Beginning with a look at the “free-trade” debates of the 1980s, the course offers a brief history of how the nation state of Canada emerged from the technologies and ideas of industrial modernity. It then sketches in the major changes that have shifted the pattern (the paradigm) into something more open-bordered with new, more individualized and sometimes conflicting sources of identity and affiliation. It then considers what this means for individuals, for public institutions (like health care) and for citizens’ capacity to discuss, decide and take action as a collectivity in an age of corporate globalization and post-Sept. 11th global security.