Grad - Dawson

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between the emergence of manual labor boarding schools for First Nations children, processes of state formation, and the role of religious belief systems in nineteenth century Upper Canada. Drawing on the insights of Marcel Gauchet and Claude Lefort, Dawson argues that an analysis of the theorization and institutionalization of these schools by colonial administrators, missionaries, and church representatives sheds new light on processes of subject formation in emerging liberal democratic state formations.