Canada Dry? Water Abundance, Scarcity, and National Identity

This paper uses the case of Canadian nationalism’s intertwinement with water to discuss the politics of sustainability, scale, and identity. The paper uses a (highly tentative) defense of Canadian nationalism to argue a broader point: that the prospects for sustainable community require a dialectical account of human nature rather than a simple defense of localization or down-scaling. The first part of the paper introduces two widespread but apparently contradictory attitudes: a “myth of abundance” (Canada as a water-rich nation) and a “myth of scarcity” (Canada’s water is under threat). The second part of the paper introduces the view that “scarcity” is a phenomenon that is strongly culturally mediated, “produced” to facilitate social hierarchization and domination, with the conclusion that sustainability therefore requires a down-scaling or localization of social life. Such a conclusion, however, tends to leave little room for a more dialectical view of human nature – one that sees the definition of a “human-scaled” community as subject to change under different social and technological conditions. The final part of the paper returns to the two myths to illustrate the problems with a too-simple view of localization. Here I argue that the two myths stand in for two dominant (but, again, contradictory) impulses that define Canadian national identity: “scarcity” standing in for anti-imperialism on the one hand, and “abundance” for a domineering, instrumental attitude (the “technological” mindset) towards nature on the other.