Sasha Nagy: Welcome to our ongoing series of live discussions in the CIFAR's Next Big Question series.
Today we are joined by Gérard Bouchard a professor at the University of Québec at Chicoutimi. The topic is society, or rather, what makes a society resilient. Dr. Bouchard will be with us shortly.
1:57 Sasha Nagy: Thanks for joining us today Mr. Bouchard. I am interested in this topic. I am not sure if this is directly tied to your presentation in Montreal recently, but I was wondering about how a society rebounds from a tragic event. Communities in Haiti and Chile underwent considerable damage during recent major earthquakes, and in some ways took to rebuilding in different ways. I am wondering if the nature of how a community reacts to something like this provides insight into how they emerge from it as a society.
2:01 Comment From Gérard Bouchard: Dear Sasha, You are right, resilience applies to any kind of traumas that destabilize a society. It can be an earthquake, an economic crisis, an epidemy, a military defeat, etc. The question remains the same: what factors or mechanisms shape the response of the society?
2:01 Comment From Mark: Is there really a difference between collective memory and collective dreams? It seems that both are carefully shaped to lend legitimacy to current political regimes. As one regime falls, another reshapes how groups think about their collective pasts and futures. It's not like we know that much more about our groups' pasts than our futures, especially as the past passes further in time.
2:05 Gérard Bouchard: I would say that, theoretically, the past of a society conveys its great achievements whereas the dreams speak to the future. But, of course, things are never that straightforward; it happens that current dreams drive the writing of history, they blend with what we call the founding myths, that is a mixture of facts and reverse wishful thinking.
2:06 Comment From Diane_Dyson: The framework used for individual resiliency may give some useful ways of analysing the resiliency of a society, that is that there are both internal characteristics and external qualities which are protective. I am particularlyinterested in how issues of inequality, as described by Wilkinson in the The Spirit Level, may affect community resiliecy. Could you comment?
2:10 Gérard Bouchard: You are right, there is much to learn from the individual standpoint. As for inequalities, they may affect resiliency inasmuch as they weaken the sense of solidarity in a society, they make collective mobilization more difficult because the awareness of inequalities tends to increase distrust, thus reducing the capacity to respond collectively.
2:11 Comment From Sonia M: Recently, I heard a story about a group of Canadians working in South America – when people asked where they were from; they lied and said “USA.” This shocked me a little, but it turned out that this occurred in a country where there is Canadian mining happening and not are always ethical (including human rights violations). In those countries Canada is viewed as a terror and menacing… How do we look at ourselves critically if we continue to delude ourselves with our Canadian mythology?
2:15 Gérard Bouchard: Your comment is interesting since, usually, we hear of just the contrary: Americans travellers who present themselves as Canadians, hoping for a better greeting... It seems to me that the positive image that Canadians enjoy acoss the world is rather deserved if you compare with the USA. Personnally, I would add that a Canadian nationalism is feeding on that image and this could become a bit troublesome.
