White Space
Race, Privilege, and Cultural Economies of the Okanagan Valley
(UBC Press, 2021)
ART 108
Much attention has been paid to the changing culture and construction of the Canadian metropolis, but how are the workings of whiteness manifested in the rural-urban spaces? White Space analyzes the dominance of whiteness in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia to expose how this racial notion continues to sustain forms of settler privilege.
The region was formed under the racialized politics of nineteenth-century Canadian federalism and in the absence of treaties with the Okanagan Nation. Its demographic remains predominantly white today, while other densely urban Canadian regions embrace diversity. Using textual, historical, and media analysis along with interviews, and autoethnography, contributors to this perceptive collection critique the cultural economics of whiteness and white supremacy. The first half documents the historical construction of whiteness: how settlers and their ancestors have sought to exalt pioneers by erasing non-whites from the region’s heritage while Indigenous peoples resist this white-out. The second half explores the persistence of whiteness as an invisible organizing principle in the neoliberal deindustrialized present.
White Space moves beyond appraising whiteness as if it were a solid and unshakable category. Instead, it offers a powerful demonstration of how the concept can be re-envisioned, resisted, and reshaped in a context of economic change.
Researchers, students, and activists focused on issues of whiteness and locality, particularly in western Canada, will find this work indispensable. It will also interest a wider readership of those attuned to issues relating to neoliberalism, de-colonization, whiteness, class, gender, and privilege.
(Description Source: UBC Press)
Editors
Daniel Keyes is an associate professor in the department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, and was the founding coordinator of its Cultural Studies program. Along with a variety of book chapters, he has contributed articles on whiteness in the Okanagan to Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada and Home Cultures: The Journal of Architecture, Design and Domestic Space.
Luís L.M. Aguiar is an associate professor of Sociology in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. He is co-editor, with Andrew Herod, of The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy and, with Christopher J. Schneider, of Researching amongst the Elites: Challenges and Opportunities in Studying Up.
UBC Library Holdings
How to Purchase this Book
From the Publisher – UBC Press
From Used-book Sellers – ABE, Amazon, Antiqbook, Biblio, Vialibri
Paper ISBN: 9780774860055
Hardcover ISBN: 9780774860048
PDF ISBN: 9780774860062
EPub ISBN: 9780774860079
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