Fanning on Mounties as Social Bonding Agents, Confederation to WWI

Fans of legal pluralism and low law may be interested in this one.

Soren Fanning of Robert Morris University, "Forging a Frontier: Social Capital and Canada's Mounted Police, 1867–1914" in the December 2012 issue of American Review of Canadian Studies.

This article examines the role of the North West Mounted Police in creating communities in the Canadian Prairies during the first decades of Confederation. Despite being created as an institution of law enforcement, the Mounted Police acted more often as a social bonding agent, creating the necessary conditions and organizations required to establish permanent communities otherwise isolated from one another. As the only federal presence in the frontier, the force evolved into an autonomous institution of cultural stability, performing vital services and advocating for frontier objectives to the government in Ottawa.