Who and what is Canada? Constructing cultural identities in health care research

This paper concerns the negotiation of cultural categories embedded in and informing the ongoing nation formation of Canada. It discusses the construc tion of cultural identities by health care professional students as they pa rticipated in a qualitative study concerned with health care practice in an increasingly culturally diverse society. The study methodology, embedded i n layers of narrative about 'difference', fostered a negotiation of 'self' and 'other' on the part of the students and provided an intense site for re flection on cultural identities and social categories in a period of rapid demographic change in Canada. As the students defined and interpreted cultu ral issues during their fieldwork placements they interrogated and conteste d various dimensions of difference, including their own sense of Canadian-n ess as this played out in 'lived' multiculturalism in a specific Canadian c ity. It is argued that the students' negotiations of boundaries of the cult ural 'self' were closely linked to a changing place narrative and identity of Canada, expressed in discourses and material practices around difference at local and national scales. (C) 2001 Academic Press.