Part A:
Mary Ellen Turpel, "Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian Charter: Interpretive Monopolies, Cultural Differences"
1. What is Turpel's primary critique of the Charter?
2. What is the role of a legislative preamble? What is problematic about the preamble to the Charter?
3. Turpel advocates a cultural differences analysis. Razack critiques a cultural differences approach. Where does the disagreement between these two authors lie and where are they in line with each other?
4. What does Turpel mean when she discusses the perception of cultural difference as an imperative and how is that distinct from seeing it as a gap in knowledge (p.13)? What is the impact of such a distinction?
5. What is Turpel's critique of the rights paradigm? And what is its significance with respect to the Charter?
6. Are there any possible routes out of the situation Turpel presents?
Part B:
Wendy G. Smooth, "Intersectionality from TheoreticalFramework to Policy Intervention"
1. What is intersectionality? Why is it so important?
2. On page 13 Smooth describes the paradox that intersectionality presents for social science researchers. What would you say is the paradox that intersectionality presents for human rights advocates?
3. According to Smooth, "intersectionality is most useful not when it is used to explore how power is most familiar, but when intersectionality offers us a means to make visible hidden power differentials that are naturalized through systems of inequality, or when it helps researchers disrupt dominant narratives of privilege" (p.17). Do you agree? Can you think of examples (perhaps from previous course readings?) of each of these ways that intersectionality might expose sites of power and privilege?
4. What are the methodological issues in exploring intersectionality that Smooth describes as unresolved tensions? How do these apply in the human rights context? Are they resolvable? If not what does that mean for how we proceed in the human rights project?