From Islam en France to Islam de France: contradictions of the French left's responses to Islam

ABSTRACT

The political class in France, especially the left, has been profoundly shaped by the revolutionary heritage of 1789. Determined to combat the determinisms that fractured French society under the ancien régime, such as religion, the individual was reconfigured, first as a citizen and then, by the left, as indistinguishable from a class, the proletariat. While in both cases the conceptualization of the individual had the benefit of unity and clarity, the abstract nature of these notions too often left out those very factors that are most significant to those individuals themselves for their self-definition. Moreover, the social transformation of France since the 1960s has exposed the culture-specific conditioning that underlay the apparent neutrality of the conceptualization of the individual bequeathed by 1789. Raymond explores how the left has struggled with its intellectual heritage in its relationship with minorities, especially Muslims, from the xenophobic populism of the Communists in the early 1980s to the recognition proposed by some Socialists during their last period in government. Paradoxically, the institutional accommodation reached with the Islamic community by the centre-right governments of the past decade, notably the creation of the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (French Council of the Muslim Faith) in 2002, built on the initiatives of previous Socialist administrations. They set the course for a better integration of the Muslim community by transforming Islam en France (Islam in France) into an Islam de France (French Islam). But in spite of the initial impetus given by the Socialists to the institutional assimilation of Islam, their reactions to the emergence of a French Islamic identity remain contradictory. The question therefore persists as to whether the left in France, impregnated by a historically conditioned secularism, can be reconciled with a community defined by its faith through the emergence of a ‘Gallican’ Islam, or whether the time has come for a fundamental reappraisal of the ideology of the French left, and even the Republic itself.     

Managing South African transformation: the story of cricket in KwaZulu Natal, 1994–2004

Sport has historically been an important element of South African popular culture, even though it was divided along racial lines for much of the country's history. In post-apartheid South Africa, sport is seen by politicians, sports officials and many ordinary people as a means to surmount race and class barriers and to forge nationhood. But sport remains a site of acute contestation over what transformation means: ‘merit’ versus ‘affirmative action’, beneficiaries of change, pace of transformation and so on. This conflict reflects the broader tensions over how South African society should be restructured. Change in racial composition at the level of leadership, coaching and players since 1990 has failed to transform cricket into a ‘people's game’. The cricket establishment is following the lead of government in prioritizing the empowerment of a minority. Class privilege has replaced race privilege. At the same time, tensions generated by change are producing further hostility along the fault lines of race and class. There is, for example, a conflict over resources among those previously labelled ‘Black’: Indians, Coloureds and the majority African population. These struggles reveal the fragmented nature of post-apartheid South African society, notwithstanding attempts to define South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’. The historical, social, economic and cultural legacy of South Africa's conflicting pasts, the impact of globalization—and sport is a principal front of globalization, generating vast economic revenue and creating intolerable pressure to succeed—as well as post-apartheid discrepancies in economic and social conditions are all making it difficult to forge a united national culture, despite the attempt to use sport for the ‘mythic enactment’ of a collective South African identity. The tensions discussed in this article continue to be alive though the ‘patterns of prejudice’ are manifesting themselves in different forms.     

Romania and EUrope: Roma,Rroma and Ţigani as sites for the contestation of ethno-national identities

ABSTRACT

In November 2002 a Romanian journalist published an editorial attacking the Romanian authorities for 'playing the democratic card' and failing to prevent 'thieves, hooligans and criminals' from going to the West and disgracing all Romanians. The journalist, Lia Epure, entitled her article 'Rromania', a play on the Romanian government's spelling of Roma (i.e. 'Rroma'), and concluded that, if Romanians 'continue to accept identification with abnormals, then we will be become Rromania'. In response to vocal Romani and human rights group protests, Epure published a second article defending her right to say what 'even the president of the European Commission knows', that Romanians are not accepted as EUropean 'because of ?igani'. Woodcock explores how both elite and popular levels of Romanian discourse blame Romania's continued marginalization in EUrope on the actions of the ?igan, a fantastic Other, historically constructed out of ethno-nationalist Romanian discourses at moments of crisis for national identity. The discursive struggles for meaning with regard to the constructed ethnic Other highlight the paradox of post-socialist Romanian ethno-nationalism in an era of European Union accession: in order to be recognized as EUropean, Romanian discourse must relinquish the ?igan Other, even when it is this precise construction that has historically enabled Romania to claim a European identity.     

美国汽车露营的符号消费性及对中国的启示

从让·鲍德里亚的符号消费理论来看,休闲已演变为一种符号消费的对象,而作为一种户外休闲活动的汽车露营也被赋予符号消费的价值,普通汽车露营与房车露营作为不同的消费符号界定了美国中产阶级与上层阶级的身份与社会地位。依美国汽车露营发展的历程看,房车露营在中国还是富人阶层的符号消费,中国目前更适合重点发展大众的普通汽车露营度假产业。     

Protest,memory, and the production of ‘civilized’ citizens: two cases from Turkey and Lebanon

This article studies the proliferation of discourses of rationality and responsibility among a particular elite social group in Lebanon and Turkey, as they remember student mobilization of their past. I offer these episodes of student mobilization as acts of citizenship that create and make use of rapturous moments in the histories of their countries and institutions. I extend these acts of citizenship to the contemporary context and study the ways in which they become part of discourses of citizenship in unexpected ways. I propose that these narratives draw upon a set of local practices that reflect meanings of citizenship, originating from Western discourses of liberalism, albeit following a different route. In the narratives, violence and irrationality become the defining features of politicized behavior, whereas being civilized epitomizes good manners and rationality. Such boundary-drawing exercises contribute to making conceivable exclusionary social orders based on the idea of a hierarchical distribution of reason and social utility.     

常识与理性（四）：走向综合的司法改革

司法是解决社会纠纷的最后也是最重要的途径,但不是唯一的途径。作为社会正义的最后屏障,司法发挥作用的程度通常受制于行政和社会自身之解纷机能的出色作为。故此,应当理性地正视司法的有限性;并树立＂综合司法改革＂理念,在定位于最后屏障的前提下,将司法改革置于整个社会改革体系之中,正视并充分整合行政与社会自身之纠纷调处资源,以促成社会矛盾解决机制的多元化格局。     

民事诉讼调解制度的未来——回归其本质

诉讼调解是一种传统的解决纠纷方式,它在彻底解决纠纷、维护社会稳定方面发挥着重要的作用,但是随着社会的转型,审判方式的逐渐改革以及人们权利意识的增强,诉讼调解在解决纠纷方面也暴露出了种种弊端,这些弊端已经使调解制度在一定程度上发生了异化,基于此有必要对诉讼调解制度进行完善,使其回归其本质——纠纷解决方式.     

食品监管渎职罪的司法适用困境及出路

食品监管渎职罪＂入刑＂后,由于监管部门混乱,监管职责的交叉和空白致使该罪发现查处难;刑法规范本身用语的模糊性,结果犯的入罪门槛高,因果关系认定难,与其他犯罪难以区分等因素导致其具体适用难;加之监管人员与不法分子相勾结等原因,使得设立该罪的预期效果难以实现。对于其在司法适用中的困境,需要厘清监管部门的职责,优化监管者队伍,通过明确刑法用语、引入危险刑法理念变结果犯为危险犯、采取条件说来判断因果关系、增加罚金刑和资格刑等来完善刑法法规,为该罪的司法适用难寻求出路。     

司法对法律体系的完善

人民法院的司法活动对完善法律体系具有不可替代的独特作用。司法通过作用于法律体系的微观向度、调适过程、法与社会联系的建立、成文法固有缺陷的克服来完善法律体系。完善的具体方式包括司法解释、法律解释、指导性案例、司法审查、司法建议、参与和配合立法、送请有权机关审查和裁决、提出法律案等。对于通过司法完善法律体系,需要树立正确的理念。