SSH News: Canadian Museum of History plans, Humanities 2.0, and the social conditions affecting Canadians’ health

Blog
August 2, 2013

The plans for the new Canadian Museum of History have been revealed, and they point to a greater focus on issues of politics, conflict, and First Nations history than can be found in its current incarnation as the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The report outlines the museum’s plans to rebrand itself and revamp the collection’s presentation, though some are expressing apprehension about the museum’s ability to critically examine certain issues in the wake of research and curatorial staff losses .

Le Devoir has been continuing their Humanities 2.0 series, and as we mentioned, one of their articles was about the research of Stéphane Bouchard, who spoke at our March 2013 Big Thinking lecture on Parliament Hill. The series has gone on to explore some more great digital humanities research, such as the implications of GeoWeb software, the digitization of Islamic science and philosophy manuscripts, and Google and the sociology of algorithms (subscription required).

A report from the Canadian Medical Association reveals that poverty is the primary factor influencing the state of Canadians’ health. It also states that “life conditions including income, education, disability, gender, working conditions and the feeling of belonging to the community affect about half of health outcomes,” with about one-quarter being attributed to the health care system, 15% to biology and genetics, and 10% to environmental factors. Released this past Tuesday, the report was developed based on data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada.