
Beyond the City Limits
Rural History in British Columbia
La description
The essays in Beyond the City Limits, all published here for
the first time, decisively break this silence and challenge traditional
readings of B. C. history. In this wide-ranging collection, R. W.
Sandwell draws together a distinguished group of contributors who bring
expertise, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives taken from
social and political history, environmental studies, cultural
geography, and anthropology. They discuss such diverse topics as
Aboriginal-White settler relations on Vancouver Island, pimping and
violence in northern BC, and the triumph of the coddling moth over
Okanagan orchardists, to show that a narrow emphasis on resource
extraction, capitalist labour relations, and urban society is simply
not broad enough to adequately describe those who populated the
province’s history.
Reviews
While the rural sometimes gets lost in the dazzling array of topics and methodological approaches represented here, this book is often fun to read and serves as a delightful sampler of what happened 'beyond the city limits' in British Columbia . .. If subsequent research efforts 'beyond the city limits' are as well executed as are those depicted in this sampling . .. then the history of British Columbia and Canada will be the richer for it.
- Margaret Conrad
Ken Favrholt’s article on agricultural settlement south of Kamloops does a wonderful job of explaining the presence of the old abandoned farm houses that dot the landscape on either side of Highway 5, and David Dendy’s account of codling moths in the Okangan is a "must read" for anyone interested in the history of the provincial tree fruit industry or the problems facing the widely publicized sterile insect release program. [Jean] Barman’s essay is clearly written and it manages to tackle a number of potentially contentious issues in a balanced and non-partisan manner. After reading Barman’s contribution you will no longer accept the arguments that all pioneering women were white, that academics are incapable of writing a coherent sentence, and that academic articles are categorically different from the articles that grace the pages of The Beaver or British Columbia Historical News.
- Clint Evans