Identity Politicking: New Candidacies and Representations in Contemporary Canadian Politics

This dissertation centres on the candidacies and leaderships of three politicians—Justin Trudeau, Olivia Chow, and Kathleen Wynne. It examines the ways in which gender, race, sexuality, and other salient aspects of politicians’ identities are strategically negotiated and mobilized by politicians, political actors, the media, and the grassroots. The cases herein question the extent to which identity matters in Canadian electoral politics at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, bridging sociological understandings of power and authority with feminist analyses of identity. The project engages broadly with qualitative methods—discourse analysis, media analysis, participant observation, and interviewing. The research contributes to understandings of: (1) the durability of masculinity in Canadian electoral politics; (2) dispositional requirements for leaders; (3) the compensatory labour that minority politicians perform; (4) alignments and allegiances between politicians and grassroots movements.The first case of the dissertation examines media coverage of a charity-boxing match between Liberal Member of Parliament Justin Trudeau and Conservative Canadian Senator Patrick Brazeau. It offers the concept recuperative gender strategies to describe how political leaders work to restore their public gender identities. The second case is focused on the candidacy of visible minority Toronto mayoral candidate, Olivia Chow. The case offers three concepts that illuminate forms of identity work that minority politicians navigate on the campaign trail: dispositional requirements, ideological alignment, and political compensatory labour. The final case analyzes social movement actors’ assessments of Premier Kathleen Wynne—the first woman and openly lesbian premier of Ontario—and presents a typology of words and deeds to map the terms under which social movement actors judge progressive politicians.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sociology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Maiolino, Teresa-Elise

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Taylor, Judith

• Canadian Politics
• Gender
• Identity
• Political Leadership

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/93035

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/93035