White Space : Race, Privilege, and Cultural Economies of the Okanagan Valley

Much attention has been paid to race in the Canadian metropolis, but how are the workings of whiteness manifested in the rural-urban?

White Space analyzes the dominance of whiteness in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia to expose how this racial notion sustains forms of settler privilege today. Contributors to this perceptive collection critique the cultural economics of whiteness and white supremacy.

The first half documents the historical construction of whiteness: how settlers and their ancestors have sought to exalt pioneers by erasing non-whites from the region’s heritage while Indigenous people resist this white-out.

The second half explores the persistence of whiteness as an organizing principle in the neoliberal deindustrialized present. White Space moves beyond appraising whiteness as if it were a solid and unshakable category.

Instead it offers a powerful demonstration of how the concept can be re-envisioned, resisted, and reshaped in contexts of economic change.