalised way of conceptualising the dynamics of Canadian cultural expression.