BOOK REVIEW

Richard Collins, Culture, Communication and National Identity: The Case
of Canadian Television. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

Collins' trans-Atlantic perspective lends some valuable insights to
academic and policy debates on the importance of domestic cultural

industries. His continentalist position is clear: though "both

communications and the state have been central to Canada's continuing

process of nation-building and self-assertion" (5), an out-dated

nationalism must give way to the fact of a "weak linkage between
national sentiment — generally strongly held — and low consumption of
Canadian production in what is widely held to be the most important of

the cultural industries: television" (339).

The book begins with an historical survey of Canadian

broadcasting policies. Finding that these are nationalist-oriented policies,

which presume to strengthen national identity by supporting nationalist

cultural industries, Collins proceeds to critique the notion and practice of

nationalism, both theoretically and within the concrete Canadian context.

He criticizes dominant assumptions of dependency and national identity
as they have been applied to issues of Canadian regionalism and

continentalism. Collins argues finally that the Canadian intelligentsia and

other elites assume wrongly the precepts of media imperialism,

misunderstand the link between the state and symbolic culture, and

perpetuate a false sense of nationalism.

Collins identifies a central, long-standing objective of Canadian

broadcasting policy to strengthen cultural identity. Included in the

recommendations of the 1957 Fowler Commission Report, this objective
persists up to the 1988 House of Commons Standing Committee on
Cultural Communication report, which states that "broadcasting policy is
Canada's premiere cultural policy" (43). These cultural goals have,

however, been blocked by the impossibility of reconciling a majoritarian

nationalist vocation with a minoritarian public service (334-35). While

the minoritarian goal is to Canada's credit, the nationalist goal is not

necessary, and is based on a false premise (140).

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Alternate Routes, Volume 10, 1993

Collins argues that central to the variants of nationalism is the

view that they serve the objective of obtaining and using state power. To
this end, nationalist ideology attempts to enforce a congruence of political

will, economic activity and cultural identity. The ideological project is,
for Collins however, an outdated one which denies a fact of the

contemporary world economic order: nation-states are no longer self-

sufficient and are becoming unstoppable, integrated and interdependent.

The force of this inevitable process of interdependence is the world

economy itself — something which Canadians could not and should not
attempt to influence (xi). Collins objects to the "anterior values of

national Canadian-ness" as if these values never existed, but are rather

imagined by the Canadian nationalist who is "hostile to the United States,
capitalism, television, modernity, and rational thought" (121). The few

espousing the rhetoric of Canadian nationalism are merely those who
stand in the way of the inevitable world of international competition (xvi,
28, 349).

Among these sorts is the Canadian intelligentsia. They must back
down from a position of false authority and give up the practice of
dictating the Canadian consumption of foreign culture. They must give

up aspirations to control cultural production for their own selfish gains
(339) and accept a new world order of cultural and economic
interdependence. Collins makes repeated reference to the emerging

European Common Market, and predicts that it will face a cultural
internationalization similar to Canada's (ix, xiii, 5, 337). Collins,

however, avoids the conclusion that the future interdependent Europe is

less an acceptance of a new world order, than it is a fear for the survival

of independent European states, given a growing threat of American

economic expansion (hence, 'Fortress Europe'). Suggesting that

Canadians should not similarly resist this same threat, amounts to a

failure to distinguish between 'united against' and 'dependent upon', while

calling them both 'interdependent'.

The future interdependence of Europe is, for Collins, one in

which the increasing demands of broadcast programs are "of interest to

different language and cultural communities" (337). Collins argues that

Canada's bilingual and multicultural broadcast system provides a perfect

laboratory to develop new products for the coming European market
Though claiming that this opportunity is undermined by nationalist

broadcasting goals (336), he docs not offer a clear explanation. If these

goals are to oppose American broadcast culture, arc they not also to

oppose a narrow cultural and linguistic autarky? Is it not the nationalist

policv goal of providing a multi-cultural, bilingual and Canadian

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Iluhka Book Review

alternative to American broadcasts which has created this bold new
model and 'testing ground' for Europe? Canada's option in the new
European cultural market was only afforded by the symbolic cultural
sovereignty which Collins suggests Canadians give up.

In overview, Collins' rejection of Canadian nationalism (or

assumptions thereof) is the basis of his rejection of policy objectives to

support cultural identity through a national broadcasting system. Not

only is this offered as an academic advancement that is proof that the

state and culture must be separated (326-29), but also as support for the

current European and North American continentalist agendas. The value
of Collins' argument depends upon whether one accepts that Canadian

communications policies in support of cultural identity are necessary.

That this debate in Canada will not be resolved soon is bitterly

acknowledged by Collins who, in the final analysis, admits the

shortcomings of his 'martian view' of Canada.

David S. Hubka
Carleton University

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