This open access book recognizes, builds on, and reinvigorates the legacy of critical interventions in the study, practice, and teaching of Canadian foreign policy. It offers a wider consideration of methodological, theoretical, and epistemological possibilities, and greater attention to issues not typically captured by studies of foreign policy – situated within the critical challenges of the current “moment” of global uncertainty. Contributors offer a view into not only how Canada exists in the world, but also how its foreign policy might be reimagined through a critical lens, and what different futures are possible. In doing so we look to people, insecurities, myths, and relationships both within the state and beyond it. Collectively, the volume provides a critical re-interpretation of Canada’s changing composition, identities, and impacts, highlighting the relationships that underpin its status and stature, its impacts and responsibilities in the world, and the narratives used to explain and justify Canada’s actions and inactions.

Chapter 6: Instrumentalizing Gender in Defence and Security: Discursive Shield or Rhetorical Quicksand is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Liam Midzain-Gobin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, Canada.