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Let's start by breaking down the topic:
Let's start by breaking down the topic:
Identity conflicts and ethical considerations for Canadians’ heritage-based claims to identity
Identity conflicts and ethical considerations for Canadians’ heritage-based claims to identity
🔴 Who is this project for (target audience)?
🔴 Who is this project for (target audience)?
This project is primarily for people in Canada who have heritage-based identities.
Why “Canadians’”?
This project primarily addresses Canadians as it addresses considerations relevant to the specific sociopolitical contexts present in Canada that may differ slightly (or significantly!) elsewhere.
📖 Heritage is defined as “a person's racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural background” (Cambridge, n.d.-b).
Image source [dictionary]: Koreller (2022)
🟠 By heritage based identity claims, I am referring to self-identity built on legitimate heritage, but from which the individual is disconnected, that is to say that this heritage relates to a group or community with which the individual has not been actively engaged, or to which their engagement has been limited.
Community is intended to mean an ethnic group for the context of the current project.
📖 The American Psychological Association defines an ethnic group as “any major social group that possesses a common identity based on history, culture, language, and often religion” (n.d.-a). “Ethnicity refers to a group of people bound by a common language, culture, spiritual tradition, and/or ancestry.” (Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2017, p. 45)
Heritage-based identities in this respect is what is being addressed in the current project.
How does that even happen? [disconnection] 🤔
There are many reasons individuals can become disconnected from certain pieces of their heritage. It can result from a conscious choice (ex. distancing oneself from a socially marginalised identity), or unintentionally (ex. a relationship breakdown, or geographic move that resulted in a lack of contact). While these changes can occur within a single generation, the current project primarily addresses changes occurring over a longer period, i.e. intergenerationally.
For example, Gauthier (2018) addresses the situation of "Anglo-dominant individuals of Francophone heritage”. These are individuals to whom the French language was not transmitted, even though their grandparents and sometimes their parents were French speakers. They were likewise not afforded the opportunity to participate in the culture, or chose to distance themselves from it. Some of the reasons identified for this disconnection were the loss of the language by the parents, limited minority language education or community support, etc. These individuals are a part of what are termed "the lost generations" (Denis, 2010-2011, p. 17, as cited in Gauthier, 2018).
Image source [Fleur de Lys]: Futurhit12 (2019)
🟣 “Ethical considerations” …Why do ethics matter here?
🟣 “Ethical considerations” …Why do ethics matter here?
First, let’s establish what ethics and ethical considerations are...
📖 Ethical is defined as “relating to beliefs about what is morally right and wrong” and as “morally right” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.-a).
📖 Morally is defined as “based on principles that you or people in general consider to be right, honest, or acceptable” (Cambridge dictionary, n.d.-d).
📖 Moral is defined as as “relating to the standards of good or bad behaviour, fairness, honesty, etc. that each person believes in, rather than to laws” and as “behaving in ways considered by most people to be correct and honest” (Cambridge dictionary, n.d.-c).
In essence, ethics talks about the notions of 'right' and 'wrong', honestly, fairness, etc. These ideas relate directly to social sustainability.
🔵 Sustainability? I thought we were talking about ethics and heritage...
🔵 Sustainability? I thought we were talking about ethics and heritage...
Don't worry, we are! But to understand how, first we need to understand some theory. This project focuses specifically on social sustainability, which is defined below:
📖 Social sustainability is described as “the ability of a social system, such as a country or community, to indefinitely maintain an adequate level of social well-being. It involves social relationships, interactions, and institutions that affect viable development. Social sustainability includes areas such as social equity, community development, human rights, and social justice and overlaps with some aspects of economic and environmental sustainability” (Comstock, 2024).
It is also stated that “a key principle of social sustainability is the engagement of citizens in participatory processes, ensuring that development plans reflect the needs and voices of the community” (Comstock, 2024).
A key idea of social sustainability is the long-term well being and thriving of a particular community. For the context of the current project, community is intended to mean an ethnic group. Ensuring that the perspectives of a given community are represented is an important factor as this contributes to their representation and equitable treatment in society, which supports the community's ability to thrive. We will learn a bit more about how representation and equity are related, and why they matter in the subsequent sections.
In order to understand how one's heritage-based identity claim relates to social sustainability, we must first understand how identity forms, as well as the larger interactions and power dynamics between communities in a given society.
In this section, we broke down the topic, now it's time to dive a little deeper!
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