Dressed to Express: Islamic Headscarves in French SchoolsMarc Ross Bryn Mawr University
Department of Political Science Abstract: Why is it that in France a country where public nudity is often seen as a matter of personal choice that a young girl placing a cloth on her head is viewed as a threat to the integrity of the society and culture requiring Presidential commissions and national legislation? This chapter on France is part of a larger examination of the diverse roles of cultural contestation in ethnic conflict and is intended to complement existing interest-based and structural accounts that dominate most political analyses but all to often fail to pay attention to identity and the role it plays in ethnic conflict. My analysis examines how identities are contested around mundane, everyday objects, cultural expressions and enactments found in literature, museum exhibitions, festivals, music, language, parades, flag displays, dress, sacred rites, religious practices, public art, monuments, flags, archaeological excavations, and holidays. In France, the 15 year old headscarf conflict has been "settled" at times through administrative and legislative action but has not been resolved in any meaningful sense in great part because headscarf conflicts are not about headscarves but about the threats to deeper identities they represent. Competing narratives about religious expression in contemporary France and vulnerability drives the increasingly intense conflict in a society that has a very homogenous view of itself that is at odds with both its tradition of high immigration and its contemporary social diversity. A psychocultural analysis reveals the deep fears at play and the unwillingness of each side to consider the other's recognition needs. It concludes that what is needed is the development of a more inclusive narrative of French identity and the development of more inclusive ritual and symbolic expressions. To date this has not been the in part because each side has been too fearful that by modifying its own positions, its own identity is at risk.
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