Product Description

In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all.

Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions.

The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56537 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Review
"A powerful weapon in Islam's arsenal is women's clothing." -- Carla Power, New Statesman

Review
Scott does a good job of conveying the hysteria that surrounded the foulard debate in France...Scott's broad and exhaustive research makes for a bracing account of the debate.
(Laila Lalami The Nation )

Veil-bashing is suddenly socially acceptable among not merely tabloid-reading Little Englanders, but also metropolitan sophisticates...Why should a bit of cloth so threaten the French republic? That is the central question posed by [this] subtle new study...Many French commentators cast the debate about the veil as an issue about Muslims, Islam and integration. Scott, a distinguished historian at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, shows that it revealed rather more about the French themselves.
(Carla Power New Statesman )

This book will undoubtedly rank as one of the best Anglo-American critical commentaries on the affaire du foulard and the 2004 law banning religious signs in schools...[Scott] succeeds in providing a magisterial demonstration of the power of discourse--of the ways in which abstract ideas, when mediated through a vibrant political culture, can influence collective thinking and practice.
(Cecile Laborde La Vie Des Idees )

The Politics of the Veil is a propitious contribution to the exploration and analysis of the complex meanings and purported meanings of these phenomena that have come to symbolise for Turkey and France the struggle to defend the foundations of their Republic against forces that allegedly undermine all that is glorious and good about these 'singular' or 'exceptional' states.
(Elif Aydyn The Muslim News )

This book is a powerful denunciation of the French government and people whom Scott labels as racist, discriminatory, and intolerant of Muslim immigrants primarily from North Africa. In instituting a ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public schools, the author claims that France has gone too far in its policies of strict secularism and adherence to the values of republicanism in which citizenship is conceived of as an individual matter devoid of ethnic and religious content. . . . [A] fascinating piece of scholarship.
(S. Majstorovic CHOICE )

[I]t is important to remember the lessons of the headscarf ban, to understand the politics that lay behind it and its racist implications. This book is a useful reminder of both.
(Sadie Robinson International Socialism )

Scott's book is a wonderful discussion about how well and how badly societies respond to religious challenges. I strongly recommend it.
(Iva Ellen Deutchman Politics and Religion )

It is difficult to do justice to the rigour and subtlety of this important book, written by a distinguished historian with previous works on gender and democratic politics. It should be read not only by those interested in the French situation but also by anyone who is concerned by the hysteria surrounding Muslims in Europe. It clarifies the ideas behind current debates on multiculturalism, assimilation and integration, and points the way towards a solution.
(Mary Hossain Journal of Islamic Studies )

Joan Scott authoritatively rejects many of the arguments that are often used in favor of totally excluding Islam from the public sphere. In doing so she has provided much food for thought and has written a book that is equally valuable to scholars and to students in a graduate or upper level undergraduate course.
(Hootan Shambayati Law and Politics Book Review )

The Politics of the Veil is written in clear and accessible prose, and its provocative yet succinct chapters are thought provoking and user friendly at the same time. . . . [T]he book can be easily divided up and read over two or three class periods or it can be comfortably assigned as a whole. Because its subject matter is so pertinent to so many disciplines, the book can be used in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, gender studies, European Studies, religion, or any courses in the humanities or social sciences examining contemporary French politics and society.
(Kristen Ghodsee Women's Studies International Forum )

Review
Brilliant, crisp, and cogently argued. Joan W. Scott's novel and trenchant discursive analysis exposes the prejudices of the reductionist French versions of secularism and feminism regarding Islam and French Muslims from North African and Arab origins. The study is illuminating far beyond the French case, as former colonial and/or working subjects struggle for integration and recognition of their difference.
(Abdellah Hammoudi, Princeton University )

Customer Reviews

Paradoxes of Religion and Secularism
Joan W. Scott's book on the headscarf controversies (*affaires des foulards*) in France over the past two decades is one of the best works of social theory that I have read in recent years. In clear, accessible prose, Scott lays out an incisive analysis of the motivations for and consequences of the headscarf ban in French public schools. Furthermore, although the controversies constitute a relatively recent phenomenon, Scott (a historian by training) does an admirable job of contextualizing the debate by presenting the colonial, religious, and philosophical sources of French national identity. The result is a nuanced and compelling study of contemporary French society and the supposed "threat" posed to it by Muslim immigrants.

The great virtue of this book is its analysis of the paradoxes of religion and secularism that have been revealed by the French government's prohibition of the headscarf (strategically referred to as the more oppressive-sounding "veil" by supporters) in school. In Scott's careful attention to media coverage of the controversies and the political and philosophical discourses of pro-ban figures, she reveals a surprising degree of chauvinism in the political ideals of French universalism; of intolerance in France's lauded defense of "abstract individualism" as the basis for citizenship; and of patriarchal authority in certain French feminists' insistence that any wearing of the "veil" is inherently oppressive and degrading of females. In short, where pro-ban figures (from conservative politicians to feminist intellectuals) rail against the intolerance, "backwardness," and authoritarian nature of global Islam (as symbolized by the "veil"), Scott notes a fearful trend toward "absolutist secularism" and an uncompromisingly hostile stance toward cultural difference (where *intranational* [within France] social, class, and ethnic/racial differences are elided by "clash of civilizations" discourse -- Western secularism pit against global Islam).

On the other hand, opponents of the ban as well as some heardscarf-wearing girls (through quoted testimony) reveal the extent to which the "veil" actually serves a strategic, even empowering, purpose in everyday life: a way for young women to negotiate their gender, spiritual, and political identities in woefully underfunded schools in the poorest sections of major French cities. In other words, in already stigmatizing environments, young women wear headscarves as a means of expressing fidelity to cultural traditions, signaling attachment to their family, and/or asserting individual dignity through spiritual development. In all cases, the headscarf is a symbol of survival and social well-being -- the very things the state claims to protect under its obtuse, heavy-handed ban.

*The Politics of the Veil* does more than outline the French government's hypocrisy in dealing with social and religious minorities. It is a well-written, well-argued case for the need to recognize the interdependence of religion and secularism in Western democracies. I recommend this book highly to scholars and general readers of modern Europe, contemporary politics, and social and cultural theory.