The Canadian State - by Heather Whiteside & Stephen McBride (Paperback)

About the Book

A critical analysis of the Canadian state as an active agent in shaping and navigating political-economic change.

Book Synopsis

Inspired by trailblazing work in the field, this wide-ranging collection makes an essential and timely intervention through new theoretical contributions that build on decades of critical analysis of the Canadian state as an agent active in capitalist development in a global era. The Canadian State explores the state's distinctive role in the development of a political economy shaped by capitalism and settler colonialism. Paying critical attention to how the state exercises accumulation, legitimation, and coercion in unique ways, the book provides an essential guide to understanding the multidimensional character of Canada's contemporary state form. Leading contributors in their field provide cutting edge chapters on settler colonialism, land ownership, extractivism, energy, services, care work, democracy, finance, commercialization, employment, and trade and investment.

Review Quotes

"The Canadian State is a vital, contemporary intervention in Marxist state theory with a focus on Canadian political economy. Whiteside and McBride have compiled a wide-ranging collection of essays that offer new understandings of the interconnections between state power and capital accumulation in the contemporary context. Deeply grounded in the historical development of capitalism in Canada, the text sheds light on the lineages of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy that have long been advanced and reproduced by the Canadian state. Attuned to contemporary processes such as the politics of care, environmental crisis, global trade, and financialization, The Canadian State is essential reading for those seeking to understand state power in the 21st century."--Mark P. Thomas, professor, Department of Sociology, York University

"Whiteside and McBride are among Canada's leading experts on state-capital relations, and they have assembled an outstanding set of two generations of theorists and analysts of the Canadian state. The authors recognize the centrality of settler colonialism as a structural logic animating and shaping the state; chapters on today's dominant sectors of Canadian capital shed light on the organization of the Canadian state today. The collection as a whole forms both a tour-de-force survey of existing recent literature and an important fount of contemporary political economic theory in its own right."--Justin Paulson, director, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University

About the Author

Heather Whiteside is an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo and a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs. She is a political economist with expertise in Canadian political economy, economic geography, theories of the state and capitalism, and public policy, demonstrated through a wide range of publications on issues such as public ownership, privatization, property relations, fiscal studies, and state capitalism.
Stephen McBride is a professor (Canada Research Chair in public policy and globalization, 2010-2024) in the Department of Political Science, McMaster University, where he is an associate member of the School of Labour Studies and a member of the Institute for Globalization and the Human Condition. His research interests include the crises of liberal democracy, globalization, the political economy of austerity, and the past, present and future of the state and the public domain.