| Occupying a dominant position in the global mining industry is one of Canada's key strategies for establishing itself as a successful nation in the twenty-first century global order. This has entailed a rapid expansion of Canadian mining industry presence in African states, such that Canada is now the leading non-African country investing in African mineral exploration. Positing such presence as neocolonialist in nature, this thesis asks how it is in cultural terms that Canada, a country usually portrayed as a model of national and international civility, is able to engage in inherently violent neocolonialist practices in African countries in the twenty-first century. Data is generated primarily from interviews with Canadian mining industry professionals, and supplemented with examination of various Canadian federal government texts, multilateral agency documents and mining industry documents. The data is read in relation to the fact of African resistance to foreign domination of mining. Drawing on anti-colonial, postcolonial, post-structural and critical race theories of white masculinity, nation formation and racial discourse, my analysis of the data shows the making of a particular kind of Canadian national cultural imaginary, "muscular white civility"---and a particular type of white male capitalist subject---required to normalize contemporary processes of North-South resource appropriation. By authorizing the appropriation of African mineral wealth in the name of Canadians' "muscular white civility" (we have capital, technology, organization and humane values), Canadians' privileged access and property rights are maintained and normalized in contemporary African mining. A key finding of this research is the inherently white supremacist nature of the Canadian twenty-first century internationalist imaginary and the consequent reproduction of North-South economic disparities structured along racial lines. |
