The Proposal Economy

In 2001 the northern Ontario town of Cobalt won a competition to be named the province’s “Most Historic Town.” This honour came as Cobalters were also applying for and winning federal and provincial development grants to remake this once important silver mining centre. This book, based on extended ethnographic and multi-method research, examines the multiple ways that development proposal writing is intertwined with neoliberal citizenship. The authors argue that the citizens of Cobalt have become entrenched in a “proposal economy,” a system that empowers them to imagine, engage, and propose but not to count on the state to provide certain services.