Neoliberal restructuring and multicultural legacies: the experiences of a mid-level actor in recognizing difference

Abstract

In this article, I address the impact of neoliberalism and the attendant techniques of financialization on multiculturalism in Canada through ethnographic research at a non-profit, multicultural heritage institution. I consider how the workers at this non-profit maintained their solidaristic, pre-neoliberal conception of multiculturalism even as they experimented with a sociality dominated by market exchange. Even as worker subjectivity was transformed at the institution by dramatic budget cuts and the necessity for project-based contracts, ‘volunteerism’, entrepreneurialism, and flexibility, neoliberal discourse also opened new imaginative possibilities for the MHSO. Through extensive community networks the organization has been able to survive, if precariously, without dramatic changes to its pre-neoliberal programming which asserts a social democratic, pluralist ethos. Therefore, I argue in this article that we need to attend to the limits of neoliberal effects on the situated and historically distinctive way multiculturalism has been put into practice around the world.

Keywords:

• Multiculturalism
• neoliberalism
• non-profit
• financialization
• nationalism
• subjectivity

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was generously assisted by the Canadian High Commission in Canberra, Australia and the International Council for Canadian Studies through the Faculty Research Programme. I also want to thank everyone involved with the MHSO who helped me with my research. All errors are mine alone. I dedicate this article to a wise manager and treasured mentor, Carl Thorpe.

Notes

1. This was most dramatically evident in a 22 per cent cut to social assistance.

2. Two essays about post-war migration and its impact on the development of Canada and Toronto provide the best description of the socio-historical context of multiculturalism in Canada: Harney (1988) and Troper (2003). For readers interested in an individualistic and neoconservative but readable book, which also pulls together existing critiques from entrenched (and threatened) interests but has trouble with the concepts of causality or structure, see Bissoondath's Selling Illusions (1995). Published in the mid-1990s it is suggestive of the backlash institutions like the MHSO would shortly face. Kymlicka's (1998; 2007) body of work has attempted to provide a philosophical rationale for Canadian multiculturalism. Also see Ralph Grillo's helpful comparative work Pluralism and the Politics of Difference (1998).

3. The term the ‘people's house’ was used by African Canadian friends of the MHSO to mark the sharp distinction between the MHSO's good community relations earned by its inclusive exhibits on the African Canadian experience and its more traditional neighbour up the road, the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2008, the MHSO was forced to move ‘house’ as the lease was up and their space prized within the University. Villa Charities, an Italian Canadian-based social and cultural charity with a massive service campus in the northwest of the city offered office space to the institution based on their thirty years of work on joint projects.

4. For representative MHSO publications go to http://www.mhso.ca/publications.html.

5. Between 1998 and 2010, core funding from the province has ranged from $0 to $10,000 CDN making planning and budgeting precarious and reinforcing the production of subjectivities characterized by audit, strategy, and finance.

6. Robert F. Harney, Professor of History at the University of Toronto, served as academic director until his untimely death in 1989.

7. Mike Harris was the Premier of Ontario who swept the Conservatives to power on this neoliberal programme. He remained Premier until 2002. His brash and often condescending style enhanced the emotional impact of the cuts. One of his nicknames was Mike the Knife.

8. See the MHSO website for details: http://www.mhso.ca/news.html.

9. www.historica.ca was one of their favourite targets. Founded by Charles R. Bronfman of the Seagram Company (liquor), wealth and the splashy, high production quality of the film shorts focussed on ‘great Canadians’ and thus riled the MHSO staff who had more democratic progressive impulses but were also frustrated that after twenty years of building up knowledge and expertise, a commercial interest with money but no content was accruing all the attention.

10. See the Canadian government website for further information: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/programs/community-projects.asp.

11. Reviewer one's comments were especially helpful in sharpening the implications of my example. All errors are mine.