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Abstract: The apparent absence of a unique national tradition of anthropology in Canada has been the subject of discussion since the 1970s. Howes (1992) proposed that, in fact, a Canadian anthropological canon can be identified and that these works share, along with Canadian culture more generally, a commitment to the principle of bicentrism. This article questions the idea that principles such as bicentrism and/or multicul-turalism are reflective of a distinctive Canadian national/popular collective will. It argues that, in English-Canada, there is a widely recognized intellectual tradition of political economy and that this tradition offers a better model for understanding what is or is not different about English-Canadian anthropology.
Resume: L'apparente absence d'une tradition anthropologique nationale unique au Canada a fait l'object de discussions depuis les annees 1970. Howes (1992) a soumis I'idee qu'en fait un canon anthropologique canadien peut etre identifie et que les travaux qui en relevent partagent, en accord avec la culture canadienne en general, un engagement envers le principe du bicentrisme. Le present article remet en question l'idee que des principes tels que le bicentrisme et/ou le multicul-turalisme refletent une volonte collective populaire nationale distinctement canadienne. Il soutient qu'au Canada anglais, il y a une tradition intellectuelle d"economie politique largement reconnue, et que cette tradition offre un meilleur modele pour comprendre ce qui est ou ce qui n'est pas different en anthropologie canadienne anglaise.
Introduction
Whether or not Canada has its own national tradition of anthropology has been a subject of discussion since at least the 1970s. Recent efforts (Darnell, 1998) to trace the history of the discipline in Canada have enriched our knowledge of the development of the institutional bases of Canadian anthropology but have not identified a distinctive intellectual or theoretical anthropological tradition that reflects or expresses a unique Canadian culture. To date the most explicit effort to specify a distinctive Canadian anthropological paradigm is Howes' (1992) proposal that canonical Canadian anthro- pological writings express the principle of bicentrism.
In this paper I engage Howes' argument about the relationship between a distinctive Canadian culture and the tradition of Canadian anthropology. Since the specific objects of study in physical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, linguistic anthropology and archaeology are diverse, and anthropology in Quebec is different from the rest of the country, for...