The Construction of Minority Identities in France and Britain


Book Description

In France the idea that a person can be both a French citizen and have an ethnic or religious identity is unacceptable, while in Britain community cohesion promote the combining of race or faith with the idea of being British. This volume examines the problems posed by these assumptions and the realities that are forcing them to be revisited.




Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe


Book Description

Social justice has returned to the heart of political debate in present-day Europe. But what does it mean in different national histories and political regimes, and how has this changed over time? This book provides the first historical account of the evolution of notions of social justice across Europe since the late nineteenth century. Written by an international team of leading historians, the book analyses the often-divergent ways in which political movements, state institutions, intellectual groups, and social organisations have understood and sought to achieve social justice. Conceived as an emphatically European analysis covering both the eastern and western halves of the continent, Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe demonstrates that no political movement ever held exclusive ownership of the meaning of social justice. Conversely, its definition has always been strongly contested, between those who would define it in terms of equality of conditions, or of opportunity; the security provided by state authority, or the freedom of personal initiative; the individual rights of a liberal order, or the social solidarities of class, nation, confession, or Volk.




Growing Up Canadian


Book Description

A significant number of Canadian-raised children from post-1970s immigrant families have reached adulthood over the past decade. As a result, the demographics of religious affiliation are changing across Canada. Growing Up Canadian is the first comparative study of religion among young adults of Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist immigrant families. Contributors consider how relating to religion varies significantly depending on which faith is in question, how men and women have different views on the role of religion in their lives, and how the possibilities of being religiously different are greater in larger urban centres than in surrounding rural communities. Interviews with over two hundred individuals, aged 18 to 26, reveal that few are drawn to militant, politicized religious extremes, how almost all second generation young adults take personal responsibility for their religion, and want to understand the reasons for their beliefs and practices. The first major study of religion among this generation in Canada, Growing Up Canadian is an important contribution to understanding religious diversity and multiculturalism in the twenty-first century. Contributors include Peter Beyer, Kathryn Carrière, Wendy Martin, and Lori Beaman (University of Ottawa), Rubina Ramji (Cape Breton University), Nancy Nason-Clark and Cathy Holtmann (University of New Brunswick), Shandip Saha (Athabasca University), John H. Simpson (University of Toronto), and Marie-Paule Martel-Reny (Concordia University)




Figures of the Migrant


Book Description

This volume seeks to investigate the representation of the migrant and migration in literary texts and the arts. Through studies that examine works in a range of art forms ‒ novels, theatre, poetry, creative non-fiction, documentary films and performance and video installations ‒ that evoke a variety of historical and (trans)national contexts, the volume focuses on the question of the roles of literature and the arts in representing migration. An important issue considered is the extent to which artistic figuration can act as a counterpoint to social discourse on migrants that often involves stereotypes and reductive views. The different contributions to the volume illustrate that literature and the arts can provide readers and viewers with a space for fluid knowledge production and affective expansion and that within that overarching function, artistic works play three main roles with regard to representing migration: undertaking a socio-political and cultural critique, presenting alternative views to stereotypes that highlight the singularity and complexity of the migrant and providing proposals for different futures.




The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing


Book Description

This book will enlighten readers on the importance of literature in contributing to historical knowledge. Will provide readers with comprehensive understanding of the development of writing by French authors of Algerian origin, from its emergence in the 1980s to the present day. Emphasizes the contemporary relevance of the Algerian War and the afterlives of empire on twenty-first century society and culture.




Europe and Its Muslim Minorities


Book Description

The presence of Muslim communities in Europe is a politically charged issue. Sporadic attacks by radical Muslims have further highlighted the problem of a deep cultural divide between the Muslims and their host countries. This book presents a picture of the causes and effects of Muslim immigration to the West.




French Muslims in Perspective


Book Description

With the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, France has faced a number of critiques in its attempts to assimilate Muslims into an ostensibly secular (but predominantly Catholic) state and society. This book challenges traditional analyses that emphasise the conflict between Muslims and the French state and broader French society, by exploring the intersection of Muslim faith with other identities, as well as the central roles of Muslims in French civil society, politics and the media. The tensions created by attacks on French soil by Islamic State have contributed to growing acceptance of the Islamophobic discourse of Marine Le Pen and her far-right Front National party, and debates about issues such as headscarves and burkinis have garnered worldwide attention. Downing addresses these issues from a new angle, eschewing the traditional us-and-them narrative and offering a more nuanced account based on people’s actual lived experiences. French Muslims in Perspective will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, politics, international relations, cultural studies, European Studies and French studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners involved in immigration, education, and media.




State Management of Religion in Indonesia


Book Description

Although Indonesia is generally considered to be a Muslim state, and is indeed the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, it has a sizeable Christian minority as a legacy of Dutch colonialism, with Christians often occupying relatively high social positions. This book examines the management of religion in Indonesia. It discusses how Christianity has developed in Indonesia, how the state, though Muslim in outlook and culture, is nevertheless formally secular, and how the principal Christian church, the Java Christian Church, has adapted its practices to fit local circumstances. It examines religious violence and charts the evolution of the state’s religious policies, analysing in particular the impact of the 1974 Marriage Law showing how it enabled extensive state regulation, but how in practice, rather than reinforcing religious divisions, inter-religious marriage, involving the conversion of one party, is widespread. Overall, the book shows how Indonesia is developing its own brand of secularism, neither a full-blooded Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, nor an outright secular state like Turkey.




The Plural States of Recognition


Book Description

Critical reflections by established academics on the crisis of multiculturalism that occurred in Great Britain, Netherlands and Canada. It provides an occasion to develop a sophisticated understanding of societies characterized by religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.




The Democratic Predicament


Book Description

Both India and Europe have been undergoing a difficult process of negotiating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity within their democratic frameworks. In fact, recent incidents of xenophobic backlash against multiculturalism and minority communities in Europe, as well as myriad movements for constitutional recognition of castes, tribes and languages and the emergence of Islamophobic terror in India, question the conventional idea of democracy as the idyllic preserver of diversity. This volume contests the simplistic connection between democracy and diversity by proposing that democracy, in fact, produces, sediments and reinforces cultural heterogeneity. It argues that in democratic polities, disparate cultural practices are often converted into identity categories, with disturbing implications for national identity, constitutionalism, political governance and citizenship. While mobilizations on the plank of cultural differences are typically viewed as being born in undemocratic spaces with little toleration for diversity, they also find fertile soil in democracy insofar as democracy celebrates diversity and allows cultural dissent to thrive. Such dissent, while essential for democracy, has difficult consequences. Examining the fundamental conflict between constructions of particular cultural identities and mandates of a unifying democratic ethos, the book brings forth the complexities underlying the politics of identity recognition and national integration. In making a radical intervention in the discourse, this volume offers a critique of existing paradigms of multiculturalism. It will interest scholars and students of political science, sociology, and postcolonial and comparative studies.