Neoliberalism in small town Alberta : a look at personhood, gender, race and poverty

Abstract

An in-school feeding project, Kids In Need or KIN, was introduced in the fall of 2001 to a rural community located between two First Nation's Reserves, in southern Alberta. I analyze the KIN project and its ensuing controversy as the site of struggle over the meaning of parenting. Given the predominance of neoliberalism as a discursive practice, centered on individual responsibility, the controversy generated by the KIN project reflects the central question of how to implement a program devised to assist children living with adults presumably "responsible" for their well-being. Implicitly the debate centered on particular class-based, neoconservative constructions of families, which support a gendered division of labor and were deployed in this community to reengage long standing notions about the parental deficits of Natives. This thesis explores the possible dangers, then, of the KIN project's focus on child poverty, in relation to neoliberal constructions of personhood, gender and race.